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purplesunrisefanfic · 4 years

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This is not the type of post I normally write and I won’t make a habit of it.

I had no idea how to write this post. This post is inherently problematic and I acknowledge that, but I ask that you do take the time to read it because I honestly believe that this is one of those times where it’s better to be problematic than silent. I am autistic and that’s where I’m coming from here. I can’t speak for Black autistic people but I have tried my best to ensure that I am speaking up for Black autistic people to the best of my ability.

I’m sorry there isn’t a read more, the mobile app and site on Tumblr does not do that.

I’m very worried by some of the generalisations I’ve seen being reblogged all over the place about what people should and should not in terms of grieving Chadwick Boseman and how they may be impacting some disabled Black people.

For example, I have seen posts that are very hardline about how it’s “wrong” to think/feel/say “T’Challa has died” as opposed to saying “Chadwick Boseman has died” and I have also seen posts that categorically denounce anyone who might want to react by writing fanfiction about T’Challa dying. There are other examples but I will use those two so that there are not too many.

I suspect that many of these comments were aimed at sketchy white people but they didn’t say so and that worries me. It worries that there is problem where allistic (non-autistic) and otherwise neurotypical people are failing to recognise that assuming everyone will know what you mean and/or that Black people will know it isn’t aimed at them is an ableist concept. One of the key problems people with autism face is that allistic people are often as bad as knowing what autistic people will or won’t assume or find obvious as we are when the shoe is on the other foot.

I’m not saying that some Black autistic and otherwise neurodiverse Black ppl won’t find it obvious that certain posts are implied to be addressed towards white people, because some will. But not everyone will. When it comes to autism, if you don’t say exactly and precisely what you mean then you cannot guarantee that the exact and precise thing you mean will be understood.

There are children on this platform. Are you sure you wanna say mass generalisations about how it’s wrong to do this, worry about that, think this way, express yourself that way and so forth on a platform where grieving Black children might see it? Where Black autistic children and adults might feel shamed or inferior (once again) because there’s a ton of notes on a post telling them that the way they think or feel or express themselves while grieving is wrong?

Don’t make any of these generalisations, please. Go back and rethink your posts, edit them, say what you mean. I’m not trying to be a white person inserting myself into this issue because I’m butthurt about posts calling out the shitty behaviour of white people. No, actually, it’s kinda the opposite, I’m butthurt because some of you forget to say “white people” when you needed to say “white people” I’m butthurt bc I know a lot of people think it’s okay to assume that everyone in a marginalised group always “gets it.” That idea hurts autistic people who are in another marginalised group. That idea is ableist. A person’s Blackness is not contingent on their ability to read neurotypical social rules. Do not assume that every single Black person knows instinctively that your post is aimed at white people being dicks who only care about Marvel, useless you actually say something like “Dear white people being dicks who only care about Marvel.” Yes, most people tend to “get it.” But unless you say “white people” you are the taking the risk that an autistic Black person won’t get that subtext. Please don’t take that risk when you the consequence could be that you effectively tell a Black autistic/neurodiverse people that they are grieving wrong.

I cannot think of many people out there that will be worse off for today’s news than Black autistic people for whom Chadwick, Black Panther, Marvel or superheroes in general is a special interest. I cannot put into words how much is at stake for the adults and children to whom that description applies. Some of these people may not be able to separate their mental concept of Chadwick Boseman and their mental concept of T’Challa in the way the average person does. They are not wrong, they are not lesser. They have nothing to be ashamed of. The last thing they deserve to see today is ill-thought grief-shaming generalisations that tell them aren’t respecting their hero properly.

Please check your posts, amend your posts, clarify and specify everything. If you wanna call out white people doing a thing say “white people,” if you wanna call out doing a thing in the context of having a shitty motive, call that out specifically. Explicitly say that doing X for Y reason is wrong because Y is a shitty motive. Explicitly say that the problem is Y motive. Or if it’s that the thing is okay to do privately, but some people are doing it inconsiderately and that’s hurting you, say “It’s inconsiderate to do X in this way. If you are doing X, please [specify how they can do it in a way that doesn’t harm others].” If you’re not sure how to communicate in a manner that is autism friendly, you can ask me and I’ll try to help.

Somewhere along the way I forgot to keep saying “autistic/neurodiverse,” every time and just said autistic sometimes. I’m sorry for that. So for the avoidance of doubt, this applies to anyone, diagnosed or undiagnosed/not yet diagnosed with any element of the differences I’ve talked about it, not just autism.

And to anyone of the people out there that I’m trying to talk about: How you think, how you feel, and how you process things is valid. If all you can think about today, tomorrow and maybe for a while is your fears about the future for T’Challa, that’s fine. More than fine, it’s a reflection of a way of thinking and perceiving that the world would be WORSE OFF without. If you write fanfiction about T’Challa to process your emotions then that’s okay too. Those are just two examples, the same goes pretty much across the board, however you express yourself. And actually most creative people tend to be glad to inspire other people to be creative, so if I had to bet on it, I’d bet that Chadwick Boseman would more likely than not be glad to see you writing.

If someone wants to take this rough point and write it better, please, please do. Ngl, I’m struggling with this, this is my best attempt at making these points but I’m not convinced it’s as good it ought to be. Please @ me if you do, bc I’d be glad to know.

And I’m fresh out of everything right now but here are some notes that I should add:

No one is exempt from considering autistic people, but that said I highly suspect it’s probably white people who are perpetuating a lot of this stuff, maybe even authoring it.

Every Black autistic person is inherently/fundamentally valuable regardless of their “contribution” to society, but also Black autistic people as a whole are valuable to society. The world would be shittier with Black Autistic people.

I’m a white autistic person trying to draw inferences and look out for other autistic people as best I can but I cannot and do not speak for Black autistic people. Raise their voices if you can.

#autdhd

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thinktosee · 4 years

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GAY RIGHTS APPLICATIONS DENIED (ONCE MORE) IN SINGAPORE

A. OPENER

“You pretend! Like you’re so perfect, so godly, but…you’re fake. You are fake.

Religion, what does that even mean to you?....What do your values stand for?....Traditions, culture, all that bullshit and for what?

I stay with my values! I stay with what I believe in! I might be a sinner, but I’m not fake! I know who I am………

But you don’t get to change me. You don’t get to change who I am……

You are hypocrites!”

