I coach high school football in west Texas

I love Texas, and I love football, but neither of those is why I love Friday Night Lights. More than any other character on television, I relate to Eric Taylor, coach of the mythical Dillon Panthers. The man's career depends almost entirely on factors completely out of his control, but he works under the intense scrutiny of a public which holds him solely accountable for his team's weal or woe. Especially good is his relationship with his wife, Tami, who out of necessity is the only person in his life who understands what it's like to hold his job, and at the same time keeps him grounded in home and family. Their entire relationship is revealed in between the lines, when the camera lingers on their faces a few seconds longer than in most shows. That's where you find the reality of almost all marriages.

The football part is fun, but what makes this show work is the characters. Season one was just about perfect, although the Panthers went through more trauma in a given episode than most high schools experience in a decade. With season two, I was afraid the show had jumped the shark: the writers tried way too many story lines, each with ridiculously high stakes, and just when everything was at the point of maximum chaos, the writers' strike left everything hanging. Season three just came out on DVD, and so far (two episodes), so good. Lord willing, the writers will keep the plot under control and let the characters continue to develop realistically. That's what keeps me and Mrs. Curmudgeon watching, and the critics seem to agree.

Although sometimes I wonder how many of those critics realize producer Peter Berg intended the whole thing as a metaphor for the professional life of the pastor of a small presbyterian congregation. But no, that's just too obvious.

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight

Today I added "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" to my iTunes library. Richard Thompson has written any number of great songs, but this album is, in my not-so-humble opinion, his one true and unquestionable masterpiece. Each song is an unflinching look at the brutality of human experience in a world without hope or the possibility of redemption; the lyrics are matched with hauntingly appropriate tunes made all the more piercing by Linda Thompson's lovely voice.


Nihilism is no game, Quentin Tarantino's attempts to cutify it notwithstanding. Thompson does not invite us to envy the hopeless, but to empathetically enter into their despair. In this way, like the late Kurt Vonnegut, he is a humanist nihilist. This album from over thirty years ago (1974) has by itself made me pay careful attention to everything else Richard Thompson has released, which exercise has also brought great rewards.

Takeover

A peculiar quirk of having grown up overseas and gone to international schools was not taking any U.S. history or civics classes until late in my high school career. The whole thing hit me like a ton of bricks. I was enchanted with the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers between the three branches of the federal government, and the sheer boldness of the Declaration of Independence. I never really got over it, and continue to be unable to indulge the sort of cynicism which passes for political common sense these days. I actually really, really believe the self-evident fact that all men are created equal and that the government should make no law restricting free speech, and that government agencies keeping secrets from the people and their elected representatives is a tremendously bad idea.

That all being the case, I tend to spend most election cycles (which apparently is ALL THE TIME these days) muttering about how I'd be glad to vote for any candidate who makes restoring the Republic the main plank of his platform. In the past I was being, at least a bit, hyperbolic, but now I'm sure the Republic is long, long gone. In Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, Charlie Savage documents how the Bush/Cheney administration took every single opportunity to expand executive power on the basis of contrived legal theories with no grounding in the Constitution's text or jurisprudential precedent. The imperial presidency, as Savage notes, was evolving for most of the twentieth century, but the last administration consolidated the movement and institutionalized its most egregious forms.

We have come to the point that most Americans honestly expect the president to exercise absolute, unchecked power: remember how Fred Thompson (who, I can't believe it, was actually a U.S. Senator) during his brief presidential campaign said that, were he elected, he would personally suspend all imports from China until their safety could be verified. And as Savage also notes, the imperial presidency is not a liberal or conservative phenomenon; presidents of all political stripes like being able to impose their will, unchecked by those other two branches of the federal government.

As Nat Hentoff, hero of the Republic, is recording (http://www.cato.org/people/nat-hentoff), Dear Leader offers no hope for those of us looking for the restoration of the rule of law. A liberal emperor is an emperor still.

Why Paul could work as a tent-maker

James Jordan makes some interesting observations on the need for reflection in pastoral ministry over at the Biblical Horizons blog: http://biblicalhorizons.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/the-pastoral-function/.

I Was, Once More, Superman

(Other than the John Byrne revival, I never found Superman interesting enough to read any comic featuring him on a regular basis. In fact, I suspect the amount of space given to Superman over Batman is, in large part, what made Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Strikes Again such a disappointment. Nonetheless, something fascinates and draws me to Superman. This poem by Jack Butler, published in the March 2006 issue of First Things, gets it just about perfectly.)

I was, once more, Superman
in my dreams
last night, torching a section of steel plate loose
with X-ray vision, swigging like orange juice
a gallon of explosive oil. Such themes,
a half-century past childhood!–So fast I blurred
invisible, so nimble I pirouetted
with atoms, so powerful my passage shredded
the air like thunder when I stopped or stirred.

And yes, I flew. Lifted my arms and flew.
Swooped and zoomed and shrank the world to a map.
Flying's the greatest happiness of sleep.

I woke to find myself still me, and you
still you of course, still angry from our fight,
and all this Earth a vale of kryptonite.

Cutting the Romans 7 knot

Romans 7 is something of an exegetical Gordian knot. Any number of exegetes argue, by very sound methodology, that Paul is describing his pre-Christian experience under the Law of God of failing to effectively put sin to death. This interpretation is frequently rejected by Christians because Paul's description of his struggle with sin resonates so well with their own experience. The knot: how can an existential description of an unbeliever be applied to a believer?

In a recent post on his blog (http://www.leithart.com/2009/05/11/doing-what-i-do-not-wish/), Peter Leithart suggests Romans 7 may resonate so well with Christians because their Churches have succumbed to a practical legalism, giving priority to Law over the Gospel.

By this my Father is glorified

For a number of years, I've been bothered by a strain in Puritan and Reformed thinking (which probably doesn't quite rise to the level of a "school of thought") which argues God is glorified to an equal extent in both reprobation (passing some people over unto their damnation for their sins) and election (choosing some for salvation in Christ). While I grant God is glorified both by making and executing all his decrees, it seems to me the overwhelming testimony of Scripture is that he is much more interested in the glory gained by displaying his grace to sinners.

I bring this up because I've been working on John 15:1-8, in which the topics of reprobation (15:2, 6) and preservation of the elect (15:2-5, 7) are dealt with together. If these two matters were of equal value to God, this would be an excellent place to make that note. Instead, Jesus particularly emphasizes that the Father is glorified when his people persevere in grace and obedience (15:8).

As Paul argues, "What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy which he has prepared beforehand for glory– even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?" (Roman 9:22-24)

John Yoo may be disbarred

Every once in a while, God allows me a glimmer of hope that the rule of law, and perhaps even the Republic itself, may be restored to our long-benighted shores: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103825801.