Category Archives: Religion

Special: A “brown bag” Bible study and the end of the world

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Speaking of books, how about the Bible?

Of course, you open a can of worms when you bring it up because immediately it raises a host of questions. For example, which Bible? The KJV, NIE, Jerusalem Bible, RSV? Well, these are translations of one and the same book (although when you compare excepts from two different translations it is hard to believe that they came from the same source). And do we mean the Christian Bible  or are we referring to the Jewish Bible? The Jewish “bible” is called the Tanakh (tuh-KNOch), and contains the same books as the Protestant Old Testament, but in a slightly different order. (Just don’t refer to the Jewish Bible as the “Old” Testament.) The Bible is considered sacred by many, an anachronism by some, and a puzzle by any who have actually tried to read the whole thing through.

But I want to focus only on one topic, one that arose in our church’s “brown bag” bible study a week or so ago. We were discussing the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16:28 , wherein Jesus says,“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (New International Version)

A question was raised: did the people living in Jesus’ time think they were living in the end times? The pastor’s answer was “Yes, quite possibly.” If so, the people in Jesus’ time were in good company. If you recall (it was only a month or so ago), thousands of people were actually terrified that the end of life as we know it was drawing near because some Mayan equivalent of Steve Jobs had developed an uncannily accurate calendar–one that ended mysteriously in December 2012! NASA fielded thousands of phone calls from people who actually thought their number was about to be punched because some nameless Mayan ran out of room on his wheel.

Did you ever wonder how many times human beings actually feared that the world was going to end? I did a search on Wikipedia (not always the most reliable source, but not a bad place to start), and discovered that there were no fewer than 51 predictions of the end of the world in the 20th century (Wikipedia warns that the entire list is incomplete). Then came the year 2000, a “millennial” year, and it led to predictions that the end would come on January 1 (Jerry Falwell); others predicted that the antiChrist would use the confusion over Y2K to begin his takeover of the world.

Predictions about the end time weren’t only made by Christians. Some Romans feared that the year 634 BC–the 120th year after the founding of Rome–would signal the end of the republic. When it didn’t happen, they figured that they had misinterpreted the signs and recalculated that it would occur in 389 BC. It didn’t, and I guess people forgot about it. The barbarians were lurking, and they really did spell the end for Rome eventually.

Speaking of recalculating, who can forget Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping’s prediction that the end would come May 21, 2011. It didn’t. Whoops! Harold announced that he had it wrong. It would be October 21, 2011. It wasn’t, and Camping returned to a life of well-deserved obscurity.

Why is that we humans are so sure that the end is coming in our lifetimes, and so quick to believe every nut job who tells us so? We see “signs” everywhere. The climate is changing. Wars are raging in the middle east. Bacteria are winning against some antibiotics. Cats are sleeping with dogs. But you know what, our parents lived through the 30s and 40s and if you think we have it tough look at the horrors of the world back then, and the horrible economic disasters they lived through that make our problems seem like flea flicking. Every era carries dangers with it, horrors of war, famine, political ineptness (although we seem to be more burdened by this than in some years past–but we had it before too and survived!), and economic crises. Could anxiety over our problems lead us to deflect them by announcing  that the whole world is going to hell? Is it easer to throw up our hands in despair than it is to get up each morning and face our reality, whatever it is? If we’re all going down the tubes, is there at least some comfort in knowing we’re not alone?

The world will probably end someday. All things must I suppose. But it won’t be in our lifetime, probably, and no human being will ever be able to predict the time or day. The Bible tells us that, but somehow we don’t often pay attention to the parts that really make sense: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Matthew 24:36 (NIV).

One thing, however. The end will definitely come for each one of us. And truly, no one knows about that day or hour. Maybe, instead of worrying over the collapse of creation in some cataclysmic cloud cluttered parade of angels we can neither predict nor do anything about we should pay more attention to what the Bible says about how to live our lives so that, when our time comes, we can leave here without regret.

