Photo and Commentary ©2023 by Maylan Schurch
Sunday, May 7, 2023
I’ve done just enough writing over the years to show up in the Adventist Book Center, and a couple of days ago the above Google link came to my attention. I don’t know whether this link was generated by a real person who didn’t know me, or by some kind of artificial intelligence.
But whoever put this online got some things right and some wrong. Somehow the purveyor of this information had discovered that I was both an author and a pastor, but they had gotten my gender incorrect. “What is her latest book?” it asks in a chatty way. Probing for more data—and to keep the clicks happening—it asks “When did she become a pastor?”
Having long been the possessor of the name “Maylan,” I can see how this might have happened. It’s frankly rather frilly. It has “May” in it, which gives it a decidedly feminine spin. That’s why my college postal mailbox was often stuffed with offers from beauty salons and cosmetics companies!
The truth, of course, is that just as you can’t trust a book by its cover, you can’t gender-label a Maylan without knowing who he really is. It’s important to remember that you and I and everyone else live our life using presuppositions, assertions we’ve allowed ourselves to believe are true. Sometimes this is okay: The assumption When the traffic light is green for me, it’s red for the person approaching from my left or right at an intersection is true unless there’s been damage to the computer.
But sometimes our assertions are false: Someone who belongs to the political party I disagree with is either a Communist or a Fascist.
Much of Europe’s 20th century sorrow would have been eased if when someone shouted “Heil Hitler!” everybody else would have shouted “Why?”
The Bible talks about wisdom from end to end. Some of these verses are found at the following link.