We wish you two merry Christmas albums

After years of my whinging about the depressing dearth of quality Christmas albums, 2018 has produced two from the middle portion of the alphabetical list of my favorite bands.

Things started looking up in my world when the latter-day countrypolitan Mavericks started recording again a few years ago. Lead singer Raul Malo's Marshmallow World has long been a favorite of myself and the curmudgelings, so I had high expectations for the Mavericks' Hey! Merry Christmas! Unlike Malo's solo offering, it's mostly new compositions. As such, it didn't really connect with me on a first listening. However, I decided to give it another chance whilst baking Christmas cookies and was quickly converted. The Mavericks swing, children; they really do.

Strangely, the Monkees never recorded a Christmas album during their heyday, so they're offering one now before they're all dead. Don't be cynical, but get thankful: Christmas Party is a marvelous pop confection of Yuletide goodness. The only melancholy comes from two tracks by the late Davy Jones. He wasn't resurrected, but the tracks were unearthed from a vault somewhere. His voice is as sweet as ever, but we're reminded that the fates are allowing fewer and fewer of us to all be together with each passing year.

Angels of Advent

On the one hand, I am as convinced as any other curmudgeon that angelogy is where crazy goes to live. On the other hand, I am intrigued by the angelic message, "Fear not." Holding both those thoughts in mind, Peter Leithart offers a helpful meditation on angelophanies over at the First Things website.

You say you want an eschaton

I can't be the only reactionary hard-shell Calvinist who misses Marxism's rhetorical domination of the educated elites. I enjoyed having a vocabulary in common with my opponents on the left. In particular, I really liked talking about what would happen when the Revolution comes (as in, "When the Revolution comes, the Republicans will be the first with their backs up against the wall." Ah, the good old days.). In the Marxist cosmos, "the Revolution" is that glorious impending moment in which the proletariat will rise up against their bourgeois oppressors, seize the means of production, and usher in an age of harmony and peace in a finally-classless society.

As a (nearly-)infinite number of Christian critics have noted, the Revolution is Marx's eschaton, his endpoint of history and new golden age. In that sense, Marxism is just another Christian heresy. In Christian orthodoxy, human history ends in Christ's return, the end of the present evil age, and our Lord's establishment of the new heavens and earth in which peace and justice reign. Marx (conveniently) removes Jesus and divine intervention from the scenario, but he does teach his students to look forward to an age of peace and justice.

Marx's vision will never, ever be achieved until the Revolution comes. (For what it's worth, I rather doubt it will.) Conversely, while the Christian eschaton is utterly dependent on the Lord's good pleasure to inaugurate it, it nonetheless is manifested in the present by the Christian's faith. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1) Along with the Old Testament saints, we are called to live in the present as though we already live in the age to come, according to the values of the city which has foundations (Hebrews 11-12). In other words, we are to live according to the Biblical principles of peace and justice now, even though they will not be rightly, fully, or permanently established until our Lord returns in glory.

Which brings us (at long last) to my point: an inaugurated eschatology requires the Christian to maintain a commitment to social justice. The perfect social justice of the new heavens and earth is not yet, but must be already present in the political agenda which the Christian pursues. Christians may, and certainly will, disagree as to how to pragmatically and prudentially pursue social justice in this present age; indeed, they often disagree as to what social justice even looks like. Nonetheless, whether they find themselves on the left or right of the political spectrum, whether they are politically active or inactive (or, in my case, only a reluctant voter), they must be bound by a desire to bring about as much social justice as is possible in this fallen world.

Accordingly, it is wrong, bordering on eschatologically heretical, to assert that Christians ought not be concerned with or driven by social justice. At their very best, such critiques evidence a rather poor grasp of Biblical eschatology.

I can't make myself look away

I retired from the Boy Scouts of America after they changed their membership requirements, but before the name change to "Scouts BSA." I really, really want to be done with the organization, but people (by "people," I mean "Mrs. Curmudgeon") keep alerting me to stories such as the Girl Scouts USA suing Scouts BSA for creating confusion between their programs. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm taking the Girl Scouts' side. Scouts BSA, a once-noble organization, is only adding to the overall addledness of this gender-confused generation. And in the process, they are neglecting the single most important reason to maintain entirely separate programs for boys and girls.

That reason, of course, is cooties.

And you doubt the end is nigh?

Pringles™, being as they are the particleboard of the snack chip world, are well-suited for the dubious enterprise of flavoring the otherwise-noble potato chip with unnatural and unreasonable flavors (ex. barbecue, ranch dressing, and other abominations). Perhaps, then, we should not be surprised that Pringles™ can now be had in "Thanksgiving dinner flavors." Having destroyed both Christmas and Halloween, popular culture is now busily at work bringing down Thanksgiving.

If this is not enough to disprove postmillenial optimism, nothing is.

