Bible Practice

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In a strange kind of oneupmanship, the horrendous murders in Sutherland Springs overshadowed the story of Scott Ostrem’s multiple shooting at a Walmart in Colorado. Ostrem apparently shot at random and killed three people. No motive is known, but when his apartment was searched a stack of Bibles was found. Plenty of people have Bible stacks in their houses—I know I do—but the odd element here is guns. The “reasoning” behind the NRA’s convoluted logic is that guns are for self defense. Everyone ought to have them, along with their Bible stacks. When those voices in your head begin to speak, which you grab—gun or Bible—may make all the difference. Fact is, you don’t have to be mentally stable to buy guns. And no matter how much the NRA says you should shoot back, guns in the hands of madmen obey no rules.

Trump promised to make America great again. One of the statistics at which we excel—indeed we’re a world leader—is gun deaths. We also do pretty well at opioid overdosing. Politicians can’t seem to figure out that the underlying causes here are related to the society they’ve built where you can’t ever get ahead and no matter what you do the 1 percenters will get richer while you spend your days struggling to get to the point when you can climb back into bed and sleep it off until it all starts over again. Watch them in congress. See them trying to thrust more money upon the wealthy. See them pocket the funds the NRA so generously offers. And then read the statistics. Some inexplicable disconnect exists that no amount of drugs will bridge. We are a hurting nation. And stacks of Bibles aren’t the answer.

A Bible stack in its natural habitat

In antiquity there was an ideal. Not that it ever existed in practice, but at least they had the idea. The ideal was that there was nothing wrong with wealth as long as the wealthy first ensured that everyone had enough. Then they could go on an accumulate as much as they wanted. The problem of course is that nobody knows what enough is. When do you know that you have enough? Today there’s no ceiling cap. Take your pick: money, guns, drugs, Bibles. You can have as much or as many as you wish. In just about any combination. Any combination that doesn’t involve money. Only the 1 percenters should be entitled to that. And the rest of us here below and fight it out over the remaining three.

Imagine Devils

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One of the more encouraging events of recent times took place on Tuesday. In elections across the country many public offices were won by women. After a year of official misogyny from the Comrade in Chief—it started long before the election, of course—I felt hope for the first time. You see, I’d been reading Carol F. Karlsen’s The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. I’ve been interested in witches as part of my general exploration of religious views of monstrosity, and in the Early Modern Period, witches were still lurking in the imagination of many. Karlsen’s book isn’t focused solely on Salem. There were other outbreaks of witchcraft accusations, and a general air of suspicion had hung over New England from its founding.

Why women? Karlsen’s question haunts much of human history. Why one gender, or gender construct, why one race, or racial construct, feels itself superior to others is an issue not easily resolved. It doesn’t come, necessarily, from being a “white” male, but it is a disease that primarily effects that demographic. It’s a myth of superiority. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is not an easy book for a man to read. Centuries of bad behavior don’t exonerate those who, although their belief was sincere, found an outlet for their faith in the destruction of others. Karlsen demonstrates that quite often the background issues were those of inheritance—in a patriarchal society, land passed to male heirs. Women who owned property complicated a social picture that was already under stress. Consider: any family with two sons would halve (although the proportions were not equal) its land each generation. The only way to keep the wealthy wealthy was to snatch land wherever they could.

It wasn’t so simple as that, but the basic economics—which haven’t changed much—set colonial New England up for disaster. Birth control was considered evil. Men still had to be gratified, however, and population increased as land size remained the same. The system is untenable. Just a year ago the electoral college made love to an angry white man. A man who “owns” lots of “valuable” property. A man who demeans women and those of other “races.” When his own shady dealing come into the light he cries “witch hunt!” History is full of ironies. One of the greatest of them in the fact that women have been held back long after circumstances had advanced enough to allow equality in a stable society. There may still be witch hunts, but they flow in the direction they always have—toward those denied autonomy and civil rights. Maybe Tuesday was finally a sign of hope.

