I’d like to someday write a book about King David, telling his story as a story. It’s one of the great epic narratives of history, and it has everything a great story needs. The universal themes all course through the arch of his life. David’s humble beginnings as the young shepherd, possessed with a secret courage and determination that nobody knows. His anointing as king while the old king is still very much in power, and his subsequent fearful flight. The man of honor who gathers around him a band of thugs and bandits, who love him with a fierce loyalty that’s only found in lost men who have been redeemed. The warrior-poet who is possessed with a fervor for God. His willingness to let others do violent, evil things to preserve his power, while keeping his own hands clean.

His ascension to the throne, only to become bored and restless with the bureaucracy of power. His subsequent slide into lust, adultery, and murder. The brutal consequences of ignoring the jealousy and political maneuvering in his own household. The exile, the return, the painful longing to forgive a son who perpetrated the ultimate betrayal, all of the complex emotional entanglements between a father and a son. The stratification of power in Jerusalem between the young and the old, and one last desperate attempt to fulfill the covenant and place Solomon on the throne, by securing for him an alliance with Israel’s perpetual power brokers, the temple priests.

The Bible Podcast is treading through 1st Kings these days, and a few weeks ago I read through 1 Kings 2 (read | listen). I realized as I was reading it that this is the ultimate ending scene to the story. It’s like something straight out of Godfather. David is lying in his bed, about to die, he pulls a young (maybe 12 years old) Solomon close, and whispers into his ear a list of those who have betrayed him, and should be revenged, and those whose loyalty has yet to be rewarded. He charges Solomon with carrying out a hit list of executions.

And Solomon does. He marches through the list, and puts to death everyone who betrayed his father, no doubt knowing that they would be the first to challenge his right to the throne. He rewards the loyal, no doubt securing their continued support of his royal claim. He slashes his way through the Jerusalem hierarchy, carving out a new reign. Fear sweeps through the old guard, who had abandoned the infirm old king and thrown their support behind Adonijah his son, culminating in the execution of the ruthless Joab, the brutal general who violently defended David’s throne even when David himself opposed Joab’s methods, on the floor of the House of Yahweh.

Can you picture it, in extended montage, muted dialog and cries for mercy from those who betrayed David, the dogged advance of Solomon’s new royal bodyguard, swords drawn, all to the soundtrack of a single male voice singing out in Hebrew the words of Psalm 56,

In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can mortal man do to me?

All day long they twist my words;
they are always plotting to harm me.

They conspire, they lurk,
they watch my steps,
eager to take my life.

On no account let them
in your anger, O God, bring down the nations.

The chapter ends with this simple sentence, “The kingdom was now firmly established in Solomon’s hands.”

Indeed.

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Paul Giamatti totally reinvents himself in the title role.  He’s specialized over the years in roles that seem to emphasize the more negative human traits.  Petty, shallow, insecure characters in great movies like American Splendor and Sideways.  It is shocking, really, to watch him become the ferocious orator John Adams, in even the first episode, as he defends the British soldiers on trial for what we know as the Boston Massacre.  As the series plays out, and we begin to see the darker shades of our 2nd president, he brings his usual sharp eye to human character traits.  It’s a simply breathtaking performance.

Laura Linney has slowly become one of my favorite actors over the years, and she totally outdoes herself as Abigail Adams.   Linney’s a strange one, because she’s not one of those actresses that physically transforms herself for roles.  She’s not like a Meryl Streep, a chameleon who shapeshifts.   However, as I’ve watched her tender, nuanced, dynamic Abigail unfold, I’m simply stunned that it’s the same woman who played the insecure, emotionally retarded female lead in last year’s amazing The Savages.

Speaking of shape shifting, after getting robbed of Best Supporting Actor for the single best acting performance of the year in Michael Clayton, Tom Wilkinson outdoes himself, completely disappearing into the role of Benjamin Franklin.  The rest of the cast is outstanding as well, including a noble and subdued turn by David Morse as George Washington.  

I’m going into mildly spoileriffic territory here, so if you’re interested in seeing it without my little commentary in your brain, stop now.  For the rest of you, I just wanted to confess that this miniseries has me reconsidering my views and stances on the birth of our nation.  

See, I grew up as part of the Red, White, and Blue, God Bless America, We’re a Christian Nation sorta tradition so prevalent in Evangelicalism.  I’ve reacted negatively towards it in recent years.  I think that mentality has done us more harm than good, and I’d gleefully tweak Christians with a little reminder about our “Christian Nation” that allowed the enslavement of an entire race of people for about 200 years.  I can say for certain that I’ve never slipped into an “Anti-American” mentality.  I’ve tried to fall somewhere in the middle, keeping me head on straight and giving credit where credit is due.  

