Articles in this section are from the past 6 to 12 months,
I have only read the first volume, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, of the Harry Potter series. I hesitated reading any of the series for a long time because everyone was so insistent that I must read them. This, of course, is silly. Rowling is a great writer, a master of plot and characterization. She has created a world as fully realized as the ones C.S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien have invented. As a story-teller, I believe her to be superior to those two Inklings. I have refused to read the subsequent volumes in protest, though (this is probably silly, too). It was bad enough that Rowling would not admit Dumbledore was just her iteration of Obi-Wan, Gandalf, and Merlin before him, but she angrily denied that Harry was a Christ figure. Whatever. Unless I am misinformed, the master-arc of the story describes how sacrificial love (first offered by Lily Potter, then by countless others) overcomes evil. Unless I am misinformed, evil is destroyed by a hero who sacrifices himself and then is resurrected. Surely, there’s no debt to Christianity there.
I do have an appreciation for Rowling, not just as an author, but as a phenomenon. Summer after summer I would see children all around camp with their entire beings invested in the next installment of the story. I doubt that any writer except Harriet Beecher Stowe has generated such contemporary devotion. It is a good thing to see children (to see anyone) reading. God gave us a book to read, thus, the better we are at reading, the better we are at reading the Bible. I also have a pretty good knowledge of the content of the entire series because my youngest daughter Jill shared every detail with me as she read the books.
Jill would read a while and then couldn’t read any further without sharing what had just happened. She was so informed and passionate, and the story was so good, that it didn’t suffer from being retold. I became especially devoted to the story of Neville Longbottom whom we meet in the first book while trying to find his toad. I remember how he secretly wished the sorting hat would send him to Hufflepuff because he was intimidated by the reputation for bravery Gryffindor had. He was timid, but a gifted herbologist. He ends up being among the bravest of all – killing the last horcrux, and making it possible for Harry to achieve ultimate victory. Neville became one of my favorite characters in literature – mostly because of Jill’s retelling of the tale.
As Jill was reading the series, and sharing the details with me, it occurred to me that what she was really doing was preaching. She was sharing the message of a text, and the story of a person in such a way that the listener became fully engaged with that message, and that person. This is what the New Testament defines as preaching. Paul tells Timothy that preaching is about one thing – sharing a text (“Preach the Word!” II Timothy 4.2). He tells the Corinthian brethren that when he was among them he shared only one message –“Christ crucified,” (I Corinthians 1.23).
That passage from I Corinthians is quite informative because it begins by saying that Greeks want wisdom and the Jews seek signs. Paul refuses to accommodate either. He will only preach Christ crucified. This is instructive for anyone who would stand before those assembled to hear God’s Word. One’s sole responsibility is to deliver that Word.
Our listeners will often prefer something other than the Word - jokes and bullet points seem to be as popular in our day as signs and wisdom were in Paul’s - but we all need the Word. If we just tell the Bible story - if we allow ourselves to be engaged by the living Word, and share it in its depth and simplicity, it will have its effect. Neither signs and wisdom, nor jokes and bullet points will ever have the same effect.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4.12
The Bible is filled with people. Some we meet only once. Some we know from birth to tomb. All of them are alive. Some of them are family. I hope we have come to know some of them as friends.
The people we meet in the Bible are alive because we meet them in the pages of a book. We meet them as readers. God has given us a book. God has also given us the capacity, as readers, to invest ourselves in the lives of the characters we meet in a book. If Americans had not been so invested in the fate of Uncle Tom, our history might have unfolded in a radically different direction. How many of us feel that Huckleberry Finn, Neville Longbottom, Jo March, Charlotte the Spider, and Peter Parker are lifelong friends. God designed our brains to form intense connections with people we meet on the page. They are alive for us. We care deeply for them. This is a capacity we bring to the Bible.
The writers of the Bible understand they are leveraging this capacity to communicate with their readers. In I John 1.1-4, John asserts that the experience of Jesus he had as an eyewitness can be fully shared with the reader through the written word so that our joy will be as full as his. In his gospel (John 20. 30-31) he has absolute confidence that the reader will come to life-giving faith as a reader - as she experiences the written record of Jesus’ signs. The people we meet in the Bible are alive for us because as readers we have the capacity to experience them as such.
But I am asserting more. They are alive because the book they inhabit is alive. The word of God is alive and active (Hebrews 4.12). I doubt we full grasp or respect this truth. When we read the Bible we engage a living organism – and one that engages us, diving the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. All through my childhood I heard adults debate whether we experience the Spirit as an indwelling presence, or only through the inspired word. This is a silly debate. The categories are invalid. The Bible is not just wise words written in ink on pages of papyrus, vellum, or paper. A living word necessarily invests us with a present Spirit. The scripture is alive with the breath of God, just as we are (II Timothy 3.16). The people we meet in the Bible are alive because they inhabit a living book.
