All those poets, storytellers, playwrights, etc, who write with a straight face about how one's - anyone's - heart would break for the loveliness, they're right after all. There are real live Ophelias in this world, by whom only a Hamlet would be mad (or fool) enough not to be bewitched. There are also women - and by no means only Ophelias - of whom only one Lover is worthy, and whom only one Lover can satisfy, and in just one kind of Place (however much they may pretend otherwise, elsewhere, in the meantime).
And so of course I'd be lying if I told you I was even a small part of their answer. Or indeed anything remotely resembling the Question. But by the same token, if only they could know (even as I'm hardly the one to convince them) how much he . . . this . . . we (any of us) . . . definitely aren't . . .
18 March 2017
16 March 2017
A Man and His Dog: A Love Story
Alright, so you've read my subtitle. But what do I mean by love?
I'd like you to picture the kind of fuss and worry, fret, strain, and all-round uptightness, that seems all but guaranteed to make the object of one's charity at least as burdened as the one being charitable. The kind of charity, in short, in which busy Man finds delight, playfulness and interest nowhere, and tedium, drudgery and obligation everywhere that Love turns His gaze. That, I think, is the most popular brand of unselfish love I see going on around me today. And not just towards dogs.
I mean, considering how it travails and torments itself, it must be unselfish, right?
I'd like you to picture the kind of fuss and worry, fret, strain, and all-round uptightness, that seems all but guaranteed to make the object of one's charity at least as burdened as the one being charitable. The kind of charity, in short, in which busy Man finds delight, playfulness and interest nowhere, and tedium, drudgery and obligation everywhere that Love turns His gaze. That, I think, is the most popular brand of unselfish love I see going on around me today. And not just towards dogs.
I mean, considering how it travails and torments itself, it must be unselfish, right?
15 March 2017
Jeffersonian Ironies; or, America Just Before Lincoln (and possibly beyond?)
"One has to admit, we Americans are a combatively independent bunch. A few not unprejudiced observers might even call us fractious. Those are the envious, the timid, the chumps. Not that they don't have a point. I mean, look how contentious and argumentative, and bitterly disagreeable, how 'Says you!' and 'Yeah right!', how 'Whaddaya mean?' and 'Like HELL it is!' we are. And not just about politics and religion, but about - well, practically anything you can think of. Including, I'm told, slavery. Which only means that, with our indomitable wills, both singly and collectively, why, we're the classic textbook definition of the word 'unstoppable.'
"So why even try stopping us? Because if we're not the one country - or, more precisely, the one culture, civilization, IDEA - most fit to rule the world, who is?"
"So why even try stopping us? Because if we're not the one country - or, more precisely, the one culture, civilization, IDEA - most fit to rule the world, who is?"
Mind you, I'm not saying anyone actually spoke those literal words in Tocquevillean America. Only that our US history might have attained some breathtaking heights of self-honesty if they had.
But what is it that could produce and fuel such blithe confidence? Anyhow, here's a speculation:
Imagine everything in heaven and earth being as simple and straightforward as, well, the Declaration of Independence. Imagine there being nothing of real, abiding interest in human affairs to talk about (or even, strictly speaking, to think about); nothing to reflect on, or consider, or wonder at; nothing to discover, or explore, or be surprised by (whether pleasantly or otherwise), or enraptured with. Particularly if you're one big, dynamic, superior, human-tidal-wave of a country poised for serious overland expansion. There are no unexpected twists or turns, no strange curvatures of geography or history, no Burkean particularities to understand and accommodate, to be patient with or sensitive to. Indeed, there is no abiding truth - nothing we do or choose or undertake - that can't just as well be conformed to a straight or perpendicular line. Because, you see, it's all self-evident. Those (surely) are the only truths worth believing in, or acting on. And if all you can do is impose them on some stupidly recalcitrant reality (whether natural or human), all to the good. And if you find they can't be lightly interwoven into the pre-existing fabric, or gently seeded into the pre-cultivated soil, why, so much the better. Just slap 'em down, and steamroll 'em over.