Joshua Fit

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“Horrible things are going to happen!” shouts Grandpa Simpson. He ends his epiphany in church with the strange words “Epa, epa!” The Simpson’s Movie, among many other popular outlets, has had some fun at the expense of the Environmental Protection Agency. Over the years many people have concluded that it is ineffectual and that the heart of the government isn’t really behind it. One of the Dominionist creeds is that the government as we know it must be disbanded. Trump has been working hard at that, on his breaks from the back nine, since January. Appointing heads of agencies tasked with dismantling them, the underlying plan (not Trump’s, for he has no plan) is to take the current government apart while self-important Republicans simply can’t understand that they’re being used as pawns to be sacrificed as soon as a knight or rook comes along. Bishops don’t seem to be of much use anymore.

So when the head of the EPA cites the book of Joshua as science, some were surprised. Scott Pruitt, according to a story on BuzzFeed my wife sent me, has decided that the Old Testament is the new frontier. You have to choose who you’re going to follow. As for Pruitt and his house, it will be the Lord. And by “Lord” I mean money. Those who stand to gain by deconstructing the EPA are big businesses. Those who stand to loose? Only Homo sapiens and every other species on the planet. Although, in all fairness, rats and cockroaches have a way of thriving in our wastelands. In fact they seem to be thriving in Washington DC. I almost tripped over a rat on my way to work just the other day. They’re not just for the subway tracks anymore.

The Bible is the most abused book in history. This is what idolatry looks like. You take an object and make it a god. Nobody would be more surprised to find their words worshipped than those who wrote the Bible. Not one of them realized that their words would be taken the way that they are today. It’s pretty obvious that Paul of Tarsus would’ve taken a little more time in his letter writing had he known they’d be one day mistaken for God’s words instead of his own. And Joshua—well, we don’t even know who wrote that material. Whoever it was believed the earth was flat and that to stop a day from progressing all God had to do was hold the sun still for a day. No hot mitts needed either. This is, after all, the most powerful government in the world.

Sense or Ship

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I can tell I’ve been too busy when I haven’t planned for Banned Book Week. A kind of unofficial holiday since, well, it’s about banned things, the point of this observation is that we should be free to read. A fairly large portion of the fiction I read anyway, at one point or another, ends up on the banned list. Not surprisingly, most banned books have diversity content—racial or sexual minorities portrayed in sympathetic ways. Trump has shown us clearly how dangerous such thinking can be. It’s well known that such perspectives are allied with some evangelical Christian interests, or, perhaps I should say, lack of tolerance. There are lots of ways of looking at the world out there, and many of them aren’t evil. I should’ve planned ahead.

Censorship implies a certain arrogance. One way of looking at things is right and all others are wrong. Although we all know that any logical system runs up against its limits (we call them paradoxes) we’re reluctant to let go of that which we suppose, with or without justification, to be right. Banning is an effort to control minds. It’s no coincidence that many of the titles on banned and challenged lists are intended for younger readers. Those who favor censorship want to close the eyes of the young and pretend the real world will just go away. Yes, many of the banned books are fiction, but fiction tells us truths. Those who ban books are uncomfortable with such truths. That’s not to say all literature is created equal, or that all banned books are great literature. As someone who writes fiction, though, I can attest how difficult it is to get it published. That in itself tells us something.

It’s banned book week and here I am without a banned book to read. I’ve got some ideas, of course. My wife and I both take on book reading challenges each year. One of this year’s books (at least) was a banned title, but one that I read too far in advance. Besides, although we have too many books in our apartment already, I used Banned Book Week as an allowance to go to the bookstore. What better way to fight literary fascism than to buy a book? The problem is deciding which one. The lists are long and grow longer each year. Intolerance, it seems, knows no limits. I’m about to do my civic duty for this time of year. I’m about to go to a bookstore and buy a banned book.

Overlooked Scripture

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In this great Trump Tower of capitalism in which we all live, I often wonder about the overlooked Bible. Fundamentalist Trump supporters certainly know how to thump it, but do they know how to read it? This thought occurred to me as I was rereading the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 recently. The narrative isn’t hidden or obscure. Here’s how it goes: the earliest Christians were communists. Literally. Peter himself was involved. After Jesus’ ascension, his followers pooled their resources and divided them up by how much each person needed. Ananias and Sapphira, a husband and wife duo, sold their property and presented the money to Peter and the collective. They held a little back, though, just in case. The result? Peter saw through the lie and they died instantly. The point was pretty clear—Christians don’t hold anything back for themselves. They live communally.