Nehemiah cleansed the Temple

But during all this I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had returned to the king. Then after certain days I obtained leave from the king, and I came to Jerusalem and discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, in preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God. And it grieved me bitterly; therefore I threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room. Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms; and I brought back into them the articles of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense. (Nehemiah 13:6-9)

I can't be the first to observe this, but I would like to point out that this is an example of Nehemiah as a type of Christ. Nehemiah's response to Tobiah and Eliashib was identical to Jesus' when he entered the Temple:

Then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple. Then He taught, saying to them, “Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ” (Mark 11:15-17)

I don't know

Just found this while going through some old pictures: it's from a form we were asked to fill out for the county while Thing 3 was in therapy a few years ago. On the one hand, I suppose not knowing your child's gender might well explain why said child needs therapy. On the other hand, I am sure this is proof the end truly is nigh.

I am not afraid of God

Comments from Mrs. Curmudgeon about my character and from a colleague about a post I wrote on suicidal ideation have conspired to remind me of 1 John 4:18: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." The Gospel tells me that God loves me in Christ. I believe that. Therefore I am not afraid of God.

"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39) Nothing. Not even depression, not even suicide.

So how does Christ's love keep me from killing myself? "For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again." (2 Corinthians 5:14-15) I live for Christ, not for myself. I know he wants me to live to serve others, and not myself. I know he wants me to live. So I live.

I am not afraid of God. That's the point of Christ's work on the Cross: God's unaccountable, prodigal love for his people. That's why angels keep saying, "Fear not."

Why are pastors committing suicide?

So when you come out as occasionally depressed and suicidal, you get sent links to articles. "Why Pastors Are Committing Suicide" doesn't actually tell us why pastors are committing suicide; it doesn't even have any data on whether pastors are committing suicide (other than anecdotes). There is a wee bit of data: 23% of surveyed pastors report self-diagnosing with a mental health problem, and 12% obtain an actual diagnosis.

That leaves me wondering whether pastors are committing suicide at any notable clip. I checked with the Google and found no empirically useful data, so, by modern standards, that means there is none. I can believe, however, that many pastors, particularly in evangelical Churches, suffer from depression. From the above-linked article:

Knowing someone to reach out to is vital, since most pastors feel they can’t tell their congregations about their mental health struggles. They’re afraid of losing their jobs, not being a good role model, or being inappropriately transparent.

Those are also reasons why pastors suffer from depression. It's not simply that the workload is nuts: you also have to do it all with a smile.

A few years back I was picking up a prescription from the pharmacy while bearing under a perpetual headache which felt like termites eating away at my skull from the inside. (If I remember correctly, it had been going on for about four months.) After the clerk asked me what I did for a living, she said, "Well, smile, pastor!"

Thankfully, the unendurable pain prevented me from gathering the wherewithal to strangle her.

Call me overly sensitive, but I tend to think that people who are not allowed to be normal human beings might occasionally get depressed that they are not allowed to act like normal human beings.

A denial of the Bible's teaching on sin

Our old friend John MacArthur is again warning one segment of the evangelical world against the inclinations of another segment of the evangelical world. This time, he is very very concerned about interest in "social justice." His is the first name listed amongst the signers of "The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel," a series of affirmations and denials.

As I've noted before, online doctrinal statements rarely reflect the care, wisdom and sanity found in the Reformation-era confessions, and, sadly, this "Statement" is no exception. Like many such statements (and unlike the Canons of Dort), its denials and affirmations engage not with actual positions held and statements made by real people, but with what appear to be straw-man representations. Today, however, I want to deal with a much more specific, and doctrinally troubling, problem. With regard to the doctrine of sin, it states,

WE DENY that, other than the previously stated connection to Adam, any person is morally culpable for another person’s sin. Although families, groups, and nations can sin collectively, and cultures can be predisposed to particular sins, subsequent generations share the collective guilt of their ancestors only if they approve and embrace (or attempt to justify) those sins. Before God each person must repent and confess his or her own sins in order to receive forgiveness. We further deny that one’s ethnicity establishes any necessary connection to any particular sin.

This denial falls short of the whole Bible's teaching on sin when it attempts to distance subsequent generations from the collective guilt of their ancestors. Consider the prayers recorded in Ezra 9, Nehemiah 1 and Nehemiah 9. Ezra-Nehemiah records the history of the Restoration, when the Lord brought the Jews back from Exile into Judea. Those generations (the process took decades) most emphatically did not approve, embrace or attempt to justify the sins of their forebears. Nonetheless, their prayers confessed that they shared the guilt of their ancestors.

From the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as it is today. (Ezra 9:7) 

[L]et your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. (Nehemiah 1:6-7) 

Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. (Nehemiah 9:35-37)

Clearly, the Restoration generations believed they shared their ancestors' guilt, and that they needed to repent for it. Given that both Ezra and Nehemiah spoke and prayed prophetically as messengers of the Lord, today's Church is obliged to receive the model of the Restoration-era Church as a guide for our own doctrine and practice.

