Rick Perry, Biblical Ignoramus

Presidental hopeful Rick Perry loves quoting
the Bible. Thinking about it, not so much.

Outgoing Texas governor Rick Perry, openly tooling himself up for another Presidential run in 2016 despite currently being under indictment for public corruption, granted the Washington Post a not-very-in-depth interview regarding his long-term policy position and aspiring national agenda. The resultant low-tension puff piece is particularly galling because Washington’s greatest lawmakers read the Post daily. Perry’s festival of ignorance would appear merely half-assed in regional urban newspapers. In Washington, such worshipful fawning becomes outright dangerous.

One quote is particularly galling. Asked about efforts to address poverty in Texas, Perry gave the verbal equivalent of a pious shrug: “Biblically, the poor are always going to be with us in some form or fashion.” This line, beloved of conservative Christian politicians everywhere, recurs whenever somebody questions whether government, as the embodiment of popular will, should undertake efforts to alleviate poverty. It derives from Matthew 26:11, spoken by Christ just before the Crucifixion.

Serious theologians debate what this citation means; I cannot resolve millennia-old debates here. However, the response to Perry’s statement widely overlooks that Jesus, in this passage, quotes Deuteronomy 15. Matthew, considered the most Jewish of the four canonical Gospels, includes frequent references to the Torah, the Books of the Law. Matthew assumes throughgoing Biblical literacy which his First-Century Jewish audience could’ve taken for granted, but which many modern audiences, including conservative Christians, just don’t share.

The Evangelist Matthew's mainly Jewish
audience studied Scripture the way
we study writing and math

Most of Deuteronomy 15 addresses issues of indebtedness among Hebrews. (Five verses deal with animal sacrifice.) Then as now, powerful people used debts as instruments of social control, encouraging poor to cover old debts through further borrowing—the Insta-Cash Advance companies of ancient Canaan. Hebrew Scripture unambiguously declares lending at interest sinful, because the recipient of such loans becomes subservient to the debt owner, an unacceptable form of peonage. Americans holding underwater mortgages can sympathize.

Witness the progression of concepts through Deuteronomy 15:

Verse 4: “[T]here need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you…”

Verse 7: “If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them.”

Verse 11: “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”

That’s quite the trajectory. From “no poor” to “if” to “always.” Apparently God, Moses, or whoever, realized that a gap exists between humanitarian ideals and reality, especially where money intrudes. Yet, even amid these changing qualifiers, one point remains constant: how we treat the poor among us matters.

Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and others have recently justified deep cuts in America’s poverty protection network, claiming that defunding food stamps and AFDC empowers poor citizens to find jobs. This tortured logic makes perfect sense among people substantially untouched by recent economic circumstances. America’s financial magnates gamble recklessly on paper debt instruments, ship manufacturing jobs overseas, manipulate loopholes to evade lawful and moral taxes—then subsidize legislators to say: “If you’re poor, get a job.”

Teapublicans like Rand Paul love Biblical
language. They're somewhat squishier
on the actual Bible.

Oh, and don’t they love Biblical quotations to create retrospective moral justifications. Besides Perry’s misuse of Matthew, many love citing 2 Thessalonians 3:10—“The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” These references always get flung willy-nilly, without contextual reference, mere orphan quotes. They provide moral armor for actions which, taken otherwise, would offend citizens’ standards of common decency. But they subvert what the passages mean, which undermines shared faith in Biblical authority.

Rhetoricians call this “quote mining”; Biblical scholars call it “prooftexting.” Theologians have another word for such naked misuse of Scripture: “heresy.” Do nominal Christians like Perry really start out finding ways to empower poor Americans, and progress to slashing the safety net? Of course not. They want steep tax reductions for their backers, subsidized by undercutting public services. Biblical citations permit them to cover their asses retrospectively, a cynical behavior completely antithetical to Biblical ethics.

Perry uses Biblical language to fatalistically opt against meaningful action. But his source specifically requires responsibility for the less fortunate. Public conservatives love quoting Biblical law regarding sexual and reproductive issues; yet if we truly believe American law derives from Scripture, that means all of Scripture, not just whatever makes well-heeled white guys feel righteous. The Torah spends pages and pages on how we treat the poor. Come Judgment Day, ignorance will provide no defense.