- 16 year old Scott, to his parents, in David’s award-winning play, “Piety.” (1)

B. INTRODUCTION

This post underscores the on-going struggle and dilemma concerning the status and scope relating to the freedom of expression in general, and of the rights or lack thereof, in particular, of the LGBTQI community in Singapore. The following links to reports by U.S. Government and international human rights organizations are informative in so far as they offer a glimpse of the state of civil rights, and the level of respect accorded towards the dignity of our fellow human being in Singapore :

1. https://www.hrw.org/asia/singapore

2. https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/singapore/

3. https://rsf.org/en/singapore

4. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/SINGAPORE-2019-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf

On Mar 30th, 2020, the high court of singapore ruled in favour of staying a colonial-era law criminalizing consensual sex between men. (2) The law in question, dating to 1938, specifically states :

“Outrages on decency

377A : Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross decency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.” (3)

There were three applications to the court to re-instate personal and constitutional rights, which were legally denied or removed since 1938 at least, from a specific group or community of individuals – homosexual men. (4), (5)

The high court’s opinion regretfully and clearly goes against natural law, which may be defined as follows :

“Natural law can be discovered by reason alone and applies to all people, while divine law can be discovered only through God’s special revelation and applies only to those to whom it is revealed and whom God specifically indicates are to be bound.” (6)

C. CONCLUSIONS OF THE COURT

It appears the court addressed the challenges by the plaintiffs from a standpoint of the supreme rights of society or a seeming majority, against the mores, behaviour and or expressions of a minority community or individual. It is as simple as that, if we discarded all the obfuscating legal jargon. The rights of the individual to life, liberty, freedom, expression and beliefs were unfortunately not exhaustively explored to evince an outcome which is both judicious and acceptable to our conscience.

Here are excerpts of the court’s conclusions on case histories from India, United States and Hong Kong. International or universal law in this matter, seems to have little relevance in the Singaporean context :

“As I have suggested earlier, this conception of proportionality should be viewed as distinct from traditional principles of judicial review. While the Indian courts may have adopted such an approach, the Singaporean courts have made clear that we continue to subscribe to the traditional principles of judicial review.” (7)

“The willingness of the US courts to review the legitimacy of a statute, as well as its implications, would again be at odds with the reluctance of the Singapore judiciary to address extra-legal arguments.” (8)

“Singapore, however, has not adopted the ICCPR. (9) As such the decision in Yau Yuk Lung is less relevant to our context.” (10)

“A similar point may be made in addressing Navtej, where the Supreme Court of India ruled that the criminalisation of male homosexual conduct violates, among other rights, the right to freedom of expression. (11) I am unable to agree with the reasoning of the Indian Supreme Court given that the court appeared to have accepted a wider meaning of what constitutes “expression”, extending beyond verbal communication of ideas, opinions or beliefs.” (12)

Here’s a conclusion of the court, which in this writer’s opinion, is a Catch-22, really :

“As a starting point, it must be emphasised that Dr. Tan was taking issue with the enforcement of s377A, as opposed to the constitutionality of s377A itself. These issues are separate and distinct. The manner in which a provision is enforced, even if arbitrary, cannot, without more, result in the provision itself being rendered unconstitutional. The appropriate recourse in such a situation would be to seek administrative review, not constitutional review.” (13)

D. INDIVIDUAL vs SOCIETAL RIGHTS

Individual rights long preceded societal rights. The latter, are in most cases, gained through the diminution of individual rights, or through the theory and practice of the “common good.” That being said, the theory also holds that when a bill or provision is to be considered by the legislature, its adoption, if ever, should be proportional to that which it is intended to regulate (14). This was addressed by the Indian, U.S. and HK examples cited in the foregoing. The law must never be onerously discriminating, harmful or disadvantageous to the society, community or individual. The Singaporean court however, relied disproportionately on what it deemed to be overriding local societal mores, which it apparently equated with supreme rights, a conflation which goes against the grain of justice. Hence, its decision against the applications of the plaintiffs. Without the benefit of a city-wide referendum on s377A, how confident are we really about this societal justification for upholding an unjust law as s377A? And speaking of this unjust law, our words to the Archbishop may help us to differentiate how particularly unjust it truly is :

“Any law which wilfully discriminates, isolates, targets, inflicts pain or injury upon, suppresses, denies or eliminates the natural and or individual rights of anyone or group is inherently and morally reprehensible. Such law has no place in our home, school, religious institution and society. It is a law of abuse and FEAR. An abuse and fear of a defenceless individual or minority group. An abuse and fear of a community of citizens.”

- Our “Open letter to the Archbishop, Singapore”, dated Sep 27, 2018 :

https://thinktosee.tumblr.com/post/178506731468/open-letter-to-the-archbishop-singapore

Finally, to get back to the missing piece – nowhere in the court’s judgement did natural law make an appearance. Or if it did, I for one, missed it. It is as if its applicability is inconsistent with Singaporean jurisprudence. This method evokes, for me at least, a poem by John Donne (1572-1631). (15) It has relevance to the matter at hand as we shall see :

For Whom the Bell Tolls (16)

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend’s were.

Each man’s death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

The title of the poem, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, was adopted by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) for his novel, centring on the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the rise of fascism. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. (17)

Quote may be sourced in : “50 years of Hemingway Criticism”, p217. Author - Peter L. Hays, Scarecrow Press, 2014

E. CONCLUSION

Human rights are sacred, as John Donne alludes in his poem about the universality of humanity. We cannot and should not, deny to others, that which has been our collective and shared inheritance. Compassion is never a dirty word.

The Singaporean court has, despite its most learned applications, failed in this sacred duty to right a gross injustice to a law-abiding and respectable community of citizens. For this, the bell continues to toll for everyone in Singapore, and the world.

“You accept it. You accept that you cannot have everything your way. And perhaps, that’s just what makes life worth living, perhaps, that’s its beauty. Everyone has a culture. Everyone has a tradition. It’s just not always clear.”

- Final act, by Scott’s mother, in David’s award-winning play, “Piety.” David was 16 years when he received the award.

BE YOURSELF!

In the Spirit of David Cornelius Singh

www.thinktosee.tumblr.com

Sources/References

1. Act III of “Piety.” Published as a compendium by the organizer, Theatreworks in 2014/2015. David’s family plans to re-publish as a stand-alone in due time, in furtherance of his creative works and legacy.