I'm glad the drafters of "The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel" are zealous to preserve the integrity of the Biblical Gospel. Sadly, their sub-Biblical understanding of sin and repentance means they are failing to do so.


[NOTE: If I remember correctly, it was Karl Dortzbach (a long-serving missionary in Africa and, perhaps more importantly, the son of one of my predecessors in my current call) who I first heard point out this theme in Nehemiah 1 during a talk at the 2003 Peacemakers conference. My own subsequent work in Ezra-Nehemiah has confirmed the importance and pervasiveness of cross-generational repentance in this Biblical book.]

The word of the day is "sherd"

I just learned from a footnote on page 83 of The Book that while a "shard" is a fragment of glass, a "sherd" is a fragment of pottery.

Now I finally understand the book of Job.

Radio & redemption

I know nothing of Ben Kingsley's spiritual formation, but he made a deeply Christian observation about the nature of man while being interviewed on August 29 by Rachel Martin on NPR's Morning Edition regarding his role as Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann in the recently released film Operation Finale: 

But these people — however difficult it might be for us to swallow — were human beings. …For the years of extermination between 1933 and 1945, it was men and women who did this. It was not my duty to humanize anything because tragically, it's already human.

As Kingsley implies, we all have a tendency to distance ourselves from evildoers so that, unconsciously or elsewise, we can categorize them as something other than human. To the extent they are sufficiently distanced, they can be cut off from membership in society. 

The problem, of course, is that evildoers, sinners, are in fact fully human and on occasion try to enter human society. That problem was exposed during a discussion the previous evening on NPR's All Things Considered about the comedian and cinéaste Louis C.K., lately revealed as a serial sexual harasser, who had attempted a return to the stage on August 27. During that discussion, Ailsa Chang asked, "And what makes someone deserving of redemption?"

Unsurprisingly, a clear answer was not forthcoming.

In the May 2011 issue of First Things, Wilfred McClay asked, "But how, in a society that retains its Judeo-Christian moral reflexes but has abandoned the corresponding metaphysics, can a credible means of discharging the weight of sin be found?" In this #MeToo moment, we should be grateful that sexism and sexual harassment are being identified as the sins they are. At the same time, we are slowly beginning to realize that the sinners and evildoers are human beings just like the rest of us. If none of them can do anything to deserve redemption, then none of us, no human being, can deserve redemption.

Of course, that's the thing about redemption. "Redeem," properly understood, is not a reflexive verb but a transitive one. One cannot redeem oneself: one must be redeemed by another. If our society has rediscovered the self-evident truth that humans are sinners and evildoers, then perhaps it's ready to hear about the God who redeems sinners.

Research on Religion is over

The Research on Religion podcast is shutting down so host Anthony Gill can focus on academic research. That's more than too bad as its quality varied from interesting to super-interesting. The podcast's online archives will remain up for another nine months or so: I highly recommend you visit and download anything which at all piques your curiosity before it's too late!

Listen to Dwight Yoakam

I'm a relative latecomer to Dwight Yoakam's oeuvre, so I decided to work through his catalogue while I still have my free Pandora premium subscription. (Another reason it pays to have a Starbucks gold card!) He has an astounding voice and a remarkable dedication to preserving that which makes country music country music. He's the one you need when you need sad, sad music.

As Dwight himself likes to say, "Guitars, Cadillacs and hillbilly music are the only things that keep me hanging on."

Yes, indeed

Today's Pickles:

So do I:

There's gonna be a certain party at the station,
  Satin and lace, I used to call "Funny Face."
She's gonna cry until I tell her that I'll never roam;
  Chattanooga Choo Choo, won't you choo-choo me home?

Reusable bags mean the terrorists have won

Apparently, al-shabaab has banned plastic bags. You know what to do, America.

I am going to live forever

The more coffee you drink, the longer you live, because science. So there, my tea-sipping enemies.

And please note: black is better.

I am so, so happy.

Standard time in the summer time!

Well, okay, it's technically late spring, but it's pretty hot out here in Arizona. This year for our family vacation, I decided to bring the curmudgelings to the only place in the continental United States where they could still experience time in the manner in which it was created to be experienced, without the onerous and rebellious hand of the federal government interfering with our precious religious liberties.

It being Father's Day and everything, I thought it important to set an example of patriarchal excellence for my vast legion of readers to emulate. Don't let Daylight Stupid Time oppress your family any longer!

[While we're here, Mrs. Curmudgeon mentioned something about visiting a "grand canyon." Still not sure about her priorities.]

