A Rights Analysis Doesn't Work for Torture. Here's Why.

I believe that torture is wrong. Yes, even if you’re Jack Bauer and lives will be lost, it is still wrong for anyone to torture the bad guy. But why? In all the anti-torture arguments that I have seen, there is some kind of appeal to universal human rights. Everyone (they will tell you), American or not, combatant or not, has a right not to be tortured. And further, this is a right that cannot be waived. It is a universal human right. I appreciate what this argument is trying to do, but I find it inadequate. Of course there is such a thing as a right to be safe from torture. Everyone knows this. But equally, in real life, everyone knows that you can waive this right. Why do I say “everyone knows” this? We need look no further than the war-, spy-, and police stories that we find all over our culture. Popular wisdom is often revealed in our narratives, and that is true here. A person waives his right not to be tortured when he tortures someone else. Take the handy example of Jack Bauer. As we all know, the producers of 24 employ a double standard. If Jack (or another “good” guy or gal) is tortured, this proves how despicable the bad guys are. But if Jack brutalizes someone while interrogating them, he had to do it to save lives, and it is commendable. Whatever the good guys do, however evil it may be, is considered good, as long as their cause is just. But this is where things get interesting. Even though the producers commend Jack for his acts of brutality, the narrative rule of do-as-you-would-be-done-by is so strong that it still applies. His acts of cruelty, done from good motives or not, have moved him into a realm where he is eligible to be tortured by the bad guys. And, he is. Once he has crossed the line into the world of brutal, desperate measures … the same measures will be applied to him. The producers may not even realize it, but they are following this narrative rule. By the same token, we do not feel that injustice has been done to the bad guys that Jack torments, because the producers have taken care to first establish that by committing previous cruelties, they had already entered that brutal world themselves. This simple law makes it hard for me to sympathize with your average terrorist who is about to be unjustly tortured. If he comes from Saudi Arabia, for example, he is from a place where men routinely sexually torture women. (See the book Princess .) Has he done this himself? We can’t know for sure, of course, but the odds are good that he has. He probably had no idea (or interest in) how those poor women felt. If he is tortured unjustly by the Americans, he is about to find out. But now, behold the beauty of the non-rights analysis. On the non-rights analysis, we don’t need to invoke universal human rights when deciding what to do. We are forbidden to do certain things just because they are wrong. It doesn’t matter if the guy deserves it. It is still wrong for us to torture him, because torturing another sentient being is always wrong. A major comeuppance may be long overdue to the bad guy, but it is not the sort of thing that human beings such as ourselves can rightfully dish out. Ever. Voila. Torture is wrong, and there’s no need to invoke rights. Rights are slippery, and they will turn on you faster than you can say, “I need you to trust me.”

Dystopias: When the World Goes Wrong

I love a good dystopia. By which I mean, of course, a book set in a very dark version of the future rather than in an idealized (utopian) one. Some dystopias project present trends or the author's worst fears quite far into the future. For example, Brave New World shows a society in which genetic engineering plus entertainment have achieved a very advanced level of control over humanity, far more so than was the case at the time of writing. Other dystopias are actually about the present day. 1984 was originally meant to be titled 1948, and to be a description of life under a totalitarian regime that is constantly at war, which was of course already happening at the time. Similarly, Lord of the Flies, about the descent into barbarism of a group of boys stranded on a remote island, was apparently a critique of the adults, who were fighting a world war back in "civilization." Other classic dystopias, which they tended to make us read in high school, include Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm. The genre is alive and well, and it seems that new dystopias are being written every year. Lois Lowry has written some terrific ones, such as The Giver and Gathering Blue. There is Agenda 21, which has Glenn Beck's name on the cover but was actually written by Harriet Parke, where the future is one of regimented, cultureless starvation brought about by environmentalist totalitarians. On the other end of the spectrum, The World Made By Hand and The Witch of Hebron by James Howard Kunstler bring to well-written life his vison of a future in which oil shortages, plagues, and an energy crisis have returned North Americans to a preindustrial lifestyle within one generation. (See, you can write a dystopia from any point of view!) A very good recent dystopia was The Office of Mercy by Ariel Djanikian, in which one group of human beings exterminates another group at the slightest sign of suffering. That one will make you cry. Dystopias, especially the classic ones which do not tend to have happy endings, are not good beach reading. They will wrench you, haunt you, and stay with you for weeks. But they tend to be intense page-turners, as well as being an important source of wisdom about our world. So what have I missed? What's YOUR favorite dystopia?

Where In The World Is Graham Hatter?

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson, 2006. ... Graham Hatter spends almost all of One Good Turn in a coma, but he still manages to dominate the book due to the way he has lived prior to the coma. A coma is not Hatter’s natural state, and it’s as if his energetic, devil-may-care spirit, not content being confined in a hospital bed, has left his body to stalk the pages of the novel. He causes considerable chaos among his associates and employees by his absence. His crappy housing estates, Hatter Homes, figure big in the plot. Most of all, Hatter lives on in the memories of his now-almost-widow, Gloria, as she moves about her daily life, tweaking her home and wealthy lifestyle to (finally!) fit her tastes. A reader, like me, is alternately tickled and horrified as we come to know Graham through Gloria’s musings. Gloria remembers when Graham got a speeding ticket. He had been speeding, talking on his Bluetooth, smoking a cigar and eating a huge, greasy cheeseburger, all at the same time. And that pretty much sums up Graham Hatter. … Martin, the accidentally successful writer, is Hatter’s opposite. He has trouble making his presence felt, even when he is actually present. He is frequently mistaken for someone else, such as a gay person (which he’s not) or a dead person (not quite). But since Martin is not, like Graham, in a coma, he is actually able to make things happen in the world on occasion, and so … well, you will have to read it for yourself. It is dark, sad, and sometimes graphic, but if you are in a space to enjoy such things, it is also very funny.

They Shot Him

Lay down your arms! I come in peace. Said the ambassador right before they shot him. Lay down your arms! And be released, he said, and then they shot him. His hands were high His heart was wide They saw, and yes – they shot him. Shall I play it back one more time? If I played it back ten times, would there be one time without ‘they shot him’? Would his plea ever work, would his face melt their fear … I doubt it, there’s not enough time before they shoot him.

Merry Olde England, Illustrated

St. George and the Dragon, retold by Margaret Hodges from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, illustrated by my hero, Trina Schart Hyman. Little, Brown and Company, 1984. As you can see from these photos, Trina Schart Hyman is a master illustrator. We had this book when I was a kid, and ever since then, these are the kinds of illustrations that I have wanted to do. The way she handles landscapes, light, detail, and her characters' forms and faces is just amazing. This is perhaps my favorite page of the book. It is so exciting! Can't you just feel the warmth that is still rising from the ground as the day closes, and the cold breeze that is snapping the banners and making the standing wheat sway? Don't you just love the drawings of the hills, the peasants, the children? And what's that over there ... a bank of clouds blowing in for the night? ... That's what I took it to be, for years. But perhaps it is ... smoke from the dragon! "The dreadful dragon lay stretched on the sunny side of a great hill, like a great hill himself, and when he saw the knight's armor glistening in the sunlight, he came eagerly to do battle." This amazing picture is accompanied by a solid paragraph of description of the dragon. In a modern book, we would consider it over-written, but bear in mind that this story would have been told without any pictures or film. The teller had to create a picture in his hearers' minds. The kids will sit patiently through the old-fashioned prose, because they have such an amazing illustration to look at meanwhile. And while they sit, their ears will be bathed in phrases that bear the features of old Anglo-Saxon poetry: strong rhythm, assonance, and pairs and even triplets of alliterating words. "In his tail's end, two sharp stings were fixed. But sharper still were his cruel claws. Whatever he touched or drew within those claws was in deadly danger. His head was more hideous than tongue can tell ... He snatched the spear in his claws and broke it off, throwing forth flames of fire from his nostrils. He hurled his hideous tail about ..." If experience is any guide, little girls will sigh at this picture. Una looks all of eighteen; George, twenty. They got started young back then. Look at the red braid on the king, and the carved Celtic face on his chair. That's why this is one of my favorite books.