I mean, what's the worst that can happen? The "stuff" beneath your feet, or beneath your plans, will either submit to your overriding, commanding, abstracting Will as if it ne'er had nature of its own. Or else it will change you (the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812), and all your plans and agendas (the spoils system, the Mexican-American War, the Ostend Manifesto, the Civil War), beyond your every conceivable intention or expectation.
01 March 2017
Try Telling That to a Modern Economist
To believe the modern world, man's uttermost progress and improvement lie in his mobility: his unstoppable determination to be everywhere on earth that his ambition and the omnipresent demands of money take him. In today's globe, if you're not moving - constantly - you're either dead or dying. Or at best a pariah.
Wow. And to think the uttermost progress - of anyone - was accomplished by a social outcast who succeeded in getting both hands and feet fatally nailed to a dead tree.
Wow. And to think the uttermost progress - of anyone - was accomplished by a social outcast who succeeded in getting both hands and feet fatally nailed to a dead tree.
26 February 2017
The Real (underlying) Question
More market resilience. About which, perhaps the most startling thing - if not disconcerting, in some quarters ("This should NOT be happening!") - is how it continues to trend upward. How far this reveals or conceals the true nature of global market direction is, to be sure, a question on which we'd all be wise to suspend judgment. Though that's hardly going to stop me from pronouncing (in my modest fashion) on what I believe is a much deeper, if not more urgent question.
The question isn't whether present global markets are over- or underperforming, healthy or unhealthy, sane or insane. Personally I suspect there's more long-term health in the culture, instincts and trajectory of today's markets than any of us could possibly account for by, say, the mere election or non-election of a Donald Trump; a Brexit or non-Brexit; a reception or non-reception of an official call from Taiwan; a raising or non-raising of interest rates; a Muslim immigration ban or non-ban. Or even a southern border wall or non-wall. (Though I do hope recent market performance - whether because or in spite of the recent election - is symptomatic of a kind of real wisdom and courage, on the part of today's investors, in at least one key area. I.e., maybe they no longer feel quite as hostage to Three Uncontestable Dogmas that, throughout our century's first decade, were presumed to be necessary conditions to market health: - 1) Euro-worship [both currency and Union]; 2) Beijing-worship; and 3) Saudi/Wahhabi appeasement.)
But the real, underlying question is always the same: What is going to make markets everywhere, despite real and considerable volatility, sane and healthy over the long term - as opposed to psychotic, diseased or delusional. And of course every long term is bound to come up short sooner or later: that's just the nature of human history. What I mean is the kind of sanity that can only be stopped dead - as distinct from being merely interrupted or disoriented - by some conscious, deliberate, concerted ideological evil. And no, I'm not thinking of only the kind of evil that can issue in major war. Praise God, the progress of modern jihadism has yet to issue in a war, or even a major economic crisis.* But we'd be epic fools to presume, for those same reasons, that here's a monster we Westerners can somehow tame, appease or manipulate.
* Partly, I suspect, because modern jihadists - being rational in means if hardly in ends - have probably even less incentive than most of us to want to derail that same train of globalization on whose "prosperity" they're also riding.
What I mean is the kind of sanity that makes investors see the point of investing in countries, as well as companies. The kind of sanity that knows that human beings are at least as important as human actions. And that the latter, if they're not to become quite hopelessly dysfunctional, must exist for the sake of the former, and not the reverse. And that countries, for all their notorious vices, crimes, follies, inefficiencies, etc, are generally far better at acknowledging and confessing this strange, elusive being of human beings than companies are. Perhaps because a country addresses a far less predictable, yet far richer, broader, more permanent stratum of human nature than even the most successful company ever will, or can.