However, watching this miniseries, I have been convicted about a few things.  First of all, I think that while slavery will always be the original sin of America, it’s important to remember that these men of great principle, many of whom found slavery detestable, knew a simple fact:  had they tried to deal with slavery in 1775, the nation simply would have never been born.  The South wouldn’t have gone along, and the revolution would have been quelled.  

I think it’s important for the “America is bad” crowd to own up to this reality.  I know it’s going to temper my discussion of our nation in the years to come.  

The other thing about John Adams that has so transfixed me is that in a pre-internet, pre-airline, pre-car world, time seemed to move slower.  It took days to travel to Philadelphia from Boston.  It took months for a piece of news to travel from the colonies to the king and vice versa.  There are several sequences in the first two episodes where the delegates are trying to make decisions about the future even as they’re waiting for their last request to the king to be answered.  

All this to say… I think the slowness of the pace of their lives made it so that when they said something, or did something, they tended to make it matter.  Their words seem chosen more carefully.  Their decisions seem to have more weight, and greater consequences.  Things seem more important.  

Now, I realize this is a mini-series, and that everyone’s pretending, and I’m sure that there are inaccuracies, and so on and so forth.  However, watching this story makes me want to make my words count more.  I sit here, typing, and in a moment, these words will be accessible to anyone all over the world who cares to read them, instantaneously.  

The men of colonial America had one shot.  They had to make it count.  They had to get it right.  There’s a scene where Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin are editing the Declaration of Independence, and it’s just astonishing to think that there was a time before those iconic words existed, and as they change things around, it’s humbling to think that words can be so important.  We take that for granted.

To quote another great American character, (albeit fictitious) Melvin Udall, this miniseries makes me want to be a better man.

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I have had a few bold encounters with Scripture in my life, but mostly they are little ones that add up.  Sometimes those little encounters get lost in daily life, so I thought it’d be cool if we wrote some down.

On Wednesday nights I am going through a study called The Patriarchs with some women.  This week we studied Genesis 29/30.  I am thinking of Rachel and Leah after they are both married to Jacob.  One’s prettier, one bears more sons, and neither one can let go of the competition.  Sisters - women - human beings are nauseatingly competitive.

Leah has three sons and hopes it will cause Jacob to love her.  Here are the things she said after they were born:

First son: “It is because the Lord has seen my misery.  Surely my husband will love me now.

Second son: “Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one, too.”

Third son: “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.”

Then she birthed a fourth son and said, “This time I will praise the Lord.”  After a lifetime of being known for ugliness and betrothal to someone who was in love with her sister, she made her peace , like Lieutenant Dan after the storm on Forrest Gump’s boat.  This baby’s name was Judah.  Of Jacob’s twelve sons, this is the one whose descendant would be Christ.  I thought it was cool that perhaps this small trace of Jesus was bringing peace, even long before he was born.

How about you?  Have you been learning anything from the Bible lately?

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I originally ran across this essay as part of a collection of Jacobs’ writings, Shaming the Devil, under the title “The Republic of Heaven”. I was thrilled to (finally) find it reprinted online at FirstThings.com under the title “The Devil’s Party”. It is, probably, the only review from a Christian perspective worth reading about the books and film.

It is a deeply critical look at Pullman’s work, but critical in the best possible way: he takes Pullman to task for squandering his formidable literary ability by delivering a disingenuous editorial pamphlet instead of the substantial work of fiction that his readers deserved. I think Jacobs would find resonance with our own beloved Chad’s critique of The Da Vinci Code: he [Brown, and Pullman] delights in goring the church, and “his delight is his undoing.” (what a great line, Chad). What he really wants to write is a bitter political invective against the church, but people don’t pay $20 to read those. Instead, he couches it in thinly veiled narrative, where the characters are either mimeographed caricatures or leitmotifs, and all suffer under the weight of the agenda.

You can hear Jacobs talking more about Pullman’s book at the Mars Hill Podcast archives.

If you haven’t read anything by Jacobs, this is a good introduction. His has a few collections of essays published, including Shaming the Devil and A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age. Both make good scotch + bathtub reading.

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Sadly, that’s the only mommy book I’ve added so far. (Thus, this post.) The only other things in my cart are three children’s books about Thanksgiving. (Thanks Aly…I finally checked out the Squanto book you recommended.) Like I said, I’m planning ahead.

I thought briefly about adding Foucault’s Pendulum as per a recommendation on a friend’s facebook page, but this sentence from the review sent me back to the children’s section: “This complex psychological thriller chronicles the development of a literary joke that plunges its perpetrators into deadly peril.” That is soooo utterly unappealing to me. And I don’t even feel compelled to apologize for my lack of intellectualism. (Mark it down.)