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/world/asia/singapores-gay-sex-court.html

3. https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/PC1871?ProvIds=pr377A-

4. https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/pdf_upload-371997.pdf

5. https://www.supremecourt.gov.sg/news/case-summaries/ong-ming-johnson-v-attorney-general-and-other-matters-2020-sghc-63

6. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/

7. https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/pdf_upload-371997.pdf - 221-223, p73-74

8. Ibid. 226-228, p74

9. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx - came into force in 1976

10. https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/pdf_upload-371997.pdf - 229-236, p76-78

11. https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/navtej-singh-johar-v-union-india/

12. https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/pdf_upload-371997.pdf - 262, p87

13. Ibid. 287, p94-95

14. https://www.doj.gov.hk/eng/public/basiclaw/basic15_2.pdf

15. https://literarydevices.net/john-donne/

16. http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=2118

17. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1954/summary/

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woodworkingpastor · 4 years

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A heart for those who do not yet believe, Part 2 -- Romans 10:5-15 -- August 9, 2020

Romans chapters 9-11 are probably the most challenging sections of this letter to understand and to connect to our day. They are an extended discussion of a credibility problem Paul had in his proclamation of the Gospel: why haven’t his own people believed the Gospel? Last Sunday I drew an analogy to our day in the way that the church sometimes has a credibility problem with our younger generations, in that we can appear to be more interested in keeping the peace than in speaking the truth about some of the challenging circumstances of our times. This credibility problem makes it harder for some to hear the Gospel.

Since these chapters are one long extended argument, we will continue with the idea that in the Gospel we see Jesus meeting people where they are, without filter, without any real expectation. We will see that Paul’s earlier claim that “nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord also applies to those who have not yet believed in Jesus.

Concern over rules and traditions (Romans 10:5)

We pick up the argument in the middle, with Paul once again making a reference to the Old Testament law. He does something that was very popular to do—he quotes Moses, who said that righteous people will be known by their obedience to the laws God handed down when the people had recently escaped from Egypt.

That’s a really big idea, and it goes a long way in explaining why people today get so upset when you talk about taking monuments of the 10 Commandments down from public places. It acknowledges that the foundation of what we believe as a people, the solid ground upon which we have based our living, did not originate among people on earth; our faith and our ethics has a foundation in things that were handed down from heaven.

When we go a step farther and look closely at the context of those rules—the condition of the people when the rules were given—we can begin to understand even more reasons why people held on to them so strongly.

The first is the Old Testament laws communicate that God will be honored through the manner of our living. That idea is consistent throughout the Scripture. Faith that exists simply as intellectual belief is incomplete. Distinctiveness matters. God’s people will be known by the fact that our lives are different from the winds of the prevailing culture. Sometimes this will be attractive, other times it will be controversial. But the laws that Paul refer to spelled out those differences.

The second is that people needed structure to their living so they could grow into this new way of living. This also continues to be true. Our Wednesday night study of Ephesians reminded us that “by speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:16).

The difficulty was that the people who were rejecting Paul’s presentation of the Gospel had come to love the rules and traditions more than they loved the one to whom the rules and traditions were to honor and glorify.

Jesus encountered this problem all the time, of course. No one would be so brazen as to admit this out loud, but that was what was going on—the elevation of the laws over the lawgiver, as if the cold, rote ability to be a rule-follower is enough to demonstrate a transformed heart.

But it gets worse; we might not realize it, but most of Jesus’s arguments with the authorities of his day were not about the rules; the arguments were on the rules about the rules. Let me explain:

Sometime when I was 5 or 6 I got a bike. This being my first bike without training wheels, I wasn’t the best bike rider in the world—I fell off it a lot. Thankfully, the street in our neighborhood ended in a cul-du-sac, so there wasn’t much traffic. There was, however, a bit more traffic at the other end of the street. So my dad had a rule: I was not allowed to ride past the driveway closest to the stop sign. His rule kept me about 10 yards or so from the intersection. Being 6 or 7, I of course thought this was the dumbest, most oppressive thing you can imagine. All my friends, after all, could ride all the way to the stop sign. But not me.

Having raised three children, you might expect my perspective on some of this has changed. But it seems like my dad’s rule was more of a rule about a rule. He didn’t want me to ride near the intersection, so he made a rule that kept me far away from it. There was nothing special about this particular driveway that became a boundary, but I most assuredly would have had my bike taken away from me if I rode past it, even though the real danger was some distance ahead.

Kids on bikes are easy enough, so let me give you another example: the so-called “Billy Graham rule” which says that men should never be alone with a woman other than their wife. I get it. Sexual misconduct is terribly damaging in every context, especially so in the church. Allegations—or even hints—of sexual misconduct can do significant damage to someone’s credibility. And so I know pastors who follow the Billy Graham rule, and I get why they do.

But I also know that sometimes women in our congregation want to meet with me in the office to talk about things, and I have to be pastor to the women just as I am pastor to the men. So it’s why I don’t follow the Billy Graham rule. But it is why I have the Property Commission trim the shrubs outside my office window to the height they are, and it’s why I included this as an illustration this morning—it seems better to talk about these things openly than have a hard and fast rule.

I assume we can see how both of these illustrations give us examples of rules that are intended as good things that help us honor Jesus and respect one another. The danger is that we end up loving the rules and traditions more than we love the Lord. This is what has happened in Paul’s day, and it kept people from understanding how someone who came to faith outside the rules and traditions of the Old Testament law could ever be faithful.

Responding to Jesus (Romans 10:6-13)

Paul’s answer to this is to say, “Don’t look for righteousness and faithfulness in all these other ways and places. Our faith is not centered in obedience to a set of rules, it is centered on a person; a person who is as close as your lips and your heart.” All that is needed is confession and belief. Call out to Jesus for help for whatever circumstance you are in; because calling out for help implies a belief that the person coming to your rescue can help.

We learn a lot about God’s love for us though the interactions Jesus had with people who came near him. Sinners and Jesus were comfortable in one another’s presence. We might expect this to be different, but it’s not.

When we’re more in love with rules than we are the giver of the rules, then rule-breakers are a problem. If there was ever going to be a person who was offended by the life choices people make, you might think it would have been Jesus. The reverse is true, too. If there would ever be someone you wanted to avoid because of your life choices, then it would be Jesus.

But this isn’t what happened in the New Testament. Sinners flocked to Jesus, and Jesus sought them out. This happened so often that Jesus had the derogatory name, “friend of sinners.”