I mean the kind of sanity that recognizes human creatures as consisting of more than the various companies or other organizations they create - or even the ones that employ them. A sanity that understands human creatures as being, in fact, not quite reducible to any thing they merely do. And least of all to those actions by which they try to assert their independence, power, cleverness, or superior creativity. Human creatures - perhaps even at their most imaginatively creative - consist also of two, if you will, residual elements, that began long before we were able to do anything, and that will go on long after any doing of ours on this earth has ended. These both involve our Maker most closely and inseparably - and not (hard as it is to believe in these self-creating times) merely as coach, legislator or moral guide. They are
(1) what God has made us to be at the beginning, and what He intends us to be at the end (though this latter flame has a weird and most unfortunate way of getting all but completely extinguished in many of us by the time we die);
(2) the various things that happen to us, and how we absorb (or mal-absorb) them, from birth - indeed, from the moment of conception - onwards. And in particular those events which provoke and dispose us not merely to plan and act, but to pause, and watch, and wait; to wonder, mourn and miss; to pray and hope and yearn. Sometimes even productively.
And while these older things - these things we residually are and endure, so to speak - may often seem bad or useless enough under the microscope of our modern agendas, they have also been known to prevent those same agendas from crashing, or going off the rails. And though in fact they too, like everything else in this life, are subject to change, they don't change nearly as often - or as drastically - as our busy ambitious actions would have us believe.
At least, not for the better.
The question isn't whether present global markets are over- or underperforming, healthy or unhealthy, sane or insane. Personally I suspect there's more long-term health in the culture, instincts and trajectory of today's markets than any of us could possibly account for by, say, the mere election or non-election of a Donald Trump; a Brexit or non-Brexit; a reception or non-reception of an official call from Taiwan; a raising or non-raising of interest rates; a Muslim immigration ban or non-ban. Or even a southern border wall or non-wall. (Though I do hope recent market performance - whether because or in spite of the recent election - is symptomatic of a kind of real wisdom and courage, on the part of today's investors, in at least one key area. I.e., maybe they no longer feel quite as hostage to Three Uncontestable Dogmas that, throughout our century's first decade, were presumed to be necessary conditions to market health: - 1) Euro-worship [both currency and Union]; 2) Beijing-worship; and 3) Saudi/Wahhabi appeasement.)
But the real, underlying question is always the same: What is going to make markets everywhere, despite real and considerable volatility, sane and healthy over the long term - as opposed to psychotic, diseased or delusional. And of course every long term is bound to come up short sooner or later: that's just the nature of human history. What I mean is the kind of sanity that can only be stopped dead - as distinct from being merely interrupted or disoriented - by some conscious, deliberate, concerted ideological evil. And no, I'm not thinking of only the kind of evil that can issue in major war. Praise God, the progress of modern jihadism has yet to issue in a war, or even a major economic crisis.* But we'd be epic fools to presume, for those same reasons, that here's a monster we Westerners can somehow tame, appease or manipulate.
* Partly, I suspect, because modern jihadists - being rational in means if hardly in ends - have probably even less incentive than most of us to want to derail that same train of globalization on whose "prosperity" they're also riding.
What I mean is the kind of sanity that makes investors see the point of investing in countries, as well as companies. The kind of sanity that knows that human beings are at least as important as human actions. And that the latter, if they're not to become quite hopelessly dysfunctional, must exist for the sake of the former, and not the reverse. And that countries, for all their notorious vices, crimes, follies, inefficiencies, etc, are generally far better at acknowledging and confessing this strange, elusive being of human beings than companies are. Perhaps because a country addresses a far less predictable, yet far richer, broader, more permanent stratum of human nature than even the most successful company ever will, or can.
I mean the kind of sanity that recognizes human creatures as consisting of more than the various companies or other organizations they create - or even the ones that employ them. A sanity that understands human creatures as being, in fact, not quite reducible to any thing they merely do. And least of all to those actions by which they try to assert their independence, power, cleverness, or superior creativity. Human creatures - perhaps even at their most imaginatively creative - consist also of two, if you will, residual elements, that began long before we were able to do anything, and that will go on long after any doing of ours on this earth has ended. These both involve our Maker most closely and inseparably - and not (hard as it is to believe in these self-creating times) merely as coach, legislator or moral guide. They are
(1) what God has made us to be at the beginning, and what He intends us to be at the end (though this latter flame has a weird and most unfortunate way of getting all but completely extinguished in many of us by the time we die);
(2) the various things that happen to us, and how we absorb (or mal-absorb) them, from birth - indeed, from the moment of conception - onwards. And in particular those events which provoke and dispose us not merely to plan and act, but to pause, and watch, and wait; to wonder, mourn and miss; to pray and hope and yearn. Sometimes even productively.