But I am asserting more still. The people we meet in the Bible continue to exist apart from the page. They are still alive. Even if we cease to exist here on earth, we continue to exist. Jesus insists upon this truth with the Sadducees, who rejected any notion of an afterlife. I Am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” God tells Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3.6). Jesus points out that God says “am” not “was,” and concludes that “God is the God of the living, not the dead (Matthew 22.32). Jesus insists that Abraham is alive. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Jepthah, David and the rest are all part of the cloud of witnesses interested in our race (Hebrews 12.1).
The people we meet in the Bible are alive. Before we were born many of them worked for our salvation. Those who belong to God care for our outcome. The Living Word, and our God-designed brains allow us to know them in full, and to make real connections with them.
I hope your Bible is filled with old friends. I hope Jesus is the dearest friend of all.
My granddaughter, Noelle, who is two years old today, loves Road Runner cartoons. I have to confess, I am the one who introduced her to those classics of animated violence. Early on she just liked the flashes of color, the booms, and the beep-beeps. Now she takes an interest in the many and varied failed schemes of the Coyote.
Noelle’s impulse is to feel sorry for the Coyote. I don’t think she understands fully what he is trying to do to the Road Runner. I have always taken great pleasure in the myriad ways the Coyote finds to blow himself up. The Road Runner is minding his own business, when the Coyote comes along and tries to do everything he can to destroy him. The Coyote is the author of his own demise. He gets what he deserves.
One might argue that the Coyote is just doing what coyotes do. Yes, but this is no normal Coyote. In the first place, a normal coyote runs about twice as fast as a road runner. In the second place, normal coyotes are not self-aware. They do not learn hypnotism or order rocket launchers from the ACME Corporation. Even if they were self-aware, normal coyotes do not have the ready-money to purchase a rocket launcher.
Besides, for the price of a rocket launcher the Coyote can order several hundred pizzas. And if Papa John’s doesn’t deliver to Monument Valley, then the Coyote can take the money he would otherwise spend on a rocket launcher and buy cases of Dinty Moore Beef Stew, or Franco-American Spaghetti-O’s (all available for purchase from the ACME Corporation). If he actually gets lucky eventually, and hits the Road Runner with a rocket from the ACME Corporation - what would be left of him to eat?
No, the Coyote isn’t trying to kill the Road Runner because he will otherwise go hungry. He has plenty of resources, and enough intelligence to know how to use them. He is doing it because he refuses to change his pattern of behavior. This means he is more like a normal human than a normal coyote. If we doubt that humans are this way we should read Genesis through Revelation, and all three volumes of H. G. Wells’ Outline of History. If we still doubt we should take one day where we pay close attention to our own actions, noting the negative choices we keep repeating.
Like the Coyote, we have the gift of self-awareness, and the resources necessary to make good decisions. God has given us everything that pertains to Life and Godliness (II Peter 1.3). In addition we are told how things are going end, and so we should consider the kind of people we ought to be (II Peter 3.10-11). Peter gives us this warning after quoting a proverb that reminds us of our bad patterns of behavior: “A dog returns to its own vomit, and a sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire” (II Peter 2.22).
In Mathew 12.43-45, Jesus describes a man who gets rid of the evil in his life, only to allow it back in and become 7 times worse than he was before. We are frequently reminded that good behavior will not just happen, and that good intentions are no substitute for good deeds. Just saying “I’ll be better tomorrow,” is a waste of breath. We will only be better when we do better, and we will not do better until we smash bad patterns of behavior and replace them with good patterns. Otherwise we are just the Coyote, expecting that this time the rocket launcher will not blow up in our face.
A really good documentary film can change your world-view. It can do this more powerfully than even a good feature film. The great documentaries, from Nanook of the North (1922), to Man on a Wire (2008) put you in the action. Because they are not linear – but simultaneously hold on to the different threads of a story, they allow us to digest - both emotionally and intellectually – a complex issue. Because the documentary filmmaker has all the tools of filmmaking in his tool-belt he is able to communicate deeply into our consciousness. In Spike Lee’s masterful film 4 Little Girls (1997), he jump cuts between the words of the parents of the girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing of 1963, and brief (almost subliminal) shots of the coroner’s photos of those dead girls. The effect is nightmarish – much more affecting than if he had just let us look at the photos. A great documentary lets you live through events a diverse as a penguin migration (March of the Penguins), and a championship heavy-weight boxing match (When We Were Kings).