Jesus understood that the rules God gave were meant to show people how to live, not keep people from living. Once people saw that, following him became a much easier thing to do.

The gospel tells us that we have received more grace and mercy than we can possibly imagine; now we are to extend that grace and mercy to others and invite them to follow Jesus with us.

Modern day mission

The fancy way of describing this is to say that incarnation precedes proclamation. That’s a big phrase. It means that you have to be present to be heard. Jesus was with people, demonstrating that he cared about them, establishing a relationship with them, before he proclaimed grace and salvation. He made it so people were interested in hearing what he had to say.

What does it mean for us as a congregation of God’s people to be deeply focused on the concerns about a particular place, time, people, and circumstances? How can we practice an incarnational presence in people’s lives?

Last Sunday I asked you to consider those persons who either don’t have a relationship with the church, or used to but currently do not. Today I want to think about a slightly different group of people: your extended network of friends and neighbors. For my own prayer time, I recently wrote an extended version of the Lord’s prayer, that includes praying for God’s “kingdom to come, on earth as it is in heaven” in some specific places: in this neighborhood, in your neighborhoods, in the lives of our neighbors, friends, and coworkers. I would invite you to join me in this.

What would it look like if this happened in the life of a neighbor who is lonely, or struggling with anxiety? In the life of a couple whose marriage is failing? In the life of someone who is struggling financially? In the life of someone who has been deeply hurt by the actions of another and is struggling to forgive? In the life of someone battling an addiction, or dealing with discrimination in their workplace?

What would it look like for you and I to be incarnational in those places, to come alongside people wherever they are with whatever is going on in their life because we’ve built a relationship with them, and offer to pray for what is happening, or to invite them to become part of a church family? Can we see this as our part of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus, inviting people to come along side us and be transformed in his image?

Let us pray.

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examiningmormonism · 4 years

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Are Book of Mormon Names Evidence for Authenticity?

One of the most common arguments for the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon is the use of nonbiblical personal and place names which have 1) sensible etymologies in Old World languages sometimes making contextual sense as wordplays and/or 2) have been verified from extrabiblical sources after Joseph Smith's day.

I find such arguments, taken as a whole, deeply unconvincing- despite a smattering of reasonably interesting cases. These cases are overwhelmingly the exception to the rule. A good model should account for the entire phenomenon of Book of Mormon names rather than picking out a few here and there and utilizing them as individual arguments isolated from the pattern of the text as a whole.

Here are seven reasons why Book of Mormon names are not a sound argument for historicity. I begin with factors which undermine arguments for historicity and move towards arguments which mitigate against historicity.

-1- A survey of the Book of Mormon Onomasticon often- even typically- provides a list of possible etymologies, each of them called "plausible." I have never seen LDS scholars or apologists note how this completely undermines the argument for "direct hits." If you have three different plausible etymologies, at least two are chance connections, as these are mutually exclusive. So by virtue of providing different options, the LDS scholar has acknowledged the possibility and frequency of chance connections with ancient languages in unique Book of Mormon names.

-2- Claimed independent verification is often indirect and far afield from the Lehite exodus. For example, the oft-cited Jewish name "Alma" is found in a text dated 132 AD- 700 years after Lehi left Jerusalem! Moreover, the name is Aramaic and appears long after Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language (it was known as a liturgical and scriptural language only) among the Jewish people. As such, whether the word was actually used as a Hebrew personal name is unknown. The "A" in the name "Alma" could represent either the Hebrew aleph or the Hebrew ayin, both of them being real Hebrew words but with very different meanings. The common claim that Alma as a male name in the Book of Mormon would have been unthinkable as an invention of Joseph Smith because of its feminine gender in Latin is silly.

This is a very common mistake made by LDS scholars. On the one hand, they insist that Joseph was an unlearned farmboy. On the other hand, they compare the Book of Mormon with what would have been expected from a deeply learned scholar of his day. Was Joseph Smith a Latinist? Did he know Latin? How familiar was he with the notion of grammatical gender, which is not generally present in the English language? There is no evidence that Smith knew Latin or was particularly familiar with grammatical gender. The idea, therefore, that no person writing a text in his day would use Alma as a male name is unfounded. It is possible that Joseph vaguely recalled hearing about "alma" in a biblical context, as the word is used in Isaiah 7:14 (associated with the virgin birth in Christianity and thus given special importance) and generally understood (though alternative translations exist, i.e. those proposed by Eugen Pentiuc) to mean "young woman." This meaning is very interesting since the first reference to Alma in the Book of Mormon calls him a "young man." Were this derived from Hebrew and transliterated into English, the word "Elem" would be a much more natural fit.

-3- Independently documented nonbiblical Book of Mormon names are often very slight alterations of biblical names. The name Sariah is found in papyri from Elephantine, Egypt. But given that we are to evaluate Book of Mormon historicity based on a comparative analysis of two production contexts, the name is essentially a wash. One already convinced of historicity can, quite reasonably, note the presence of Sariah in extrabiblical documents as historical context for its use as the name of Lehi's wife. Nevertheless, the nonbelieving model for the production of the Book of Mormon explains the data equally well.

The name "Sariah" is a slight variation of the biblical name "Sarah." There is a one letter difference. Significantly, Sarah the wife of Abraham had her name changed from Sarai. Sarai provides the "i" which differentiates Sariah from Sarah. Moreover, an echo of the name of Abraham's wife makes sense given the story Smith is dictating. Smith is providing a history of a branch of the Israelite nation beginning with the wanderings of a family patriarch called by God to leave his homeland and journey to a new land of promise. This is the story of Abraham, called by God to leave Ur so that he might become the progenitor of a great nation in a land of promise. That Smith would give Lehi's wife the name "Sariah" is easily explained by a desire or instinct to echo the well-known story of Abraham without outright copying any of the personal names. Note, I am not saying that this is an argument against historicity. Instead, I am saying that the presence of the personal name "Sariah" is equally consistent with both models and thus provides an argument for neither.