Why Does He DO That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, by Lundy Bancroft

This is a book about abusive relationships. You will notice that ‘abuse’ is nowhere in the title. I suspect this is because everyone has their own definition of what constitutes abuse, and it almost never covers what they themselves are doing – or being subjected to – are seeing and are concerned about. So, with a title like “angry and controlling men,” they are more likely to pick up the book, thinking, “Hey, this might apply to the confusing situation I am facing.” Can a man abuse a woman without physically harming her? Yes. He can scream at her. He can throw things around the house. He can vandalize her property. He can routinely blame her for everything that goes wrong in his life, or he can constantly critique her and tear her down, or he can call her names that when I tried to put them in this review, got it banned from Amazon. This does not mean that just any unpleasant behavior earns the title abuse. Bancroft uses the word “abuse,” but he does not use it irresponsibly. For example, he says that if someone is angry all the time, “I would not like it,” but it is not necessarily abuse. Abuse is not a binary kind of behavior that is only invoked when the fists fly, but a deeply ingrained, unrepentant attitude of ownership, entitlement, contempt and resentment that a man displays, not toward most people in his life, but toward “his” woman (including past women). I have never witnessed physical violence, but I have definitely heard conversations similar to the ones you will read in this book. And that is disturbing. Does this sound hard to read? It is. Despite being written in a very readable style, this book is in some ways torture to read. The only thing worse would be to live it. I recommend that everyone who can stand to, should read this book, because it clears up so much of the confusion that prevails in abusive situations … confusion in the mind of the victims, the observers, and even (especially?) the professionals. Even if you only read the first three or four chapters, you will be far ahead. The very first chapter, titled “The Mystery,” begins with the confusion felt by victims (who might not see themselves as victims) and their friends, as they try to understand the situation and the abuser. “He says I’m too sensitive. Maybe I am.” “Have I changed or has he changed?” “Why does he DO that?” This confusion is created by the abuser himself, in his highly successful attempts to justify himself to himself, to his victim, and to the people around him. Bancroft did not did start out with this assumption, by the way, but came to it after years of working with abusers in mandatory counseling groups. When he started out, he believed what the abusers told him about how their behavior was caused by their wives’ failings, their traumatic childhoods, their unemployment, or the hurts done them by past girlfriends; that they didn’t know what they were doing; that they “lost control.” Only after several years did the author start to cotton on to the lies. Also confusing is the fact that many abusers can actually be kind (yes, kind) in between abusive incidents. Add to this the fact that the victim may indeed have some mental problems of her own (alcoholism, depression, etc.), either predating the abuse or brought on by it. If she has lived with abuse long enough, she may be barely functional. The abuser, meanwhile, is functional in his life at large (except when it comes to treating his wife well), and appears to be a sane, trustworthy person. To top it all off, he has told her many times that his behavior is her fault. (In fact, he may accuse her of abusing him … referring to her attempts to defend herself.) Small wonder, then, that the abused woman, her friends, and society at large cannot figure out what her problem is. If they start from the assumption that the abuser is a decent guy who means well, they will never figure out the situation. There are decent guys who mean well. This book is not about them. This book is admirably free of psychobabble. For example, in one chapter Bancroft examines in some detail a frustrating conversation between a whiny, controlling man and his wife, which ends with him insisting on walking home in the cold, even though she would be willing to drive him. The author then analyzes why the man chose to walk home and resent it. Of course, his main motive is to maintain the role of victim, to keep himself in the right and his wife in the wrong, so that he can tell himself (and tell everyone else later) how she “left him” to walk home in the cold. Bancroft then adds, “Also, deep down inside [the man] there is a human being who knows that what he is doing is wrong.” In another place, he says, “Most people, when you confront them about something they are doing wrong, get defensive and deny it at first. But later, when they have had some time to cool down, they will come back and admit you were right. Abusers do not do this. They use the passage of time to find additional arguments about why they are right.” One last note. There is a fascinating, counterintuitive warning (late in the book), that women in abusive situations should not seek couples’ counseling. “Couples’ counseling is designed for problems that are mutual.” Abuse is not mutual. It is unilateral. It is not the result of a communication problem. Furthermore, couples’ counseling can be dangerous (!) for the wife. The reassuring presence of the counselor might get the wife to open up and say things to, or about, her husband that she would never otherwise dream of uttering. Then, when they get home (or even, in one chilling case, in the car on the way home), she can face violent retaliation. This book will haunt you, but definitely read it. It might help you someday to help someone else, even if it is only by being the only person who believes her.

