A House for My Name, A Survey of the Old Testament

Cambridge educate, Presbyterian pastor from Idaho, Peter Leithart, has provided a valuable, concise literary and theological survey of the Old Testament. A House for My Name examines the Old Testament text, comparing it primarily with itself, to determine what the scriptures are saying then and now.

Dr. Leithart makes extensive use of Biblical Theology and of understanding the Old Testament in its literary context. He is a theologian who understands his work from the context of covenant theology, so his grid for surveying the work is based on understanding that the point of the narrative was to show not just what is in the Old Testament, but how the contemporary reader and Christian follower can use the Old Testament to apply the work and what to look for today.

For many modern, evangelical Christians, the Old Testament can at best be a series of interesting moral stories, outdated laws, soaring poetry, or dense prophecy; with no particular rhyme or reason to its placement. Leithart aims the reader towards a unified view of the Bible, that is that there is one story told from Genesis to Revelation, that progressively expands through covenant action. In doing so, he not only calls the reader to pay attention to the interpretation of the text on a word by word level, but by paying attention to just how sections of the Bible are ordered, as would be important for a text written in the ancient near eastern context.

Leithart’s hope is that the reader comes to a conclusion that the Bible says the same thing, repeatedly, that of creation and re-creation; because only then can the reader of the Bible see the connection between Adam and Solomon, or between Joseph and Daniel.

The great value of Leithart’s 250 page plus work is enabling the reader to understand the literary underpinnings of the history of Hebrew people and why that promotes the overarching theology of the message. This book is valuable for teenage students and above of the Old Testament, especially those who have imbibed the idea that the Christian faith is primarily one of the inner life, and not particularly connected to history or to the larger community, nor to the responsibilities that are required of the people of God. In fact, perhaps the greatest use of this book would come from applying it in group studies or in family studies, especially with children capable of understanding larger stories and a basic depth of human relations, with how they relate to their God.

Israel and the Nations: The History of Israel from the Exodus to the Fall of the Second Temple

Because the Bible has a spiritual point and tells a spiritual story, the context with which that story develops can seem obscure at times. Professor Bruce’s effort, in Israel and the Nations, attempts to place most of the Old and New Testament within its regional political and cultural context in a very precise and clear prose style.

Bruce writes with the presupposition of the historicity of the miracles and supernatural interaction with the Hebrew people being real, but that is not his primary focus. His focus is to place the spiritual story within the larger story of the ancient near east. He does regard the the Bible to be a history source of the highest rank. The author makes no theological judgments of the events, but merely places them in time.

His story is remarkable when taken out of its familiarity: a large tribe of nomads arising from Egypt over 3500 years ago onto a cross-roads section of the Mediterranean coast, after various civil wars, economic collapses, and defeats by a string of neighboring powers, should be nothing more than a footnote to history, as much as the Hittite Empire or the Amorite. Instead, they changed the world, largely due to their struggle to keep and at times abandon their unique religious faith.

The first half of the book covers the period from the Egyptian exodus to the end of the prophets. This retelling of the history has a wonderful way of humanizing the events told in the Old Testament. The envies and strife spring from real tribal warfare, real economic crisis’s, and real political intrigue. The rise and fall of King Solomon and his descendants is an excellent example. Taking advantage to exploit natural resources, like copper and horses for chariots, his tribal empire grew; yet fell when tax burdens, forced labor, double-crossings of allies and enemies happened and raw nepotism and favoritism ensured the worst of combinations: weak and oppressive government, something not easily picked up by reading the scriptural narrative, but the elements are all there.

The value of Psalm 137, which tells of the joy of Judah’s traditional enemy, Edom, rejoicing over their fall to the Babylonians in 587 BC has a greater ring to it when you understand the doom of the fall of Jerusalem and what that meant for relations to neighbors and what that said about the confidence of the Jewish people in years to come.

The last half of the book deals with what is known as the inter-testaments period to the final fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 to the Romans and the Jewish diaspora that forever changed Judaism and its daughter faith Christianity. The exploits of Alexander the Great, his successor Greek rulers, the rise of Rome, and the Herodian dynasty are all told here from the perspective of the Jewish people and state. What readily becomes apparent is that the Jews were becoming more of a spiritual people and less of a nationalistic people, as the Greek influence after Alexander, spread the Jewish influence around the Mediterranean basin. In fact the first translation of the Bible out of its native tongue, the Septuagint, took place around 50 BC in the Jewish learning centers of Alexandria, Egypt.

