Tim Stafford's Blog, page 34

Shameless Commerce

So, some of you have purchased Birmingham, and some of you have actually read it. Yay! A few have actually written very nice reviews on Amazon. Yay Yay! Thanks.

The price for the print edition ($12.99) is roughly the least that Amazon will let me charge. Here’s the link on Amazon (also for Kindle). Here it is for Barnes & Noble (discounted to $8.29).

Here’s the really good deal for ebooks: I can now offer a one-week special price of $2.99 on Smashwords.com. You can download in just about any format. The special coupon is KZ46Q. It expires on March 23, so you have to act soon.

You can send this coupon to friends and family and anybody else…. Please do.

Now I will stop bothering you…..

Amour?

I can’t honestly urge anybody to see “Amour,” the French film that won the Oscar for best foreign film. It’s difficult to watch. If you want to see it–and it’s a fine movie–I’d encourage you to go with others who can talk it through afterwards. You can’t see “Amour” without thinking hard about your life.

The story is of two aging French music teachers. The wife, Anne, suffers a stroke. We watch as she declines in agonizing slow motion, and her husband Georges attempts to care for her. We see all the indignities, the terror and frustration. Nothing is romanticized; there are no compensations. These two clearly love each other, and the title, “Love,” is not ironic. But it’s not inspiring, either.

This kind of “amour” isn’t sweet or touching or motivating. This is love full of dread and duty.

That’s why you need people with whom to talk it through. The film presents the end of life for Georges and Anne the way they experience it: as a prison with no exit. But does it have to be that way? They see suicide as the only option. But there are actually many choices that they refuse.

They choose to be alone in their plight. They are not on terribly good terms with their daughter, who lives far away, but she wants to help, and offers to help. Georges rebuffs her.

He is reluctant to look for help, beyond a nurse who comes three times a week. Georges doesn’t get respite. He sees no one–no friends, no professional helpers. Hospice is not on board.

These two have built genteel, dignified lives. They love music. They inhabit a charming apartment full of their comforts. They have made it their castle. Facing terribly hard reality, they pull up the drawbridge.

You sense that all their lives they have cultivated independence, even from each other. Anne bristles against being cared for. She won’t listen to music, even a CD sent by one of her students, a successful pianist. The exigencies of care force Georges and Anne as close together as two humans can be, but there is little or no laughter in the way they embrace their indignities, only duty. And love. Genuine love.

But love is not enough. They need help, all kinds of help. They need community. Even with the best of help, what they go through is devastatingly hard. But hard is not the same as miserable. And they are fundamentally, abjectly miserable.

“Amour” pushes you to ask, “What would I do differently?” Lots of people have created charming, dignified lives that go well as long as they are healthy and have enough money. When they lose their health or their money, they may try to pull back into themselves, like a snail retreating into its shell. Georges and Anne do.  It’s just too undignified to admit people into their castle, to disturb their calculated life. They are stoics in the classical sense: their well-cultivated virtues will have to see them through.

It’s better to be undignified. It’s better to ask for help. It’s better to laugh and cry together. It’s better to be weak. It’s better to be dependent. It’s better to have friends. It’s better to rely on your family.

It’s still hard.

Testimony

I was in Kenya when President Obama was inaugurated for his second term. The occasion came as a slight surprise to me, as I had not planned my trip there with Obama in mind. In the odd magic of coincidence, I had been in Kenya the last time Obama was inaugurated. Which meant that, unless the US Constitution had been changed without my notice, it had been exactly four years between my visits to Kenya.

That made me reflect on the changes those four years have brought me. Then, my wife Popie and I had gone for a 3 month visit, wondering whether we should relocate to Kenya. We had spent four years there early in our married life, and always thought we might someday go back. Now, with our kids launched, nothing held us in California. We wondered whether there was a job in Kenya, or a calling that we should answer. We decided to take a sabbatical, a long visit that would give us a chance to really investigate possibilities.

In the background for me was a lot of frustration with my work. Most of it had to do with the stresses in publishing brought on by the digital revolution. Someday publishing is going to find a new normal that will be a lot better than the old one. The transition, though, is difficult. The old economic models don’t work. The problems are different for newspapers than for magazines than for books. But in each case, there is tremendous uncertainty. And uncertainty leads to risk-averse publishing.

For a writer like me, that is bad news. Once upon a time you just needed to be a good writer. Now there’s a level of scrutiny that never used to be. Every discussion is played out against a background of fearfulness: this business could go bankrupt if we mess up. A writer is expected to offer a marketing platform. You are expected to prove that your project will win the day. It’s stressful. It makes for difficult relationships with editors.

So while I went to Nairobi open to new callings, I was also supremely fed up.

In Nairobi I spent considerable amounts of time investigating publishing possibilities. Popie looked at counseling and teaching. We talked to a good many friends. We looked for light. Popie and I asked God to make our direction clear.

And we found opportunities. There was need, and an obvious eagerness to work with us.