And while these older things - these things we residually are and endure, so to speak - may often seem bad or useless enough under the microscope of our modern agendas, they have also been known to prevent those same agendas from crashing, or going off the rails. And though in fact they too, like everything else in this life, are subject to change, they don't change nearly as often - or as drastically - as our busy ambitious actions would have us believe.
At least, not for the better.
02 February 2017
Some Notes for Modern Hamlets
You know you're living in an intensely political age, when folks you've known for years are prepared to end a hitherto warm, hearty, even thriving friendship, because (they have reason to suspect) you didn't vote the way they did. Or tweet the way they did. Or were being insufficiently supportive of their various tweeting campaigns.
By now, of course (unless you've been asleep for twenty years), you will have noticed that ours is one of those intensely political ages. (Not to mention an obsessively economic, money-driven age; talk about morbid obsessions.) But the reason?
No doubt it reflects the vastly greater political wisdom and discernment of our time, as compared with previous eras even of the Twentieth Century. Nowadays we have so perfectly managed to align our political divisions with the perfect will of God or Progress or History or Freedom, we're not only excused for hating - or at least anathematizing? - a friend who voted for the wrong candidate, but we're practically obliged to do so. Apparently the road to Heaven is now paved with politically severed friendships. Not that that prevents even one's closest political soul-mate from being an absolute backstabber in the more ladder-climbing departments of life. Seriously, who can you trust? And how do you love (anyone)?
"Those friends thou hast, . . . their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel."
Hamlet I: iii: 65
Poor old Polonius. Natural enough in those days, I suppose, to warn your son of Machiavellian-style rottenness-and-treachery-in-Denmark, etc, as the most reliable agent for the dissolving of beautiful friendships. Ambition, jealousy, political expedience - these have always worked wonders at making new enemies out of old friends. But what would Polonius, or Hamlet - or Shakespeare - have made of ideological purity, as the most corrosive solvent of all?
By now, of course (unless you've been asleep for twenty years), you will have noticed that ours is one of those intensely political ages. (Not to mention an obsessively economic, money-driven age; talk about morbid obsessions.) But the reason?
No doubt it reflects the vastly greater political wisdom and discernment of our time, as compared with previous eras even of the Twentieth Century. Nowadays we have so perfectly managed to align our political divisions with the perfect will of God or Progress or History or Freedom, we're not only excused for hating - or at least anathematizing? - a friend who voted for the wrong candidate, but we're practically obliged to do so. Apparently the road to Heaven is now paved with politically severed friendships. Not that that prevents even one's closest political soul-mate from being an absolute backstabber in the more ladder-climbing departments of life. Seriously, who can you trust? And how do you love (anyone)?
"Those friends thou hast, . . . their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel."
Hamlet I: iii: 65
Poor old Polonius. Natural enough in those days, I suppose, to warn your son of Machiavellian-style rottenness-and-treachery-in-Denmark, etc, as the most reliable agent for the dissolving of beautiful friendships. Ambition, jealousy, political expedience - these have always worked wonders at making new enemies out of old friends. But what would Polonius, or Hamlet - or Shakespeare - have made of ideological purity, as the most corrosive solvent of all?
20 January 2017
Gospel American-Style: A Brief Retrospective of the Past Generation
Whew. Another contentious Inauguration Day come and gone (though we all know the testiness will continue).
Also, dare I add, most likely an historic, turning-point inauguration. And hopefully in ways more good than bad. As always, only God will tell (provided we listen, of course).