This is an excellent book, not only because the story it tells is excellent, but because Dr. Bruce writes of it extremely well and concisely in under 250 pages. It would be a worthwhile read for students of the Bible.

At any rate, as busy as we are, we have been looking for a good breakfast starter to break the routine, so we found this bran muffin recipe. I know, I know, bran…. bran not quite my favorite cereal grain; but this was different. Yes the recipe calls for half the bran to be pounded into a fine mist, and the rest straight out of the box Kellogg’s Original All Bran, but what really aids this one is the yogurt and the molasses (or Georgia cane sugar in my case). It turned out fine, a nice compact muffin with enough chewy calories to last you for several hours.

So its come to this, I’m making bran muffins. I suppose this means, regardless of what the calendar says, the 20′s are over for me..
Better Bran Muffins by Charles Kelsey

Makes 12 Muffins

• 1 cup raisins
• 1 teaspoon water
• 2 1/4 cups All-Bran Original cereal
• 1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 large egg plus 1 large yolk
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons mild or light molasses
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 3/4 cups plain whole milk yogurt

Bake at 400 degrees, for 18 minutes, adding the dry and wet ingredients together at once, after mixing them separately.

I was associated with the Winthrop basketball team for a year in the mid-90′s, so I have followed with with a bit of special attention. Here is the chain of events that began in mid March, after Kentucky was ousted in the second round of the NCAA tournament: Tubby Smith leaves for Minnesota, work-aholic Billy Gillispie leaves the Texas A&M program that he built for Kentucky, Mark Turgeon leaves perennial Missouri Vally contender, Wichita State for Texas A&M, and then nine year Winthrop head coach, Gregg Marshall, leaves his first head coaching job, Winthrop, (where he had won 7 Big South conference titles in 9 seasons and a top 25 ranking this past year) for Wichita State this past Saturday, with Randy Peele becoming the new Winthrop Eagle head men’s coach. It is fairly standard for the college basketball off-season to start with a quick chain of events where a coach leaves for a bigger job, effecting coaches all the way down the line. Since I was connected to the Winthrop program for a while, the following are a few thoughts about where the program has been and should go.

I can see why leaving is a good decision for Marshall. I thought the South Florida job he interviewed for might be better for him, by putting him in the Big East, but I can see how the Wichita State would put him in a better place for success long term. Even Winthrop’s players said they would have taken the job and don’t blame him for leaving.

He really had peaked at Winthrop, and wasn’t going to have a better season next year. So leaving now was really his last shot for moving up for the few years.

Coach Peele sounds like a good fit for Winthrop. I remember when he coached at UNC Greensboro and how aggressive his teams were. I remember being in the Winthrop Coliseum the night in ’96 when he brought his team in and ran Winthrop off the court with speed and aggressiveness, before taking UNCG to the NCAA tournament.

Long term, Winthrop us just going to have to raise the financial profile of their athletic department to compete at higher levels. The Big South is as low as it gets in Division I basketball, and the league is just going to have to push for greater financial guarantees all around, and attempt to become more than a one bid league.

Possible conference affliations that could help Winthrop in the future include the Colonial Athletic association (a good fit) or Conference USA (a real stretch at this point).

Winthrop is of course a founding member of the Big South, with long standing ties going on several decades now. There are lots of regional connections to places like Coastal Carolina, UNC Asheville and now Presbyterian; so breaking that bond will be hard.

Long run: Winthrop really needs to raise its athletic financial profile, and that may not be possible until other campus infrastructure improvements are finished. Due to its relatively recent coeducational status, and teacher’s college mission, Winthrop by nature has not had a deep pocket donor pool. That should change over the next 10 – 15 years or so as the school’s standing, which really started to improve after Ambassador Phil Lader’s leadership, should trickle down into a larger and deeper donor pool. Then the school can consider if a move to a better conference like the Colonial Athletic Association or Conference USA would work, with their greater competitive and financial pressures. The Southern Conference, one of the oldest conferences in the nation, is probably out of the question as they just expanded to include an even 12th member in Birmingham, AL, Samford University, that and Winthrop has not present plans to add the expensive sport of football.