Obviously, this didn’t last very long. Let the one without a savings account cast the first stone. In fact, by half-way through Acts the holy experiment is already forgotten. Nevertheless, it was the ideal. Christians were people who took care of one another, especially the poor. By the time communist governments (which didn’t work because people are people) took hold, Christians were dead-set against them. Okay, well, they were godless—but the idea behind them was biblical. Today any form of socialism is soundly condemned by most evangelicals. Apparently they don’t read the book of Acts any more. There was no moment when this commune was castigated in Holy Writ. It simply vanishes without a whimper to be condemned as utterly evil in these latter days.

The wedding between capitalism and Christianity has proven an enduring one. Capitalism allows, indeed pretty much mandates, selfishness. It’s difficult to live in such a system and not feel entitled to more than you already have. Who ever says, “No thanks, I don’t need a raise. I have enough”? Those who attempt communal living are generally called “cults” and the suspicion is omnipresent that the leader isn’t holding (usually) himself to the same standards as the pedestrian members. The story in Acts 5, however, is even more extreme. After Ananias lies to Peter and dies on the spot, his wife Sapphira comes in just as those who buried her husband are returning. Peter baits her with a question about how much money they received for their property and when she concurs with her late husband, the undertakers have a second job for the day. This is a faith taken seriously. It was bound not to last.

Birth of a Notion

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Childhood is an impressionable time. Our phobias begin then. Children are vulnerable. (Of course our current government is intent on making us all afraid of bullies again.) This theme of childhood keeps coming up in interviews with directors of horror movies. A friend recently sent me a New York Times article by Erik Piepenburg about Annabelle: Creation. The piece includes some horror auteurs discussing what frightened them as children. We all experienced fear at a young age. For some of us it hung around awhile longer. Horror movies have, despite their low brow reputation, been reliable revenue streams from the beginning. People will pay to be scared, for a little while.

I have to confess to having fallen behind on The Conjuring diegesis. Since I’m the only one in the family who really likes to watch horror, I don’t see these movies in theaters and, well, there’s a lot to do besides watching movies these days. And finding DVDs is getting harder as well. Streaming scares me. Anyway, I missed The Conjuring 2 and the original Annabelle. I’ve read accounts of what supposedly happened in real life—Annabelle is one of the cases investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren—and it has been written about a number of times. The Warren’s take on it was that a doll can’t actually be possessed. (Sorry Chuckie.) They suggested that it could act as a conduit that would’ve eventually allowed a demon to possess the two young women who kept the original Annabelle in their apartment. The doll showed up in The Conjuring, although it wasn’t part of the main story. The haunted doll trope is scary enough that the second knock-off in this universe focused on it.

Interviews with older horror directors reveal that they often grew up without fathers. Despite the gender profiling, for kids fathers are generally thought to represent protection. A child without a father often feels insecure. Even today when people talk of their fathers I have to remind myself that they can be a good thing. I often wonder if those of us who like horror films had childhood parental issues as a regular part of our pasts. I’m generalizing, of course. Growing up into Trump’s America has given us all plenty of things to fear in the present. Since January a number of high profile horror films have gotten notice in the press. Sometimes a real bully can cause as much fear as a possessed doll. That’s especially the case when our government wants us to submit like a bunch of frightened children. Childhood fears may, in some cases, serve us well.

Implied of Course

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The American terrorist attack in Charlottesville over the weekend should have us all frightened. Despite declarations of “it couldn’t happen here,” fascism is an adaptive disease that finds its way to new hosts quite readily. The atmosphere coming out of Washington only promotes contagion. Trump’s response—bad behavior all around, no one party to blame—left the supreme white commander open to criticism. The appropriately named “White” House spokespersons responded with an implied “Of course that includes white supremacists,” according to the Washington Post report. That’s an awful lot of weight for an adverb to bear. The past six months have given many of us reason to doubt it’s true at all. “Of course” 45 loves all Americans. Or at least their cash.

