Random Notes, 62

1. Recently, when reading an article about contemporary fiction, I suddenly realized why the critics and the writers, while often highly talented, are so radically wayward and off- base. Consider this: whether it be novels, short stories, film scripts, or television stories, can you for a moment think of any of the characters in the plot as someone made in the image of God? What is very clear is that the people in modem fiction are simply Darwin’s higher apes. Because of this, the characters and plots are radically falsified, and, in future time, will be seen as the false and unreal things they are. Too often, the contrived plot carries the characters, whereas the characters should determine the plot.

I recently read a favorably reviewed novel, and I was impressed by it. But the next day, not a single character was real to me, and my memory was simply of a well- contrived plot.

I do believe that we have seen many very talented writers in this century, but because they are believers in Darwin’s “man” and world, they have severely limited their abilities and effectiveness.

To presuppose Darwin rather than the triune God is like attempting to live and write in defiance of gravity, only worse.

We are what our presuppositions allow us to be.

2. Summer-time always brings more memories than other seasons do, although I relish them all. But summer-time to a boy on a farm with a river within walking distance is paradise. This past summer I remembered how my cousin Ed and I, in the early 1930s, would go every week to a neighbor’s farm. He grew watermelons (and other varieties of melons as well), and when the melons were picked for market, the fully ripe ones (the very best) could not be shipped. They were sold to anyone who came by for 25cents for two dozen. Ed and I would load them in the back seat of the Model T Ford, put them in his family’s cellar, and in ours, and then the happy eating twice daily.

3. An interesting point is made by Andre Corvisier, in Armies and Societies in Europe, 1494-1789 (1976); wherever the military aspect was dominant, except for certain parts of the Austrian empire, there was a weak bourgeoisie, or urban middle class, and a powerful nobility.

4. In The Formation of Hell by Alan E. Bernstein (1993), the concluding three sentences read as follows: “The symmetrical system of justice threatens more than the wayward within its own community. It menaces all who deny the belief system that erected it. For that reason, the horror lies less in hell’s torments than in the damning dismissal of its detractors.” Balance that against the clear statement some years ago by Emory Storrs: “When hell drops out of religious, justice drops out of politics.”

5. Grayce Flanagan passed on an old clipping to me, of a letter written by a Karen Clark. Her father grew beautiful flowers around their home in Clinton, Mississippi. Years ago, when her mother was still living, a woman stopped to admire the landscaping, and she asked, “How much do you pay your yard man?” Her mother replied, “Nothing, but I have to sleep with him.”

6. I may have told you this story before, but, when I left my youth work in Chinatown for the Indian Reservation, Owyhee, Nevada, the Elko pastor, 100 miles south, was very helpful. The Rev. J. Mortimer Swander had begun his ministry in early mining camps. Now on the verge of retirement (and very ably succeeded by the Rev. Harold Van Zee) he was a rich source of stories. My favorite was about the effort of a dispensational premillennialist to convert the old man. Mr. Swander’s fellow pastors who were pre-mil never tried to argue with him but were gracious friends, but this zealous layman was determined to convince Mr. Swander of the “error” of his ways, and he insisted that the only way to read the Bible was to accept the literal meaning. Mr. Swander, when his patience began to wear out, commented slowly, “You may be right, you may be right. If so, I hope I live long enough to see the woman (Rev. 17:9) whose backside covers seven mountains!” The man left promptly!

7. In the mid-1930s, when my father was a pastor in San Francisco, a friend from our home-town and MD, Dr. Olson, went to a SF hospital for treatment. He asked my father to visit him. Dr. Olson, more than little angry, began by saying, We doctors are the worst patients; we know too much for peace of mind, and we resent soothing talk. Also, he said, because he was a small-town doctor (by choice), it was assumed that he was none too good. Then there is the ancient medical tradition of treating patients as retarded people. Added to that was the silly hospital gown, nothing in the back but a tie-string, hardly the thing to wear in the hall! He was doing his best to give the staff the bad time he felt they deserved. After talking with my father, it was agreed that since he was not about to change, why not make it fun for himself and educational for the hospital, which he did. My father would come home daily laughing over Dr. Olson’s heckling of the staff, and the staff would ask my father to beg him to behave meekly like other patients. After a long stay, Dr. Olson recovered, and, to thank God for sparing him from the hospital’s ways, he went to Africa as a medical missionary and enjoyed it greatly.

8. This too I have repeated often, so you may have heard this story, a favorite of mine. In the early 1950s, this ship’s captain whom I knew retired. He insisted strenuously to his wife that he could not live in their inland home but had to be near the sea. His wife, who loved him dearly but who hated to leave her son, daughter, and grandchildren, finally agreed. They moved to a coastal city, about five miles from the beach. The day after the move, Capt. A. had his wife drive him to the beach. He got out, sniffed the air with satisfaction, went home, and, for the rest of his life, never went near the ocean again. Whenever his wife complained, Capt. A. looked at her with amazement and remarked, “But I know it’s there!” This, she commented was their only disagreement.

9. A. N. Wilson, in The Rise and Fall of the House of Windsor (1993), commented on the expectations which arose with Queen Victoria that the royal family should represent Christian and middle-class virtues, and how costly failures to do so have been for Edward VIII and Prince Charles. In earlier years and over the centuries, royalty has often been arrogant, immoral, and evil to a startling degree. Royalty held itself to be accountable to only God, and no one else, and they were scarcely responsible to God in most cases. What happened c.1860 in Europe was the rise of public opinion, and the insistence on accountability to the people as well as to God. Public figures less and less have a license for corruption and immorality. This change has affected most Western countries. In the US, this accountability existed from the beginning but has waned in recent years.

10. In the “debate” concerning welfarism, one young woman, an unwed mother, said, “Why should I pay for the rest of my life for a mistake I made at 19?” First, it was a sin, not just a mistake. Second, who then should pay for your mistake, the taxpayer? We all continue to pay for our sins and errors. A problem in our day is the loss of responsibility. As one man, a murderer, insisted, “I’m not the same person who committed the crime ten years ago.”

In the young woman’s case, nothing was said about making the father of her child pay.

But the key question to be answered is this: when will the Christian community do more to help in such cases? There are some able groups at work, but more needs to be done.

11. Inflation in this century has been phenomenal, and the worst may be ahead for us. In the year of my birth, one college president received $800 a year (1916) and was well paid. However, in 1861, the pay was $500 a year. It was after 1914 that our monetary instability set in.