God and Mammon
There is no supernatural being or mythic deity by the name of Mammon. However, it is the Syriac and Hebraic word for 'riches', and according to some accounts, 'surety' or 'that in which one puts financial trust'.
It strikes me that when we put God and Mammon together as an antagonistic pair, we are also putting a qualitative paradigm and a quantitative one in opposition. God is uncountable, beyond measure, and willing to deal with absolutes; Mammon is that which must be counted, measured and evaluated exactly in order to mean anything to anybody.
When we educate a child so that values are inculcated and that pupil learns to develop those values (within the context of personal limitations and circumstances), it is qualitative development. When we educate a child so that the score on Test 1 is evaluated as a baseline such that the score on Test 2 is seen as 'improvement' or 'decline', that is using a Mammonistic approach — we have put faith in numbers which may not actually reflect the growth of a human being.
Perhaps that is why Christians are told to not conform to the world — it isn't a call to be unworldly, but to be non-conformist: to not easily lend oneself to description by numbers and words, or to not be controlled by the formal rubrics of human society. If everything is numbers, then we shall cast a wary eye over numbers and make sure they are servants and not masters.
That is not to say that science and engineering are of no value. On the contrary, they are supreme in their sphere of producing results that are eminently reproducible. We can have faith in switching on a light or in walking over a bridge. We can use the methods of the quantitative without fear. But we should be very, very careful in using those methods to handle the individuals we teach.
It is a simple argument even for non-theists: since humans are vastly different and very complex, specific means of evaluation and education are likely to have statistically measurable effects, but they are unlikely to have the same effects for each individual. Hence, when we use quantitative manipulations on humans, no single real human is likely to be optimally developed by those manipulations.
Then again, since humans are vastly different and very complex, we have to put our faith in something if we are to imagine that education is of use. And some education, as far as we have been able to see, indeed looks to be of great use.
How then to decide whether Mammon is of any use at all in education? The answer is a simple one: in Luke 16, the righteous are told to make righteous use of unrighteous Mammon — for if one is unable to be trustworthy with quantitative wealth, how can one be trustworthy with that which is more valuable?
And that is why we have to deal with both as honestly as we can, serving God and measuring Mammon — rendering to each its appropriate due.
It strikes me that when we put God and Mammon together as an antagonistic pair, we are also putting a qualitative paradigm and a quantitative one in opposition. God is uncountable, beyond measure, and willing to deal with absolutes; Mammon is that which must be counted, measured and evaluated exactly in order to mean anything to anybody.
When we educate a child so that values are inculcated and that pupil learns to develop those values (within the context of personal limitations and circumstances), it is qualitative development. When we educate a child so that the score on Test 1 is evaluated as a baseline such that the score on Test 2 is seen as 'improvement' or 'decline', that is using a Mammonistic approach — we have put faith in numbers which may not actually reflect the growth of a human being.
Perhaps that is why Christians are told to not conform to the world — it isn't a call to be unworldly, but to be non-conformist: to not easily lend oneself to description by numbers and words, or to not be controlled by the formal rubrics of human society. If everything is numbers, then we shall cast a wary eye over numbers and make sure they are servants and not masters.
That is not to say that science and engineering are of no value. On the contrary, they are supreme in their sphere of producing results that are eminently reproducible. We can have faith in switching on a light or in walking over a bridge. We can use the methods of the quantitative without fear. But we should be very, very careful in using those methods to handle the individuals we teach.
It is a simple argument even for non-theists: since humans are vastly different and very complex, specific means of evaluation and education are likely to have statistically measurable effects, but they are unlikely to have the same effects for each individual. Hence, when we use quantitative manipulations on humans, no single real human is likely to be optimally developed by those manipulations.
Then again, since humans are vastly different and very complex, we have to put our faith in something if we are to imagine that education is of use. And some education, as far as we have been able to see, indeed looks to be of great use.
How then to decide whether Mammon is of any use at all in education? The answer is a simple one: in Luke 16, the righteous are told to make righteous use of unrighteous Mammon — for if one is unable to be trustworthy with quantitative wealth, how can one be trustworthy with that which is more valuable?
And that is why we have to deal with both as honestly as we can, serving God and measuring Mammon — rendering to each its appropriate due.
etched with acid at 1:36:00 pm
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