The same applies to the name "Mosiah", though this name has no documentation from the ancient world outside the Book of Mormon. It does have a good Hebrew etymology as "the Lord saves." But it is easily explained as Smith's combination of "Moses" with the "iah" ending found throughout biblical literature. There is good evidence that the character of Mosiah is modeled on Moses. Mosiah leads his people to a new land. The language of Omni in describing the Lord's leading Mosiah and his people to the land is rooted in the story of the exodus. According to Omni 1:13, the Lord "by the power of his arm" lead Mosiah and his people through the wilderness into a new land of promise in Zarahemla. "Arm" language in the Bible is rooted in the exodus story. Compare:

And it came to pass that he did according as the Lord had commanded him. And they departed out of the land into the wilderness*, as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord; and they were led by many preachings and prophesyings. And they were admonished continually by the word of God; and they were led by the* power of his arm*, through the wilderness, until they came down into the land which is called the land of Zarahemla. (Omni 1:13)*

lest the land from which you brought us say, "Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness." For they are your people and your heritage, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.' (Deuteronomy 9:28-29)

I should emphasize that I am not saying typology is an argument against historicity- this is a fallacious argument present in both biblical and Book of Mormon studies. Instead, I am saying that the presence of the name "Mosiah" is perfectly intelligible in light of Smith's background and a 19th century production context- as a conscious drawing of themes from the Old Testament into a biblically rooted history of ancient America.

-4- The most unique Book of Mormon names have the least extrabiblical documentation and sound etymology. Consider the names Mormon and Moroni. This sound very little like common biblical names. Thus, were they documented outside the Bible in the appropriate context, their presence would be a reasonable argument for historical rootedness (relative to this particular point- their overall significance, as with all arguments, must be determined relative to the whole fabric of argument and evidence) and somewhat striking. See:

https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/index.php/MORONI

https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/index.php/MORMON

Notice the lack of attestation for these words as personal names outside the Book of Mormon as well as the variety of mutually exclusive etymologies proposed. It is exactly where the Book of Mormon is "boldest" in departing from its biblical background that its language becomes the least intelligible as an ancient document.

-5- Personal and placenames often bear superficial resemblance to biblical names but lack etymological sense when actually considered in a Hebraic context.

Consider the use of the affix "ihah" in the Book of Mormon. This is very common- Moroni becomes Moronihah. Ammon becomes "Ammonihah." Nephi becomes "Nephihah." There are also instances of the affix without having a counterpart name lacking the suffix, such as Orihah. Notice how the same linguistic pattern appears in both Jaredite and Lehite names. This makes good sense if original names are being produced artificially from the same mind. It is hard to account for if these names have genuine and independent linguistic histories. The frequency of the affix "ihah" suggests that if the Book of Mormon is historical, it must have had a clear meaning in relation to those words to which it is affixed. The most natural source would be in the element derived from YHWH, such as in the theophoric names Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micaiah, Shemaiah, and so on. However, ihah makes little to no sense as a representation of the theophoric element found in "iah." See the entry in the Book of Mormon Onomasticon here:

https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/index.php/-ihah_As_an_Affix

In this insightful article, the origin of the affix is left unexplained. The author provides a series of powerful arguments against its origin as the theophoric element from YHWH. Yet, this linguistic anomaly is a pervasive feature of Book of Mormon names. Its explanation, therefore, ought to have an outsized role in considering the relative merits of our two possible production contexts. In an ancient production context, the origin of the affix is highly anomalous by normative linguistic principles. The anomaly is made more striking based on its presence in both Jaredite and Lehite names- two people groups with languages which should not be unrelated.

(I see absolutely no basis for demythologizing the Jaredite narrative with respect to the Tower of Babel. The implication is clearly that the Adamic tongue is not Hebrew and that it was unknown to those whose languages were confounded. We should not expect Jaredite names to resemble other Book of Mormon names, nor should we expect them to be intelligible in light of ancient Near Eastern languages.)

What about a production context in the 19th century? Here, "ihah" makes perfect sense. Needing to generate a reasonable variety of names and being familiar with the KJV Bible, Smith simply affixes "ihah" to many of the names already present in the text. As someone steeped in the Bible, Smith has heard countless names which have the "iah" theophoric element. For someone unacquainted with linguistics (as LDS scholars often point out), "ihah" sounds like a perfectly reasonable biblical-type name. This is exactly what one expects from a pseudotranslation. The result is a text with pervasive superficial similarities to biblical naming patterns but which makes little linguistic sense to one who has a understanding of the real structure and logic of biblical and ancient Near Eastern names.

-6- Proposed etymologies and ancient roots of Book of Mormon names are only possible when taken from a large "grab basket" of vaguely related ancient languages. I say "vaguely related" because Book of Mormon scholars are usually quite vague when attempting to explain the actual mechanisms of cultural cross-pollination which produced the family of names present in the Book of Mormon text. The proposed ancient Book of Mormon has personal and place names of Hebrew, Egyptian, Arabic, Akkadian- and Greek- backgrounds. How did these names come into the Lehite and/or Jaredite tradition? That Lehi was a sometime trader in Arabia and Egypt is simply not a sufficient explanation for how such a long tradition of names derived from these languages came to appear. While individual names might be intelligible in light of this or that language, there is no overarching theory coherently explaining the phenomenon of Book of Mormon names in its entirety.

It is highly instructive to contrast the contemporary situation in Book of Mormon studies with the principles set forth in Hugh Nibley's first article on the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon, "The Book of Mormon as a Mirror of the East", published in 1948. In this article, Nibley seeks to explain Book of Mormon names on the basis of Egyptian language and culture as known from the Third Intermediate and Late Periods, precisely the time closest to the time of Lehi of Jerusalem. Nibley laudably seeks an overarching explanatory model for Book of Mormon names taken together. He notes the possible objections of critics of historicity- aren't some links with authentic names likely given the size of ancient languages from which the Book of Mormon scholar can choose? Nibley agrees- coincidences are likely if this is our method. But, he argues, such a grab-bag is not what we find. Instead, we find that Book of Mormon names consistently derive from Late Period Egyptian and make sense in light of the historical contexts of Late Period Egypt.