Dear Christians: Please Stop Boring the World

Phil Rehberg, The Road to New Life: The Way Of Jesus Of Nazareth

Many moons ago, my local pastor offered what he called a “Bible 101” course for all congregants interested in learning more about the Good Book. He even opened it to community members, including interested unbelievers. Though I suspected he’d lowball his lessons (and he did), I attended, and found it periodically enlightening. Then, six months later, he offered Bible 101 again. And six months later. And six months after that. “Bible 102” was never forthcoming.

I’m unsure how to review this book. At only eighty pages plus back matter, it’s barely a pamphlet, but brevity serves its purpose. Attorney turned pastor Phil Rehberg pretty comprehensively summarizes his brand of charismatic Protestant theology for spiritual seekers and recent converts. But he breaks no new ground. He just circles popular homiletic points longtime Christians have heard for years, and even curious unbelievers have previously encountered in a society saturated with religious language.

Don’t misunderstand me. Rehberg says nothing out-and-out wrong. His exegesis accords with broadly Calvinist soteriology, backed with solid Biblical citations. I cannot dispute statements like: “Unfortunately, Christian leaders often ask people to decide to follow Jesus before they have considered him.” Or: “If you decide to follow Jesus, you are choosing to join his family, live in his kingdom, and let him be your King.” To pinch a theological cliché, This Is Most Certainly True.

It’s also really ordinary. Not only does Rehberg declare rudimentary Christian principles without any form of rhetorical clarification, as the quotes above demonstrate, he uses short sentences and few polysyllabic words. The language approaches a middle school level, with gentle, soothing cadences Christian readers probably remember from Sunday School handouts. Despite Rehberg’s brevity, and his generally agreeable thesis, I found holding focus very difficult, because his theological simplification and Mister Rogers-like intonation made me sleepy.

Recently I read an essay insisting that Christian worship traditions must change, that liturgy itself drives believers away. One recommendation really stood out: the author insisted sermons needed to go, because they’re a mere relic of pre-literate civilization. Christians today can read theological books, watch theological TV, and generally absorb theological teaching broadly. Old-school homiletics, according to this argument, is functionally obsolete anymore. Anybody, this writer claimed, can read theology and witness the truth thereof.

I respond: they can, but do they? We can argue the theological heft of Christian TV. But even Christian bookstores won’t stock difficult theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or William Lane Craig. Writers with bite, like GK Chesterton and Watchman Nee, vanish into the “Catholic Interest” and “Charismatic” sections, guaranteed to go unread by anybody not specifically seeking them. Forget classics like Augustine, Aquinas, or John of the Cross. You might find pretty gift editions. Maybe.

Instead, Christian bookstores, and Christian sections of mainstream booksellers, are dominated by writers like Johnnie Moore and Terry Smith, popularizers who desperately pitch to the middle. Or Amish romances. Lots and lots of Amish romances. Christian publishing has become hostage to a mindset that being pious means being polite, anodyne, and unobtrusive. The BBC's history of British Sunday School notes that Parliament once tried to ban Sunday School as dangerous. When did Christianity become safe?

Phil Rehberg joins legions of recent Christian leaders keeping curious Christians stuck at “Bible 101” levels. Surely they don’t mean any malice. They don’t revel in their congregations’ bland habits and freshman-level Biblical literacy. However, at least since the 1990s, when “Seeker Friendly” became Protestantism’s watchword, Christian leaders have fallen into a groove of presenting the same information, mostly the same way, time and time again. Meanwhile, “no religion” has become America’s fastest-growing religious category.

Then, irregularly, Rehberg tosses in the kind of awkward flourish that actually alienates Bible-believing Christians from evangelical churches. One really stood out: “Your relationship with God is like a romance. God is pursuing you.” David Murrow complains, with some justification, that such “Jesus Is My Boyfriend” language, common especially in evangelical praise songs, specifically alienates men. Today’s society has strict gender divisions, right or wrong. While I believe God seeks us, romantic rhetoric is offputting.

Rehberg’s brief, accurate, basically harmless pamphlet might make a decent textbook for adult catechumens. To his credit, Rehberg avoids the “one and done” salvation model beloved on Christian AM radio. He just says nothing to inspire Bible-believing Christians beyond the “Bible 101” level. It’s a theological teething ring, and says little congregants won’t internalize after a few Sunday sermons. People who buy books expect something more, something weightier. Rehberg, sadly, just doesn’t push hard enough.