Nevertheless, sometime late in our sabbatical we turned to each other and discovered that each independently had no sense at all that we were supposed to live in Nairobi. On the contrary, we had a very clear sense that we were supposed to go back to California and keep doing what we have been doing all along.

It wasn’t the answer we were expecting. But it did bring a certain amount of peace.

Four years later, visiting Nairobi again, I was struck by what had occurred since. Three major projects have fallen into my lap. I didn’t seek them. I really had no idea of them at all.

One was my book on miracles. An editor asked me to consider it. I was very skeptical, and put him off repeatedly before eventually deciding to do it.

The second was a book on evolution and creation, which a foundation offered to support financially. I would never have attempted all the research without their support.

The third is what took me back to Nairobi: a Bible with notes on justice, produced as a global project. We call it God’s Justice. I’m the editorial director.  My friend Scott Bolinder approached me with it last spring, out of the blue.

None of these was my idea, but each one I have most thoroughly enjoyed. They use my gifts in ways I could not have anticipated. They have stimulated and educated me– a high value in my life. And I believe/hope that they will prove genuinely significant.

I tell this for the benefit of those who are frustrated and unsure of direction. I can’t claim that your life will work out as mine has. I believe these things are individually tailored. I do want to testify, in thanks to God, that I asked for direction and received it. That direction has led me to surprises that I would not have anticipated, and that I would not want to have missed.

Bitter Pills and American Medicine

My brother-in-law Hank Herrod, former dean of the University of Tennessee medical school, encouraged me to read Time Magazine‘s cover story on the cost of medical care. I always pay attention to my brother-in-law, especially when he tells me something about medicine, so I read the article online. It took a long time–it’s a long, long article–and it made me sick. The guts of the article follow patients through their hospital care and the back-breaking charges they incur. It explains in detail what those charges are and how they are decided. If you think American medicine is based on market economics, think again.

Evil and the Justice of God

I very much liked N.T. Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God. The chapter on the cross struck me most. Here are a few selected quotations:

“[The Last Supper] was Jesus’ own chosen way of expressing and explaining to his followers, then and ever since, what his death was all about. It wasn’t a theory, we note, but an action (a warning to all atonement theorists ever since, and perhaps an indication of why the church has never incorporated a specific defining clause about the atonement in its great creeds). p. 91

“What the Gospels offer is not a philosophical explanation of evil, what it is or why it’s there, nor a set of suggestions for how we might adjust our lifestyles so that evil will mysteriously disappear from the world, but the story of an event in which the living God deals with it.” p. 93

“The ‘problem of evil’ is not simply or purely a ‘cosmic’ thing; it is also a problem about me. And God has dealt with the problem on the cross of his Son, the Messiah. That is why some Christian traditions venerate the cross itself, just as we speak of worshiping the ground on which our beloved is walking. The cross is the place where, and the means by which, God loved us to the uttermost.” p. 97

State of the Church

The New York Times’ Ross Douthat has an excellent post on the state of American Catholicism. His very balanced views–which he explains in detail–can be summed up by his concluding sentence:

There is rubble everywhere, and fallen arches and sagging walls and cracking ceilings — but there is also still a foundation of belief upon which a stronger church might yet be built.

I would assess American Protestantism similarly. We are losing (fast) the easy sense of cultural authority and institutional security. We aren’t living in Christendom. The general culture doesn’t respect us, the younger generation has no plans to come back to church once they have children. Even the faithful have their doubts and their ideas.

Roughly speaking, we are becoming like Europe–much less churched, much less prone to pay attention to the church. There are advantages in that. When I visit the UK I’m struck that active Christians are a tiny sliver of the population but they don’t seem surprised or dismayed by it. That may be a healthier place to start from.

Those in Prison

In the last week I’ve been reminded that “those in prison” are not merely historical. I first heard news of Zac Niringiye, a Ugandan friend, being arrested for distributing brochures protesting governmental corruption. Zac is a former Anglican bishop. He wasn’t held long but is under orders to report regularly to the police station–a demand that is a way of threatening him with trouble if he keeps making trouble, I assume. Zac is helping to organize regular protests called Black Monday, in which people wear black each week to express their feelings about governmental theft of public resources.

I was glad to be on the receiving end of a series of email reports and requests to pray for Zac’s well being. Zac has friends all over the world.

Not so much another friend, Mehrdad, whom I met at an international literature conference a few years ago. He was a young, engaging, hopeful Iranian, who told a remarkable story about coming to faith in Christ through reading the Bible. He found it very difficult to locate a Christian who could explain the faith to him; when he eventually found a church, the members were too afraid to let him in. Eventually he located another church, where he became a member leading a large cohort of young people.

Now Mehrdad, I am told, is in an Iranian prison because of his Christian faith. He was arrested about a year ago and imprisoned for some months. He was released, but his business was confiscated. Now he is imprisoned again. His wife, a poet whom I also met, is desperate.