Why is this instructive? Because many or most of Nibley's etymologies have not panned out in LDS scholarship after the publication of his 1948 article. I checked a sample of names commented on by Nibley with the Book of Mormon Onomasticon. What I found was exactly the situation Nibley suggested would be likely to occur by chance. The Late Period Egyptian sources for most names has been set aside or suggested as an alternative but less likely etymology. Instead of this nonrandom distribution of linguistic connections, one finds the grab bag approach. Lehi's family is a good example. Lehi and Sariah are Hebrew (though Lehi makes no sense as a personal name), Nephi is Egyptian, Laman is Arabic. One of Nibley's key etymologies is "Ammon" as derived from Egyptian "Amun." While I agree with Nibley that "Amun" is the supreme God corresponding to the Hebrew Yahweh in their identities and relative positions, it is unlikely that a prophet of Israel versed in the Israelite tradition would, for some reason, transmit a lengthy tradition of using the Egyptian title for the high God. And indeed, "Ammon" based names are easily explained as derived from the biblical personal name "Ammon" in "Moab and Ammon." This is actually found in 2 Nephi 21- one of the Isaiah passages, where Isaiah is referring to Moab and Ammon.

-7- Finally, and most problematically- where are all the Mesoamerican names?! Very few Book of Mormon names have even a proposed explanation in terms of Mesoamerican languages. Those few proposed explanations that do exist are either based on very simple, monosyllabic names or are highly dubious. Yet, it is a cardinal doctrine of contemporary Book of Mormon scholarship that the presence of indigenous outsiders is implied throughout the text and constituted an essential part of the historical Nephite and Lamanite experience. To give an example from one of my favorite and most astute Book of Mormon scholars, Brant Gardner explains the linguistic confusion between Mosiah and Zarahemla in terms of the relative geographical distribution of different Mesoamerican languages in the time of King Mosiah. Book of Mormon scholars universally hold that the Lehites joined with much larger preexisting indigenous populations and made a minimal genetic contribution. If this is true genetically, it ought to be true linguistically as well.

If Brian Stubbs is ultimately correct about Hebrew and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan (Stubbs is a real scholar, but many linguists have idiosyncratic theories about relationships among languages which don't pan out- the test for Stubbs' model should be its coherence with the overarching historical situation in which this linguistic influence is supposed to have taken place), then what is being proposed is that Lehite union with non-Lehite populations entailed not only the adoption of the Lehite religious tradition, but the Lehite languages- not only Hebrew but also Egyptian! Why are the Nephites and Lamanites speaking Hebrew and Egyptian to each other and requiring that new populations use these languages as well? Appeals to a belief in the sanctity of the Hebrew tongue are unsound because they are supposed to have imposed the Egyptian language as well. This is a very unlikely historical situation.

Brant Gardner's suggestion that the Nephites would have retained Hebrew and/or Egyptian as scribal languages is far more plausible. But this raises an essential question. If Mesoamerican languages are the spoken languages of Nephites and Lamanites, why are most of their names based in Hebrew, Egyptian, Arabic, or some other language from that region of the Old World? Where is the memory of these widely varied names even coming from? Lehi's family would have been familiar with a host of names in the Old World, but within a couple generations it is probable that nearly all such names except those in the founding generation would have been forgotten. The only possible source for continuing Old World names in cultures speaking Mesoamerican languages would be the brass plates. But it was not as if the brass plates were accessible to everyone. They were sacred objects housed in the Nephite temple. Even if one were to plausibly suggest that copies were made to teach the people, only an elite scribal class would be able to read these copies. One would expect Old World names to constitute a distinct minority of personal names found among 1) the elite with access to Old World texts and 2) highly religious families whose devotion to their Old World religious heritage held special significance.

Yet, it appears that these names don't fit this pattern at all. We find Old World and biblically based names among Nephite, Lamanite, and even Jaredite (notice the bizarre presence of "Aaron" and "Levi", both Hebrew names in the Jaredite lineage) peoples. During periods where Book of Mormon peoples are supposedly highly assimilated to preexisting cultures, there is no leap in Mesoamerican names. For example, the harlot Isabel, probably though not certainly of Lamanite background, has an Old World name. This is hard to explain as an historical phenomenon. It is very straightforward on a 19th century model where the author of the Book of Mormon is steeped in the KJV Bible. Isabel sounds like Jezebel, and Jezebel is the paradigmatic harlot in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.

I think this is the most devastating factor in considering Book of Mormon names relative to the question of historicity. An historical Book of Mormon produced as a Mesoamerican codex should be filled to the brim with Mesoamerican names and names which only make sense in terms of Mesoamerican language. Yet we find almost nothing of this kind.

----

Summing Up

We have seen that Book of Mormon names have the following characteristics:

-Many or most have biblical roots: Sariah, Mosiah, and Amulek are examples- from Sarah, Moses, and Amalek, respectively.

-Many are constructed from roots superficially resembling biblical names but lacking intelligibility as actual Hebraic names: Names with the "ihah" affix.

-Lehite and Jaredite names appear to share the same background and structural principles: Levi, Aaron, Gilead (as in biblical Ramoth-Gilead), Orihah. I have made an exception for biblical names found in the antediluvian period and in the Jaredite story (as in Seth and Noah) because these make sense in terms of the internal narrative of the text.

-The clearest connections are with a Hebrew background.

-Names making sense on a Mesoamerican background are absent. Arguably, there is not a single Book of Mormon name which makes more sense as a Mesoamerican name than as a biblical-type name.

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ascbh13 · 6 years

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Remembrance Sunday 2017 John 15 verses 12-14, Kay Morison

Just recently we had a letter from a family friend. His wife had been in a car crash and was disabled and seriously ill. He wrote “I wish I could have taken her place in that crash and could suffer in her place, instead of her!”

In a focussed way for that that particular family - and today in a whole variety of ways for all of us - this is the day of Remembering those who have suffered. We look back and remember the two world wars, many more recent conflicts, continued fighting, sadly all around the world.

The passage I have chosen from John’s Gospel today contains crucial words of Jesus about this very matter:

“Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

These words are inscribed on countless war memorials all over our country. Today wreaths will be placed there, ceremonies and rituals performed, poppies worn and memories cherished, Most war memorials have the words “Lest we forget” inscribed on them. But for many people, all they want to do is forget the horrors, the suffering and utter sadness. Having experienced as a child the effect of the second world war myself, I can fully understand this.

Let’s be honest: Today is a hard day for many of us, with all our varied memories from the past. In our last parish one man would not come to the Remembrance Service if we sang “Oh Valiant Hearts”: That hymn carried too many painful memories! Contrariwise, another ex-service man would not come unless we sang that hymn. The hymn’s words helped him place the memory into God’s keeping.