Yeah, stuff like that is in the Bible too. Perhaps that’s why the book is still a big seller.

Copyright 2013 Isaac Morris

REPRISE: A rare experience for the soul (assuming, of course, that you have one)

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 15, 2012. This is a spiritual journey suitable for a Christmas day.

I’ve read many good books, many bad books, and many mediocre books over the course of my lifetime. There is a fourth category, however, which I call “Books-That-Stir-Your-Soul” (BTSYS). You know, the ones that start something warm coursing down your chest, speaking to you in a way you never knew possible, and making you conscious in a new way. Books in this category are few, but include Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Faulkner’s Light in August and As I Lay Dying, and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Your list will probably differ, but you get the idea.

There is now an addition to my BTSYS list, a novel by Marilynne Robinson called Gilead(Picador, New York, 2004). This is not a new book, but I only encountered it upon reviewing Marilynne Robinson’s recent book of essays, When I Was A Child I Read Books.  In the process, I found myself in awe of Ms. Robinson’s ability to express the ineffable with words that wrap themselves around you and then pull tight the knots of meaning in an unforgettable way.

Marilynne Robinson teaches at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Gilead won her a Pulitzer, and her latest book — When I Was A Child I Read Books — has been reviewed on this site. Her message goes against the grain in a society that only believes what it can verify empirically.

The book’s title refers to a place, a small community in Iowa, not far from the Kansas border. The time frame is the early 1950s. The narrator is a man named John Ames, a seventy-six (soon to be seventy-seven) year old Congregationalist minister. The entire book is a letter to his six-year old son.  John’s heart is giving out, and he will soon die. In the letter, he is telling his young son—born of a late-in-life marriage to a much younger woman—about himself, his life, his family, and his faith.

In this letter, Ames confronts his family’s history. He is the son of a preacher, whose grandfather was an abolitionist preacher during the years of “Bloody Kansas.” His grandfather hovers over this story and reminiscences abound about how the old man rode with John Brown and how he sometimes stood in the pulpit with a pistol and bloody clothing. These were the stories John Ames heard from his father, but all he remembered about Grandpa was the way the old man would look at him, as if knowing what was in his mind, and how he had a habit of just taking stuff from other people. The people around Gilead just came to accept the old man’s idiosyncrasies.

The love story between Ames and his wife, who showed up at a service on a Pentecost and who seemed to be taken by the much older man’s kind and gentle ways, is the reredos behind the story: the curtain is parted only slightly in his portrayal of the woman, but she remains largely a mystery to us. We do know that she loved John enough to give him a child in his old age and to fill his life with love long after he lost his first wife and child. When the ne’er do well son of his closest friend, a Presbyterian minister he grew up with, arrives back in Gilead John begins to notice that his wife and son seem taken by the younger man and John’s creeping mortality begins to work on his fears for the future.

The themes that streak though this novel include respect, something people had for one another in earlier times; and light. Images are constantly appearing about the light, and it intrudes upon life in the most unexpected moments, such as when his young son and a friend are playing in the sprinkler:

The sprinkler is a magnificent invention because it exposes raindrops to sunshine. That does occur in nature, but it is rare… I’ve always loved to baptize people, though I have sometimes wished there were more shimmer and splash involved in the way we go about it. Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people  ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.

The phrase “in the way we go about it” refers to the fact that John’s denomination baptizes by sprinkling, not immersion. This issue and many other religious questions pop up in his letter, only to make very evident that there is a real difference between his faith lived and that same faith observed from outside. This is why atheists as well as Christians should read Gilead. Much of what those who attack Christianity base their attacks on are misunderstandings. For example, when confronted with a sincere question about salvation, particularly the famously Calvinist notion that God has pre-determined who is saved and who is damned before they are born, John addresses this question with a startling lack of dogmatism and comes down decidedly on the side of a merciful God.