There is a book of the Bible that, to me, is presented in documentary form. Understanding this, I think, is the key to understanding the book. That book is Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes is not like any other book in the Bible. It is written by someone who identifies himself as “the spokesman” (Ecclesiastes 1.1). The KJV uses the phrase “the preacher” to translate a Hebrew word derived from the verb “to assemble.” The writer has gathered us together because he has something to say. He identifies himself as a king. He is a man with historically unparalleled power, resources, and intellect (Ecclesiastes 1.12-16, 2.1-11 – Solomon seems the only person described in the Bible who fits this description). Because he has the resources, the power, and the critical ability to investigate the great questions he decides to answer one. That question is, “What is the profitable thing for a man to do under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1.3).
“Under the sun” is an important phrase. It limits his field of investigation to life on earth. In other words, he can make no assessment of an action’s value based upon future reward. In fact, in the body of the text he only refers eternity once – in Ecclesiastes 3.11 as something elusive.
And so he sets about experimenting – with excess, with achievement, with pleasure, with great learning. His quest, described in chapters two through eleven is not linear. This structural characteristic of the book has made many readers frustrated with it, and has caused others to think of the book as dark or pessimistic. But that is the way of a documentary. It holds on to several threads at once. It makes you earn moments of clarity by living through moments of frustration.
The moments of clarity are there. The writer realizes certain things matter – and they are not the things he thought about at first. Relationships matter (Ecclesiastes 4.9-12). Enjoying the blessings you are given the moment you are given them matters (Ecclesiastes 9.7-9). Doing your best for its own sake matters (9.10). Sharing your blessings with others matters (Ecclesiastes 11.1-4).
The conclusion reached seems inevitable when we reach it. In fact one could argue that the book need only be seven verses long – Ecclesiastes 1.1-3 and Ecclesiastes 12.11-14. Then again, if we were only given seven verses, we would use this hard earned lesson like a platitude. Instead, the reader understands fully that even if there is no heaven or hell this conclusion is true. We also know that there is a heaven and hell. The eternity God has placed in our hearts will be reached – in one way or another.
The conclusion, when everything has been heard is this: Fear God, and keep His commandments - this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every act into judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12.13-14)
I was at Wendy’s last week and ordered a pulled pork sandwich. I know that if this piece was a tweet that information would be enough. But I am an old guy and don’t assume that anyone else would care that I ordered a pulled pork sandwich unless there were other circumstances that make the story interesting. The girl behind the counter who took my order was wearing a hijab. I hadn’t noticed. A hijab is not an exotic fashion statement anymore – at least not in our neck of the woods, so she didn’t stick out in any way. I was salivating over the poster of the pulled pork sandwich piled high with slaw, and didn’t notice the girl behind the counter. The minute I looked down and saw what I had done I was really embarrassed. The last thing I wanted to do was order pork from a Muslim girl. She didn’t have to handle the pork at all. Someone else made my sandwich. But I felt really bad about it just the same.
There is a Muslim man who parks in the Church parking lot every so often to pray. He gets out of his car, carefully places his prayer rug on the ground, and kneels on it to pray. If I am mowing when he stops by I always turn off the mower until he is done. I do not want to be disrespectful.
In Acts 23 the Apostle Paul has been arrested, and is brought before the Sanhedrin. As he begins his defense, Ananias, the High Priest, orders that he be struck in the mouth. Paul declares:
God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! Do you sit to try me according to the Law, and in violation of the Law order me to be struck! (Acts 23.3)
The crowd is shocked. They ask “Do you revile God’s High Priest?” Paul immediately apologizes: “I was not aware, brethren that he was the High Priest; for it is written you shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people” (vv.4-5). Paul quotes Exodus 22.28: “You shall not curse God, nor curse a ruler of your people.” A curse is exactly what Paul pronounced, and he lost the attentiveness (and certainly the sympathy) of the crowd. His apology and his use of scripture regained it. No one will listen to you when you have disrespected things they respect.
When Jesus is faced with an identical situation in John 18, He issues no curses, makes no threats, indulges in no name-calling. He just speaks truth: “If I have spoken wrongly, then bear witness of the wrong. But if rightly, then why did you strike me?” (v.23) Jesus acted respectfully and had to do no back-tracking. The Bible makes clear that we should show basic respect to everyone (I Peter 2.17).
In the olden days, when I was a boy, I used to listen to the radio all night long. There was no digital tuning, only a knob. At night, on AM, you could find all kinds of exotic stations from distant signal towers by delicately manipulating that knob. It was like space exploration, there in the darkness – finding a Klezmer station from New York City, or a Mariachi band broadcasting from Juarez. You could only catch these far-flung stations for a brief moment before static swallowed them up in the darkness. There were ways to minimize the static and hold on to the station for a few seconds longer, but eventually the static predominated, and you had to move the dial in search of another colorful destination.
Disrespect is the loudest and most persistent form of static which obscures personal communication. The opportunities to really share the truth are fleeting and precious. They will be non-existent if we turn up the static with disrespect.
Always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you – but with gentleness and reverence. I Peter 3.15