Let's Just Write Good Fiction, People, Not Preachy Fiction

A review of The Sign, by Raymond Khoury, 2009. I picked up this book because it looked interesting. The Sign, wow. What could it be? Aliens? Ancient prophecy? Will we get a thrill of mystery as clue after clue is revealed? No such luck. If you haven’t heard of Raymond Khoury, think Dan Brown. Similar themes, similar writing style. From chapter to itty-bitty chapter, the book jumps around the world: Antarctica – Massachusetts – Egypt – Mexico – Egypt – Antarctica. This is supposed to give the book a fast pace (“never relents,” according to the blurbs). For this reader, it went agonizingly slowly. You get a little bit of action in Massachusetts, things start to get tense, then the scene moves to Egypt. You think that perhaps in Egypt, we will find out more, but after a few pages of cinematic conversation in which nothing is revealed, we are back to Antarctica. I call the conversation cinematic because, despite an international cast of characters (Egyptian, Croatian, Czech), all of them talk exactly the same, i.e. like characters out of a Hollywood police drama. For example, here is how a Croatian monk, living in a Coptic monastery, sums up his situation to a couple of Americans: “There’s not much to tell. They contacted us. They said they were making a documentary … The abbot wasn’t keen, none of us were. … But they were coming from a very respectable network, and they were very courteous, and they kept on asking and insisting. Eventually, we accepted.” Come on, Mr. Khoury. Not a single bafflingly misused word, or just one case of awkward word order? How often does this monk speak English? And speaking of English, there is Khoury’s own. Here is how he describes a certain bad guy: “He was a ruthless and imaginative political strategist, he had a mind like a steel trap, and [an] appetite for detail. … His effectiveness was further enhanced by an easygoing, gregarious charm – one that masked the iron resolve underneath and helped when one was a dedicated polemicist ready to take on the red-button issues that were splitting the country.” (p. 122) Golly gee. How many clichés can you squeeze into two sentences? (And even getting one of them wrong? Isn’t it supposed to be “hot-button” issues?) As it turns out, the Sign (spoiler alert) is coming neither from aliens nor from supernatural forces (between which, by the way, Khoury sees no difference), but from a very covert, deniable U.S. government group that has gotten ahold of some cutting-edge technology. The Sign, which first appears over the tragically melting ice caps at both poles, was originally meant to scare people into stopping global warming. But as often happens, the bad guys have had an internal disagreement about how to use the sign. The good bad guy (let’s call him Bad Guy B) wanted to keep the sign vague and occasional, so that no one religion could claim it. This, in addition to stopping global warming, might have the desired effect of nudging people toward pantheism or at least religious relativism. But Bad Guy A (the one described above), wants to steer the sign in the direction of a specifically Christian miracle, creating a specifically fundamentalist fervor. (He does this by kidnapping and brainwashing a Mother-Theresa type to be his mouthpiece). The two bad guys’ conversation about this is revealing. Bad Guy B is principled and thinks that deliberately stirring up religious fervor “might help get rid of one evil [global warming], but you’ll be feeding one that’s just as vile. One that’ll turn our world into a living hell for any rational person.” Got that? Belief in God is not just irrational, it’s “vile.” And it leads to hell. Bad Guy A replies: “You know that was the only way to go. These people don’t read newspapers. They don’t research things on the Internet. They listen to what their preachers tell them – and they believe them. Fanatically. They don’t bother to fact-check the bullshit they hear in their megachurches. They’re happy to swallow it whole, no matter how ridiculous it is … We need these windbags. We need them to sell our message.” (page 212) All I can say is, Wow. No, I don’t mean, Wow, Khoury thinks the Internet is a reliable place to fact-check, although that might make us scratch our heads as well. Rather … Wow. Has this guy ever met even one evangelical Christian? So that was where Khoury completely lost me. But I kept reading, partly because I wanted to earn the right to write this review, and partly because I wanted to find out what happened to the two “good” guys (a former car thief, and a Czech scientist-cum-couch-potato named Jabba, the funnest character in the book). And I was well rewarded when the car thief borrowed a garbage truck and crashed it through the façade of the “stately Georgian mansion” inhabited by Bad Guy B, killing bodyguards like flies in the process. He then puts Bad Guy B in the trash compacter, but thankfully, doesn’t compact him. That would have taken the book in a completely different direction. Later, the Mother Theresa character assured me that “of course I believe in evolution. You’d have to be a blind half-wit not to.” Another character finds this attitude to be “much less dogmatic than I expected.” The funny thing is, I think that I (or the person Raymond Khoury imagines me to be) am actually part of the intended audience of this book. His idea is that all of us evangelicals believe as we do only because we’ve never been exposed to any alternative view. So, we will pick up his book because it appears to be a novel about God (or maybe Satan, given the cover art). Then, the “relentless pace” of the action will draw us in, and when we read in the characters’ mouths Khoury’s compelling logic against belief in God, organized religion, and ID, our minds will be blown open, our world will be rocked. Then, the insults will give us added motivation to convert to materialist environmentalist atheism so that we can belatedly join the group of those in the know. It’s a weird experience reading this kind of a bait-and-switch, because often it goes in the other direction, with Christian writers trying to convert unbelievers through mediocre fiction. Khoury isn’t too fond of Tim LaHaye. Would he be insulted to hear that, as far as this reader is concerned, he is the Tim LaHaye of the atheist world? Anyway, reading this book and then reflecting on my experience was certainly enough to cure me of making any such attempts. Let’s just write good fiction, people, because the preachy fiction doesn’t work on thinking believers. It might work in movies, at least for the duration of the film (I’m looking at you, Dances with Wolves), but books don’t overwhelm the senses quite so much. But I digress. If the garbage truck scene sounds like enough fun to make you plough through the anti-religion rants, then this book is for you. About the science behind the book, I don’t know. I haven’t done the Internet research to find out whether “smart dust” a real thing. If the science of the book is as well researched as the historical and religious parts, then it’s mostly made up. But it’s possible that Khoury put more time into the part that interested him more, the part he actually believes in.

I'm Going to Jackson

This is the way to handle him, ladies!

Ancient Sumerian Epic Makes a Great Children's Book

You laugh. ... They love it.

Imagine my delight to find this illustrated version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which as you can see was retold and illustrated by Ludmila Zeman.

Gilgamesh, like most ancient rulers, is a god sent to rule a people. Unable to relate to humans, he rich, powerful, lonely, and cruel. He makes the people build a wall around the city of Uruk (a historical city), just to show his power. After a while, the people realize that the building on the wall is never going to stop. (Could this myth be a memory of the Tower of Babel, which was meant to reach to the heavens?) They cry out to the Sun god for help.

In reply, the Sun god sends Enkidu, who is also a god-man. But instead of being a Ken doll like Gilgamesh, Enkidu is a hairy wild man who lives among the animals of the forest. (This wild man aspect is perhaps why my three-year-old was fascinated with Enkidu ... is he a picture of the hairy, but soft-hearted, wild man within every three-year-old?) When no one can capture Enkidu, the beautiful Shamhat is sent to lure him to his death at Gilgamesh's hand.

Instead, she falls in love with him. And here comes the only part of the book that I censored for my kids. I simply skip the sentence, "They explored the ways of love together."

Enkidu rises to Gilgamesh's challenge and they have a long, terrifying battle on the city wall. My son wanted to take a picture of this page, where Gilgamesh slips and falls. This super ancient myth has enduring appeal because it is, basically, a superhero story. The DC comics of the Fertile Crescent.

Enkidu chooses to rescue Gilgamesh rather than let him fall.

Gilgamesh has found a peer and a friend. He has experienced mercy. Humanized, he orders work on the wall stopped forever.

How wonderful it is to have a god/king who understands us, who understands what it is to be weak and need mercy ... and to receive it. Look, even the Babylonian sphinxes are happy.

I love the illustrations in this book. They were clearly well researched. For any child who sees them, they will form his first impression of the world of ancient Sumeria. For adults, they capture well our feeling of that ancient world being always sunny, yet somehow always bathed in a golden sunset. The grandeur is there.

The people are celebrating Gilgamesh's change of heart. As you look at these pictures, what do they remind you of? I think they capture ancient Sumeria well, but they also reminded me of Mesoamerica, and, believe it or not, Bali. India is also in view. All complex, centralized civilizations with a lot of idolatry. ... Great book.

At Last, A Realistic Love Poem

Tell me how wonderful I am. /Come on, tell me. /I know you can’t see the dishes that aren’t dirty, /but nevertheless I did them, /and I want to be praised for it – now. /Today I performed the least of my duties, /and it was such an unfamiliar experience /that it almost killed me. /So I think the least I deserve /is to be worshipped. /Tell me I am a goddess with sweet breath, /beautiful, smart and /selfless. /Come on now, /don’t distract me with your demands, /just tell me /how wonderful I am.