"Masterpiece Cakeshop" as a harbinger of defeat

First Things posted excellent analyses of the recent Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court decision by R.R. Reno, Hadley Arkes, and Darel E. Paul last week. As Paul notes, the extremely narrow decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, does not represent a victory for religious liberty but instead is a "harbinger of defeat."

Masterpiece Cakeshop is owned by baker Jack Phillips, who declined to make a custom wedding cake for a homosexual couple due to his Christian convictions. The couple complained to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which held against him. Phillips made his appeal primarily on free speech grounds: namely, were he to be required to design a cake which promoted a point of view to which he objects, that would be a form of state-compelled speech. Curiously, the religious liberty question receded to the background of the case. Yet more curiously, Kennedy's ruling addressed neither of these First Amendment issues, but instead overturned the Commission because one of its commissioners spoke of Phillips' religious convictions in disparaging terms.

In other words, as Reno puts it, the Commission failed to be sufficiently nice for Kennedy's tastes. But as Reno argues,

So Kennedy has always been deluded. Every use of anti-discrimination rhetoric necessarily demonizes those who do not join the chorus of affirmation. …The Colorado commissioner who implied that Jack Phillips was “despicable” was simply following through on the cultural logic. Kennedy is kidding himself if he thinks he can use the postwar anti-discrimination tradition to empower the LGBT agenda—while at the same time preventing religious believers and others from being attacked legally, economically, and culturally.

The commentary on Slate's "Amicus" podcast supported Reno's point when Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern described the commissioner's comments as reasonable characterizations. When reading the various opinions from the Supreme Court justices, it appears the majority of the Court differs from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission not on substance, but on style. That offers little hope for those of us who agree with Jack Phillips.

"Churches," not "Church"

I direct your attention to the Washington Post article, "The sin of silence: the epidemic of denial about sexual abuse in the evangelical church," not so we may discuss its subject, but instead so that we may discuss the way in which it discusses its subject. To wit: is there such thing as an "evangelical church" which exists in the manner that headline implies it exists? 

As author Joshua Pease writes, "Without a centralized theological body, evangelical policies and cultures vary radically…." Precisely so. There is no evangelical Church: there are only evangelical Churches.

Evangelicalism is a diverse social, theological and ecclesiological phenomenon: it includes a wide range of types of Church government, from congregational to presbyterian to episcopal. The very fact that it encompasses nearly every sort of Church government imaginable means there is not, nor can ever be, an evangelical "Church" in a manner comparable to the "Roman Catholic Church." While the "Church of Rome" itself contains a surprisingly diverse portfolio of theological views and its governing structures are somewhat more complex and sophisticated than most Protestants grasp, it is nonetheless a defined body with a clear hierarchical authority structure, and therefore one may reasonably ask, "Is there an epidemic of denial about sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church?" Bishops may or may not enforce discipline, cardinals may or may not pressure the pontiff to enact and enforce clear policies, but whatever may occur we know who is in charge and who to hold accountable. We (or at least the media and Roman Catholics) may be able to determine who to call in order both to get answers and to get something done.

Not so amongst evangelical Churches. One congregation has excellent accountability structures, while another has none whatsoever; these contrasts are found even between Churches which are nominally part of the same "network" (ex. Acts 29) or "convention" (ex. the Southern Baptists). As Pease writes, 

Diagnosing the scope of the problem isn’t easy, because there’s no hard data. …The problem in collecting data stems, in part, from the loose or nonexistent hierarchy in evangelicalism.

I'm not picking on Pease because I'm a pedant (or at least, not only because I'm a pedant), but because the headline of his article (which he may not have written himself) is only the latest example of a chronic problem to cross my transom. Particularly when discussing perceived problems within evangelical congregations, writers and speakers will refer broadly to "the evangelical Church" or "the Reformed Church," and ask why "the evangelical Church" or "the Reformed Church" doesn't do something about "x." The answer is not, as seems often to be assumed, that "the evangelical Church" is indifferent; it is that there is no evangelical Church. Accordingly, it is impossible to reform, or even change, the evangelical Church.

Next week the 85th General Assembly of my communion, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, is to meet on the campus of Wheaton College, that famed evangelical redoubt. As a Church, the OPC can make changes (to Church government, for example) which affect every member congregation because the OPC is a Church (singular) which operates under a unified system of government. If the OPC suffers an epidemic of denial about sexual abuse (and it's not my purpose here to suggest it does), then our system of government offers genuine hope that something can be done about it.

I sympathize with those who wish to reform the evangelical Church, with regard to sexual abuse or anything else. As my own professional vocation has been, in part, to play the role of reformer in a small way, I know what the struggle is like. I have had the advantage, however, of working within clearly defined government structures as I have pursued my reform agenda. Those who wish to reform the evangelical Church would do well to recognize there are only evangelical Churches, and to ask whether the absence of a defined hierarchical government is not itself a part of the problem they seek to redress and reform.