Short run: Winthrop needs to be very appreciative of Greg Marshall for boosting the athletic program into a higher orbit, something that was really unexpected, but he has created a culture of winning – which is very, very hard to do. Also, folks need to get behind Coach Peele as quickly as possible, not letting donations drop off, etc. He’s a good coach and there is no reason why he shouldn’t keep winning as he already knows the recruiting pipeline. Winthrop basketball will not be as good next year, probably a 10 loss team, due to losing three top players, so folks need to keep that in mind. Also other sports like baseball, which is having another good year, need support. The baseball team is a hitter and two good pitchers away from being college world series contenders.

*** The above picture is the moment that Winthrop clinched its 7th Big South title in 9 seasons under Gregg Marshall this past March against the Virginia Military Institute at the Winthrop Coliseum. Winthrop later went on to defeat Notre Dame in the NCAA tournament.

Murders and massacres have been more of a constant through human history, rather than an a parenthesis to normal days. Yet something of the Virginia Tech shootings have struck as if a bolt of lightening suddenly flashed on a cloudless day, or so it seems at least.

The present in the developed world is an age of disaffection and loneliness, family breakdowns and blind narcissism of individuals. Perhaps earlier ages would have had community structures built in to more quickly realize and at least arrest the vain evil of Cho Seung-Hui. Maybe. Ours did not. In the shadow of a small town in one of the more advanced centers of learning in the world, relationships among people were just not there to stop this evil.

The most disturbing thing that probably makes folks shudder in education and other public institutions is that there is nothing they can really do to stop an individual once he has geared up to be a suicidal killer with a developed plan.

Yes pray for the students, faculty, staff and families of Virginia Tech. And if you will be specific. Remember people like J. R. Foster, Reformed University Fellowship minister at Virginia Tech, his immediate work will be terrible, but no less important in the months ahead. Anyone who has spent any time on a large college campus in the last couple of decades knows there are large numbers of isolated, socially outcast, and angry individuals. When the typical blame game ends, the only folks who have a real opportunity to keep events from happening like this in a post modern world are people who can help others make sense of who they are by helping them to know themselves by knowing God in the gospel.

Read more for some insight on dealing with evil… Albert Mohler, President Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY

A central tenet of the Christian faith is the claim that, on the cross, Jesus Christ willingly suffered the full force of evil, even unto death — and that in raising Christ from the dead, the Father vindicated Christ’s victory over sin, death, and evil.

The Virginia Tech horror reminds us all what human beings can do to each other. The cross of Christ reminds us of what Jesus did for sinners in bearing the full punishment for this evil.

Christianity does not deny the reality of evil or try to hide from its true horror. Christians dare not minimize evil nor take refuge in euphemisms. Beyond this, we cannot accept that evil will have the last word. The last word will be the perfect fulfillment of the grace and justice of God.

N. T. Wright, Anglican Bishop, Durham, England

My faith tradition (ordinary Christianity) doesn’t really try to explain the origin of evil either in general or in particular awful situations. Part of believing in a good Creator God, as Christians do, is to believe that evil is essentially absurd, irrational, a denial of the goodness and meaningfulness of creation — which is of course all the more graphically the case when faced with multiple, random murder.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we could never tell some kind of explanatory story about the combination of circumstances, including tendencies within the culture as a whole, which would go some way to understand the chain of events that led up to a particular incident (we in the UK are quite preoccupied just now with the inquest on some of the soldiers who died early in the Iraq conflict, and with the refusal of the U.S. to release relevant evidence), and to do so with a view to attempting to eliminate the causes, not least the causes within the cultural milieu, that can lead and have led to particular horrible incidents.

 Charles Colson, Founder Prison Fellowship Ministries

Christians also believe that God Himself comforts those who mourn the dead. We believe He sent His Holy Spirit, whom Jesus calls “the Comforter.”

Ultimately of course, Christians believe that death does not have the final word. On the cross, Christ triumphed over death; He will give eternal life to all who faith in Him. In the end, as it is written in Revelation, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

“the Legotown builders turned their attention to complex negotiations among themselves about what sorts of structures to build, whether these ought to be primarily privately owned or collectively used…the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive.