And so I'd like to begin my own nod to the event, in my perverse fashion, with a brief counter-intuition concerning our new president's two predecessors, plus their almost-successor. And in particular what all three of them had in common.
Counter-intuitive enough, right? If not downright stupid. First off because, whatever one might say - for, against, or even neutrally - about our outgoing president and his predecessor, the one most common surface impression might be that, God knows, the two fellows had little enough in common. I mean, seriously, Bush and Obama: Depending on your bias, what's not to trust, in the case of the one? or not to loathe, in the case of the other? Almost an open-and-shut case of political light and darkness, no?
Consider the typical media-driven scenarios:
A) One president rather disastrously overplaying an already decent American hand in the World's Great Poker Game, followed by the other's very sensible retreat and retrenchment. Or, conversely,
B) one president's far-from-illegitimate attempt, in the face of arduous difficulties and setbacks, to uphold US prestige in the world, and even his success at restoring a modicum of that prestige before leaving office - all wasted, practically thrown away in fact, by the timidity and PCness of his successor.
What neither of these assessments tells us, though, is how our two most recent presidents saw themselves, and what they were trying to do. And in particular how they may have taken themselves seriously, in a way that did not necessarily puff them up, but rather drove home to them the gravity of their presidential responsibilities, and how those ought to be executed. Least of all do the indictments tell us how these two presidents understood themselves to be living their respective religions.
And yes, I know how laughable this is sure to sound to folks on either side of the fence. But I also know something else, that I'm all but certain of. Because I have little doubt that Bush and Obama both considered themselves to be (albeit in very different, if not opposite ways) serious Christians of one kind or another. No doubt, too, they were regarded as such by many of those who knew them most closely and sympathetically. The same might even be argued, however loosely, of the losing candidate in this past election: that, however many corners had to be cut, or characters compromised - or even lives lost?- along the Dirty Road of Politics, Mrs Clinton was in the main trying to follow what she understood to be her evolving (some might say a little too wildly evolving) Christian conscience, in the political arena.
Anyhow, now they're all out, presidentially speaking. And if there's One Current Public Figure who has somehow managed to triangulate - to stand in equally bold contradistinction to - all three of these quite distinct political personalities, it's the guy who's just come in. Mr Trump has been accused, and no doubt will go on being accused, of a good many serious things over as many years. But, so far anyways, tripping over himself in the effort to follow an overly severe (or even an over-sanctimonious) Christian conscience has not been one of them.
Whether that will somehow prove a point in his favor remains to be seen. Big History is seldom less than strange. Indeed, if Mr Trump's recent campaign - and even more his inaugural speech - is any augury, at least the appearance of an active Christian conscience is something he may be in process of acquiring. But before we rush to judge it all pretense or rhetoric, keep in mind two points no less true for being clichés: Sometimes a man or woman can rise to an occasion - and even do a good job of it; at other times the occasion can (re)make the man. Either way we can at least hope and pray.
Meanwhile, again, here we are with one more presidential inauguration under our belts. So naturally I thought this as good a time as any to look back, maybe even try and take stock of where we've been for roughly these past 25 years.
Or at any rate where I've been. Because, for at least a generation now, I've been getting the message that the United States is, like, easily, hands-down, no-contest, dude! - the most Christian nation on earth. Or rather we were, somewhat loosely in spirit if you will (if not in precise letter of orthodoxy) - ("Everything was going JUST FINE!") until a certain Donald Trump came along. Or Barack Obama. Or George W Bush. Or Bill Clinton. Or ___________ (fill in your presidential villain of choice).
But there's a further message I've been getting. And it's one I find even more curious. It is that, in particular, the things about us that are most, if you will, contentiously - or even cantankerously - American, are also the things that make us most distinctively Christian. And even that may be true, I suppose, depending on one's definition of Christian (=Scots-Irish Presbyterian?). Indeed, I wonder if the whole question wouldn't prove a richly rewarding field of study: - i.e., to explore how far a certain deeply cultural strain of American Calvinism may have fueled and radicalized, say, both sides of our Civil War. How, for instance, certain elements on both fronts may have been equally (violently) convinced that the Bible, on the one side, unequivocally condemned and denounced chattel slavery, and on the other, just as unequivocally sanctioned and defended it. And that either way, the right way to go was to get fighting mad about whatever God was defending or denouncing.*
* I don't doubt that one side was right to get fighting-mad in its attack upon slavery. But what if the other side had been less fighting, less Biblically sure in its defense?