Undeath is Even Scarier In Rhyme

Poems Dead and Undead (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

Long before Lovecraft developed a secular cult by describing a world where nature’s gear-wheels fell off, or Stephen King got rich translating Jungian fears into supernatural terrors, humans looked into the darkness and knew fear. That which we cannot predict or control has always terrified us, and somehow, that terror has always been… well… fun. So versifiers, from ancient bards to modern professor-poets, have long buttered their bread telling spooky stories with the lights off.

With the highly commercialized veneer surrounding horror literature today, themes of terror and unlife seem far removed from schoolbook poetry. But death, the ultimate unpredictable force, has always lingered in poetry, often as an active force—even more so before humans discovered penicillin. Compilers Barnstone and Mitchell-Foust find examples of blood-chilling dread throughout poetic history, including Egyptian funerary texts, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and this bleak prize-winner from Fitzgerald’s translation of Homer’s “Odyssey”:

Thus to assuage the nations of the dead
I pledged these rites, then slashed the lamb and ewe,
letting their black blood stream into the well pit.
Now the souls gathered, stirring out of Erebus,
brides and young men, and men grown old in pain,
and tender girls whose hearts were new to grief;
many were there, too, torn by brazen lanceheads,
battle-slain, bearing still their bloody gear.
From every side they came and sought the pit
with rustling cries; and I grew sick with fear.

Hans Baldburg Grien, "Death and the Maiden"

Horror in these poems generally arises when death’s sudden implacability collides with human illusions of control. Whether that means literal death, as in Homer, or more metaphorical death, horror inevitably arises because we hoard power reserved exclusively for God, Nature, or whatever. Many poems herein have religious meaning; Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot call for God, one piously, another desperately. But other poets, like Goethe and Baudelaire, invert religious meaning, creating mindscapes where despair becomes downright transcendent.

Some classic poets included herein are renowned for utilizing horrifying themes. French Décadents like Baudelaire and Rimbaud frequently described death, monsters, and shambling unlife in their works, while Poe and Christina Rossetti are known for little else (unfair though that is). That undergraduate staple, Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” deservedly gets included here. But some poets, often sanitized and squeaky-clean for high school textbooks, demonstrate surprising horror traits when de-bowdlerized, like this, from Lord Byron’s “Manfred”:

From thy false tears I did distil
An essence which hath strength to kill;
From thy own heart I then did wring
The black blood in its blackest spring;
From thy own smile I snatch’d the snake,
For there it coil’d as in a brake;
From thy own lip I drew the charm
which gave all these their chiefest harm;
In proving every poison known,
I found the strongest was thine own.

Somehow, despite having studied poetry myself, I didn’t anticipate these themes extending into living times. Besides a few dedicated genre poets like Bruce Boston, I didn’t know anybody still wrote that way, not when most poets teach college courses and winsomely court the tenure committee. Therefore, most surprising of all, nearly half this collection derives from poets currently, or recently, living. One doesn’t think “horror” when teachers and other eminences name Rita Dove, Billy Collins, or Ciarán Carson. Maybe we should.

These contemporary poets, however, simply feel different from their classical precursors. Modern horror poetry, like modern poetry generally, deals less in universal truths and broad archetypes; it favors greater intimacy. That is, it would rather bare the poet’s soul than describe humanity generally. Yet despite this intimacy, these poems are surprisingly humane and inclusive. George Bernard Shaw said only the deeply personal is ever truly universal. That certainly conveys in poems like Bryan Dietrich’s “Zombies”:

                                                 Beside a tombstone
you make your final stand. Stealing the arm, shoulder
and all, from one who may have been your father, you fend
them off for a while, waving his limb before you
the way you would a dowsing rod, a hand of glory.
Living, you tire. Fighting, you fall. Past lovers
get to you first, their mouths glorious, their bums hot.
What teeth they have to rip rivulets down your shins.

With our medicine, science, and technology, we today delude ourselves that we’ve established control. We exclude chance and mortality from our decisions, screaming YOLO while simultaneously stockpiling our retirement accounts, believing we’re eternal. But poetry, itself innately anti-modern, obstinately reminds us our illusions fool only ourselves. This collection, a mere sampling of poems designed to cause fear, channels a world our spirits cannot forget.

Why Aren't You Listening To Meg Myers?

