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.
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.
How deep must your perversion be to think that you can get away with this stuff forever? The only way I can explain it is that you must be psychotically double-minded, or you must not really believe in God.
Dreher is being typically emotional. Reporting on Christianity Today‘s reporting on Ravi Zacharias, he recoils in horror at this “vile man.” I don’t disagree, though given what we know now, it would have been better for Zacharias if all the vileness had come out while he was still alive and could see what his sin had done. That would have been an opportunity to repent.
But really, he had many opportunities , especially in the last few months when he must have known his time was short. He could have confessed. Or he could have destroyed all his phones and emails. The fact that he did neither of those tings indicates that he was living on an unreal plane.
Every conscious, deliberate sin, from adultery to tax cheating, requires a certain double-mindedness.
“Psychotically double-minded” seems the more likely of Dreher’s alternatives, but double-mindedness may be more common than he thinks. In fact, it may be the default position of all of us, including Christians. Every conscious, deliberate sin, from adultery to tax cheating, requires a certain double-mindedness. A Christian man who berates his wife, an elder who makes nasty comments about troublesome church members, a pastor who develops a gambling habit, a Sunday school teacher who constantly talks down her husband. And me, who wastes an hour and a half on Netflix when I should be checking up on my neighbors.
We all know what we should do, or shouldn’t do. The scripture we swear by is very clear. But on the way to action, knowledge gets sidelined. We shuttle it into a storage room called “Holy to the Lord,” where we make our sacrifices and holy acts. And then we claim our “free time” to do what we want.
Ravi Zacharias traveled the world, spoke at conferences, wrote dozens of books that sold millions of copies, counseled celebrities and world leaders. In that role, in that room, he may have (probably did) believe every word he was saying as the head of RZIM: the name, the legend. Once outside that persona he was a slight, elderly man with chronic back pain. Perhaps one justified the other. RZ spoke a blessing over Ravi. When he prayed with women he was preying on, when he told a partner she was his “reward” for godly service, he might have been sincere, in an all-too-human, double-minded way.
All idols replace Christ. Idolatry is the primary temptation.
“The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jer. 9:17), and the first person my heart deceives is me. Could Ravi have made an idol out of RZ? (Naming a ministry after himself, or consenting to it, seems unwise in the first place.) Given the convoluted reasoning we tend to indulge in, he may have indulged himself with a clear conscience. He may have atonement for himself as his own high priest in his holy capacity, crowding out the Christ he claimed to serve.
All idols replace Christ. Idolatry is the primary temptation. This sad saga should, if nothing else, serve as a warning to the rest of us: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (I Jn 5:13).
All through my public K-12 education I learned popular anthems like “The House I Live In,” “This Is a Great Country,” and “God Bless America,” along with the old standards (“America the Beautiful,” ‘My Country, ‘tis of Thee”). By 1967, though (my junior year), such guileless flag-waving wasn’t cool. I gave a speech against patriotism to the Rotary Club—not too smart, but truth to power and all that.
Patriotism was an outmoded idea, anyway, the cause of unending wars when we had so many problems to solve at home. Racism, the Feminine Mystique, poverty, the military-industrial complex—what was not to complain about? Shortly after came Nixon and Watergate and general “malaise.”
But you know what? Life wasn’t too bad. Most of us had enough food (even though prices were zooming in the 70s), a place to live (with double-digit interest rates, if you chose to buy), the freedom to move around and find another job if you didn’t like the one you had (we did that a lot). My husband had acquired a B.A. degree at tuition rates we could pay off within ten years. That degree that allowed him access to a white-color job once he got the wanderlust out of his system. Our black friends were no longer segregated—that’s why we could have black friends—no more moving to the back of the bus or “colored days” at the State Fair.
Also, I started reading history, and decided this country was actually pretty great after all. A complicated past, to be sure, but with a form of government that allowed for self-correcting over time. There was plenty of ugliness, but also plenty of hope and upward mobility: more than any other nation in history, anywhere on the globe. I grew up in what would now be considered poverty, yet we always had enough to eat and a roof over our heads and free education that actually educated us a little.
But ever since high school, the only time a certain subset of people—which at one time included me—can speak well of the United States is when they are running for office. Then, it’s the land we love, even though it may have lost its way or forgotten its ideals or listened to the wrong people too long. All this great country needed was the right people to get it back on track. That was the vibe from Barak Obama and Bill & Hilary Clinton, though it didn’t always sound like it was coming from the heart.
