Month: March 2021

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The Divine Drama

This year my intention is to read the Bible all the way through chronologically (a Back to the Bible reading plan). It’s been a while since I’ve attempted anything so ambitious, but so far, so good. The first few months are pretty straightforward: Genesis 1-11 followed by Job, and after that straight through up to I Samuel, where they start throwing various Psalms at you. Kings alternate with prophets, epistles with Acts, gospels dance together, etc.—should be interesting.

What strikes me this year, and not for the first time, is the presence of God. He is the main character, but somehow it’s easy to overlook just how active he is, how generous, and how much there. He inhabits the story even before there is a story. He is the director, but also the principal actor. He thinks and acts and feels, grieving in his heart over every intention of man’s heart.

If history is merely the unfolding of a preset plan, why grieve? He’s not just watching or directing, he’s participating. He makes a covenant “with every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth”: from bacteria and paramecium to every last man and woman. Each individual life is in his hands but their species is secured “while the earth remains.”

After Genesis 3, and after the flood, the story continues with an abiding tension, as is proper to any drama. The gulf between God and man is fixed and no one can cross it. With the story of Job, the frustrating adage of every parent and sage is born: “Who ever told you that life is fair?”  Job’s chief lament is that he’s arguing with the inarguable. No one can speak for him or answer for him. The “Almighty” (used singularly, rather than “Lord Almighty,” only in Job) seems to stand far off and involves himself only to torment: “What is man that you make so much of him?”

Job wants to make something of himself before God. He dreams of a relationship restored, while his friends insist that’s impossible. They’re sticking to a mathematical calculation of rule and reward, as legalists have done ever since. But Job is haunted by the idea of an advocate (the seed, the serpent-crusher, the redeemer). And he’s right to imagine so. God is not an abstract ethos. He is present. He is involved.  He storms upon Job’s third act and takes over the narrative. Does Job want an answer? Here’s the answer: not a proposition, but a presence that will continue to dominate as prehistory gives way to ancient history and a pagan from Ur is called out to be a wanderer.

The drama continues . . .

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Every Good Thing

A picture book published last September is scoring stars in all the children’s-book review journals: I Am Every Good Thing. The book celebrates boyhood—particularly black boyhood—as a radiance of joy and exuberance and possibility.

Words and phrases like “good to the core,” “star-filled sky of solutions,” and “perfect” overstate the case. Other thoughts, like “I am the tree that falls in the forest and doesn’t make a sound” are more puzzling than clarifying. But the truly disturbing page, near the end, shows our hero with an unmistakable halo. “I am what I say I am” is the facing text.

I Am, or I Am Who I Am—Does that remind you of anyone?

I can understand the need for a book like this. Boys have been medicated and castigated and exhorted to act like girls for the last twenty years or so; about time they are appreciated for the rambunctious risk-takers they are. Black boys, especially, need inspiration to grow into strong and capable men.

But I’m not sure that the self-affirmation expressed in the title is the best way to go about it.

In fact, I’m sure it’s not.

You don’t have to be convicted of original sin to see the problem here. The title is patently untrue. Boys are not every good thing: while lively and funny, they can also be self-centered, aggressive, reckless, impetuous, and thoughtless. (My five-year-old grandson is a lot of good things, but I could tell you some stories . . .) Both boys and girls lack plenty of good things, like maturity and good judgment. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature, the very definition of a child.

Now, wait a minute, the author and illustrator might object: we don’t mean it literally. Or maybe they do. I don’t know, and the casual reader or first-grader who finds this book thrust at him by his reading specialist won’t know either. If the intention is the build his confidence, this reminds me of the self-esteem movement that began in the 1980s. I call it sticker-sheet confidence, because it seemed to consist of handing out accolades like exclamatory stickers (Awesome Work! You Rock!!)

The Self-esteem Movement, as a conscious Movement, was gradually buried under a pile of evidence that self-esteem is not endemic to good character. In fact, it may actually be inimical to good character. Building confidence is not a matter of telling kids they’re awesome, but helping them along the road to becoming awesome. That’s a lifelong process.

And they’ll never be as awesome as a halo-crowned figure identifying himself as I Am. Assuming godlike status is not the key to success. We have it on good authority that that’s the road to destruction.