Of course, the painting doesn't depict what really happened in the 1948 movie Fort Apache. Col. Thursday, played by Henry Fonda, is a stubborn and arrogant leader, unfamiliar with the ways of the West in general and of the Apaches in particular. Ignoring the sage advice of Captain Yorke (John Wayne), he foolishly leads his men into an ambush (a la Custer--note the title of the painting referred to above), where they are slaughtered by Apaches with superior numbers and superior position. Despite knowing that Thursday's death was the result of poor leadership, and despite their personal animosity toward one another, Yorke does not correct the reporter's understanding of the battle in which Thursday was killed. On the contrary, he glorifies Thursday's martial abilities and does not mention his own personal issues with his former commander. In a similar way, David glorifies Saul's prowess in battle and the love that the people had for him. He does not mention his own run-ins with Saul, which included Saul's attempts to hunt David down and kill him. Why did David speak of Saul in such a positive way? One reason might have been pragmatic politics (Realpolitik). Saul had many devoted followers, and if David hoped to persuade them to follow him, he would need to ingratiate himself to them; praising Saul as a valiant warrior was a good way to accomplish this goal. Another possibility is the common custom of avoiding speaking ill of the dead, especially the recently dead, whether out of courtesy or out of a fear of the recently departed spirit. One might also argue the David's elegy concerning Saul was an accurate assessment of that aspect of Saul's life. Saul was, after all, a valiant warrior, who had led his people to many victories over their enemies, despite his personal failings. Of course, there is also the matter of David's love for Jonathan, and Jonathan's love in turn for his father Saul. David might have conceived his song as a tribute primarily to Jonathan, but he could hardly disparage Saul while praising Jonathan, since their fates were identical. From the viewpoint of the final redactor of the story, I suspect that the first explanation best explains the reason for the song's inclusion in the text, though other factors might well have been at play as well. I would like to focus, however, on the need that people often seem to have to portray those who have died in battle as valiant warriors, as though that were something especially praiseworthy. From a Christian perspective, I think that a soldier's heroics in battle should first of all not be exaggerated, as they were in the tragic case of Pat Tillman, whose family was told that he died charging up a hill to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, when in truth he was accidentally killed by friendly fire. Stories that exaggerate the circumstances of a soldier's death only serve to glorify warfare itself, and they cheapen the true bravery of the soldier who lost his or her life. Second, a soldier's heroics in battle--even if real--should not be the main thing that people remember about his or her life. Certainly a family can receive some comfort in knowing that their loved one died saving others, if that is the case, but the manner of a person's death shouldn't overshadow the meaning of their life. A few minutes or seconds at the end of life tell less about a person than the preceding twenty or thirty or eighty years. (What are the implications for the Christian focus on Jesus' death?) If we as a society ever hope to move beyond the scourge of war, we must learn not to glorify or glamorize violent deaths.Newspaper reporter: Have you seen the painting of "Thursday's Last Stand"?
Captain Yorke: Yes, I saw it when last I was in Washington.
Newspaper reporter: [to other reporters] There were these massed columns of Apaches and Thursday and his men riding in among them!
Captain Yorke: [knowing what really happened] Correct in every detail.