Joseph R. Biden is different. When he talks about this great country, I think he means it, as someone who started from a humble beginning and achieved the nation’s highest office—“Only in America.” He’s an old-time glad-handing political animal who knows how to work a room but his Inaugural Address came from a genuine core, however deeply buried.
So I don’t get why he’s promoting Critical Race Theory, unless he doesn’t really understand it. The basic premise of CRT is that the United States is founded on racism (not a bug but a feature) and owes its wealth to slavery, all the way up to the present day. Biden has mandated “racial sensitivity training” (a euphemism for CRT) in all federal agencies and disbanded the 1776 Commission established by President Trump, calling it inaccurate and harmful. The 1776 Commission was intended to counteract the negativity embodied by CRT and the 1619 project, etc.—to restore some balance or to whitewash, depending on who’s talking about it.
I haven’t read the 1776 Report and can’t judge the whitewashing content. But I’ve read parts of the 1619 project and I think it’s both inaccurate and harmful. Has President Biden read either? Because if he has, and still buys into CRT, he can’t believe this is a great country. If the United States was founded on racism, what could possibly be great about it? The only solution is to dismantle our constitutional government and rebuild it from the ground up—which is just what some Critical Race theorists would like to do.
I assume that’s not what Joe Biden wants to do, or other patriotic Democrats. But it suggests that the deep division he wants to unify goes through his own heart (to paraphrase Solzhenitsyn). And through the Democratic party’s heart, and through the heart of America as well. If the USA is as bad as the critical theorists say, it’s not worth saving.
Back in the eighties, we attended a large Presbyterian church with a television ministry. Television ministry isn’t my style, but this was Presbyterian. No strobe lights or smoke machines or healing services: it was music and preaching. The preaching was both edifying and compelling, and the music was directed by a dynamic choir director with impeccable taste in both classical and contemporary Christian choral works. My husband and I ended up in the choir (they didn’t even vet us!) and loved it.
The annual Christmas concert was a big deal that included singers from the local university (where our director headed the vocal music department). They were almost all youngsters, pert and eager. One of the young ladies, we heard, had been a finalist in that year’s Miss America pageant—a celebrity!
During dress rehearsal an overhead mic needed adjustment, and our Miss America finalist, who was sitting nearest to it, popped up out of her seat to do some tweaking. I was sitting a few rows back and toward the center, so I had a good view of the popping up and tweaking. And I clearly remember thinking, “What a pretty girl. What a beautiful, trim body. You did some good work there, God.”
I’m not accustomed to thinking this way about beautiful women—not that I’m especially envious (or not since high school, when one of my classmates was an actual model, with cool clothes). I do notice beauty, as most of us do, but that was the first time I recall giving praise to the One who designed bodies to be beautiful. It wasn’t the last.
What brought this random memory come to mind is this article in Quillette: The Attack on Beauty. The body-positive movement, according to the writer, is teaching girls that there’s no objective standard of beauty, that the cover-girl ideal is a conspiracy to keep them down, and that everyone—or every girl—is beautiful just the way they are. The article was inspired by “Scars to Your Beautiful,” an Alessa Cara song with this telling refrain:
And you don’t have to change a thing, The world could change its heart, No scars to your beautiful, We’re stars and we’re beautiful.
Got that? If the world doesn’t turn its head when you walk by, it’s because the world is screwed up, baby. You’re a star, and don’t you forget it.
If messages like this taught young girls to stand up straighter and face the world with confidence, in spite of bad hair or teeth, that’s one thing. But there’s no evidence they do. Instead, plenty of evidence that many girls substitute whininess, defiance, and/or destructive behavior for confidence, because they have been assured the world should respond to them in a way it’s not going to.
The writer of the article concludes that pretending objective standards of beauty don’t exist, and that everyone is a “star,” encourages a narcissistic state of mind, “the condition of being enamored with one’s idealized projection of oneself to the exclusion of reality and of one’s real self.” One’s real self could eventually turn into a decent person if it’s not obsessed with imaginary stardom. But if everyone is a star, no one is. If everyone is physically beautiful, then beauty doesn’t mean much. And we know that’s not true. Even the oversize models I see in poster displays at Penney’s have flawless skin and sparkling hair.
In That Hideous Strength, the last volume of C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, four of the female characters are trying on dresses for a celebratory banquet (after the bad guys have been defeated). Rather than each picking out her own gown, they collaborate in choosing the others, and somehow the colors and styles complement each woman’s personality. The dressing room has no mirror; they are not to rejoice in themselves, but in each other.