1001 Albums To Hear Before Your iPod Battery Dies, Part One
Meg Myers, Daughter In The Choir and Make A Shadow

The first time I heard “Adelaide,” I stopped everything. I was cooking dinner at the time, and I admit, I burned the bacon. However, when Meg Myers’ voice, bold and resonant, forcibly contrasted itself to the introductory toy piano, I knew I’d begun hearing something revolutionary. As the percussion takes Myers’ side against the deceptively gentle piano, demonstrating Myers’ conflict with someone she only calls “boy,” she proved my initial opinion correct. She’s something new.

Recent years have seen the revival of breathy female vocal stylings so annoying, back in the 1990s, that it made my teeth hurt. When Selena Gomez or Carrie Underwood comes on the radio, I cringe, wishing they’d put more larynx, less lungs, into their vocals. Not that every female top-forty singer sounds wispy and girlish, but too many do. In “Adelaide,” Meg Myers sings with such full-throated bravado, I feel her singing in my chest.

Which made it doubly surprising when I purchased Myers’ debut EP, Daughter In the Choir, where “Adelaide” is track two. Track one, “Curbstomp,” has exactly that breathy style which annoys me from pop stars, and I cringed inwardly. Then, the second time through, I bothered listening to the lyrics:

I'm a sinner, I’m a liar
Want forgiveness, but I'm tired
I'm addicted to the fire
Let go, I'm ready for it
Let go, I’m ready

The lyrics, particularly coupled with Myers’ vocal tone, suggest a powerful woman who’s had the fight kicked out of her. Particularly since those last two lines, the song’s semi-refrain, sound very different: Myers’ beefier, more self-assured tone intrudes, though clouded through layers of distortion, like some nihilistic Jiminy Cricket. In a media environment where Strong Women are so ubiquitous that critics mock them, Meg Myers sounds different. She isn’t “Strong”; she just won’t be broken.

Among her many virtues, Meg Myers’ voice is so protean, she almost sounds like different artists on different songs. She uses this to remarkable effect. “Desire,” the first track and lead single from her second EP, Make a Shadow, mimics the breathy, besotted tone much loved by demure female pop stars. However, backed with a muscular, synth-driven backbeat and Myers’ frankly disturbing lyrics, she becomes the antimatter version of the crinkum-crankum songstresses she’s clearly mocking.

This reflects her general gist across her work.. “Heart Heart Head” starts softly, almost gently, though the music sounds less like a romantic ballad, more like a horror film soundtrack. By the end, Myers has ascended from gently husky lullaby, through gruff growling, into full-throated screams acidic enough to peel paint from metal. Her changing voice makes the superficially sweet lyrics, “You’re in my heart, you’re in my head,” a statement of undisguised animal terror.

We could apply such interpretations to every track, but more example will suffice. The song “Go” lets Myers use two voices in counterpoint. As her romance collapses, one voice timidly whispers: “Running away, running away.” Suddenly, the other, full-throated and brash, barks: “Go!” It becomes clear, these two voices represent one woman, and the pull between being good-girlish and being, well, herself. The song’s abrupt ending leaves us reeling—as, indeed, her romance leaves her.

I’ve seen Meg Myers in performance. She’s as dynamic and nervy as her songs imply. Not that she’s some fearless man-eater; as she sings songs of a woman asserting herself against the prissy roles society encourages in women, she looks terrified. But you quickly realize, she isn’t terrified of being judged. She’s terrified of the mighty power she’s discovered locked inside herself. She realizes, as if for the first time, that she could destroy you.

Myers is a fascinating performer. Watching her dance across the stage, between her guitarist and an electric cello player, I assumed she was improvising her moves. But Sarah beside me, who’d know, exclaimed: “She’s using belly dance moves!” Indeed, I quickly realized her moves were choreographed. One regional DJ observed that, where many alt-rock vocalists’ warm-ups involve slamming a beer, Myers actually does scales. Her passion is tightly controlled, which, if anything, makes her scarier.

Women’s roles come and go in rock music. Confident artists, from Wanda Jackson to Suzi Quatro to Aimee Mann, periodically assert themselves against the continuous thread of shrinking violets waiting for some man to complete them. Meg Myers is no shrinking violet. She has relationships, she loves men, but she won’t let them control her. The power in her songs asserts: I exist. Before you, without you, I exist. And nobody can take that away.

The Apostle From India

Wisdom of the Sadhu: Teachings of Sundar Singh, Kim Comer, compiler

Born into a wealthy Sikh family and drawn to religious studies from an early age, Sundar Singh angrily rejected Western Christian missions into colonial India. He insulted missionaries, burned Bibles, and made his objections known. But as Hindu and Sikh beliefs left him feeling bereft, he contemplated suicide. Then a road-to-Damascus moment altered his path forevermore. Before his death in 1929, Sundar Singh became India’s most renowned Christ follower, and remains a national icon today.