"Forced Vaginal Ultrasounds:" A PR Coup for the Left

The phrase “forced vaginal ultrasounds” is a genius bit of spin on the part of the proabortion left. This little buzzword does the work of a hundred TV commercials. It takes ten seconds to say, and would take about ten minutes to refute. I first started hearing it about a year and a half ago, back during the “war on women” propaganda campaign. But I still see it plastered around, even on blogs: “Forced Vaginal Ultrasounds! Vote Republican!” I’d like to address the legitimacy of this little phrase, but first we have to back up a bit and talked about patient’s experience in our modern medical system. Doctors’ visits are never fun. All of us have been through things, in a medical context, that are uncomfortable and that, in any other context, would be really degrading. Ask any male patient. If we are considering major surgery, this becomes even more the case. Leading up to the surgery, we expect to go through any number of tests and procedures that might be really painful, though still less invasive than the surgery itself. For example, we might have our head shaved or have a bone marrow sample taken. These things are required in the sense that if we want to go through with the surgery, we have to have them done first. We accept this as part of modern medicine. It can be merely unpleasant, or it can be a real nightmare, depending on our state of mind and body, and on the attitudes of the medical personnel who are giving us care. I have never had an abortion. I have given birth three times. Childbearing is not surgery, but it is a major medical event. Leading up to this event, I had regular visits to the obstetrician. In my case, my ob was a man, a man I trusted and who had a great bedside manner. Nevertheless, I asked that a female nurse be in the room whenever he was examining me, and they were happy to comply. The first few ultrasounds were vaginal, then the baby got big enough that they could do abdominal ultrasounds. It’s always weird to be up on that table, but it was something I was willing to go through on my ob’s recommendation, in order to know the state of my unborn baby’s health. In the case of a woman contemplating an abortion, the purpose of the vaginal ultrasound would be to provide her with full information, so that she knows exactly what it is that she’s aborting, what is involved in the procedure, and what she stands to lose. The instrument for the vaginal ultrasound is small. Despite the weird, potentially degrading nature of the ultrasound, it’s not painful and is far less invasive than the original process of getting pregnant. It is also far less invasive than abortion itself, which often involves invasion by vacuums and knives, instruments of killing. (Abortionists have little tables in their offices too.) Requiring an ultrasound before an abortion is in harmony with how other major medical procedures are handled; namely, a series of tests before the main procedure to rule out potential problems. But abortion advocates have hit on the genius idea of calling this reasonable medical precaution a “forced vaginal ultrasound.” What a powerful buzzword. Anything with “forced” and “vaginal” in it can’t be good. (Although for women in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, ultrasounds are done on the abdomen.) Saying “forced” instead of “required” makes it sound like the woman is screaming on the table, being restrained by three or four people, being given the ultrasound by a male doctor who is probably laughing maniacally. (I ask: why not link this same scene to the abortion itself? The abortion is just as likely to be traumatic … in fact, more so.) And this rape-like scene can then be linked to “the Republicans” or any politician who thinks that women should be given full information about what is involved in abortion before they go through with it. This is nothing but pure propaganda, all packed into a little three-word phrase. A woman who decides to give birth to her baby can adopt him out after he is born. Abortion can’t be undone. It makes sense that women have full information before being asked to choose abortion. Ultrasounds can help give them that information.

Who's More Self-Absorbed? John Denver vs. Johnny Cash

No, I'm not qualified to compare their entire musical corpuses. Or to comment on music at all. Let's just look at each one's signature song, from a philosophical perspective. In "Rocky Mountain High," John Denver wants to go off into the Rockies and "try to touch the sun," "walk in quiet solitude," etc. Now, as an introvert, I find this VERY appealing. And I like Nature. I do. And in fact, I really like the song. But on a closer listen, JD does not like people. He does not want people following him to the Rockies ... "more people, more scars upon the land." So, getting off by himself in the mountains, for John Denver, is SALVATION. "You might say he's born again. You might say he's found the key to every door." Granting that we all need a retreat and some beauty now and then, getting away from people as a permanent lifestyle is pretty dang self absorbed. Of COURSE most of our problems will vanish if we just get away from the dang PEOPLE! ... Meanwhile, in "Man In Black," Johnny Cash is going to tell us why he's always wearin' black, why we never see bright colors on his back. Turns out that he wears black for "the poor and beaten down." On a first listen, I must admit the content of this song simultaneously inspires and annoys me. As a middle-class person who is very susceptible to guilt trips, I question the populist assumption that a class war is raging and everyone is either a victim in it, or an aggressor. And, c'mon, Johnny, did you REALLY decide to wear black at first because you represent all oppressed people? Or was it because you like black and it looks better on stage? ... But having said that, the attitude expressed by "Man In Black" is miles ahead of the one expressed by "Rocky Mountain High." Although I may find Johnny's populism kind of grandiose, it isn't a pose. It's sincere. Johnny really is very concerned about people who are struggling. He grew up poor, he really identified with prisoners. Above all, Johnny's signature song is about OTHER PEOPLE. Actual, other people. This is what gets him going ... the life-and-death struggles of other people. He sings about that with as much passion as John sings about ... himself, alone in nature. What more need we say?

Suspicion of Guilt

By Barbara Parker, 1996 ... Gail Connor has had a hard time lately. Her husband left her. Her sister was murdered, and Gail was charged with the crime. All this happened in the last book, Suspicion of Innocence. Now Gail, the Miami lawyer, is back. In this book she has a Cuban-American boyfriend (who was her defense lawyer briefly in the last book), a 10-year-old daughter, and at her firm she is trying to make partner. … This is a legal thriller, with lots of action, confrontations, and also steamy bedroom scenes. The plot is believable and gets consistently more tense toward the end. The author, a lawyer herself, clearly knows what it’s like to work at a firm. Also, we get to see lots of Miami. The book even had me turning to Google Earth so that I could orient myself. Which way does Miami face, now? Where’s the coast? Where do these causeways lead? As you would hope from Miami, a lot of the action takes place on or near the water. … If you like the genre, you will like this book. I don’t even particularly like it, yet I read the whole thing and often neglected my duties to read it because the book is such a page-turner. … So why don’t I like it? One major problem is Gail Connor herself. For most of the book, I found her hard to identify with. The scenes between Gail and her 10-year-old daughter are painful. I could identify with both of them in those scenes, but it seemed to me that Gail was not really trying to listen to her daughter. Of course, Gail was under a lot of pressure. That happens when you’re in a character in a legal thriller. Gail also doesn’t seem to really like her boyfriend for most of the book. She is so prickly that she bristles at him constantly. Perhaps this has to do with personality. To make partner, as a woman, and also to get involved in an unofficial murder investigation, you have to be bloody-minded. But I spent much of the book annoyed with Gail for how she treats wonderful Anthony. … Except when they’re hopping in bed, of course. Does anybody really do that after a day in which they’ve been arrested / beaten up / chewed out by their boss / nearly killed? Maybe in Hollywood. Anyway, I advise skipping those scenes, they border on porn. … It’s not all Gail’s fault that she’s not too likeable. She has some stiff competition from the other characters in the book. Gail’s mother, Irene, is terrific. I have already mentioned Anthony. And there is the murder victim, a large-livin’ Miami socialite. And Gail’s irrepressible Cuban-American office intern, Miriam. Even the murderer himself is a well-drawn character … a jerk, but a familiar kind of jerk. And the way these people talk! Whether it’s the octogenarian Miami aristocrat (“By God, aren’t you lovely? And tall. A strapping young woman.”) or the fiftyish black police detective (“I might want to reinstitute some paperwork from an incident over at Mrs. Tillett’s house. You understand what I’m saying?”), you can almost hear their voices saying it. … Gail redeems herself with her daughter, and with me, in the obligatory scene at the end when they’re fighting for their lives with a desperate killer. I might be willing to read about her again, if only to see how the daughter turns out.