Of course, I could be making a lot out of an implied deflection. A national leader should not hesitate to point the blame squarely at any supremacist group. Listen closely: no group is superior to another. Anyone’s background, examined closely enough, is likely to turn up a character or two who would be suspect. Trump’s election gave a new boldness to fascist groups—this is the way America’s going, isn’t it? Republican leaders, full of squees and shivers, refuse to say anything negative about a man whose thumbs can’t even reach the humility emoji. Hate crimes are wrong. They used to be illegal. What has happened to leadership? It’s more than just the CFO, wait, I mean Commander in Chief, who’s implicated here. It’s an entire political party that won’t stand up against injustice. What ever happened to “truth, justice, and the American way,” Clark? There’s never a phone booth nearby when you need one.

Back when I worked at Nashotah House, we had a conflicted environment. One of my colleagues told me something that has stayed with me ever since: “silence implies consent.” If you don’t condemn evil, you are complicit with it. We all need to stand up and say racism isn’t just an opinion—it is evil. Human rights are more than just civil rights. All people have the right to be treated fairly. Someone who hates others enough to climb into a car, start the ignition, and accelerate toward a group of pedestrians is guilty of premeditation. A president who won’t say as much is tacitly saying it might just be okay. Of course, it might just be that he’s too self-absorbed to get the thumbs going on the words we’ll never read: “I’m sorry.” Of course I’d be glad to be proven wrong.

News Pause

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One of the benefits of “getting away from it all” is the blessed respite from news. Given the political situation these day I suppose that’s a rather risky proposition since the government is now based on presidential moods rather than any kind of policy or strategy. I worried as I got onto the plane home whether regulations might have changed when I was in the air and whether I’d be landing in the same country as the one from which I’d taken off. Maybe it was more than just time zones that we were changing. Being a child of the ‘60s I couldn’t help thinking about the Twilight Zone—getting onto a plane and then something happens. Quite a few episodes deal with that theme. Only now it’s real time. Real fear.

I have to wonder about the impact of constant news. Since November I’ve been obsessed with frequent updates—scanning headlines for any sign of hope that what began as a joke might have finally reached its punchline. Instead, the press has fallen into normalizing Trump, writing and reporting as if this is what happens in a democracy. It should be illegal to elect a dictator. It’s one of those logical conundrums, but it is a real one. Democracy shouldn’t be just those people who feel like they should getting out to vote. It should be a legal obligation. We know that if votes were counted straight up Trump could not have won the election. Since politicians like to play games we now live in the Twilight Zone of government. Every day Trump is allowed to remain in office the more credibility in government erodes. The knock-on effect will continue for years.

Since stepping off that plane I’ve been wondering what has changed over the past week. Has some basic fact of life been overturned by a presidential temper tantrum? Is what I’m doing now illegal? Has a horse been made a senator? Anything is possible. When I last paid attention it seemed we were well on our way to becoming the United States of Russia. I’m afraid to look at the headlines. The glow of getting away from it all hasn’t faded yet. It’s a hazy, dreamy reality that makes government seem like a bad dream. What would happen if they privatized air traffic control when I was in the air? The results are just to scary to contemplate. I think I need a vacation.

Berrying Perspective

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Two people looking at the same thing see something different. Since we’re living with a government of distorted perspective this truth appears refreshed daily. I was reminded of this while picking huckleberries. Huckleberries, according to the local edible berry guide, are called many different things. In this part of the country you know them when you see them. And if you see them you pick them. They appeal to the frustrated hunter-gatherer left in us city-dwellers. As I was trying my best to fill my bucket, I kept thinking of those who only see nature’s bounty as a means of turning a profit. In my mind they’re meanies—those who take all the fun out of the few freedoms we have left—although I realize that it’s a matter of perspective. Consider the huckleberry.