Nor does every real moral difference - or even moral ordeal (abortion, to name just one) - always justify dragging a country to the brink of civil war. In our case, historians might do well to ask whether a certain strain of righteous combativeness in our makeup hasn't played its considerable part, not only in unifying our impact on the world stage, but in dividing and, at times, even savagely polarizing us domestically. As for whether, if true, this colorful heritage has made us more Christian - that, again, depends on one's definition of the word. Some may argue, correctly enough, that our Lord most definitely knew how to "raise hell" with the Pharisees, and even how to tell 'em where to get off, on more than one occasion. I hardly know that that justifies you or me, as good red-blooded Yanks, treating every other person we meet as a potential or prospective Pharisee - or other spiritual bully. If that's our crusade, we might want to start, as the saying goes, by looking first in the mirror. These days I seem to notice, more and more, how the measure of a serious Christianity - Right or Left - is taken to consist of: (1) a heaven-sent sureness of one's own position; (2) an equally sure knack for demonizing one's opponent. All of which gets me to feeling just the least bit queasy.
Indeed, about all I can say with any conviction is: If rock-ribbed, granite-jawed, feisty, ornery, defiant, cantankerous, take-no-crap-from-nobody Americans (and really, aren't we all - in one degree or other - Scots-Irish in spirit nowadays?) are the quintessence of what it means to be Christian, then Scarlett O'Hara was hands-down the greatest Christian fictional character of modern times. And Heaven and Hell must be something like first cousins.
Also, dare I add, most likely an historic, turning-point inauguration. And hopefully in ways more good than bad. As always, only God will tell (provided we listen, of course).
And so I'd like to begin my own nod to the event, in my perverse fashion, with a brief counter-intuition concerning our new president's two predecessors, plus their almost-successor. And in particular what all three of them had in common.
Counter-intuitive enough, right? If not downright stupid. First off because, whatever one might say - for, against, or even neutrally - about our outgoing president and his predecessor, the one most common surface impression might be that, God knows, the two fellows had little enough in common. I mean, seriously, Bush and Obama: Depending on your bias, what's not to trust, in the case of the one? or not to loathe, in the case of the other? Almost an open-and-shut case of political light and darkness, no?
Consider the typical media-driven scenarios:
A) One president rather disastrously overplaying an already decent American hand in the World's Great Poker Game, followed by the other's very sensible retreat and retrenchment. Or, conversely,
B) one president's far-from-illegitimate attempt, in the face of arduous difficulties and setbacks, to uphold US prestige in the world, and even his success at restoring a modicum of that prestige before leaving office - all wasted, practically thrown away in fact, by the timidity and PCness of his successor.
What neither of these assessments tells us, though, is how our two most recent presidents saw themselves, and what they were trying to do. And in particular how they may have taken themselves seriously, in a way that did not necessarily puff them up, but rather drove home to them the gravity of their presidential responsibilities, and how those ought to be executed. Least of all do the indictments tell us how these two presidents understood themselves to be living their respective religions.
And yes, I know how laughable this is sure to sound to folks on either side of the fence. But I also know something else, that I'm all but certain of. Because I have little doubt that Bush and Obama both considered themselves to be (albeit in very different, if not opposite ways) serious Christians of one kind or another. No doubt, too, they were regarded as such by many of those who knew them most closely and sympathetically. The same might even be argued, however loosely, of the losing candidate in this past election: that, however many corners had to be cut, or characters compromised - or even lives lost?- along the Dirty Road of Politics, Mrs Clinton was in the main trying to follow what she understood to be her evolving (some might say a little too wildly evolving) Christian conscience, in the political arena.