A few days after we’d removed the Legos, we turned our attention to the meaning of power. During the boom days of Legotown, we’d suggested to the key Lego players that there was an unequal distribution of power giving rise to conflict and tension. Our suggestions were met with deep resistance. Children denied any explicit or unfair power, making comments like “Some-body’s got to be in charge or there would be chaos,” and “The little kids ask me because I’m good at Legos.” They viewed their power as passive leadership, benignly granted, arising from mastery and long experience with Legos, as well as from their social status in the group.

My friend Bruce has some suggestions for the Hilltop School and others like it, so that they can continue to speak truth to power:
TOP TEN OTHER CHILDRENS TOYS/CHARACTERS BANNED FROM HILLTOP CHILDREN’S CENTER:

10. Thomas the Tank Engine – Often disenfranchised by Gordon the Big Express Engine – Delivers capitalist goods to public structures of varying shapes and sizes with an obnoxious coal burning carbon footprint.

9. The Wiggles – Class-based group divided by different colored shirts. Yellow Wiggle always sings, oppressing other Wiggles, particularly Purple one who is disadvantaged by sleep disorder. “Captain” Feathersword promotes outdated concepts of rank and command contrary to the interests of the collective. Also, see carbon footprint above re: Big Red Car.

8. Jay-Jay the Jet Plane – Instrument of labor for capitalist, non-union airline that economically opresses those unable to afford air travel. See also carbon footprint above.

7. Barney the Purple Dinosaur – Constantly magically appearing in homes, shops, community meeting places and other vestiges of a class based society. Also, “Idea Bench” is dangerous setting for contemplation of new capitalistic and entreprenurial thought concepts.

6. Mickey Mouse – The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is banned as it is a “Clubhouse” and as such class-based and not a public structure.

5. Cookie Monster – Symbol of wanton greed and avarice. Also see carbon footprint above re: flatulence from overindulgence of baked goods.

4. Dora the Explorer. Explores countryside – not social justice. Also, constantly oppressing the misunderstood fox, Swiper, who is simply trying to engage in resource-sharing.

3. Cinderella. Fights class warfare battle only to surrender and become a princess herself. Lives life of power, privlege and authority in opulent castle.

2. Snow White. See 3 above. Also, abandoned model team of underprivledged dwarfs in doing so.

1. Spongebob Squarepants. Where do we begin? Holds down a capitalist job at a restaurant making unhealthy food. Owns a private residence in the politically incorrectly named city of Bikini Bottom. Opresses a free creature, his “pet” snail named Gary. Covets “cool things” valued by a capitalist, class-based society. Pineapple residence not standard sized.

I attended a Minor League baseball game on Friday evening. And I couldn’t be happier. It was a cold Carolina evening, with a 3,000 or so crowd. The usual kabuki dance of the minor leagues began anew again, and I never grow tired of it: kooky radio station promotions outside the gate, the friendly staff that seems thrilled that you showed up, the hot dog 100% cheaper than the Major League variety, but just as good, crazy mascot antics and silly contests between innings; it was all there, and a game included for the price of admission. Hard to beat it. Were I showing a visitor to America the essential sights, so he could get an honest report, I would be sure that he visited a minor league baseball game. For all the great things about the New York’s and Chicago’s of the nation, a night with the farm team gives a fairly honest portrayl of a large section of America. Actually, I did that once for an Indian co-worker who loved cricket, yet was completely fascinated by the minor league event, in that case watching the AA team of the Atlanta Braves.

Saturday morning I picked my wife up from the airport, returning from Portland, OR, where the above image was taken, with beautiful and terrible Mount Hood in the distance. I learned that the “cell phone” waiting lot is a wonderful concept, a great attempt at modern adaption due to time constraints, transportation and technology advantages.

Sunday was reserection day worship. While I attend a Reformed church that does not formally acknowledge the church calendar year, it is nice to be reminded, even if its externally that the church has 52 stated holidays a year, revolving around the reserection, and that everything the church universal stands for, rises and fall on that day.

Every year, the United States spends $300 on pre-packaged stuffing ingredients. I had no idea of that until I read it in a cooking journal this weekend. In recent weeks, with announcements regarding just how much money the various Presidential candidates have raised, I have seen the occasional cackle about should we be spending that much for our favored candidates, even now in early 2007? The 2008 Presidential race is said to be the first billion dollar campaign. I don’t know if it will get that high, but in the meantime, Americans will be spending $600 million on stuffing, a substance that is maimed for its malice, for being evil.