John Ames is not a man who bases his life on dogma. He is a believer who understands the intricacies of faith and does not rest on its supposed certainties. And, in spite of the fact that Christianity is often seen as a life-denying faith, John’s statement in this letter to the child he will not see grow up makes it quite clear that his faith is anything but. In fact, faith is the element in his life that adds the sparkle to existence.

“Remembering my youth,” writes John, “makes me aware that I never really had enough of it, it was over before I was done with it…Oh, I will miss the world!”

This is a book to ponder, to read and re-read, and to carry through life as we grow older and find ourselves feeling the need to explain why we are the way they are to those we are about to leave behind. Most people don’t really think about it, however. What a shame. Letters like this from parents a just might help to make our children better human beings.

Unfortunately, the notion of what a “better human being” is may seem strange to a world that demands empirical demonstrations for every concept. If you are among those, don’t read this book. Unless you want to rethink some of your basic assumptions.

Rating (5/5)

Copyright Isaac Morris 2012

Not really that different, those Puritans

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Note: This was originally published as a “Sneak Peek” on August 14. This book is now available for purchase. – MM

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. — from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, by Jonathan Edwards

If there is anyone who gave rise to the phrase “fire and damnation” as it applies to sermons, it was Connecticut preacher Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). His fiery “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (quoted above), delivered on July 8, 1741 in Enfield, had his listeners writhing with agony and–in some instances–fainting, so fearsome were his descriptions of eternal damnation.

Edwards, perhaps more than anyone, was responsible for the so-called first “Great Awakening,” and is considered even today to be among the greatest scholars and intellects that America has produced. That he sprang from Puritan stock has allowed us to view the Puritans as–well, you know, puritanical.

But the stereotype that we have of the puritans in New England is misleading. True, they believed in a community of faith, the core of which was the family, and were believers in such Calvinistic doctrines as predestination. But they were far from perfect. In fact, Edwards’ own family had its share of skeletons in its closet. Much of the dirt was swept under the rug when Edwards became a national icon, but 19th century and 20th century scholarship has dragged the whole ugly truth out into the open. Edwards scholar Ava Chamberlain has taken it upon herself to put some meat back on those bones.

In her forthcoming book The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle: Marriage, Murder, and Madness in the Family of Jonathan Edwards (NYU Press, available October 2012), Chamberlain trots out an analysis of Edwards’ grandmother, Elizabeth Tuttle, a woman whose reputation (undeserved, as Chamberlain will explain) painted her as unrepentant and as unpopular as Hester Prynne, the heroine of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

When I first came across this book, I almost passed it over. First of all, it is written by an academic and seemed to have all of the appeal of a doctoral thesis as far as encouraging anyone to read it. Secondly, the subject matter is so peripheral to most people’s experience so as to cause me to ask, “Okay, who the hell is Elizabeth Tuttle and who cares?” But I started reading anyway. As it turns out, I am glad I did.

Who was Elizabeth Tuttle? She was a woman raised in a Puritan family, a family of some means, who rebelled against her religious upbringing and eventually was forced to marry Richard Edwards, a man not so well off, when she was discovered to be with child. Whoa! Isn’t this a book about Puritans? Yes, it is. And one of the most fascinating revelations about the Puritans in this book is that they weren’t really that different from us today, and their children rebelled against authority and engaged in all kinds of unsavory activity–including illicit sex–before settling down and living responsible lives.

Elizabeth wasn’t the only young person to find herself in the family way, and this was not really a problem in Puritan society–so long as the young man made an ‘honest woman’ of his young lady and established a home. The home was the center of Puritan life, and respect for a man was a function of how well he lived his life and how much he contributed to his community. There was a problem however: there was some question of who the father of their child really was. This doubt was the pea in the bed of the princess that would not allow the Edwards’ to settle into a comfortable relationship. Although they remained together for more than 20 years, they eventually divorced amidst talk of infidelity–admitted to by Richard but only alleged of Elizabeth (Oh those wild and wooly Calvinists!).