Thoughts on conversionism

There are a couple unhelpful ways of thinking, or even errors, common amongst American evangelicals which presbyterians would do well to avoid.

First is an overemphasis on a conversion experience. Several people in the Bible clearly have a conversion experience (such as the Philippian jailer), by which I mean that at one time they were not Christians, and then became Christians. However, that’s certainly not the case with everyone in the Bible, not even in the New Testament. (Timothy seems just such an example.) Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with having a conversion experience. It should be equally obvious that there’s nothing wrong with not having a conversion experience. Unfortunately, overemphasis on the importance of a conversion experience has led some to question whether they truly have been saved, and that should not be. As I remember someone telling me sometime ago, “It doesn’t matter when you became a Christian; all that matters is whether you’re trusting in Christ rignt now!”

Secondly, some appear to think that genuine Christians do not sin, or at least do not commit particularly unpleasant sins. That may not be their doctrine, but that is their assumption when they question whether a particularly heinous sinner (or just someone who one finds unpleasant) is "really a Christian." The Bible does not teach us to think or talk this way. Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, and then committed what was probably the worst sin of his life: denying Jesus during his trial. The simple truth is that Christians are perfectly capable of not acting very Christian, but that, by itself, is not evidence they are not converted. Faith in Christ is the only thing that makes one a Christian.

I think of chapter 18.4 of our Confession of Faith: “True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieves the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God's withdrawing the light of His countenance, and suffering even such as fear Him to walk in darkness and to have no light: yet are they never so utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart, and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived; and by the which, in the meantime, they are supported from utter despair."

A related thought has occurred to me as I’ve thought about my own life. There was a period of time when I did not act like a Christian, and claimed not to believe in God. But I was baptized as an infant, and certainly did believe in God before that time. I wandered in sin, but then again professed saving faith. If I were to say I did was not really a Christian prior to that spiritual renewal, what would that say about God? That would seem to imply that he was not part of my life at all before that time, that his Spirit had done no work in my baptism despite my childhood faith, and that he did not seek after me as a shepherd after a lost sheep. It would seem to imply that I was saved because I chose to believe again, not because the Lord was more faithful to my baptism than was I. In other words, to deny that I was a Christian for some portion of my life seems to me to detract from the magnitude of the Lord’s grace in my life, and therefore to take away some of the glory which is rightfully his.

The Hon. Steve Hogan

Steve Hogan, mayor of my hometown of Aurora, Colorado, died yesterday. He went fast; it was only two months ago he announced he had cancer. I didn't know him well, but he struck me as a kind and decent man. 

When my Cub Scout den was required to visit a public official, I found the mayor's e-mail address on the Aurora government website. I was surprised that he personally replied to my request, given that Aurora is the 54th largest city in these United States. He took it upon himself to meet my Cub Scouts on a Monday evening and personally gave us a tour of the city council chambers, the municipal building, and his office. He was patient with my boys, who seemed most interested in a candy dish.

I'm sorry he's gone. We need more of his sort in high office and public life.

Regarding "American War"

American War: A Novel by Omar El Akkad. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. Clothbound, 352 pages.

For me, reading American War was an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Though Omar El Akkad's intended audience clearly includes Americans, he is not a citizen of these United States, and so his depiction of our future is designed to make us reconsider our world's present, not my nation's past. I, however, have only ever been an American, steeped in reflection on our history and the meaning of the Civil War since high school, and so a novel about the Second Civil War must read, for me, as a commentary on my nation's past.

By 2075, rising waters have drastically altered this country's geographical and political landscapes, driving coastal populations inland and the nation's capital to Columbus. South Carolina, as is its wont, threatened secession and so was subjected to a viral agent by the national government which led to a quarantine of the entire state. Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama actually did secede, with Louisiana and east Texas hotly contested. Secession's pretext, apparently, was the criminalization of fossil fuels, but one gets the impression it had just as much to do with all our old grievances.

That's where my cognitive dissonance settled in. The politics of American War have enough echoes of our past that I kept looking for analogies to the 1860s. However, El Akkad tells a story of refugees and radicalization, presumptuous interference by foreign governments, and the cultivation and molding of terrorists. In other words, he tells the story of the wars America has created in the rest of the world, particularly the Middle East. He sets it in my country, apparently, in order to draw from us a deeper sympathy than we might otherwise give to persons from foreign lands with foreign-sounding names.

Read that latter way, it's a fairly effective book. The dialogue is a little clunky, and I think he failed to get inside the heads of his female characters in a believable way. At the same time, all his characters and their choices make sense, including the one who commits the worst terrorist attack in history. I was reminded of the inherent offensiveness of the American presumption that we may interfere in other nation's affairs in order to gain what our leaders think to be an advantage. 

Despite what one of our presidents liked to say, they don't hate us because of our freedoms. They hate us because we've colonized their countries. If you don't understand that, then maybe it's time for you to read American War.