Why Post About Politics?

This is my first political post. I hope I am not opening Pandora's box here. Well, perhaps I would be, if anyone ever read this blog. ...This post is intended as a qualification to provide some background to future political-type posts that I have planned. ...I am not one of those people who believes we will be saved through politics. The Moral Majority, Take Back America; or, alternatively, the Great Society, Obamacare ... bleh. Leaders come and go, but the conditions keep heading the direction they were going to head. Laws can make things better or worse, but in a democracy like ours, they mostly just reflect the way social conditions were heading anyway. Example: gay marriage laws in many states. They passed because people want them. ...So why post about politics at all? Politics are unimportant in that they don't directly change things. But political discourse is important because (however much the spin doctors may try to distract us), it is a conversation about ideas. Political discourse is society talking to itself about what is good, beautiful, and true, and about what is hateful and worthy of condemnation. It is society talking to itself about what kind of society it wants to be. ...So even though the leaders we elect, the laws we pass, the votes we cast change virtually nothing, this conversation we are having can and does change things long-term. The terms used, the way issues are framed, the influential stories and scandals can change our perception of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. These things can help shape what kind of leaders will be around, a generation from now, to be elected. ...Luckily, political discourse is not the only conversation going on. There are much more powerful conversations out there. TV shows, movies, and our very lives all tell stories that shape our society. Compared to these, political discourse is more a thermometer than a thermostat. ...Nevertheless, sometimes very important things are said in debates that have been categorized as political. Very important truths, half-truths, and lies are uttered. Sometimes I want to write about these. Stay tuned!

Are Church Buildings Evil? ("Pagan Christianity" Chapter 2)

This essay will review the second chapter of the book Pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola and George Barna. The book’s thesis is that most of what the modern church does is unbiblical because it developed from paganism. The name of the chapter is “The Church Building: Inheriting the Edifice Complex.” One of the perils of being poorly educated about church history is that, when we encounter an argument like the one in this chapter, we are apt to be thrown by it. The chapter delves into the early practices of the church, including the beginnings of the saint cults and veneration of relics, and the role Constantine played in legalizing Christianity, pushing building projects, and promoting saint cults. For me, as probably for the average reader of this book, most of these details are new information. Pastors learn this stuff in seminary, but no one has ever made us study it. So we are in no position to dispute the facts in this chapter. That can be intimidating, and we can conclude that since the authors have done all this research that we haven’t done, they are right in their conclusions as well. In fact, this chapter shows the limits of research. The authors are probably right in their facts, but that does not make them right in their historical analysis. Facts about syncretism in early Christianity get passed through the grid of the author’s assumptions: that the way the apostolic church did things is the only God-approved way to do them, that any form of social hierarchy is evil, and that anything that has been done by pagans is therefore unlawful for Christians. Much of this chapter is about Constantine. Apparently he was a syncretist who continued many pagan practices, such as sun-worship and emperor-as-deity, after his conversion to Christianity, and in fact tried to integrate these practices with Christianity. Obviously a bad thing. And, as is the root, so is the fruit. When Constantine, with his pagan heart, sought to increase Christians’ social power, he went about it in a very pagan way. Most churches built under Constantine’s auspices were built over the bodies of dead saints, were named for those saints …. were, in fact, temples to those saints. The authors point out that this happened concurrently with a growing tendency among Christians to venerate the dead, and with the increasing popularity of relics: pieces of dead saints’ bones, or things they had touched, which were thought to have miraculous powers barely distinguishable from magic. Constantine, and especially his mother who allegedly brought back from the Holy Land pieces of the true cross, were instrumental in promoting “relic mongering.” In fact, say the authors, By the fourth century, obsession with relics got so bad that some Christian leaders spoke out against it, calling it “a heathen observance introduced in the churches under the cloak of religion … the work of idolaters.” [20] Well how about that! God was not silent! As early as the fourth century, the Holy Spirit moved some leaders to notice that the trade in relics was essentially pagan, and to condemn it. And about 1200 years later, the scandalous trade in relics was one of the stones that started the avalanche known as the Reformation. Turns out Christ is able to care for His church after all. When something is truly pagan, He can clean it up. The authors have shown that basilicas were essentially “we can build ‘em too” copies of pagan temples, but they have yet to convince me that we are all therefore in sin for building church buildings that do not house a dead saint or a relic. But Barna and Viola have other reasons for hating basilicas, and by extension all buildings designed on what we might call the “high church” model. “Basilicas … were wonderful for seating a passive and docile crowd to watch a performance. [They] were designed so that the sun fell upon the speaker as he faced the congregation. The platform was usually elevated by several steps. There was also a rail or screen that separated the clergy from the laity.” [page 22 – 23] In short, “the hierarchical distinction embedded in the basilican architecture was unmistakable” [page 24]. And, as we all know, hierarchy is bad. Granted, there were some very bad aspects of the growth of a priestly class and a lay class that the authors so abhor. It was functioning to separate people from God. Lay people no longer got to pray, read or understand the Scriptures themselves, sing praises themselves, or even take communion. Obviously all of this was terrible. (And, again, the Reformation addressed a lot of it.) Nevertheless, we in Christ’s church are in a hierarchy. He is the Head over us. And even within the Trinity there is hierarchy. God is the Head of Christ. Surely our buildings should express this? The same architectural language that can be used to elevate the bishop, can also be used to elevate God. Soaring ceilings, sunlight striking the one who speaks the word of God, an elevated place for him to speak … when properly handled, these can draw our minds to God and help us appreciate His power and authority. (Some of these factors are also simple matters of logistics. If you are going to have a gathering of more than a few dozen Christians, it makes sense to have your speaker stand somewhere slightly elevated and well-lit.) To answer this, Barna and Viola fall back on their other assumption, that anything first discovered by pagans cannot be lawfully used by Christians. They concede that, “With their dazzling color, [Gothic] stained-glass windows … induced feelings associated with the worship of a mighty, fear-inspiring God” [page 28]. Why is this bad? Well, because hundreds of years before Christ, Plato also figured out that “sound, color and light have lofty mystical meanings. They can induce moods and help bring one closer to the ‘Eternal Good.’” [page 29] Since a pagan, aided only by his natural understanding (described in Romans 2), had already advocated the use of our physical surroundings to facilitate worship, we cannot do that. We are only allowed to worship God in the ugliest, most ordinary surroundings we can find. Of course God can be worshipped anywhere. That is one of the most precious gifts He has given us … His presence with us through Christ. What a tremendous privilege: we do not have to go to a church building to pray; we can pray in a hospital, in a concentration camp, in a prison. The God who once dwelt with His people in the Temple has now, through the temple of his body, given us His constant presence. Now we are His body, we are His temple. All this is absolutely true, and very precious truth at that. However, we still do need to meet somewhere every week. And when deciding where to meet, there are practical decisions we will face. Within the range of our means, will we choose a noisy place or a quiet place? A beautiful place or an ugly place? A place with windows and high ceilings, or a place with soundproof tile ceilings and fluorescent lights? And let us not pretend that these environmental factors do not have an effect on us. It is true that God’s presence is with us everywhere. This we grasp by faith. But we are still human beings. He gave us bodies and emotions, and we are affected by our physical surroundings. We acknowledge this in the rest of life. (Mr. Barna, you love your wife whatever your physical surroundings, but on your anniversary, do you take her to a nice hotel or to the bus station?) But sometimes, when it comes to “spiritual” things, we suddenly talk as if we have to be disembodied minds, grasping everything by sheer intellectual faith and giving no support to, nay actually discouraging, our bodies and emotions from worship. This reveals a philosophy that prizes the mental and spiritual and despises the body as irrelevant. And guess, Mr. Viola and Mr. Barna, where that philosophy comes from? Not from the Bible … but from ancient pagans.