I’m a mere seasonal visitor to these parts. Since not too many of my own species make this location their permanent domicile, that’s perfectly natural. Many of the berry pickers I’ve encountered have been seasonal guests as well. There are the more “industrial” pickers, though. In a good year huckleberries can command fifty dollars a gallon on the local market. Unless you know an unfrequented secret site, a gallon can take several hours to pick even in a promising location. Overall, you need to arrive before anyone else and get the most productive bushes so that you don’t have to wander around the mountainside in search of a more lucrative locale. Not to mention that, like most berries, they have a limited shelf life. Nature prefers sharers to hoarders.

While I’m picking I generally think of bears. Unlike my species they don’t have the grocery store option. These berries are their survival, I suppose. Nature does provide. That’s how evolution works—we form symbiotic relationships with our environment. The meanies, however, can’t see beyond the self. What nature provides must be accumulated for my own benefit and not that of others. There are never enough huckleberries to go around, the industrial mind thinks, and so I’d better control the availability and set my price. You don’t even have to like huckleberries to do it. Ironically we call this having a gift. Standing here on this isolated mountainside, bent over a bush offering nature’s abundance, I believe that I’ve found a gift. I have to remind myself, however, that this too is a matter of perspective. It is a perspective that tastes right to me.

Any Means Necessary

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As one of his first acts as governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie cut the Access to the Region’s Core tunnel project. This was before he closed the state-run beaches so that he and his family to have one for themselves without Independence Day crowds bothering him. Liberty means something new these days, I guess. The ARC tunnel project was meant to ease some of the burden on those hapless zombies known as commuters. As a member of this undead class myself, I often think of the relief that never was as we sit, unmoving, just meters away from the Lincoln Tunnel, looking nervously at our watches wondering just how late we’ll be to work this time. Our elected “representative” leaders have no idea about the life of the average person. Having lived sequestered away among the rich and axle-greasers for so long they have forgotten that real wheels need to roll. Their bottom line is at risk.

Trump, apparently aware that torture and public transit go together, has nominated Steven Bradbury, the Bush-era policy architect, as his general counsel of the Department of Transportation. Known for his “torture memos” Bradbury has none of the charm of the sometimes macabre other Bradbury who had the courtesy of keeping his frights restricted to fiction. The most disturbing part of all of this is just how little our elected officials care about the people who keep this country going. Populism, still poorly understood, is what happens when people get fed up with business as usual. Easily duped, the average citizen can’t tell an “entertainer” from a genuine leader. The era of “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV” has grown up and become truth. Doogie Howser where are you when we need you? It might be helpful to have Rex Morgan on hand after a session in the torture chamber.

Government has become a joke. Comic strip presidents gather the assorted nuts and dolts required build up a representative democracy, it seems. I used to tell my wife, back in January when things were bleaker than Poe’s December, that we could expect no less than outrage after outrage from a man whose sole motivation is to get people to look at him. We all knew jerks motivated by that in high school. The difference is that now they’re easily voted into office. Selfish men who will close down public parks so they can take the whole thing for themselves. They have no idea what governing is because they can’t understand that other people have wants and needs as well. Other people are for torturing when you’re bored. Sounds like a visit to October Country may be in order yet.

Liberty and Justice

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I confess to being a bit vexed. How are we supposed to celebrate Independence Day under the Trump administration? Since January our government has demonstrated over and over and over again that it’s dearest desire is to pick democracy apart, to its own advantage. Making voting more difficult for those who oppose the Republican Party, gerrymandering to ensure local election victories, cutting their healthcare so that they might, well, just die off. Repeated and loud public protests do not impact them at all. When their own party moderates protest, they claim they’re collaborating with the enemy. The American people have become the enemy of the wealthy and privileged who want this country to resemble a country club, not a nation of liberty and justice for all.

How do we celebrate a country like that? Back in high school, my senior year, I won a state-wide essay contest. I got my picture in the paper and everything. I don’t have a copy of the essay, but I do remember that the topic was Americanism. Yes, the “ism” was part of it. Although I didn’t know Shostakovich at the time, it was my attempt at what he did in his fifth symphony. Looking back, it seems strange that a Pennsylvania statewide committee would select an essay so full of irony from a working class boy who was only too well aware of his own inferiority. Yes, there was irony in that essay, and anger. Carefully hidden. It sounded patriotic. The hundred dollar prize didn’t make a dent in my fall tuition bill.