"The Who's Tommy" at the DCPA

I may be the only person introduced to the Who by Pete Townshend's solo work, but that's what happens when your parents' musical tastes run toward West Coast cool jazz and show tunes and you're the oldest kid in your family. My attention was caught by tracks from The Iron Man: The Musical on Washington D.C.'s classic rock station; when I bought the album, I found the Who's tracks less interesting than Pete Townshend's performance of "A Friend Is a Friend." I went on, as only an obsessed teenager can, to collect all his solo albums and carefully analyze and annotate every song. It was only after some years that I decided I should probably pay some heed to the music he wrote for his band as well.

Tommy needs no explanation (and there's no point explaining it to the people who might need it explained). The Who's legendary concept album has again been revived as a stage musical, this time by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Theatre Companion and I found cheap tickets and so brought along Thing 1 for a show the other night; the latter is now at the perfect age (14) to be introduced to the incomparable rock'n'roll genius of Pete Townshend, and was appropriately impressed by the music and lyrics. Tommy's plot, while convoluted, is relatively easy to follow. At the same time, its philosophical points are comprehensible only through a close reading via the lens of the rather incomprehensible Meher Baba, so I had no concerns that Thing 1 might be led down the perfidious path of eastern mysticism.

As Thing 1 observed, this production of Tommy is better characterized as an opera than a musical, as there are only a few lines of spoken dialogue. Some of the album's songs were dropped, while others were rewritten or given additional lyrics to better fit this version of the story. I had no complaints on that front other than with "1921," which makes no sense in that this production is set after World War II, whereas the original was set after World War I. (During "1921," I was so confused that I though I must have been misunderstanding the actors. I wasn't.)

Once one gets past the fact that one is watching a musical, rather than listening to the Who, the performances in this production are uniformly strong. The three actors playing Tommy at different ages appeared together on stage more than once, enabling the audience to participate in Tommy's hallucinatory take on his reality. Given my druthers, I'd have preferred to see the musicians, who were hidden from view. I imagine they might have distracted from the action, but I find it exceedingly difficult to listen to "Pinball Wizard" without watching a guitarist.

This production of Tommy proves the material's strength: one need not be a fan of the Who in order to be thoroughly impressed.

I, Too

I, Too

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

(Source: The Poetry Foundation)

After the apocalypse, a non-dystopia

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. 2014: Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Kindle edition.

Station Eleven confirms my deeply held conviction that influenza will kill us all. It begins with an outbreak of the "Georgian flu," which is not only remarkably contagious, but finishes off the infected within 12-24 hours. And just like that, civilization is gone.

Or rather, almost all the people are gone. Civilization persists, particularly in the form of the Traveling Symphony, a company of musicians and actors which caravans from settlement to settlement around Lake Michigan performing orchestral pieces and the Shakespearean canon. Their motto, taken from an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, is "Survival is insufficient." Or, as Mandel seems to be suggesting, survival has never been sufficient for the human species.

While Station Eleven kicks off with an apocalypse, it's far from a dystopian novel. Mandel uses Arthur Leander, a Canadian actor of some celebrity, to create the book's through-line: all the main characters are connected to him, even if in a minor way, although he dies of a heart attack just before the Georgian flu strikes. (No spoiler alert required: said cardiac event begins on the very first page.) Leander enables Mandel to move the narrative back and forward in time, and to introduce the titular "Station Eleven:" a self-published comic book by Leander's first wife which is itself set on a sort of ruined world. The Leander storyline is much more than a narrative device, however: it's a means by which Mandel can illustrate that human culture persists wherever humanity persists.

Life without running water, electricity, or any other features of post-18th century technology would be hard and uncomfortable. It would not, however, be a life without culture. That, at least in part, is the glory of humanity, which reflects the glory of the culture of the Trinity.

;

I've been listening to The Hilarious World of Depression podcast since its inception, and for a long time it was my sole source of therapy. (All by itself, that one sentence tells you I've got a whole raft-load of issues.) Now, however, I'm talking to actual therapists and seem to have a handle on my symptoms, and host John Moe's frequent admonitions talk about depression in order to normalize  it have finally sunk in.

There are a lot of reasons for an OPC minister of Word and sacrament to not want to talk about his depression, not least of which is the fact that my depression comes with a chaser of paranoia. Pastors are under constant scrutiny by their congregations, and most of the members under their care have unresolved father issues which make them extremely reluctant to embrace the painfully obvious fact their preacher has problems of his own. In my case, I also have a presbytery which is not known as a safe place to express weakness, and I believe I have good reason to think that my acknowledgment of mental health issues could be used by some as a pretext to lower the boom on me. Now that I'm not as fervidly paranoid, though, I realize that even my enemies may have some sense of human decency; and if not, we have colleagues to thwart their more vindictive efforts.

So here goes.