We can appreciate beauty in landscapes, buildings, and flower arrangements; likewise in Miss America contestants. All the more, perhaps, because it’s fleeting: “the grass withers, and the flowers fade.” Sophia Loren was a work of art; her efforts to preserve her looks have hardened them instead. All transient beauty points to the timeless, original Beauty who made our eyes to observe it and hearts to respond to it. And I think rejoicing in beauty, without envy, makes us all a little more beautiful.
Isn’t it funny how we can hear or read the same passage over and over—study it, ponder it, discuss it—and still recognize something new in a fresh reading? That’s what I discovered early this month as our pastor was preaching through the first chapters of Genesis. Do you notice anything odd about this:
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.
Okay, sure, you’re saying. That’s the proto-evangelion, the first prediction of a savior to redeem what the man and woman have broken. That’s the ultimate offspring, but “enmity” also refers to Christ’s people and Satan’s people, or the redeemed and the unredeemed, or the saved and the lost, or however you want to put it. Though a bit cryptic, it fits with the rest of the story. In fact, it strikes the first note of a prevailing theme, immediately after the conflict develops. That’s one mark of superlative storytelling, incidentally—and what’s so odd about it?
Just the first four words: I will put enmity. God is creating that conflict himself, slapping it right down in the middle of human history. We’re accustomed to thinking that Adam and Eve created the conflict through their disobedience, and in a sense that’s true. But God didn’t have to punish it. That is, he could have let it all go and Creation would have collapsed on itself, and good riddance. Failed experiment, or something.
Instead, “enmity” is introduced. Some versions translate the word as “hostility,” which is easier to say and perhaps more relatable, as we’ve all experienced hostile relationships. But enmity suggests something deeper—more than angry feelings or continual thwarted purposes. It’s an abiding repulsion between two parties, like reversed magnets. Some versions translate the word as “hatred,” and that’s closer to the sense, I think. God ensures that there will always be enmity in this world between offspring—not just Satan and Messiah, but those who are eternally lost and eternally found.
But, since we don’t know who those people are, and don’t even realize the enmity exists until our eyes are opened to see it, we can’t recognize it in this life. Except in one place—ourselves. We are born at enmity with God, but also with the offspring of Satan, in our own conscience. Is anyone totally lacking in morality? Is anyone perfectly content with who he is, or how she looks to others? Is any soul totally integrated with its own interior compass?
Some people are more anxiety-ridden than others but, in the words of the Paul Simon song, “I don’t have a friend who feels at ease.” We’re all born with a sense that something is wrong and, if we dare to admit it, Maybe it’s us. “Is it just me, or does it seem warm in here?” “Is it just me, or was something a little off about that statement?” “Is it just me . . . or is something really wrong here?”
I will put enmity . . . deep in the heart. And that’s a very good thing.
Because, if he hadn’t, we would have all made friends with the devil.
We’ve heard of people—even know one, possibly—who seem stone-cold evil. Though it’s presumptuous to judge anyone as beyond reach, we know those exist whom God has “given over” to their worse instincts. For them, there’s no struggle, no “enmity.” They’ve made their peace with the devil.
For the rest of us, the conflict will go on until it’s finally resolved. My internal “enmity” keeps me on alert and keeps me from self-reliance. One day, the magnets will switch poles and cling without equivocation, either to life or to death. For the one, pure love. For the other, pure hatred. But no more enmity. Until that day, though, I embrace what he has put in place.
At a Christmas ornament exchange many years ago, seven friends shared their testimony. A testimony is always a story, with a fraught beginning, a consequential development, and a transformative ending. Here are their stories, with names changed to protest their privacy.
Debbie’s life was chaos, owing to a dysfunctional family: abusive dad, passive mom, no system or order in the household. Her father made plenty of money, but she remembers walking to school in clothes so old her teachers thought she was a charity case. She was brought to the Lord sweetly and naturally, through high school friends who sought her out (she didn’t realize until later that they were evangelizing her). Her life since has had its dramatic ups and downs, but she is ever “in his grip.”