Barabbas

"Barabbas waited on the death row shelf. He had run in a gang. He would die by himself. His muscles were thin, his skin was pale, but then that comes with a stay in jail. He was tough underneath, and rough as well, but he jumped at a thump on the door of his cell." So begins one of the best Arch Books ever. It's about the trial of Jesus, and everything about it is right, from the terrific poetry to the dark art that exactly captures the mood for this event. I would not want this artist illustrating everything from Jesus' life, but for these characters and this event, it is just perfect.

See how the trial before Pilate is shown. The details of the laurel leaves, the Roman crest, and the way the Jewish priests are clumped together. Jesus is the least ugly person in the room, but He is by no means pretty or feminized. Pilate's moral weakness is visible in the shape of his face and body. On other pages, there are pictures of Pilate washing his hands before the crowd, and reading his wife's letter warning him to "have nothing to do with that innocent man."

Just look at those ravens flying overhead in this mob scene! How perfect. They know someone is going to die today. They are carrion birds, like the mob below them. I must say a word about the poetry in this book. It is so different from some of the Arch books, where entire incidents, lines, or interpretations are added, obviously just to achieve a rhyme. Very few words are wasted in Barabbas. The rythym is pounding (rather like the relentless pound of events). The choice of words is solid and meaty. There are rhymes within the lines, such as "he jumped at a thump" and some are onomatopoetic, such as, "They hissed and insisted that several times/Jesus was guilty of terrible crimes." The book ends with a pale, puffy Barabbas stepping out into the light, squinting uncomprehendingly at the back of the mob as Jesus is led away. High recommended.

Yes, It's Pagan (and why that shouldn't scare you)

We may not realize it, but pagan roots are all around us. If we look at Western culture alone, the ancient Greeks have claimed nearly every tree, plant, and fruit as the symbol of some god or other. For example, the apple was sacred to Aphrodite, goddess of love. (Is anyone going to give up apple pie?) Easter eggs and wedding rings are pagan. Pagans have baby dedications, harvest feasts, weddings, and coming-of-age ceremonies. They wear jewelry. They wear their hair short – or long. They dress up on special occasions. The problem for consciencious Christians is that because pagans are human beings, they do all the things that human beings were created to do. All lawful human activities were first done by pagans. And there are a limited number of ways to do some of these things. So we should examine our assumption that it is always a sin to do anything the way pagans used to do it. If we carry this principle to its logical conclusion, we will soon find it difficult to engage in any activity at all. Of course, that is only half an argument. “This will make life nearly impossible for us” is not a good enough reason to resist a genuine command of God. God sometimes does expect His saints to suffer severe difficulties and privation for Him. For example, in Rev. 13:16 – 17 and 14:9 - 12, God clearly expects His people to starve rather than receive the mark of the Beast (no one could buy or sell without the mark on their hand or forehead). I would like to tentatively suggest two concepts that might help us navigate this question: meaning in context and loyalty. Let’s apply them to the situation in Revelation. Have you ever had a mark put on your hand? Probably, if you’ve ever been to a concert or a fair. In that context, what did the mark mean? It meant only that you had paid to be admitted to the event. But in the situation in Revelation, the mark on the hand means something very different. Taking the mark is a sign of loyalty to the Beast. I suggest that loyalty is also the central concern in Paul’s discussion (in I Cor. 10:14 – 33) of whether Christians may eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols. It may seem strange that Paul instructs us not to eat the meat if our host says, “This has been sacrificed to an idol,” yet we may eat the same meat if we buy it from the market – even though we know it has probably been so sacrificed. In the second situation, are we pretending we don’t know? Is this culpable ignorance? But Paul’s concern is not whether someone has at some point offered this meat to an idol. His concern is what we are saying with our actions, and this depends on the context. When we buy meat in the market, we are not declaring our loyalty to an idol. We are declaring that we want some meat. But if we are at someone’s house and he serves us a roast, saying “This has been offered to Zeus,” he has created a situation where by eating we would be declaring our loyalty to Zeus. By eating at our pagan friend’s house we are having fellowship with him – which is fine with Pastor Paul, unless the pagan announces “If you want me ya gotta take Zeus too.” Note that Paul is not worried that demonic influences can adhere to an inanimate object such as meat. Paul clearly identifies the pagan gods with demons, and their sacrifices are “the sacrifices of demons” (verses 20 – 21). Yet even if meat has been in such a demonic ceremony, probably only a couple of hours before we buy it in the market, it is perfectly safe and legitimate to eat. We do not need to worry that by eating we will incur a demonically caused sickness or a spiritual curse. We do not even need to worry that we are accidentally sinning. Paul has told us that it is not a sin. This may seem shocking. Someone may say, “You don’t understand the reality of the spirit world.” Those demons are powerful! Yes, they are. Paul understood that, and he was writing to people who understood that, people who had recently been converted from paganism and probably were still afraid of the pagan gods (I Cor. 8:7 – 9). In fact, Paul urged his baby churches to engage in spiritual warfare. But here, he is urging them not to engage in it in a pagan manner – being afraid of unseen influences that might adhere to objects, come into your home, and get you. Christians know that the devil works not primarily in these magical ways, but rather by trying to lure our loyalty away from God by working on our minds – “arguments, pretensions, and anything that sets itself up against the living God,” and “doctrines of demons.” In some places the devil does manifest himself by causing sickness, pain, and possession. The point of these manifestations is to cause fear, in our minds, to lure us away from God. “We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world” (I Cor. 8:4). If we become superstitious in an attempt to avoid paganism, we are thinking like pagans. Of course there may be objects that are never used for anything but pagan worship. (Amulets, pentagrams, skulls.) It would be very difficult for a Christian to use one of these without declaring his loyalty to pagan gods. On the other end of the spectrum, there are practices that were once pagan, but their origins have faded so far into the past that their use is now no declaration of loyalty at all. (Certain hairstyles, the use of red and green at Christmas, having bridesmaids at weddings.) And then there is a lot of stuff in the middle, such as tattoos; dressing up for Halloween; or objects which are symbols of cultural heritage but whose pagan roots are not completely forgotten. These are judgment calls, matters for discussion, but of course not for blaming and accusing each other. Paganism is spooky and it tends to scare us and cause us to react emotionally. But we should not forget that although our own culture is not pagan, neither is it neutral. It is secular, humanist and consumerist – in other words, Americans don’t worship pagan gods, they worship themselves. Just as scary! We too make “loyalty calls” every day. But we have the Holy Spirit. By God’s grace we can navigate our secular culture, just as by God’s grace our brothers and sisters overseas can navigate their pagan ones.