Dilbert author Scott Adams includes this chapter, entitled "Holy Lands," in his e-book, God's Debris (available for free download from the Dilbert Web site). The wise sage discusses the foolhardiness of designating a piece of land "holy," since its absolute location in the solar system and galaxy is constantly moving, and since even its soil, water, and vegetation are different today than they were in ancient times when the events the land commemorates occurred. The poet of Lamentations had good reason to mourn the loss of his own holy land. The Babylonians had captured it, burned the temple and knocked down the walls of Jerusalem, effectively desecrating the holiness of the land. Where were the lands allotted to the tribe of Judah, or Ephraim, or Benjamin? They were gone, perhaps forever. In the midst of his own devastating sense of loss, the poet makes a startling discovery: he has really not lost anything at all! His small allotment of land from his ancestors might be gone, but he discovered a much more important inheritance: God. "The Lord is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The Jewish Zionists who want the boundaries of Eretz Israel restored to the state of Israel have missed the point. So have the Christian dispensationalists who are salivating over the prospect of war in the Middle East, believing that it will spark Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. And so have the most radical of the Palestinians, who can't conceive of a Palestinian state that doesn't have Jerusalem as its capital. Focus on holy cities and holy lands leads, as Adams's sage indicates, inevitably to war. Land may have important historical, cultural, and emotional value, and it often makes sense to allow a group of people who consider the land sacred to have significant control over its disposition (e.g., the Sioux and the Black Hills in the Dakotas). However, when three groups of people consider a land holy, compromise is necessary, along with a reminder that the holiness that people attribute to a land is only relative; ultimate holiness resides only in God. Access to the holy God does not require physical proximity to a piece of property."What makes a holy land holy?" he asked.
"Well, usually it's because some important religious event took place there."
"What does it mean to say that something took place in a particular location when we know that the earth is constantly in motion, rotating on its axis and orbiting the sun? And we're in a moving galaxy that is part of an expanding universe. Even if you had a spaceship and could fly anywhere, you can never return to the location of a past event. There would be no equivalent of the past location because location depends on your distance from other objects, and all objects in the universe would have moved considerably by then."
"I see your point, but on Earth the holy places keep their relationship to other things on Earth, and those things don't move much," I said.
"Let's say you dug up all the dirt and rocks and vegetation of a holy place and moved it someplace else, leaving nothing but a hole that is one mile deep in the original location. Would the holy land now be the new location where you put the dirt and rocks and vegetation, or the old location with the hole?"
"I think both would be considered holy," I said, hedging my bets.
"Suppose you took only the very top layer of soil and vegetation from the holy place, the newer stuff that blew in or grew after the religious event occurred thousands of years ago. Would the place you dumped the topsoil and vegetation be holy?"
"That's a little trickier," I said. "I'll say the new location isn't holy because the topsoil that you moved there isn't itself holy, it was only in contact with holy land. If holy land could turn anything that touched it into more holy land, then the whole planet would be holy."
The old man smiled. "The concept of location is a useful delusion when applied to real estate ownership, or when giving someone directions to the store. But when it is viewed through the eyes of an omnipotent God, the concept of location is absurd.
"While we speak, nations are arming themselves to fight for control of lands they consider holy. They are trapped in the delusion that locations are real things, not just fictions of the mind. Many will die."
For another discussion of this passage, click here.
The U.S. Senate Appropriation Committee met this week to vote on how to allocate money for foreign operations. Bread for the World, the ONE Campaign, and others engaged in a calling campaign to urge Senators to allocate as much as possible to hunger relief and AIDS treatment and prevention. Regardless of how much money is eventually included in the budget, however, it will be far below the actual needs of the world's poor. Several years ago the world's wealthiest nations met and agreed to set a target of 0.7% of the Gross National Product for annual foreign aid spending. In 2005, the U.S. gave the largest total amount of money to foreign aid of any country, but because of the size of the U.S. economy, it was the next to lowest amount of foreign aid spending in percentage terms, only 0.22%. That percentage rate put the U.S. behind countries such as Greece (0.24%), Japan (0.28%), Canada (0.34%), France (0.47%), the U.K. (0.48%), Denmark (0.81%), and Norway (0.93%). We did, however, edge out Portugal (0.21%). In today's reading from 2 Corinthians, Paul challenges his readers to give to those who are in need. He suggests this principle of giving: "It is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need." There is no doubt that the U.S. has been blessed with a huge abundance of wealth. The world's second richest man, Warren Buffett, this week pledged to donate about $30 billion to charity, much of it to the foundation established by the world's richest man, Bill Gates. Buffett and Gates are leading the way in the U.S. private sector, donating huge amounts of money to health, education, and other aid programs worldwide. Those of us who don't have the fortunes of Buffett and Gates can't give as much, but we can give. Furthermore, we can urge our government representatives in the strongest terms to donate a fair amount to debt relief, health programs, AIDS and malaria prevention, and other important causes. The U.S. has spent something like $300 billion on the war in Iraq since 2003, an amount the dwarfs even the huge combined wealth of Gates and Buffett. Imagine if that money had been spent instead on feeding programs, education, health care, and creation of infrastructure in the poorest parts of the world, including the Middle East. The best way to eliminate terrorists is to make them your allies. No, spending money won't get rid of every single terrorist in the world, but if done in the right spirit, it will show the world that they have no reason to fear the U.S., that we respect them as people, and that we genuinely care about their well-being. Isn't that an important part of the message that we as Christians should be spreading?