Donna’s life was ignorance. Her father wasn’t around much, especially after the War began. At the age of three she was evacuated from London because of the blitz, and lived with two families for most of the duration. Looking back, she can see the seeds planted in her early life, such as an occasional Sunday school, that finally sprouted when she read a gospel tract her husband brought home. It struck like an arrow, filling her heart with joy. She was elated, and believed at once, eagerly kneeling to accept Christ as Savior. Over the years, she’s become more grounded, learning that being a Christian doesn’t solve all your problems. But she’s not going anywhere else. Her favorite verse: “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”
Linda felt unloved and insecure. Her father died before she could know him and her step-dad, whom she called Daddy, never took her to his heart; when his own kids were born his favoritism was obvious and hurtful. When a chain of circumstances brought Daddy’s mother to live nearby, this godly woman took Linda to church. Though hostile to faith, her stepdad welcomed the Sunday-morning time he could spend with his “real” kids. They never came to the Lord, but Linda did. If her earthly father didn’t love her, she knew her heavenly Father did. Love was at the center of her conversion, and ever since she has felt secure.
Melissa’s life was darkness. Drug abuse, alcohol, and violence ruled the house where she grew up; she knew little else. Certainly no gospel. Somehow she got through high school and scraped up enough ambition to go to college. It was there, while partying on the weekends and looking for love in all the wrong places, she met some Christian girls who started inviting her to church and Bible study. Her conversion was quick and complete. No backsliding; she changed like that (snap). Her language cleaned up, her sleeping-around stopped, she was delivered from darkness into the kingdom of his glorious light.
Tabitha’s life was marked by fear. She was afraid of everything: danger, death, hell—and this at five years old! She knew about God because her parents taught her, but somehow she missed hearing about God’s provision for sin. This is the classic sequence for conversions in the past: first the wrath, then the grace. She was a tender plant, extraordinarily sensitive. Her conviction was real, even at that age—she remembers lying in bed, unable to sleep after a heinous (to her mind) misdeed that day. She had to get up and confess to her parents, who, in the middle of the night, shared the rally good news with her. She has believed ever since, and her life now is marked with confidence.
Tami was always Christian—can’t remember a time when she didn’t believe. But somewhere between youth and adulthood faith is tested and personalized and purified of baby idols; for her that happened with a traumatizing church split that put a chasm between her and close friends. Who quickly became former friends. She’s grateful for the ways this crisis shored up her faith and reinforced her walk, but the walk itself seemed a foregone conclusion.
As for me, my life was complacence. My family saw to it that I was in church three times a week. I knew all the answers, memorized the verses, sang all the verses (or at least the first, second, and last) of all the standard hymns by heart. Sometimes I got the impression that being a Christian was pretty easy: here’s what God wants, just follow these rules. But meandering along path, not paying much attention, I tripped right into sin. And self-justifying, which is even worse. I could have used a little fear of the Lord, but I never stopped believing—at the back of my mind was always a conviction that what I’d been taught was basically true, and “to whom else can I go?” I walked back the same way I’d walked away, but this time knowing much more about myself and the depth of my need.
We hear that “There are many roads to God.” Actually, no; but there are many paths to the one road. Out of seven women, only three of us grew up in anything like a Christian home, so family isn’t always the path. None were influenced by a husband or boyfriend, so romance isn’t always the path. For two, friends in school showed the way; for one, a step-grandmother; for Tabitha and me (though at vastly different ages), it was the direct and pointed conviction of the Holy Spirit.
“This promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39). Near by and far off, he calls. At this minute, and the next, and the next, He’s calling to himself. I sometimes think about all the murders being committed, all the outrages, all the unspeakable crimes going on right now. Somewhere in this world it’s always midnight and someone who should be sleeping peacefully is instead acting violently.
Back in the days when television stations used to sign off at 11 p.m. , the official tagline was, “It’s eleven o’clock. Do you know where your children are?” God knows where his children are, and right now, this minute, he is calling them out of darkness and into his glorious light. He is creating ornaments for his everlasting tree.
1. It’s unique. The Bible Creation story is not like any other creation story. The Bible God is not like any other God. He’s the only ancient deity to link worship (temples, sacrifices, etc.) to a moral code. He is absolutely central; a person beyond personality, not a representative of window or fire, not an idea, not a philosophy. He escapes easy generalities, and so does his book.
2. It’s eerily familiar. We’re always hearing echoes of it, not only in everyday conversation (broken heart, labor of love, thorn in the flesh, eye for an eye), but in values we take for granted. Whatever our political persuasion, we agree that the hungry should be fed, the injured cared for, the helpless attended to. None of these principles were widely accepted in the ancient world. We believe—or at least we say—that love is the greatest power in the world. Rameses, Nebuchadnezzar, and Julius Caesar would have laughed at that. “Love conquers all” is the story told in the Bible’s thousand-odd pages.