Themes in "PAGAN Christianity?"

Pagan Christianity? Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
By Frank Viola and George Barna, BarnaBooks/Tyndale, 2008

Three Themes
This book examines a variety of common church practices. I have chosen to review it chapter by chapter. It needs this fine-grained approach for two reasons. First, the topics in the various chapters differ from each other in kind. Some of the chapters are mostly right; others deserve nothing but a lampooning. Second, even within each chapter there is an intricate mix of valid points and spurious reasoning. This calls for a fine-grained approach to disentangle the two.
However, there are three themes that run throughout the book which I would like to treat at the beginning. Three assumptions of the authors seem to be:
1/ The church as it existed in the New Testament provides the (only) Biblical pattern for how Christians should meet and worship today.
2/ Democracy is good; heirarchy is bad.
3/ Anything that started out as a pagan practice is unlawful for Christians.
New Testament Church as the only valid model
The authors state, numerous times, that the New Testament church was doing things the way God wanted, but within in a few hundred years (certainly after Constantine), things began to go wrong, and they have been wrong – drastically wrong – ever since. The answer to this argument was well put by a review posted on House Church Unplugged (http://housechurch.org/blog/2008/02/pagan-christianity-real-hope-or-shrill-hype/) :
The book’s perspective is that Jesus, rather than making good on his promise to build and guide his church despite the gates of Hell, somehow long ago lost control, became dependent upon humans, is now lonely, hands tied, looking for freedom, romance, and a place to go.
There is a certain arrogance in the authors’ assertion that all of Christendom has been pretty much completely wrong for almost 2000 years, but now they, the authors, plus a small group of enlightened others, are finally getting back to the Biblical way.
Granted, this is not a complete argument in itself. This was also the objection brought to Martin Luther when he defended his view of the Gospel. “Are you alone right?” Of course, in Luther’s case, he was.
But there are other reasons to question this assumption. Quoting from the same review:
Viola in the original edition of PC, page 294, writes: “Take note, the NT is not a manual for church PRACTICE.” George Barna, in like manner, wrote in Revolution: “The Bible does not rigidly define the corporate PRACTICES, rituals, or structures that must be embraced in order to have a proper church.” page 37
So the authors have elsewhere denied their own premise in principle, but when pressed to explain why they hate institutional Christianity, they take back those “methods and structures” detail by detail. For example, they contend that early churches met in homes not because they were new, small congregations with little social power, but because that was the Biblical way and because it was democratic.
Which brings me to my second theme.
Democracy Good, Hierarchy Bad
This principle is never stated explicitly in the book, but it is relied on heavily. It is the reason the authors give for unBiblicality of having both pastors and sermons, for example (both of which they hate – but more on that later). They assert that Jesus can only speak to His people if the meeting is a free-form, egalitarian one where any person present has the freedom at any time to speak up, interrupt, ask a question, or start a song. They also hate clothing that implies hierarchy (that is, any kind other than casual clothing).
I am not arguing that democracy is bad as a political system, but the authors seem to hate hierarchy in any form, anywhere in life. I will deal with this more fully later, but for now let me point out that this strong value of theirs is a characteristically modern and American one rather than necessarily a Biblical one.
Pagan Roots Are Dirty
Yeah, but so are all roots.
I will treat this theme at a little more length because I think it is misunderstood by many Christians, as well as by the authors, and this book is a shameless attempt to manipulate that misunderstanding. Look at the cover of the book. Red background, the word PAGAN in big, black letters, tipped on its side to resemble a tree and sprouting sinister-looking roots. (The authors’ names, and the word Christianity, are in white and are configured to resemble a cross.)
In the acknowledgements, Frank Viola tells us the origin of this book: “I left the institutional church … I sought to understand how the Christian church ended up in its present state. For years I tried to get my hands on a documented book that traced the origin of every nonbiblical practice we Christians observe every week.” (xiii) Notice, Viola had already decided that institutional Christianity was thoroughly broken. He “knew” that most things most churches were doing, were unBiblical (they may be too, but not in the way Voila thinks). If these practices did not originate in the Bible, they must have come from somewhere else. Since Viola could not find the book he was looking for, he researched and wrote it himself. To his credit, he acknowledges the limits of his research and hopes that true scholars will pick up where he left off.
Viola’s experience is recreated within each chapter. First, we are told that whatever practice the chapter is treating (church buildings, sermons, etc.) is unbiblical. Then, there follows a brief historical survey of how such a practice developed from paganism. Then, we are given the real reasons the authors dislike the practice: arguments that it is undemocractic, unbiblical, or both. These later arguments are real arguments and deserve to be answered. But they are irrelevant to whether a given practice is pagan. If Jesus commands us to do something that the pagans also do (e.g., be wise in dealing with people – Luke 16:8 – 9), then that practice is Biblical, right?
A practice should stand or fall on its own merits, regardless of what it resembles or what it developed from. But in the authors’ minds, if they can show that something developed from a similar thing that was pagan, they have got at least halfway to proving it is unBiblical. And I fear that many American Christians would agree with them.
Interestingly, pagans share this assumption. They delight in pointing out the similarities between Christian and pagan practices, and especially the borrowings. They assume that by pointing these out, they have proved that Christianity is not unique.
G.K. Chesterton, in his book The Everlasting Man, has blown this argument apart. He argues that human beings were created by God to do certain things. Human beings, wherever they live and whatever their religion, will do these things. They will have festivals and parties at certain times. They will pray. They will make beautiful clothes and dress up sometimes. When circumstances permit, they will bake cakes. This is part of the creation order and the cultural mandate, in addition to being lots of fun.
When they are pagan, the tragedy is that people do not really have anything or anyone to do these things to or about. They are forever in search of an entity and an event that matches their huge capacity for celebration and worship. Eventually, it all falls through and degenerates into violence, or superstitious fear, or a sexual free for all.
But God does not expect us to stop doing these legitimate and lawful things when we leave the pagan gods to worship Christ. He redeems these things! For the first time, we do them for a good reason. So once, we baked hot cross buns unto the Spring Equinox. Now, we bake them unto Christ, and eat with even more joy in our hearts. Once we sang songs and made art unto our pagan gods. Now we sing and make them unto Christ!
Let me hasten to add that of course some pagan practices cannot be carried over into the Christian life. Worshipping other gods is out. So is temple prostitution, consulting the dead, divination, practicing magic, and making images to be worshipped. All of these are explicitly forbidden in the Bible, so we do not need to discuss their origins to see that they are unbiblical.
But there are a host of human activities that are not unlawful in themselves, are not condemned in Scripture, yet were certainly done by pagans before they were done by Christians (or even Jews). Pagans are human beings, and they do all the things human beings do. So, art, formal clothing, dancing, and yes, sacred buildings, priests, and sermons are not necessarily forbidden to us just because pagans do them. We will have to find stronger arguments if we want to get rid of these things. What we cannot do is strengthen a weak argument against a practice by tacking the word “pagan” on it. This is dishonest, and frankly it is unfair to pagans. Why blame them for the fact that you don’t like liturgical robes? We need to remember that although their gods are false gods, pagans are real people.