Anyhow, now they're all out, presidentially speaking. And if there's One Current Public Figure who has somehow managed to triangulate - to stand in equally bold contradistinction to - all three of these quite distinct political personalities, it's the guy who's just come in. Mr Trump has been accused, and no doubt will go on being accused, of a good many serious things over as many years. But, so far anyways, tripping over himself in the effort to follow an overly severe (or even an over-sanctimonious) Christian conscience has not been one of them.
Whether that will somehow prove a point in his favor remains to be seen. Big History is seldom less than strange. Indeed, if Mr Trump's recent campaign - and even more his inaugural speech - is any augury, at least the appearance of an active Christian conscience is something he may be in process of acquiring. But before we rush to judge it all pretense or rhetoric, keep in mind two points no less true for being clichés: Sometimes a man or woman can rise to an occasion - and even do a good job of it; at other times the occasion can (re)make the man. Either way we can at least hope and pray.
Meanwhile, again, here we are with one more presidential inauguration under our belts. So naturally I thought this as good a time as any to look back, maybe even try and take stock of where we've been for roughly these past 25 years.
Or at any rate where I've been. Because, for at least a generation now, I've been getting the message that the United States is, like, easily, hands-down, no-contest, dude! - the most Christian nation on earth. Or rather we were, somewhat loosely in spirit if you will (if not in precise letter of orthodoxy) - ("Everything was going JUST FINE!") until a certain Donald Trump came along. Or Barack Obama. Or George W Bush. Or Bill Clinton. Or ___________ (fill in your presidential villain of choice).
But there's a further message I've been getting. And it's one I find even more curious. It is that, in particular, the things about us that are most, if you will, contentiously - or even cantankerously - American, are also the things that make us most distinctively Christian. And even that may be true, I suppose, depending on one's definition of Christian (=Scots-Irish Presbyterian?). Indeed, I wonder if the whole question wouldn't prove a richly rewarding field of study: - i.e., to explore how far a certain deeply cultural strain of American Calvinism may have fueled and radicalized, say, both sides of our Civil War. How, for instance, certain elements on both fronts may have been equally (violently) convinced that the Bible, on the one side, unequivocally condemned and denounced chattel slavery, and on the other, just as unequivocally sanctioned and defended it. And that either way, the right way to go was to get fighting mad about whatever God was defending or denouncing.*
* I don't doubt that one side was right to get fighting-mad in its attack upon slavery. But what if the other side had been less fighting, less Biblically sure in its defense?
Nor does every real moral difference - or even moral ordeal (abortion, to name just one) - always justify dragging a country to the brink of civil war. In our case, historians might do well to ask whether a certain strain of righteous combativeness in our makeup hasn't played its considerable part, not only in unifying our impact on the world stage, but in dividing and, at times, even savagely polarizing us domestically. As for whether, if true, this colorful heritage has made us more Christian - that, again, depends on one's definition of the word. Some may argue, correctly enough, that our Lord most definitely knew how to "raise hell" with the Pharisees, and even how to tell 'em where to get off, on more than one occasion. I hardly know that that justifies you or me, as good red-blooded Yanks, treating every other person we meet as a potential or prospective Pharisee - or other spiritual bully. If that's our crusade, we might want to start, as the saying goes, by looking first in the mirror. These days I seem to notice, more and more, how the measure of a serious Christianity - Right or Left - is taken to consist of: (1) a heaven-sent sureness of one's own position; (2) an equally sure knack for demonizing one's opponent. All of which gets me to feeling just the least bit queasy.
Indeed, about all I can say with any conviction is: If rock-ribbed, granite-jawed, feisty, ornery, defiant, cantankerous, take-no-crap-from-nobody Americans (and really, aren't we all - in one degree or other - Scots-Irish in spirit nowadays?) are the quintessence of what it means to be Christian, then Scarlett O'Hara was hands-down the greatest Christian fictional character of modern times. And Heaven and Hell must be something like first cousins.
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