Nearly four decades have come and gone since then. I’ve watch my nation teeter-totter between humane treatment of those left out by the system and offering kick-backs to those who by no definition need or deserve them. Until November of last year I’d never seen a nation stoop to the absolute abyss of cynicism in the election of Trump. Although President Obama had the grace to say that many people were obviously happy with the results, it was as if my essay—now lost and forgotten by all but one—had come true. Make no mistake about it—I’m a poor boy who grew up among the working class. As a teenager I could see, hear, and taste the hypocrisy. I hoped and dreamed that as I grew up so would my nation. It’s the fourth of July. Normally I would be celebrating Independence Day. This year, however, I’m only wondering what went wrong along the road to liberty and justice for all.

Serpent Number One

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I haven’t read The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. Yet. My reading list is frighteningly enormous and constantly growing. I just can’t seem to get on top of it. In any case, my wife sent me an NPR interview with Perry that set me to thinking about monsters. (It really doesn’t take much.) One of Perry’s answers in the piece by Ari Shapiro stopped me in my tracks. Perry admits that recent political events have made her question her belief in benevolent humanism. I’d never thought of our current crisis in that way before. This is one example of what happens when it’s—pardon the expression—every man for himself. We’ve stepped away from religion as any kind of public conscience. The religious right doesn’t fit any classification of religion that I know of, so I’m discounting it as a legitimate form of belief. When we look out for number one, a self-appointed number one takes over.

With an insidiousness that can only be called evil, our elected “representatives” tried to sequester away the facts of their healthcare bill that they wanted to ram through in order to give the wealthy serpents tax breaks. The thing about looking out for number one is that you’re only number one to yourself. There can only be one one. Lining one’s pockets with the tax money of others is a trick as old as civilization itself. In ancient times, however, they at least called themselves kings and emperors and made no excuses for what they were doing. We said we were advanced enough to do without the religion that supported these outdated views. We’re back to the days of kings and emperors. Anyone who believes differently is fooling him or herself. There have been snakes in the garden from the beginning. Getting rid of religion won’t clear them from the grounds.

There are many benevolent humanists. There are many more who are suffering under the weight of current political systems. Unhappy people elect dictators. It has happened before—in the current lifetime of many, no less. The warning signs are all there to be ignored. The fruit sure looks nice, hisses our constant companion. Looking out for number two is the first step. Then number three, and twenty, and eight-billion. That’s benevolent humanism. Anything less is, well, a walk down the garden path. We’ve been down that path before. Those who trust serpents must learn to count. To do anything less is less than human.

Making Prophets

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I first read 1984 around its eponymous date. The context is informative. I was a student at Grove City College, a conservative, Reagan-esque school of strong free-market inclinations. Being a first-generation college student I knew nothing of choosing a school, and since my upbringing was Fundamentalist, and since Grove City was a place I’d been many times, it seemed the natural choice. As my four years there wore one, my conservatism became effaced before what should be the effect of higher education. I was reading and learning new things—ideas that in the pre-internet days were simply inaccessible to someone from a small town which had no library, no bookstore, and, to be honest, no charm. How was someone supposed to learn in those circumstances? Largely it came down to high school (for those who finished) in a nearby town, and television. George Orwell saw the potential of the latter far too clearly.

It was in this great conservative bastion that I read 1984—I don’t even remember what course it was for. I do remember vividly the discussion of the Appendix on Newspeak—that it was a danger, a very real danger, to engineer language to prevent free thought. That was conservatism in the literal era of 1984. When that year passed we breathed a collective sigh of relief that Orwell’s prophecy hadn’t happened. Maybe Orwell wasn’t a prophet after all. The thing about prophecy, however, is that it unfolds slowly. Trump may have caught the world by surprise, but the evidence is there that the Orwellian groundwork was being consciously laid from the time of the Clinton Administration onward. Those who seemed to think Ingsoc was onto something good began working in local politics—the level of school boards and state elections, to build a strong conservative bloc. How many states have Republican governors? Go ahead and look it up, I’ll wait.