For another discussion of this passage, click here.
One of the most powerful movies of the twentieth century offers viewers a glimpse at family life after a tragedy has occurred. Ordinary People opens about a year after the drowning death of Buck Jarrett, a popular high school boy whose loss leave behind his parents and younger brother, Conrad. Conrad has recently returned from a stay at a psychiatric hospital, where he was sent after trying to kill himself in the wake of his brother's death. The movie focuses on "Connie" as he tries to adjust to life without Buck. That's not easy, because he was close to Buck, and they shared many of the same friends. Moreover, Buck was older, more outgoing, made better grades, and was a better athlete than Connie. On top of all that, Buck, it turns out, had been his mother's favorite. Connie struggles with feelings of inadequacy, coupled with guilt--he was with his brother when he drowned, but was unable to save him. His earlier suicide attempt hints at the struggle going on in Connie's head: is a meaningful life possible when you are younger, shyer, less popular, and less successful than your older brother? In today's gospel story, Jesus is on his way to Jairus's house, and he stops along the way to heal a woman with a chronic flow of blood. I've read this story innumerable times, but this time a small detail caught my eye that I hadn't ever noticed before. As Jesus went into Jairus's house, Mark says he took with him "Peter, James, and John, the brother of James." When Mark, the first gospel to be written, was composed, it was necessary for the author to identify exactly which John he was talking about. It was John, the brother of James. Earlier in the gospel he makes the same identification (Mark 3:17). John is regularly listed second in the gospels, apparently because James was older and/or more prominent in some way. Even though, or perhaps because, James was executed fairly early in the history of the church, still John was identified as James's brother around 70 C.E., when Mark was probably written. Over time, however, the situation changed. When Luke and Acts were written a decade or two later, John had established himself as the more prominent of the two brothers. In fact, when Luke describes James's martyrdom, he calls him "James, the brother of John" (Acts 12:2). Church tradition says that John lived longer than any of the other disciples, finally dying in Ephesus after a long and fruitful life. We don't know what John's relationship was with his older brother, or whether he had ever felt overshadowed or even intimidated by him, but it wouldn't be surprising if he had been. I was the oldest of three children, so I look at this situation from the perspective of the older brother. I made pretty good grades in school and was reasonably successful in my academic career, and I sometimes felt a little sorry for my sister and brother who had to come along behind me. The problem in their cases wouldn't have been with my parents, who were always supportive of all of us, but perhaps with teachers that we had in common or church leaders who had gotten to know me before they came along. Maybe they felt some self-inflicted pressure to "measure up" in those early years as well. I'm happy to say that each has emerged apparently undaunted from whatever shadow I might have cast years ago, but I suspect that the situation is not always the same with other families. I'm aware of families in which the parents favor one sibling--not always the oldest--over the others. I know there are also people who feel that they can't live up to the standard of their older (or younger) brother or sister, so they don't even try. What all these people--parents and children alike--need to realize is that it's not a contest. God has endowed each of us with the gifts, talents, and opportunities that God wants us to have. One sibling may be more successful academically, and another may prosper in business, while another may emphasize raising a healthy family. The point is that all children--oldest, youngest, middle, and only children--are special in the eyes of God, and with God's help, they can accomplish great things.
For another discussion of this passage, click here.