So, who has some reading recommendations for me? I’m aiming for somewhere a bit beyond Squanto for children but below the psychologically thrilling Foucault…it’s a big target…surely some of you can help! Lest my brain moss over in this perpetual winter drizzle, do comment soon! Thanks. (I thought about this and this, but I dunno….I guess I kinda want something more….fun.)

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Go ahead. Click the pic.

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“Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.” — Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979

Time Magazine came out with a whole slew of “Top 10″ lists this week, from the top 10 moments in sports to the top 10 Middle East stories. At the head of their “Top 10 Religion Stories” list was the publishing of Mother Teresa’s private letters.

If you missed the story when it first broke, a collection of private letters between Mother Teresa and several of her confidants was collected and published by Doubleday, under the title Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. What made this otherwise innocuous event newsworthy were the passages in which she speaks of deep doubts and confusions, where the Angel of Calcutta professes her long periods of doubt, her struggle to believe that a compassionate God could exist, in the face of such overwhelming suffering. That kind of doubt seemed, to those reporting on it, to be inconsistent with the image of stalwart sainthood so cherished by millions.

Of course, anyone who has pursued the life of faith knows that’s not true. We make peace with our doubts, or we flee them, but we don’t ever outgrow them. The presence of doubt in so great a life as Mother Teresa’s is not evidence that religion and devotion are a sham; they are evidence that faith, once awakened by the intimacy of God, can sustain a lifetime of duty and virtue even in the presence of great doubt.

One of the better reflections on faith and doubt was written by C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, as quoted by Dallas Willard at the opening of The Divine Conspiracy. Writing as the demon Uncle Screwtape, C.S. Lewis says,

“You must have often wondered why the enemy [God] does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as his felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve … Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentive. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs - to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish … He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand … Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

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Snape breaks into Hogwarts and rescues Lucius Malfoy from Azkaban Prison. Harry believes that he can defeat Snape and Voldemort only by strenuously practicing charms. Professor Slughorn, inspired by a book from the East provided by Cho Chang called “Thirty-Six Strategies,” devises a plan enabling Harry to seize Snape in the Ministry of Magic. But Gryffindor’s sword, which hung in the headmaster’s office, assassinates Professor McGonagall.

When Harry confronts Voldemort at Azkaban, the Dark Lord tries to win Harry over as a fellow descendant of Slytherin. Harry refuses, and together with Ron and Hermione, kills Voldemort instead. Now what will Harry do about his two girlfriends?

Read a whole bunch of this crap at the New York Times. HT Kottke.

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This was the 2006 winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest…aka, the worst first line of a novel contest. I heard about it on NPR yesterday morning and remembered it this morning when I heard a song on my ipod begin with “I write mostly on hotel paper…”

This is a 2006 runner-up in the adventure category: “She looked at her hands and saw the desiccated skin hanging in Shar-Pei wrinkles, confetti-like freckles, and those dry, dry cuticles–even her “Fatale Crimson” nail color had faded in the relentless sun to the color of old sirloin–and she vowed if she ever got out of the Sahara alive, she’d never buy polish on sale at Walgreen’s again.”

C’mon Aly…you know you want to enter!

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I’ll lead off – and the number of books in play reflects only the wonders of ADD, not any great literary aspirations on my part.

Quiet time / bedtime:

The Great Omission by Dallas Willard. Insightful as always, but in smaller bites – great for ADD.

Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? by Philip Yancey. As always, thoughtful, provocative, wide in scope, wonderfully written.

Potty-time: The Calendar section and Entertainment Weekly, as always. At the office I just read an incredible National Geographic article about malaria. I know that this isn’t really a book and just sounds weird, but I was blown away by the worldwide devastation caused by this disease.

Drive time: Three books on CD in rotation.

Babylon Rising by Tim LaHaye. I have a perverse interest in popular Christian fiction. This one involves an Indiana-Jones type evangelical archeologist, and some really powerful bad guys who utilize a hit-man known simply as Talon. See, he has this artificial finger with a really sharp nail… Don’t all run out and get this one at once.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. You’ve seen this one for sale at Starbuck’s. A horrifying first person account by an ex-boy soldier during the insane civil war in Sierra Leone. Like the LaHaye book, I can only take this one in small quantities, but for different reasons.

A History of Britain, Part 3 – The Fate of Empire (1776-2000) by Simon Schama. I had trouble getting into this one, so I skipped to disc 6 or 7. Heard an incredible story (no kidding) about medical care during the Crimean War, and now I’m in. Right now I’m hearing about how Prince Albert was really running things for Queen Victoria.

Okay, who’s next?

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