letters to surfers

Q. You seem to be committed to your model with great confidence. The hermeneutic of suspicion should make us question the facts and motives of all the writers of historical documents.

By Robert Brow (www.brow.on.ca)

The hermeneutic of suspicion is essential in historical studies (and legal evidence in law courts, the promises of politics, sociological statistics and many other fields). But models are not to be suspected, only tried out to see if they give a useful way of looking at a problem. In map making the Mercator projection is not adopted or rejected because we suspect the motives of its inventor. We may think the flat earth model is the opinion of meatheads, and totally wrong-headed, but it is the only useful model for making a map of Toronto or any other city. Having looked at various models to settle which is the most useful for our purpose, we then have to act. An airline pilot cannot keep questioning his global map and navigational data.

For myself I have decided to follow Jesus the Messiah, and chosen to use the model of his life and teaching presented in the Gospels. Having done that, the hermeneutic of suspicion is irrelevant for my purpose.