Johnny Hart, the cartoonist of B.C. (thankfully never of B.C.E.) and voice of the Wizard of Id, died this past Saturday at his home, of a stroke, by simply slumping over his drawing board and passing on at the age of 78. Seems like a wonderful way to go: doing your life’s calling and then slipping off. For that I envy him. His was one of the few newspaper comics I found funny anymore. I grew up with the maxim of reading the sports page and the comics, everything else was just details, and B.C. was always on the must read list, with its usual cast of very non-PC characters: Wily – the one legged poet, the Fat Broad, the alluring Blond, Peter, the midnight skulker, the turtle and apeyx pair, even the new additions: Anno Domini and Cono Hani, which never did much for me. It was one of the few strips where there a plot was subversive to the whims of random encounters and odd characters. Even when it had its famed Easter strips, (here is his last Easter strip that ran Sunday) often controversial, it was never preachy, it was extremely well-informed, but it just told a simple narrative.

Take this strip that was printed the day Hart died:

It’s self-effacing, tight writing, an interesting perspective and a zinger one-liner. Something that were always hallmarks of the Hart strips. There simply was not any waining of talent with his work, something that afflicted the greatest creators of that original American art form. He just seemed like an optimistic man, but without the fake jokery that destroys one-liners. His art work, while never crude, was nicely simple, very well done. Most of the self-ironic, intentionally poorly drawn (with a wink, wink to the audience) and postmodern strips of today are just light years from this sort of thing.

I found this interview of Hart from 1999, and was struck if the word picture is true of an extremely simple, optimistic, complex and happy man. Not sure if we will see his sort again:

But today, he’s mostly focused on his Sunday school class and making the Bible come alive through a mural that will include, of course, cartoon characters wearing robes and sandals. More important than graphics, however, is that Hart is obsessed with compressing big thoughts into a few powerful words. Hence, his struggle to whittle the size of his Sunday school mural about the Bible.

“I just want to show them how incredibly simple the Bible is,” Hart said. He worries that young people will do as he did for years: “Start in the beginning and say to yourself you’re never going to read all this; it’s too thick.” Change doesn’t seem to faze Hart. He is incorrigibly optimistic. “I think God arranges these things. It’s something the church needed.”

Hart loves the Nineveh congregation, and especially his Sunday school class. Two of his former students are in seminary. But he doesn’t take any credit – not even for their attendance. “Do they come because of my infamy? No, they come because their parents tell them to come.”

But his class also attracts a few adults who attend without marching orders from parents.

“I try to widen their eyes, anything I can think of to do that,” Hart says. His favorite lesson series is to do an overview of the Bible, which itself is “like a banner, a long drawing that starts with Adam and runs through the New Jerusalem.”

Humanity was the one actually on trial. Their testimony was that they had no king but Caesar, and that is all they had at the end. The judge, the real king, stood up, was declared king and innocent by those that hated him and won the day. His justice was unlike those of the kings of this world, as it was passed on himself. He was most certainly not a fair judge, nor one just give people what they deserved. He had something better in mind, but it cost him, the God-man, his life. That is Good Friday.

Good Friday.

                 O My chief good,
How shall I measure out thy bloud?
How shall I count what thee befell,
                 And each grief tell?
                 Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one starre show’d thy first breath,
                 Shall all thy death?
                 Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?
Or can not leaves, but fruit, be signe
                 Of the true vine?
                 Then let each houre
Of my whole life one grief devoure;
That thy distresse through all may runne,
                 And be my sunne.
                 Or rather let
My severall sinnes their sorrows get;
That as each beast his cure doth know,
                 Each sinne may so.
Since bloud is fittest, Lord, to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloudie fight;
My heart hath store, write there, where in 
One box doth lie both ink and sinne:
That when sinne spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes,
All come to lodge there, sinne may say,
No room for me, and flie away.
Sinne being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sinne take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.

George Herbert, The Temple (1633) 

I think it was Dorothy Sayers who compared the days of Jesus as like an invasion of a hostile enemy, coming to liberate and to fight his enemies. What an unlikely special forces team it was that assembled that night in the upper room to receive their instructions, where surely almost none of them believed what Jesus was really saying, with one to betray him to death and another to deny him publicly to even the least influential members of society. But that is what we are told, that and the agony of the Garden, as the assurance of victory in this invasion was to be one by the most awful means possible.