I've had a few episodes of situational depression in response to traumatic events (such as Church conflict and when we lost our daughter). The "clinical depression" (if that's the correct term) began about six years ago when a problem with recurring sinusitis became a sinus infection that simply would not go away. I've been in physical pain for much of my adult life, but this pain was of an entirely different species: it wasn't the intensity, but the quality. I was perfectly capable of living my life, but I was so miserable that I simply did not want to. Although the sinusitis was finally resolved through surgery, it turned out to be masking Meniere's disease (fluid in the inner ear) complicated by a form of migraine. Since then, it's been a long journey of figuring out a regimen of vitamins, supplements, medication and sleep to deliver me from a constant sense of disorientation and unease. I think things are under control now, but I also know that I'm one sleepless night away from being plunged back into despair.

There's a clarity to depression. Most people seem reluctant to admit that, but it's true. Depression strips away the comforting reassurances we tell ourselves and allows you to see things as they are. Life is hard and full of suffering, and no one ever survives it. There's a hollowness to most relationships, and God, without a physical presence, seems absent.

On the other hand, one should acknowledge that depression makes it more difficult to recognize that God's lack of physical presence is not the same thing as absence.

People talk about suicidal ideation as though it were a shocking, well-nigh unthinkable thing, but for me it's a simple reality. I am a very slow thinker, but once I solve a problem it tends to stay solved. Now that I have a plan, I can't get rid of it: it's in my head and can't be dislodged. Obviously, I haven't done it, but there are times when I have to come up with reasons not to. Mostly, it's because I know how much it would mess up my kids.

I remember one of my ministerial colleagues being surprised that I wasn't afraid of God's wrath for violating the Sixth Commandment, but I'm not. That's one of the side-effects of believing the Gospel. While taking one's own life is a more heinous sin than others, the Shorter Catechism reminds us that [e]very sin deserveth God's wrath and curse, both in this life, and that which is to come." (Westminster Shorter Catechism #83-84) If the Cross has delivered me from God's wrath and curse, due to me for all my sins, then even a violation of the Sixth Commandment cannot separate me from the love of Christ (Romans 8:33-39).

Depression is bad enough. I'm grateful it couldn't rob me of my assurance of salvation.

"Snowflakes" or a sibling society?

In "Notes from a Sibling Society" over at the First Things website, John Waters helpfully notes that problems arise not when young people act like young people, but when older people act as though they were not older people. I love this paragraph:

The sibling society stands in contrast to what preceded it: the father-organized society in which authority was unafraid to speak or to be despised by the young for so doing. A working definition of authority might be: the capacity to endure unpopularity in the interests of the good. A defining quality of fatherhood through the ages has been a preparedness to be resented. The father was the guarantor and custodian of civilization, and even malcontented youth looked to him for guidance, free to remonstrate in the knowledge that affection would not be withdrawn. The Sixties tore up that Oedipal contract, and now the young look only sideways, and warily: The father is absent or suspect, the state has become a multi-breasted mother, and the hole in the human psyche where the father once manifested is invaded by demons.

Regarding "Still"

Winner, Lauren. Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. New York: HarperOne, 2012. Clothbound; 244 pages.

  I liked the insight and frankness Lauren Winner brought to her earlier book Real Sex (on the subject of chastity), and so was interested in what she would have to say about her own crisis of faith, precipitated by life crises such as the death of her mother and a divorce. I've not had any such crisis of faith, but I thought I might find in her some sympathy for my own struggles with depression.

  Still is written elliptically, its "chapters" really more meditative fragments pushing toward something like prosody. I don't read it as a narrative of a loss of faith so much as a loss of awareness of God's presence. Around the middle of the book (p. 102), Winner shares a friend's observation which she finds comforting; namely, that God gifts some with a natural feeling of God's nearness and gifts some others with a no natural feeling of his nearness so that these latter might undergo the discipline to know it. I've often put myself in that latter camp, and wonder whether Winner's mid-faith crisis may have resulted from having to move from the realm of feeling to knowing. I know God's presence, though I have rarely felt it, and that is the foundation which keeps my faith from shaking.

  Across several chapters she returns to the relationship between busyness, boredom, laziness and depression, but without drawing any definite conclusion. Here, I think, she puts her finger on the dissatisfaction with the present moment which depression breeds. Any distraction is welcome if it promises escape.

  What Winner found, if I may be so bold as to speculate, is that one moves on and that the future, though different from the past, still remains. This moment, no matter its power or gravity, cannot remain and must give way to the next. And God will be there still.

"Ready Player One" is a YA novel

The buzz around Ernest Cline's novel Ready Player One was extremely positive, so I borrowed a friend's copy last year when I was in serious need of diversion. On the one hand, I stayed up late for a couple too many nights reading it. On the other hand, that was despite my impatience for its weaknesses. I found myself skimming past sentences and paragraphs because I was more interested in the plot's resolution than in how it got there.