Strong emotions can sometimes cloud clear thinking. For there was another person who rigidly refused to accept our invitation to coffee in the vicarage after the service. He had imagined John say he was a pacifist……Yes, there was “Fake News” even in those days! Clearly this person had never noticed John speaking about his years of national service in the RAF. Years spent underground tracking foreign planes with radar equipment. Long hours in poor light which affected his sight. But his disability is nothing compared to the grief and anguish of the many…..those who lost the loved ones we particularly remember today.

In contrast, and to encourage you, I wonder if you have looked recently at the All SS Twitter page? There you can watch our Vicar’s interview with Bill Mitchell, a faithful member of this congregation. Bill was at Dunkirk. With the film of that title released just recently, it has been an event much recalled and brought back to our minds again.

However Bill was there in the thick of it for real, not as an actor in a film. What I remember from this interview, is Bill saying he had to sleep on the beach at Dunkirk using his metal helmet as a pillow. When he woke the next morning, he thought “ah my comrades are still asleep”. Only later, did he realise they were dead. Bill pays tribute to answered prayer in that interview. Do listen to what he said. I am sure we are privileged to have amongst us someone who was at that crucial moment in World War 2.

So back to the text I chose. “Greater love has no one that this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” I would like us to look afresh at those words of Jesus…To discover what we can learn, as we look back to the death of Jesus.To reflect on the turmoil of the last two centuries…And also see what this means for us today – where we are right now!

Being Remembrance Sunday, I want to start with the people we are specially remembering, those who have literally “Laid down their lives”.

1: Our Comrades who gave their ALL.

I was nervous at using that word “Comrade” as it has nasty undertones of communism. But my John said that it’s wrong to permit a splendid word to fall into unworthy hands. You need a strong word to indicate the deep fellowship which is essential in serving one’s country in the Forces. And you can see real comradeship in how the forces stick together through thick and thin!

So let’s think about Comrades who gave their all.

Many of you may well have served in the various conflicts. Or you will be remembering family and friends who did. Several of you will know people who died in the World Wars or Korea, Falklands, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria The list of conflict areas is so long. Each battle meant more deaths. Comrades in arms giving their all. Making the supreme sacrifice. We will hear those words “supreme sacrifice” often over this week-end.

Years ago, I took our grandchildren to the Imperial War Museum to see the long list of service personnel who had died. Now of course it is all on “Ancestry” web site. We searched and found the name Morison. One of those listed was my husband’s grandfather. His ship was torpedoed in the channel off Normandy on her final voyage back to England. French people found his body and buried it. As a family we went together years later to see that grave.

Even earlier our same Morison family had lost a son, who would have been my husband’s uncle, killed at notorious Passchendaele.

……Killed just a hundred years ago, on 10th October 1917. There have been many ceremonies recently to mark that ghastly battle. Ours is just one Scottish family reduced by war. I often wonder how that Grandma coped with such tragedy. John tells me that she always wore black and walked silently around like a ghost….. You will know many others, who suffered even worse tragedies. We read sadly about families who lost every serving member.

So much sadness, so much grief. So much hope that their sacrifice was “the war to end all wars”. Sadly, that was not to be. Our relatives had again to show that “greater love” the Bible talks about, laying down their lives for their country, their friends and indeed for strangers too.

Indeed, the same applies to the Second World War. That’s much closer to our lives and memories. My father served in the RAF in India. My mother, sister and I were evacuated to Northampton. But for us, my father did return. For many of you and many more outside church that was not the case. Our Comrades gave their all.

“Greater love has no one than this, than that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

How different our lives would have been without those sacrifices. Sacrifices which mean we live as a free nation, and not as an occupied country under tyrannical rule.

Now to see the Christian context, we need to move further back in time from Remembrance Sunday to Jesus’s sacrifice……..For my second point is that:

2: Jesus gave his ALL.

He said “greater love has no one than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends”.

A few words further on in John Chapter 15, Jesus says “You are my friends” and “I have called you friends!”

Jesus gave his life for us, his friends. You and me! His crucifixion was for us. He suffered for us so that we could have peace with God, and not be at enmity, or living in fear of God or man.

So today on Remembrance Sunday we are truly thankful for all the sacrifices that millions made for us to live in peace.

But not only that: Every single day we should be even more thankful that Jesus gave his all, his very life for us! And respond with gratitude for his sacrifice. So…..

· Our comrades gave their all…and….

· Jesus gave his all

Which leads to my third point:

3. WE are called to give our “ALL” for others.

We may not be in the armed services, we are not far away from home, suffering for friends, family and country.

But Jesus calls us his friends and he says “You are my friends if you do what I command” and he commands us to love both God and our neighbours: People with whom we have contact, especially regularly. You remember Jesus summed up the ten commandments in two memorable ones:

· “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And…

“Love your neighbour as yourself.”

These two commandments are BIG! Each of us has to work out for ourselves, just how to keep these commandments in our own situation on a daily basis. That’s the real challenge!

“Loving God”….does that mean more time with him, loving him “with all my heart” more time in prayer and Bible reading, Using “my mind” by more regular times in church, reading wider about the Christian faith. Giving Jesus “my soul”…. Offering Him my innermost being. There are as many individual applications of this as there are people here this morning! We each have honestly to work Jesus’ commandment out for ourselves…..

It seems somewhat clearer what it means to “love our neighbour as ourselves”. Admittedly, the first challenge in that word of Jesus is “Do I love myself?” If I don’t, then how can I honestly love my neighbour as I love myself?

Again, we need to work out how we can love our neighbour? Is it by caring? Giving practical help by visiting those in need? And caring for our relationships by communicating better with friends and relatives. Not just that: Making the effort to talk to people we don’t know.

I was talking to two elderly, bereaved people from the 9.30 congregation, who went in to coffee in the hall and no body talked to them. How sad! We need to move out of our own group, our familiar friends, give that pleasure up for a time, to welcome strangers and sit with them. That’s an example of sacrificial love, the love Jesus commands. I know well that conversations with strangers are not as easy as chatting together in our own familiar group. But it is essential if we are to be genuinely loving towards others….Think about it!

Today we remember those who died for our sake in turmoil and war…..We remember Jesus who died for our sake to win our spiritual freedom….. and we are called again to love God, and demonstrate this by showing genuine love to our neighbours. A big challenge! How will you respond?