George Herbert says it well in his poem, “The Agony”

Philosophers have measured mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.

Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man, so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments, bloody be.
Sin is that Press and Vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through every vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay,
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

First there is this: The Atheist Who Went to Church, aka, the eBay atheist who was featured in last year’s Wall Street Journal, who agreed to “sell” his soul i. What followed was something that could only happen today: man sells his soul on online market place, agrees for a price and opportunity to be convinced otherwise and in return he gets a book deal and makes a wheel barrel full of cash. Not bad work if you can get it. Today, Hemant Mehta is still an atheist, though he says he has different impressions of Christians than he did before, a few excerpts:

You should ask: Are atheists really bad? Why do we think other religions are wrong? And not just “I’m right, so they’re inherently wrong,” but what really do they believe? Why do so many people believe these other things? Why do only certain people believe in Christianity? How do we know what’s divine? How do we know every single thing the Bible says is true?

And I know some of these questions have been answered in apologetics books, but it would be great if more regular people, not just academics and authors, asked themselves these questions. I think that might make their faith stronger—or maybe it’d weaken it—but more than anything, it would get them thinking, to really distinguish what they believe.

And I want to say—that’s OK! If you’re talking with someone who’s also not trying to convert you to atheism or another religion, but is just trying to have a discussion with you, it’s OK if you don’t have the answers. Talk about the questions you have. You may find you have some of the same ones. You can always read and look up material after the conversation, but just talk while you’re together!

Clearly, most churches have aligned themselves against non-religious people. By adopting this stance, Christians have turned off the people I would think they want to connect with. The combative stance I’ve observed is an approach that causes people to become apathetic—and even antagonistic—toward religion as a whole. Many evangelical pastors seem to perceive just about everything to be a threat against Christianity. Evolution is a threat. Gay marriage is a threat. A swear word uttered accidentally on television is a threat. Democrats are a threat. I don’t see how any of these things pose a threat against Christianity. If someone disagrees with you about politics or social issues or the matter of origins, isn’t that just democracy and free speech in action? Why do Christians feel so threatened?

You need to spread the message of Christianity—the message being what Christianity stands for—loving each other, helping the people around you. Those are things everyone can get on board with.

I’d think young Mr. Metha is asking all the right questions, probably could teach class sections on evangelism a lot more effectively than are done now. I’m struck more than anything though, with his idea that folks of differing beliefs and ideas should just talk, tell their stories, live out what they believe, and then see what happens. Odd thought, isn’t it? Seems he’s saying that direct conflict shouldn’t be the first resort, or at least we should wait until introductions are over first. Probably the long term effect of the deep winter retreat that the evangelical, American world entered into early in the 20th century was disconnecting itself from the idea that it had something worthy to present, and instead went out about the work of protecting itself out of weakness, instead of road toward somewhere else.

Secondly, the entire Calvin & Hobbes corpus is now online and searchable by key word, by date of its writing; astonishing isn’t it? What a whirlwind that strip was, its slow days were brilliant compared to most, and it was at its height during the last days of Schultz & Peanuts, Cathy was still single, Dilbert was working with Windows 3.0 and the Family Circus kids…well they never change. C&H has been gone now for over 11 years, and for a strip that had no legal merchandising other than its books, it still seems ever present.

Thirdly, I watched Lost this week for the first time in moons, probably since the first episode of the new season where it seemed the endless thread of the show were braiding a bad copy of the “Myst” series of computer games. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the show, when I just focused on just the show itself, and not the endless speculation on its end. Probably a lesson there.  So this week, the former Iraq Republican Guard torturer, Sayid, ignores the urging of Rousseau to kill Bukharin (who? you know Bukhanin, the man Lenin sent to China to help organize the nascent communists in the 1920′s), while Locke sets off a machine that destroys a technological connection to the outside world. Wow, that’s a thoughtful. Is Lost a student philosophy/politics thesis? Or just a well-told story, where the mother of modernism urges one of its children to destroy the other? Who knows. What is fascinating is the twist. The character who was an instrument of Middle Eastern fascism spares the life of the Russian (named after a communist organizer), because forgiveness based on repentance, was shown to him earlier, while face to face with a former victim of his, all brought to mind based on the presence of two cats… tight writing and metaphor (maybe, with Lost who knows) crammed together to resolve a story beyond expectations. Not bad: “I knew that we all are capable of doing what you did to me. Because I don’t want to be what you were, I don’t want to do to you or others what you did to me or what those children did to this cat.”