The Holy Thief

The Holy Thief: The Nineteenth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael, of the Benedictine Abby of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury
by Ellis Peters (pen name for Edith Pargeter)

The “holy” thief is a monk, a novice from another abbey, who visits Shrewsbury. His name is Tutilo. He is, as it turns out, a thief and a liar, but he also posses a certain sweet innocence, perhaps the kind that comes from shortsightedness.

Tutilo contrives to steal Shrewsbury’s prized possession, the reliquary containing the bones of St. Winifred. He smuggles the reliquary, protectively swathed, onto a cart of wood headed for his own monastery.

And here is where the story begins its slo-mo slide into farce. For the reliquary never reaches its destination. The men driving the cart are mugged, the cart is stolen, the wood scattered, and the reliquary ends up in the possession of a local nobleman. By the time it is tracked down, three parties have decided they have a claim to it: the monks from Shrewsbury, the monks from Tutilo’s abbey, and the nobleman to whose house it has come. One of the best scenes in the book occurs in Chapter Four, when the priors of the two monasteries are arguing with each other and with the nobleman. Each of the three is trying to press his own claim by speculating about St. Winifred’s intentions. One maintains that she orchestrated events so as to get stolen because she wanted to go to the new abbey. Another maintains that she orchestrated all the events, including the ambush, because she wanted to end up in the nobleman’s house. The prior of Shrewsbury, of course, maintains that she never wanted to leave Shrewsbury at all. The nobleman is half-teasing in this scene, but the two monks are deadly serious.

The scene, taken by itself, reads like a satire of medieval saint worship. There are several difficulties. First, they are trying to ascribe godlike knowledge and power to a dead woman. Yet somehow they realize that this is not quite right, that she is not all-knowing and all-sovereign like God. This allows them to ascribe to St. Winifred just the degree of sovereignty needed for their respective arguments. The issues raised are not so different from those that come up any time something happens that is clearly not in line with the revealed will of God. But the difficulties of St. Winifred’s sovereignty are even greater because in her we are dealing not with an omnipresent, invisible being, but rather with a being located in, or tied to, a block of wood. In short, with an idol. And idols, for all their purported power, can be stolen by people, knocked out of a wood cart, etc.

Faithful readers of the Brother Cadfael series are let in to an additional irony. Those who read the first book, A Morbid Taste for Bones, know that the reliquary everyone is now fighting over does not actually contain the bones of St. Winifred. At the time she (everyone, even Cadfael, refers to the bones as "she") was to be brought from her native Wales to Shrewsbury, St. Winifred’s actual bones were reinterred, and another body placed in the reliquary. Very few of the characters know this. Cadfael, of course, was involved in the switcheroo up to his eyeballs, and at the time did it because he thought it was St. Winifred’s will, just as Tutilo thought it was her will to get stolen.

And this is where the story steps back from being a satire. There is some lingering mystery surrounding the reliquary. Cadfael, for one, still refers to the reliquary as “she,” though he knows the actual she is back in Wales. He still prays (in Welsh) to St. Winifred at her altar in Shrewsbury, and does actually sense her presence there. Perhaps it is because her bones did rest in the reliquary for a few hours before being reinterred, or because she is “able to send her grace” over the distance from Wales to this place where she is also honored.

But it gets even worse. Not only does Cadfael subjectively sense St. Winifred at her altar in Shrewsbury, but “she” has actually done a miracle there. In one of the books between One and Nineteen, a boy with a deformed leg was healed when he knelt before St. Winifred’s altar and heard her saying to him, “Step forward, you know you can.” He did, his leg was straightened, and he is now her most passionate devotee at Shrewsbury.
And as the book progresses, it becomes evident that St. Winifred, in response to the pagan-like divinations of the characters, is perfectly able to make her will known.
So what Peters has done here is make St. Winifred like God, and the reliquary rather like the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament … St. Winifred’s power and presence are focused at the reliquary (by her own choice), but she is not bound to it.

In fact, Peters has drawn an excellent picture of God in her portrayal of St. Winifred in this book. It is much warmer, more nuanced, and more personal than the attitude in the series to God Himself. I think the reason for this is that Peters is basically a humanist, and St. Winifred is human. Peters does not love God, but she (and Brother Cadfael) do love St. Winifred.

Come to think of it, that was probably the attitude of many who participated in the saint cults. God was alien, distant, and probably hostile, but a local saint, one who speaks their own language and who was once human like them … such a person they can know and love. The saint cults were a sign that the Gospel had not really reached these people. The Gospel, among many other benefits, tears down the dividing wall of hostility between God and people. It enables us to really know and love God, to really come near. It tells us that He has been human like us, and He does speak our language. We need a God like this, and if we do not get the privilege of knowing Him, we will invent Him in a saint, a hero or a spirit.

I doubt that in real life Ellis Peters was a saint worshipper. But she knew her medieval history. She was steeped in the beauties, limitations and assumptions of the period. She writes about saint worship with great sympathy because it is such a human thing, and with belief because she was really able to become her medieval characters as she wrote for them. That is what makes this such an excellent series.

Rotten At The Core

Vatel, starring Gerard Depardieu & Uma Thurman, directed by Roland Joffe, score by Ennio Morricone, 2000

I’m no friend of Robespierre. I hate his implacable, simplistic, kill-them-all philosophy. However, that does not mean that the Revolution-era French aristocracy were not ripe for judgment. If you need proof of that, just watch Vatel.

It is the sort of movie often described as a “lavish period film.” In the words of Ken Fox, it has “silly wigs, plunging décolletage, lavish banquets in ornate halls, a stirring score from Ennio Morricone and witty dialogue by Tom Stoppard (who adapted the original French screenplay into English). From mirrored halls to rats in the walls, rarely has a period film looked so authentic.”

But I would describe it as a devastating period film, one in which the rottenness beneath is constantly breaking out through the gilding. The king, his court, and the prince who is hosting them at his country home, all feel entitled a constant stream of the finest things. It only flatters them that the lives of the lower classes are used up and destroyed by their insatiable consumption. And even that is not enough; the court are consuming each other: bodies, reputations, and dissipated souls.

Depardieu plays Vatel, the “master of pleasures,” head cook, steward, and stage manager for the whole spectacle. He is a professional, an accomplished chef and event planner, who handles everything from the meringue to the fireworks. But he is still, essentially, a high-ranking servant. In the course of the week the film covers, Vatel is ordered about, threatened, insulted, propositioned by another man, bought and sold in a card game, and almost murdered. Through his experience, we see the violence inherent in the system. (In fact, the only skill in which the aristocrats show themselves to be competent is swordplay, when Vatel is ambushed by his court enemies, then rescued by a rival group.)

“Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come,” said Jesus. Reflecting on this film, I was reminded of His words. France reaped violence during The Terror, in large part because her kings had sown violence for many years before.