Compiler Kim Comer selects representative samples from Sundar’s writings, numerous speeches, and moments recorded by his many followers. Like Rabbi Hillel or Saint Francis, Sundar Singh attracted enthusiastic followers and initiated a school of thought that survived his mortal life. He accomplished this, not by trumpeting himself, but by righteous teachings, unclouded thought, and (too rare among Christian leaders anymore) matching his actions to his words. Before long, his reputation transcended borders, religions, and cultures.

European Christian brethren trained Sundar for their idea of Christian missions. but despite his eager Gospel studies, he couldn’t embrace Christianity’s accrued cultural baggage. I can sympathize. Intensely attuned to his people, Sundar wanted only to become a Sadhu, an itinerant Indian holy man. Leaving the European school, he undertook a lifetime of humble wandering, Socratic questioning, and mindful prayer. He never sought renown, only clarity, but perhaps that’s why spreading renown soon found him.

Comer assembles Sundar’s words along a straightforward path intended to draw new readers into the Sadhu’s thinking. In Part One, “Scenes,” Comer pairs Sundar’s parables with autobiographical sketches, allowing the parables to illuminate important spiritual principles from the factual report. Part Two, “Conversations,” pairs these parables with what Westerners might call sermons, brief discursions on important transcendent concepts. Because Sundar uses Hindu terms like “karma” and “dhyanam,” jaded Western audiences can read with unhindered minds.

Sundar Singh, the Sadhu

By parables, I mean exactly what you think. Like Christ or Buddha, Sundar uses brief, allegorical stories to convey ideas too vast to speak as mere dictionary definitions. Narratives of a bereaved bridegroom or a fledgeling hawk touch first the heart, moving afterward to the head, where simply telling us something would prematurely strangle it in analysis. Sundar’s homiletic approach encourages audiences to apprehend his truth quickly, seeking factual confirmation and theological scrutiny only afterward.

Had Sundar not embraced Christ, he could’ve inherited vast fortunes—then as now, India’s Sikhs are generally wealthier than average. But like St. Jerome or John the Baptizer, Sundar abandoned easy urban comfort, preferring the company of society’s dispossessed. If anyone donated money, he shared generously with all around. He slept in borrowed beds and ate donated food. And though his teachings eventually brought lucrative European and American tours, he owned little besides his clothing.

Despite comparisons to Francis or Jerome, Sundar has transformative potential for Western Christianity because he abjures comfortable cultural touchpoints. The liturgical language Westerners often find boring, and must consciously strive to keep vital and new, doesn’t enter Sundar’s storytelling. His references come from Indian peasant life, Hindu practice, and the poor among whom Sundar lived. He strips away Christians’ learned pretenses, permitting us no cozy hiding hole. That which we consider dull, Sundar renders alien.

Stephen Mansfield writes that many spiritual hucksters have sold Westerners a sanitized Hinduism to solve Christianity’s recent failures. Hinduism provides the spiritual counter-narrative spiritual seekers want, and Christianity hasn’t much provided. But in doing so, these purveyors have scrubbed anything Westerners might find offensive, offering a spiritual elixir that makes people feel good without challenging them to do good. This creates an environment of spiritual self-sanctification, where we can believe everything while striving after nothing.

Not so with Sundar Singh. He’s bracing, difficult, even slightly dangerous. Like Christ or the Hebrew prophets, Sundar’s message reminds us that we, as we exist, have accomplished tragically little. Salvation isn’t a matter of belief, but new life. As a resolute non-Westerner, Sundar’s messages, pierce the protective cultural barriers Christians build themselves, demanding we separate what’s truly Gospel from mere cultural baggage. That isn’t easy. But stagnating Western Christianity definitely needs an outsider’s rebuke.

Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or John Calvin, Sundar Singh doesn’t write (and Kim Comer doesn’t compile) to convert unbelievers. Sundar rather calls believers to live actively what they speak verbally, and offers wanderers a spiritual home. Therefore this book appeals primarily to current Christians and the spiritually homeless. It illuminates Christ-like thought by erasing false cultural camouflage. Seeing faith through Sundar’s eyes, it appears as dangerous today as that upstart Christ must’ve seemed two millennia ago.