So why is this important? Well, for one thing, there was a scientific fad of eugenics that energized the late 18th and early 19th century and popular thought had it that madness was hereditary, and madness was equated with sexual misbehavior. If you saw a perfect example of a thoroughly decent and accomplished human being, as Edwards certainly was, then the assumption was that this was partly genetic and could be tracked back to his pedigree. Eugenics was a dangerously misleading philosophy, aptly described by Chamberlain as “marriage of scientific ignorance and class prejudice”, but one of the things that would eventually throw a monkey wrench into the theory was the presence of Elizabeth Tuttle in the background of the famed Jonathan Edwards. If grandma was a mental case, and if mental illness is hereditary, how do you explain a decent, intelligent man who is still considered one of America’s brightest intellectuals and who would eventually serve as a college president? (Perhaps madness jumps across generations: Edwards’ grandson, Aaron Burr, would later have the reputation of being sexually adventurous and would eventually be branded a traitor.)

In fact, the whole Tuttle family was a family marked by tragedy. Not only was Elizabeth (allegedly) promiscuous and rebellious (she would not submit to her husband, which was almost a hanging offense in Puritan New England); but her brother murdered their sister, with whom he had been living, with an axe. (Murders weren’t all that uncommon, but were usually domestic offenses and were almost always committed with a handy utility, a broad axe: guess they should have tried to enact “axe control.”). Later, a member of the family was suspected of having committed suicide, a sure sign of madness. Unfortunately, much of the talk that condemned Elizabeth to the category of madness was found in court records, in actions brought by her husband seeking dissolution, and her voice is not anywhere to be found (nor was Elizabeth herself, who lost everything in the divorce and disappeared from the pages of history).

What I found most fascinating about this book is that it paints a very realistic picture of human beings whom we have always thought of as somehow very different from ourselves, when in fact they were as in need of grace and guidance as any of us today. Chamberlain notes that the dissolution of the marriage of Richard Edwards and Elizabeth Tuttle, is an “old story,”

…but many of its features sound familiar. Although the structure of domestic life has changed dramatically since colonial times, the factors that prevent a family from flourishing have remained remarkably stable. Financial failure, mental illness, intimate violence, and sexual jealousy create marital crises from which many families, in the twenty-first century as well as the seventeenth, do not emerge intact.

There was, however, one big difference. The Puritans were Calvinists whose level of belief brought about “predestination anxiety.” Predestination was the belief that God chooses whom he will save and whom he will condemn, but the problem is none of us knows which list we are on until it’s all over. Furthermore, living a good life if you are predestined to hell makes no difference, nor does living a bad one if you are predestined for heaven. This belief made even more unbearable the pain of family troubles, which were seen as intimations of one’s damnation (and the Tuttles had their share of suffering), and so such belief probably did more to bring about dis-ease than it did comfort.

It also makes it easy to understand why people fainted when Jonathan Edwards described the horrors of hell: who knew for sure they weren’t going there? Sure would make me nervous!

Copyright 2012 Isaac Morris

November 18, 1978: The Horror of Jonestown

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Thirty-four years ago, November 18, 1978, America learned that a California congressman–Leo Ryan–and four others were murdered as they tried to board a plane on a remote airstrip in a South American country called Guyana. The news filtered down that the killers were members of an organization known as The Peoples Temple, located in Guyana. Soon, the country was horrified to learn that, after the airstrip murders, more than 900 men, women, and children allegedly committed mass suicide, along with their leader–a man by the innocuous name of Jim Jones.

Americans watched in disbelief as the story developed. Jim Jones had developed a large following of people, largely African Americans, in Indianapolis, and later in Redwood, California. The Temple followers constituted a “gathering,” many surrendering their government paychecks to the church in a communistic sharing, and following the orders of their leader, the dark, handsome, charismatic Jones. Jones was praised for his charitable and social endeavors, and courted by liberal politicians who were dying to be photographed with him. Rosalynn Carter was among those whose smiling face can be seen in an archival photo next to the man in sunglasses. (Rosalynn apparently had a poor sixth-sense about what constituted a good photo-op; she was once photographed with Democratic supporter John Wayne Gacy. Both are smiling.)