3. It’s historically relevant. Even if you’re skeptical about archaeology finds that support what it says about ancient times, the Bible’s influence on history is well documented. Those who are certain it inspired oppression, crusades, and pogroms should turn over a few more rocks. Though it has been misused as a weapon, the Bible is also (and much more logically) the inspiration for revivals, reforms, and rethinking. It directly inspired the greatest surge in literacy, enterprise, and empowerment the world has ever seen (i.e. the Protestant Reformation). The Enlightenment usually takes credit for those achievements, but without the Reformation there would be no Enlightenment (and after the Enlightenment gleefully kicked away the Scriptural platform it was built on, it collapsed in something called the Reign of Terror).
4. It’s a treasury of ancient literary forms. Poetry, Historical Narrative, Allegory, Practical Instruction, Romance, Apocalyptic Imagery—every style and genre known to the ancient world is easily accessible between these covers, and in a multitude of translations, too.
5. It explains the origins of two of the most consequential people groups in the history of the world: Jews and Christians. You may not like them. Often enough, they haven’t liked each other. One was a relatively small group bound by blood and tradition, which had a wildly outsized influence on world history and a proportionate amount of suffering. (The honor of being a chosen people cuts both ways). The second group is, by design, much more numerous and diverse, bound by faith and a conviction that God loves the world enough to die for it.
6. It tells one Story. A rambling tale, to be sure–any tale would ramble if it took about 1500 years and at least 39 authors to tell it. But the general outline of the story is the model for all stories in all cultures. There’s a setting, a protagonist, an antagonist, a problem, a development of the problem, a climax, and a resolution. Why do we tell stories this way? Whether or not the Bible is the origin for the model, it’s a classic example of the model. And the type of story it tells, of desolation and redemption, still haunts us.
7. It provides the only objective reason for treating human beings as anything other than random accidents, disposable trash, or interchangeable parts to be manipulated. The reason is this: the Bible is very clear that human beings are shaped by God to bear his image. For that very reason, they are not to be willfully murdered (Genesis 9:6) or even carelessly insulted (James 3:9-10). If the value of humans is set by other humans it can shift at any time. If that value is set by God, no one can alter it.
8. It’s the most banned book in history. It’s too reactionary, too subversive, too authoritarian, too libertarian. Tyrants fear its revelation of a rival power; anarchists, modernists, post-modernists, communists, utopians, and well-intentioned progressives hate it for the same reason. The book is a scandal and a trouble—aren’t you curious as to why?
9. It’s still around. And still a best-seller. What explains its remarkable staying power? Unless you are willing to at least become familiar with it, you’ll never know.
I knew it was a lost cause, but late last month I did it anyway: bought a pound of peaches.
October peaches are not peaches, though they may look and feel and even smell fleetingly of the real thing. The rubbery texture is all wrong, for one thing: real peaches are tender with that least little bit of resistance before giving way under your teeth. The juiciness of a late-October imitation is stingy rather than generous, and as for the taste . . . an echo, maybe. Better than “peach flavored” teabags or candy, but nothing like an actual, tree-ripe, farmers-market peach, pouring out authenticity from the first touch to the last slurpy bite.
The same for raspberries, blueberries, cherries, honeydew and almost any other summertime fruit. Less true for apples and pears, but still. That tang, that bite, that complexity in flavor is impossible to duplicate artificially. For lack of a better term, I call it wildness.
The fruit itself isn’t wild—that’s important. The original peach, outside the original Garden, was probably leathery and more sour than sweet. But the potential was tucked within its wrinkly pit, and it was up to countless husbandmen, creative image-bearers, to graft and plant and variegate the fruit that we know today. There may be many varieties, cling and freestone, but they all share the same essence that belongs to that particular fruit and no other. I’ll bet Mesopotamian gardeners and English orchardmen experienced something of the same joy I feel when biting into the first real peach of summer.
Taste and see that the Lord is good. (Ps. 34:8)
A peach, a watermelon, a zucchini, a sweet potato are all good in their own way. There are many, many ways that the Lord is good. He is good as Creator of all the people around our Thanksgiving table, and all the bounty on that table. He is good as the granter of all my senses. He is good in the sweet, and perhaps especially in the sour. He is good in all the ways he’s unlike me. He is good in pleasure (when we often forget him) and even good in pain (where we can’t help but cry out to him). He is good in ease, and even better in difficulty. He is good in the familiar and the unexpected. He is good in sunlight and starlight, clouds and rain. He is good in too little and too much. Not a tame lion, not a loyal servant; not a vendor or a salesman; not predictable, not domesticated, not safe—
But good, in ways we don’t even know yet.