Progressives blithely moved ahead, making real ethical strides. One problem that they’ve always had, however, is believing that Evil is real. It’s an outmoded idea, fit for Medievalist thinking only. There are, however, very real racial supremacists out there. And avowed, unrepentant sexists. They feel that the great white way has been slighted and they are itching for revenge. Don’t believe me? Turn on the news. This is not your father’s Republican Party. In 1984 the Republicans were warning us about 1984. By the next decade they were actively emulating it. Orwell died paranoid and the world was relieved as his prophecy was harmlessly classified as fiction.

Analyze This

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Reading other people’s scripture is a privilege. Although somewhere in my long study of the history of religion I must have read excerpts of The Analects, I have not concentrated on reading them through before. Reading other people’s scripture is like being invited into their houses. You can learn a great deal in a little time, but that doesn’t make you an expert. Confucianism is about the same age as classical Judaism. The foci of the belief systems are clearly culturally bound, and those of us raised in cultures heavily influenced by Judaism and Christianity find scriptures like The Analects somewhat bewildering. For those raised in Confucian cultures, the Bible must also be like coming into an unfamiliar country. That’s the way scriptures are, and it doesn’t mean that any are more or less valid than others. That’s often difficult to accept.

I don’t know much about Confucianism, but it is clear that The Analects are intended as a guide particularly for those who seek public office. In Confucian thought, unlike that of the current United States, only the brightest are believed to be worthy of high office. Indeed, it is impossible to read The Analects at this time in history and not see that Trump is so wrong in multiple languages. Master Kong’s description of “the small man,” the petty sort who has no business governing, is the job description of the GOP right now. Is it possible that one political party has ruined two religions? Probably far more.

Learning—even in small increments—of the religions of others takes away the need to feel superior. In fact there are many commonalities between religions, particularly on the ethical front. Reading other people’s scriptures isn’t easy. There’s so much that’s foreign in them. But like the fact that foreign trade brings desirable things from abroad for us, so should be the study of other religions. There is much of value here. I don’t read Chinese. I’ve never been to China. Reading The Analects, however, demonstrates that the noble minds of different cultures have much to learn from one another. No scripture is perfect. All are necessary. It’s only when one faith decides that it alone is true that religious strife begins to replace religious respect. I’m not about to become a Confucianist, but I do have a a slightly better sense of what it might mean to be one. And small steps can lead to impressive places for those willing to learn.

The Preacher

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Ecclesiastes, I used to tell my students, is one of the most unusual books of the Bible. And that’s saying something. When we think of the Good Book we think of pious thoughts and lofty feelings—you know, the white-shirt, evangelical sort. The Bible, however, isn’t what most people think it is. Ecclesiastes, nestled right there near the geographic center of the Protestant Bible (and there’s more to say about this) is a book unlike any other. It is philosophical, weighty, and somewhat gloomy. It is a book where God can’t be relied on to help you and the world may very well be against you. It honestly admits that things just aren’t as they should be. “The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouting of a ruler among fools,” it says, “Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one bungler destroys much good.” (That’s 9:17-18, in case you want to check me out.)

America used to be known around the world for its pragmatism. Now it’s being laughed at as the master of irrationality. I remember when elections were matters of gravitas and serious consideration of the issues. They’ve now become high school popularity contests, even including the locker-room talk. Trump insults his own party and they kiss up. We have a president more impressed by kid’s toys in Saudi Arabia than by the top-notch research universities in his own country. I turn to Ecclesiastes for consolation. It’s a good book to read when everything’s going wrong. “For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten.”

My white-shirted friends will surely object. I’m taking verses out of context—prooftexting, it’s called. But, my evangelical friends, you say Scripture is the word of God. Fully inspired and inerrant, is it not? How can you dismiss the wise, wonderful, woeful book of Ecclesiastes? The world is a complex place. Those who seek office as public servants should at least be able to distinguish the servant from the master. They lay their hand upon the Bible to take a sacred oath of office. Beneath that withered hand lies the book of Ecclesiastes, forsaken among its more cheerful siblings. Do not forget Ecclesiastes. It is the book that best makes sense of our day. “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning; the patient in spirit are better than the proud in spirit.” Herein lieth the truth.