What happened? We now know that the horror that transpired in the jungle following the murder of Ryan and members of his entourage was not a mass suicide. Some may have lined up to “drink the Kool Aid” (yes, Jonestown was the source of that now-familiar expression); but among those who died were 200 children, and these were injected with the cyanide. Many adults who did not willingly submit were injected as well, their escape blocked by men with rifles. Jones wanted his “revolutionary statement” to be something of a consensus, even if he had to force it on his followers. Jones died of a single gunshot wound to the head, probably self-inflicted.

The more important questions are, why did it happen, and how could it happen? This has been the subject of many articles, documentaries, and almost seventy books ever since the tragedy. How could decent, caring, God-fearing human beings allow themselves to surrender their lives into the hands of another human being? What altruistic or religious instincts made it possible for them to walk willingly into arms of a megalomaniac?

Could something like this happen again?

Among the many  books written about Jonestown, some of the best that I have read include Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People, by Tim Reiterman (Tarcher; First Edition edition, 2008; 688 pages). This is no ivory tower treatment. Reiterman, who was an AP correspondent traveling with Ryan’s entourage, was wounded during the Port Kaituma attack that killed Ryan and four others.

An affidavit of Deborah Layton’s came to the attention of Rep. Leo Ryan (D-CA)  and helped put him on the path to Guyana.  Image: AP

There are several books written by survivors, or people who managed to escape from Jonestown before the tragedy unfolded. My favorite by far is Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the People’s Temple, by Deborah Layton (Anchor, 1999; 368 pages). Deborah’s brother, Larry Layton, left Jonestown with Ryan posing as a defector. He boarded the plane, and once the tractor arrived hauling the assassins, he opened fire. He was subdued, and later was the only Jonestown shooter to be convicted.

Deborah, unlike her brother, knew things were totally screwed up in Jonestown and managed to escape several months before the murders. She had been a trusted insider who managed the Temple’s money. She had been raped by Jones, and came to understand that the man was slowly devouring every soul that came under his spell.

Deborah’s story is made more tragic because just about her whole family fell under the the spell cast by James Warran Jones. The story of the Layton family’s involvement with Peoples Temple was beautifully told by Min S. Yee in In My Father’s House: The Story of the Layton Family and the Reverend Jim Jones (New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1981). This book isn’t widely available (I found it at the local library); but it is the best I have read because it conveys the high price a madman can exact from good and decent people. Her mother died in Jonestown shortly before the massacre, and Deborah lost two sisters-in-law and her two-year old nephew in the jungle.  Her brother Larry was released from prison in 2002 (to this day he protests his innocence). Deborah doesn’t have many of her once-large family left. Today, she lives in the Bay area along with her daughter.

I came to know Layton somewhat, through phone conversations and e-mail correspondence, after reading this book (read my 2002 review on Amazon.com). A gifted writer, she writes of her escape in such a way as to create suspense–even though you know that she got out you are praying that she will make it!

The fascination with Jonestown hasn’t abated, and the recent declassification of government files has added much to the story for writers like Julia Scheeres, whose book  A Thousand Lives appeared just last year (Free Press, 2011; 320 pages). This I haven’t read, but it is on my short list.

There are documentaries about Jonestown available as well. The best that I have seen is Jonestown: Life and Death of the Peoples Temple, which was done for PBS and American Experience in recent years. Deborah Layton is among those interviewed. Warning: This is intense. I showed it to my World Religions class a few semesters ago; one or two students had to leave the room.

When the 900 plus human beings were discovered in the jungles of Guyana shortly after they were murdered, the body of Jones was found on the stage of the pavilion under a sign that read: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

On November 28, we remember 900 human beings, most of them decent people in search of a better life, one filled with meaning, who fell victim to a man who knew how to manipulate those needs. This is something we must remember, so as never to allow it to happen again.

Copyright Isaac Morris 2012