We can’t always feel that goodness, but sometimes we can taste it, even in something as common, and yet as extraordinary, as a peach.
Ralph Moody isn’t as well known as Laura Ingalls Wilder, and didn’t occupy quite the same time period, but he accomplished something similar. My husband and I have been reading through his series of memoirs, which he began writing at the age of 50.
Born in 1898 in Rochester, NY, Ralph’s formative childhood was shaped in Colorado, where the family moved when he was eight years old. There the boy learned to rope and ride, acquiring the nickname “Little Britches” from the local cowboys. After failing at ranching, the Moodys settled in nearby Littleton, where Ralph’s father died as a result of a horse/auto accident. As the eleven-year-old Man of the Family, Ralph took odd jobs and organized the local boys into work teams, and even spent a summer working for a neighbor at The Home Ranch, receiving a man’s wages.
In 1912, for reasons too complicated to detail here, Ralph’s mother abruptly moved the family to her home state of Massachusetts. Starting over with almost nothing, Mary Emma and Company” established a laundry business while Ralph worked a number of side-hustles. All perfectly legitimate, but somehow he got the reputation of a troublemaker and at the age of fourteen he went to New Hampshire to work with his crotchety old grandfather in The Fields of Home. He didn’t get along with Grandfather, but that wasn’t entirely his fault; the old man didn’t get along with anybody.
When America entered World War I, Ralph worked in a munitions plant because the army judged he was too sickly to fight. His puniness was later diagnosed as diabetes, and the family doctor held out one hope for susvival: go west young man, get as much sun as possible, eat lots of green leafy vegetables, and don’t do anything crazy. He obeyed every rule except the last.
Not entirely his fault; the only job he could get upon his arrival in Arizona was performing “horse falls” for the movies. The hard-earned stake he gained from that brief venture began disappearing when he met Lonnie, an overgrown hyperactive kid who talked him into buying a Model T they nicknamed “Shiftless”—a total lemon. Nevertheless, the two young men tore across the Southwest, Shaking the Nickel Bush between breakdowns.
They were flat broke when Ralph hit upon his most productive money-making scheme yet: selling plaster busts to bankers and lawyers in small towns between Phoenix and Santa Fe. (He’d picked up that skill from an engineer at the munitions plant who sold sculpture on the side.) He converted the proceeds to fifty-dollar bills, which he carefully rolled up in the cuffs of his extra-long Levis. It amounted to almost $1000, with which Ralph intended to buy a little ranch and do what he liked best. Unfortunately, when he and Lonnie parted ways the latter absconded with the jeans. Ralph was sure (pretty sure) it wasn’t theft; Lonnie just snuck out in the dark with the wrong pants. And no forwarding address.
We’ve just started reading The Dry Divide, in which our hero hops a freight to Nebraska with one dime in his pocket. The back-jacket copy reveals he will end up with “eight horse teams and the rigs to go with them.” In the next and final volume, Horse of a Different Color, he will court his boyhood sweetheart and settle on a career.
All this, mind you, packed into 25 years: quite a ride, and yet probably not too unusual for the time. Ralph Moody’s America was an open society that allowed for amazing mobility, both up and down. For all his natural gifts, including ingenuity, creativity, and a cheerful disposition, he never made a lot of money and the lean times didn’t end with his marriage. But I doubt he regretted any of it, especially those early years which he recalled much later in loving, meticulous detail. He lived with eyes wide open, observing, remembering, and appreciating.
Though he carried a Bible with him, the family religion relied more on can-doism than Amazing Grace. “God helps those who help themselves” might have been the family motto (although it’s not in the Bible), and one senses more than a little pride in his mother’s determination to accept no help beyond what she absolutely had to. That might not be fair to Mary Emma, who endured severe hardship with amazing resilience and positivity, but she could be stubborn too. As could Ralph’s sister Grace, who could figure and dicker like a man but dropped out of school early because, as Mother said, she wouldn’t need any more education to make a home.
Unlike the Little House books, there’s no overt racism or hostility. “Coloreds” are not particularly numerous out west, and the only Indians Ralph meets are falling off horses for the movie cameras. (As rough as it was for them, it was a lot worse for the horses).
For good and ill, that America is gone: rough-and-tumble, snooze-you-loose, unpredictable, perilous, exhausting, and exhilarating. Racism, favoritism, cops and politicians on the take—nothing new about that. A generally honest, straightforward, enterprising, and upwardly-mobile populace—that was, if not new, then certainly rare. Will we ever see the like again? I wouldn’t bet on it.
