Dream-ministry
Dreams
Dr dear Dr: Is it true that in the New Testament period, there did exist a ministry of the interpretation of dreams, and if so, speaking as a NT theologian, could you give us some idea of where the old valediction, "dream in colour", comes from, that young people still wish their grandmothers and grandfathers in remote outback villages and farms of states like Louisiana before they go up to bed?
True, there were a variety of ministries in the New Testament communities of St Paul and some of them involved interpretations of tongues or glossolalia, and others involved the interpretation of dreams. Dreams were regarded as vehicles of the divine meaning, especially by the early Christians - after all their messiah boy was saved because his foster father had a dream. They were there to be discerned and to receive guided direction upon, such was the practice of holy custom in St Paul's churches, and this largely desumed from the Old Testament belief that God still speaks to individuals through the angels of imagining in their dreams, hence the dream about the Flight into Egypt of St Joseph. Dreams are not always streams of a clear mind and clear sub-conscious, but one or two every so often can be a vehicle of a supernal meaning - that much is clear from the holy gospels.
Mother dearest reports that in their days at school and in the many religious classes back home, the kiddies were often warned not to take dreams seriously as vehicles of meaning, which is fair enough, but when she asked whether this was the faith of christian doctrine, I had to respond to her honestly that her fellow schoolkids probably were getting some dose of another system, that where such religious advices contradicted holy Writ and holy scripture, then this may have been a sign of an invasive foreign ideology called Dutch Jansenism, a big reality over there in that unhappy French Revolution island right up to modern times - only finally dispelled by a few referendums in recent times - forcing the gift and blessing of ecumenism on that population. But as a philosophy major in college back home in my California style woke seminary, our MPhil course involved several courses in what is called Empirical Psychology with a view to practising as medicare officers in remote parts of the planet where there would be little or no health care, such was the Woke missions to the Eskimos and the Red Indians in those days, so most Psycho-analysts include sessions with troubled patients on the Interpretation of Dreams. And also Empirical Psychology forbids us discussing this as a mere theology lecture without the blessing and the giftedness of some attendant Science:
In 1942 a USA psychologist called Prof Warren Middleton reported that only 10% of his students and patients in his surveys ever dreamt in colour - most reported that they had no colour in their dreams, this was at the time of the black and white screens at cinemas and TVs. In 1951 another psychologist called Calvin Hall announced that just 29% of USA patients had colours in their dreams. But in 2008 another later Study found that among Under 25s most dreams featured colour while 1 in 4 dreams of older participants aged over 55 featured black and white dreams. It was concluded that colour came into dreams as a result of something simple and technological - the ubiquity of the colour TV set in modern times, so literally the old valediction and blessing before bed-time, "dream in colour", has now become a reality for many people, certainly at least for the younger generations - (Source, Andre Rice, Daily Mail, 14th October 21, page 62, Answers).