Does the rise of Rudy Guiliani in polls among potential primary voters indicate a lessening in the importance of the social issue concerned among the GOP coalition? Maybe, maybe not. I found it interesting that in the GOP Congressional fund raising survey I received the other day had one social issue question out of about 30 or so.

 When does Spring start? The calendar and the axis say around March 21st of course. In this part of the Carolinas, the seasons changed on February 23rd, the first day above freezing temperatures in several months. It’s all one big, warm-up until late July, when the slide southward on the thermometer begins again. And the picture above? It was taken here, about a year ago this weekend,  have a nice one!

At any rate I have been a bit fascinated by this piece from the Washington Post (WaPo), the background research and the reaction to it. The lead graf:

Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households — a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census.

As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock.

Seems to be the trend across the modernized world does it not? Live in the traditional village, until its economically unsustainable, move to the bigger town, forcibly forgetting everything in the past, moving on to the even bigger town with the even duller job, while shaving off what’s left of your household, until you end up in the late, great present moment when you can enter the world, alone and invincible without any of the messy things that come along with marriage, family, loud and obscure relatives, diapers, attorney’s, and much of anything that would remind you that life someday ends. Or at least that is what the sociologists tell us. It goes on…

 Marriage has declined across all income groups, but it has declined far less among couples who make the most money and have the best education. These couples are also less likely to divorce. Many demographers peg the rise of a class-based marriage gap to the erosion since 1970 of the broad-based economic prosperity that followed World War II.

“We seem to be reverting to a much older pattern, when elites marry and a great many others live together and have kids,” said Peter Francese, demographic trends analyst for Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising firm.

Ah, well that makes sense, doesn’t it? I don’t mean the bit about economics, I mean that an analyst from the modern priestly class tells us this, from an advertising agency. It is sorta funny really, that of all the people that could be interviewed for expert testimony here: an elementary school principal, a pastor, even the police, an advertising analyst tells us this. I think that alone should tell us enough about our age as anything.

What is ironic, as Glenn Lucke of Common Grounds points out, is that poverty is strongly correlated to divorce and cohabitation. Or as NPR commentator, Juan Williams, has remarked before, the easiest way to avoid poverty in America is to wait for marriage to have children and to stay married, every other attempt to solve endemic poverty tends to treat the symptoms and not the disease.

Sure, I could point out (ht Joe Carter) that the Alabama Family Institute has said that “the longer couples cohabited before marrying, the more likely they were to resort to heated arguments, hitting, and throwing objects when conflicts arose in their subsequent marriage. ” But if people actually considered that on the street level, then what the WaPo reports, which I have no reason to doubt, would not be happening on a large scale.

Statistics interest me and bore me at times. So I will just put it this way: the modern world has seen the remarkable rise of fat poor people. Why? In an age of remarkable achievements in raising incomes across various levels, large segments of society are in debt up to their eyeballs. Why? I would like to suggest the reason why for this and family choices that are literally poor is a scrapping grasp at security. It is hard to tell someone in the immediate crisis of life that if they wait, get married, and stay married, they will be many times more financially successful and probably more secure than they are now. Maybe the question to be asked is why is immediate security more reasonable than choices that lead to long term security? I am not sure the advertisers have the answer to that question.

Lileks, I think, at least is on the right path as he describes a recent day’s end of picking up his young daughter from a school bus stop:

A caller – male, age 31 – noted how he didn’t want to marry, and didn’t want kids, because they would ruin his freedom. Medved gently pointed out how things change, and gave the fellow a useful piece of news:…kids are fun. You never consider that when you’re fancy-free and unburdened with diaper-filling squall-o-matic obligation units, but they’re fun, in ways you can never predict. You fill your day with all sorts of important tasks, but in the end nothing beats standing in the drive way in the wan March light, laughing and cracking the ice. That’s the stuff you remember on your deathbed, I’ll bet.

Indeed….