Jury Duty

So, I'm sitting here in a room in downtown.  I get to listen to music, surf the old web, watch crappy daytime tv (non-cable too), and await to see if I'll be deciding the fate in anyone's life today.  Jury duty is actually strange to think about.  Twelve strangers who are strategically chosen by a team of legal experts (based upon a series of questions) will decide the fate of an individual.  What makes this strange is that thanks to reader response literature critiquing methods, what each person hears and how they understand it can be totally different.  What is true to you isn't true to me.  Whatever happened to absolute truth?  That is one of those flaws that those who set out argue that a text means whatever the reader wants it to, not what the author wants it to forgot to think about.  Once this became common in a text, it was quick to invade our culture.  What is true to one person, is not necessarily true to another person.  This is extremely problematic when truth exists whether you wish to accept it or not.  Not believing that 1+1=2 doesn't make it untrue.  If I believe that 1+1=3, according to reader response, makes that true to me.  Forget logic and reasonable understanding, it's true to me, so it's true.  This problem holds massive logistical problems when we come to the understanding of who God is.  Whether you believe in God or not does not make Him exist or not exist.  You can choose to not believe in God if you want to, but that doesn't make Him disappear or go away.  So back to jury duty, I realize that the idea of it is great, but I don't know how I would feel to have a group of people decide my fate based upon their worldview, whether they know that that is how they judge their decisions or not.  Having a pluralistic truth standard in today's society actually scares the hell out of me.  Thankfully the hell is out of me thanks to Jesus.