To be fair, Ready Player One's weaknesses are baked into its premise. The Oasis, a virtual reality social media/gaming platform has become one of, if not the, primary arenas for all human interaction. Even public schools have migrated onto the Oasis's platform. Since a great deal of the action takes place in the Oasis, page upon page is taken up with exposition: the Oasis's history; its social order; its effects on the real world; its appearance; its fantastic sights; so on and so forth. However, not all the exposition is necessitated by the premise: the narrator would rather explain relationships (ex. "He is my best friend") than show them at work.

Overuse of exposition is the great weakness of young adult novels, apparently because their authors don't trust their young readers to put two and two together. (The excellent Hunger Games does not fall into this trap.) I was thinking I might recommend Ready Player One to my teenage son until I ran into some explicit, albeit clinical, discussion of masturbation. With those bits expurgated, it could easily be moved to the juvenile section of the library.

Still, the main characters are interesting and sympathetic, and the plot engages the reader almost inevitably. It centers around a game which is coded into the architecture of the Oasis; accordingly, one is drawn into the plot precisely because human beings all, always, want to know who wins.

Given that Steven Spielberg is directing, I expect the film version, for once, to be better than the novel. All those dizzying visual elements will be shown, sparing the viewer from being told too, too much.

From a former youngster to today's youngsters

I was seven years old when Star Wars (spare me this "A New Hope" nonsense) was released, and saw it overdubbed in Spanish (because my family had just moved to Madrid), a language I did not understand at all. My little brain was overwhelmed with amazement, and finally seeing it English only magnified the experience's transcendence. Naturally, I avidly anticipated and celebrated its sequels, then eventually put the whole thing behind me until George Lucas issued big-screen rereleases when I was in my late 20s. With some seminary classmates, I excitedly entered the movie theatre only to take one more inevitable step towards becoming my father when I realized something he first understood way back in 1977.

Star Wars is not a good movie.

The dialogue is hokey, "the Force" is a stupid new-agey pseudo-religion, the plot trajectory is both overwrought and obvious, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey is an over-simplifying exercise in cultural appropriation and imperialism, and every halfway decent shot is directly stolen from an immensely superior cinematic predecessor. With that, I was done, especially since Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark continues to hold up marvelously well.

But then I had my own kids, and J.J. Abrams took over the franchise for the long-promised, but never-expected, final trilogy. I took Thing One and Thing Two to The Force Awakens, and found it a pleasing diversion even though it never had a chance of reconverting me to my fanboy past. I was actually impressed by The Last Jedi, and so was surprised to learn that today's fanboys were, to some extent, wildly outraged. If I may take a moment to speak in a condescending, patronizing tone to today's youngsters, I think their youth has ill-served them to receive this installment of the Star Wars saga in the spirit in which it was offered.

One of the problems with the young people these days is that they encountered the original Star Wars trilogy only after it had been entirely released. Those of my children's generation don't even remember a time before the prequel trilogy had been completed. They encountered the saga as a whole, and therefore as a text whose ending had been written before they began its study. Thus, when they hear Darth Vader intone "I am your father, Luke" towards the end of The Empire Strikes Back, they know Luke Skywalker is learning a truth about his family and background which will permanently alter his self-understanding.

This was not how Generation X experienced that moment.

We could not simply pop The Return of the Jedi into the VCR (or, worse, the DVD player; or, still worse, stream it from the interwebs). We had to wait three years, during which we engaged in a frame-by-frame analysis of The Empire Strikes Back. Although it seems obvious in retrospect, we didn't know that the Star Wars saga was really a family history of the Skywalkers. To many of us, it seemed very possible that Darth Vader lied to Luke. After all, he was, to not put too fine a point on it, a bad guy. And bad guys lie.

Just as The Force Awakens imitated the general outline of Star Wars, The Last Jedi echoes The Empire Strikes Back. Substitute Luke Skywalker for Yoda and an agonizingly slow pursuit through outer space for the peregrinations of the Millennium Falcon, and the parallels are obvious. Within that framework, Kylo Ren's villain's journey provides the most food for thought and debate. He appears to have rejected the common dark-side-of-the-Force narrative, but he certainly doesn't seem to be embracing the light. Is he imitating his grandfather and telling Rey the truth about her family, or deceiving her for his own nefarious purposes? Rather than accuse Rian Johnson of tossing aside all the plot boxes J.J. Abrams wrapped up for him, why not imagine that he's just put another bow on them? The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have pulled off the remarkable feat of both upholding and subverting Star Wars stereotypes. This should delight fans, not outrage them.

We had to wait three years between installments of the original trilogy. You youngsters only have to wait two. Don't waste them complaining; instead, fill them up with delighted, giddy speculation. That's how you make it your Star Wars.