Kenya Elections

This New York Times piece is a comprehensive and accurate description of the situation in Kenya as the country prepares for the March 4 elections. A lot is at stake, not just for Kenya but for the region. Despite the disaster of the last election five years ago, Kenya has made significant progress in government. Their new constitution has spread power regionally, they have a reasonably free press, and people expect to vote and for their votes to count. The courts also seem to have improved.

Yet many very negative forces remain. If they take over the election by force or fraud, a sense of hopelessness (at least) will grow. If democracy prevails, it will be a significant step upward and a positive regional example.

I’m cautiously hopeful.

Birmingham is here!!!!

This is a big day for me! After years of waiting I can finally announce that my novel Birmingham is available!

It’s at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, in both ebook and paperback formats.

The novel is set in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963–fifty years ago, when Martin Luther King joined Fred Shuttlesworth in leading what is sometimes referred to as the children’s crusade. This was a turning point for the civil rights movement–children facing into the dogs and firehoses of the Birmingham police.

My story begins with a white seminary student who shows up to help the protests–penniless, naive, idealistic. He gets taken in by the movement and put to work, even though his presence is both illegal and dangerous. Chris Wright is his name, and as the protests advance over weeks of turmoil and frustration, he gets entangled with a faction of the Ku Klux Klan and with Dorcas Jones, a young, hard-nosed agitator.

I wrote the novel because I find these events so fascinating, and so easily forgotten. It was much more complicated than the view you will get from the 50th anniversary celebrations this May!

In many ways, our nation was on trial. We came through–but only because of the courage and vision of countless individuals, mostly poor, Bible-believing African-Americans. This was not a triumph of the elites. It was a triumph of the powerless and the despised.

Please buy Birmingham for yourself and all your friends and relations. If you like it, please write a brief review on Amazon (or any other website). If you have a blog, please feature the book. If you have a book group, please consider reading Birmingham together.

Paul and Justice

In trying to understand the whole Bible as a story of justice, probably the hardest task for me is to integrate Paul. I have read him through Lutheran eyes for so long, with its two kingdoms mindset, that I tend to see only personal salvation.

Thinking about Paul’s own biography suggests that he did care deeply about justice. He treated the offering for the Jerusalem poor almost obsessively, putting his own life and ministry at stake to do it. Reconciliation, not just with God, but between different groups in society, was something he harped on as a fundamental of the gospel. He wrote extensively about the treatment of widows, a fundamental justice issue. Paul never considered salvation a private matter, any more than the resurrection was a private matter. He looked to see the whole cosmos redeemed.

His theology of justice is somewhat obscured by translation issues. The word usually translated “righteousness,” so prominent in his thinking, is closer to “justice” than to “personal rectitude.”

In addition, Jesus’ title as “Christ” has been understood in all sorts of exotic ways, but the Hebrew word, “Messiah,” clearly means king, with all the public justice implied by that term. Just try reading Paul’s letters substituting “justice” for “righteousness” and “King” for “Christ” and you will see that something more than personal salvation is at stake.

Of course, a wide understanding of justice, “God setting things right,” has to include personal salvation. We have to be set right. Yet there is more. Romans launches its grand theology with the words, “the righteousness of God is revealed,” and that righteousness–justice, covenant faithfulness–lies in God completing his plan begun with Abraham, to bless all the world through his chosen people.

Through this people, Paul believes, God is setting things right. He never tires of telling how the death and resurrection of Jesus is the key to that– the irruption of the “day of the Lord” into the very middle of history. Faith places us in the community of God’s people living “in the Messiah.” And the Holy Spirit, so central to Paul, enables us to become more than chosen–a people of shalom and justice.

This is not justice as some of us would expect to see it. For one thing, Paul doesn’t seem to see the Roman government as the fount of evil. Implicitly he attacks the pretensions of Caesar to be Lord, but (famously in Romans 13) he mainly sees the government as benign, at least potentially. Nor does Paul see slavery as an evil to be frontally attacked. Nor male patriarchy. He is not conventionally revolutionary at all.

Rather, his beliefs subvert slavery and patriarchy and (pretentious) government by focusing on something much more powerful and much more important. There is only one Lord to be worshiped, and no male and female, slave and free in his family. Paul works to build cells of Christians who are independent of Rome–radically disinterested–and an unthinkable mix of classes, religions and statuses. (The very thought of slave and free joining together as complete equals staggers the Roman mind.)

It is through such communities that Paul sees ultimate justice done. Just as God chose Israel to bring in his kingdom, so the Messiah, Israel’s true King, has chosen these bands to embody his rule. The day is coming for justice to be done in a complete renewal.

A believable story? Perhaps as believable as the assertion that Israel was chosen to bring blessings to the whole world, or that Jesus, though executed as a criminal, is that world’s true king. Perhaps as believable as the promise made to Abraham in his old age, that he and Sarah would have a son. “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” So we too live by faith.