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bluewatsons · 6 years

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John Launer, Medically unexplored stories, 85 Postgrad Med J 503 (2009)

If you have been reading medical journals over the last couple of years, you will almost certainly have read about ‘‘medically unexplained symptoms’’—sometimes abbreviated to MUS. The term was first proposed over 20 years ago, but recently it has grown in popularity and in some places it is taking over from similar and overlapping terms such as somatisation, psychosomatic disorders, frequent consulters, ‘‘fat file’’ patients, and so on. Its use has now spread from researchers and clinicians to managers and health service commissioners. If you work in the UK, someone in your speciality or your area will almost certainly be looking into the possibility of identifying patients with MUS and setting up a dedicated service to relieve their distress and save money for the National Health Service.

At first sight, this way of categorising certain symptoms or patients looks highly attractive. Most clinicians, whatever their field, will readily admit to seeing a proportion of patients for whom it is difficult to assign any diagnosis—or where patients will not accept the diagnosis on offer (most doctors appear to estimate this applies to 15–30% of consultations). Saying that someone has MUS is clearly preferable to calling them a difficult patient or a ‘‘heartsink’’ one. More pertinently, there are now quite a few studies showing that if you separate such people from the bulk of your patients and offer them certain kinds of interventions, they may improve. These interventions include cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT)1 and multimodal programmes of stepped care including drug treatment.2

The evidence provided by these studies is convincing—at least when judged in terms of their own implicit assumptions. At the same time, I want to argue that the definition of ‘‘medically unexplained symptoms’’ is highly problematical. It may offer no significant advance on the whole range of terms that are now becoming obsolete. It may even lead us down a medical blind alley.

The Nature of Explanation

As everyday experience shows, almost all the explanations that doctors offer their patients are only ever partial in their nature. For example, we may tell people that their symptoms are due to thrush, or fibroids, or osteoarthritis of the hip, and these all count as a kind of explanation. But if patients question us as to why they got this particular condition and not another, or why they got it this week and not last month, we are at a loss. Our explanations, in other words, are generally ‘‘proximal’’ rather than ‘‘distal’’ ones: it is usually the patients themselves who decide what the distal ones are, often attributing these to things such as life events or stress at work. With consider- able frequency, we also tell people that our diagnosis is far from certain but suggest they try a particular treatment as an experiment. If it works (as it often does) we may be none the wiser as to whether they actually had the condition we suspected, or would have got better anyway.

We can deconstruct the notion of medical explanation even further. To give a classic example: when I was in my late 30s I had an episode of severe chest pain that was diagnosed variously as a myocardial infarction, viral myocarditis and oesophagitis. After I recovered, I lived with this uncertainty for around nearly 20 years until the pain recurred. I then had a battery of further tests that first of all ruled out any possibility of a past ischaemic event, and then ‘‘conclusively’’ confirmed it. I am currently taking my b-blockers and ACE inhibitors like a well behaved patient, but who knows what future investigative technology may ‘‘prove’’ when I next see a cardiologist? Such explanatory twists and turns, I suggest, are extraordinarily common, especially if we examine people’s past medical notes carefully. If we do so, we will also find disease labels that are now totally discredited and obsolete, as well as diagnoses that we still recognise but would no longer apply in the same way. ‘‘Medically explained symptoms’’, in other words, may not be quite what they seem.

Slippery Ground

If we move on from the word ‘‘explained’’ to the word ‘‘symptoms’’, we are on even more slippery ground. Patients very rarely bring us symptoms as such. What they bring instead are words and stories, and they point to parts of their bodies that they experience as causing trouble. We as doctors then reframe their narrative accounts and gestures into what we call symptoms. In doing so, we are taking over their experiences and transmuting them into our own familiar forms. But something is always lost in translation. The affect, the meaning, the signification and the entire set of personal contexts that goes with their words and gestures will always remain theirs and can never become ours. Our efforts at interpretation may have a pragmatic purpose, and even a beneficial result, but at a philosophical level we have not actually ‘‘explained’’ anything, let alone everything. We have simply assigned a medical description in place of an individual one.

In some circumstances this barely matters. However, in a large proportion of encounters between doctors and patients it matters a lot. This clearly applies to the cases that are now being labelled as MUS, but it also applies to any interaction where patients feel that they have not been fully understood, or where there has not been enough time to hear them out. The term MUS implies that most medical encounters represent a complete meeting of minds, but there is a lot of evidence from research into the medical consultation to suggest this is untrue. In other words, concentrating on MUS focuses our attention on a supposedly aberrant group of patients whom we as doctors find irksome, but it distracts us from noticing what is deficient in our interactional skills more generally.

The Contest of Interpretations

In a brilliant paper entitled ‘‘Explaining medically unexplained symptoms’’, the Canadian psychiatrist and anthropologist Laurence Kirmayer moves the focus away from MUS to what he calls ‘‘the contest of interpretations’’.3 He argues that the narrow focus of the typical clinical encounter does not allow most patients enough time to construct a meaningful narrative about their symptoms. He quotes research that challenges the assumption that patients with unexplained symptoms have ‘‘hidden’’ psychological problems, or are resistant to accepting that their problems may have psychological aspects to them. He describes how physicians respond with physical interventions even when patients neither request nor want this. He speculates that this is due to the way physicians avoid emotional distress, lack strategies to engage with patients’ psychosocial problems, and attempt to maintain authority in the face of ambiguous conditions. He suggests that training doctors to address psychosocial dimensions and manage their own feelings of incompetence might improve the outcome for patients.

Significantly, Kirmayer does not look for solutions in treatments for the patient. He argues instead that the responsibility for a change in behaviour rests with us as doctors. ‘‘One of the basic tasks of the clinical encounter’’, he argues, ‘‘is the co-construction of meaning for distress... Only through dialogue, negotiation and cultural exchange can clinicians find explanations that make sense to patients and their families.’’ Perhaps, after all, we should continue to use the abbreviation but acknowledge what it really stands for— medically unexplored stories.

References

Hatcher S, Arroll B. Assessment and management of medically unexplained symptoms. BMJ 2008;336:1124–8.

Smith RC, Lyles JS, Gardiner JC, et al. Primary care clinicians treat patients with medically unexplained symptoms: a randomized controlled trial. J Gen Int Med 2006;21:671–7.

Kirmayer L. Explaining medically unexplained symptoms. Can J Psychiatry 2004;49:663–72.

#medicine #diagnosis #medically unexplained symptoms #narrative #doctor-patient relationship #somatization #mind-body connection #national health service #united kingdom #holistic health care

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