So here it is: The Ten Faces of Ron, solid reasons to NOT vote for this joker – with something for everyone, left, right and center. (Please also note that sources I linked to are from the left and the right as well. However, on principle I do not link to racist sites to show their support for Paul)

1. Publishing Magnate,  Or, “How I Accidentally Published Virulently Racist Newsletters and Made Over a Million Dollars!”  Okay, let’s grant that even though he defended them in the 90s, he didn’t personally write the articles.  But to believe that he didn’t know what they said, when the newsletters were supposedly meant to convey Paul’s ideas – well,  that’s impossible for a sensible person to swallow. Are we really supposed to believe that he put his name over these articles, let someone else write the vile and hateful content, and made a lot of money selling them - almost a million dollars in 1993 alone - but he wasn’t curious about what was in them?  The alternatives aren’t much better: that he actually is a closet racist trying to obscure his true beliefs, or that he was publishing articles he didn’t agree with merely to garner support and raise money from peole who would. None of these is worthy of a candidate for the presidency.

You want to know what kind of crap he sold to his readers? The New Republic has a pretty good sampling: attacks on blacks, gays, Jews — even Martin Luther King, whom he accused of being a child molester! Wow. This may explain how he won the Nazi vote.

2. Anti-Zionist. I don’t mean he doesn’t like Israel. I don’t mean he is a critic of Israel. I mean, as his former aide has said, that he wishes Israel did not exist. Is that plain enough? Yes, you can oppose their policies and government and not be a Jew hater. But how do you single out the Jews,  of all the people groups in the world, as not entitled to their nation, without opening yourself to the charge? If I said the Kurds, or the Armenians,  had no right to a national homeland, wouldn’t you suspect me of bigotry? We support and defend a lot of nations, and we have a lot of allies, but only Israel is singled out by Paul for abandonment. This may explain how he won the Nazi vote.

3. Temple Denier. This may be obscure to people outside of Israel, but check this out. In his 2011 book, “Liberty Defined,” according to Michael Medved, Paul “associates himself with the hateful, laughably ahistorical Palestinian doctrine of ‘Temple Denial’—refusing, apparently, to accept Biblical accounts of the two Jewish temples that flourished in Jerusalem over a period of nearly 900 years beginning with King Solomon.” 

 This is to deny factual history, Jewish  religion and the physical, emotional and spiritual ties the Jewish people have to the land and especially to Jerusalem and the Holy Mountain. No Temple, no Mount Zion, No Zion. The purpose is to strip the Jewish people of any claim to the city of Jerusalem. It’s especially pernicious when you consider that the reason we can’t point to the Second Temple is that in AD 70 it was razed, along with the City, by the Romans, who also killed over a million people (according to historian and eyewitness Josephus).

4. Pharmacist. Paul wants to legalize drugs. There are a lot of Americans who would like to ease or eliminate penalties for citizens who use marijuana and grow it for their own use. But Paul wants to do the same for heroin. And methamphetamine. So, instead of the War on Drugs, we’ll have the War on Zombies.

5. Conspiracy Nut. Which theories does he believe? Well, you name it.  The Illumanati, the international bankers, the UN, the coming fascism and martial law, race war, AIDS, WWII, the 1993 WTC bombing. But there is one theory that one need only toy with to disqualify oneself from serious consideration for high office: that the 9/11 attacks were planned and carried out by the US Government. “Say Goodnight, Uncle Ron.”

6. Mullahphile. Paul loves Iran, and so do I. What’s not to love? Lovely people, splendid culture, beautiful land. Everyone’s crazy about Iran. Except the mullahs running the country, who are just crazy. Their sharia theocracy has made Iran a hell on earth for the once Western-friendly, highly educated Persian people. The mullahs want to hasten the appearance of the Twelfth Imam by causing a nuclear cataclysm. They have repeatedly promised to annihilate Israel. ( This alone is perhaps why they have Paul’s sympathy.) They have been at war with the US since 1979, and have made all the roadside bombs that have killed and wounded our soldiers in Iraq for the last eight years. But Ron Paul thinks they have every right to build nuclear weapons, and thinks we should lift sanctions and make nice with them. Then everything will be fine. Does the name Neville Chamberlain mean anything to him?

7. Neo-Confederate. “Ron Paul alone stands for the Constitution!”  followers are fond of saying. It’s just that it’s the Constitution as it was before the Civil War. Unbelievably, he holds the slave-state doctrine of nullification, which contends that the states reserve the right to ignore any federal legislation they disagree with. This doctrine was discredited before but defeated only after our costliest war.  And it is remarkably anti-constitutional coming from an alleged constitutionalist – violating as it does Article 6: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall  be made in Pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme law of the land…any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

Paul is also opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He claims it laid the foundation for government violation of private property rights. He also claims it worsened racial tensions, a particularly clumsy assertion, as it echoes the defenders of Jim Crow arguing against de-segregation. He says he would have voted against it in 1964 (when it was voted for by 80% of House Republicans and 82% of Senate Republicans), and he did vote against it in a symbolic vote taken to honor its 40th anniversary in 2004. He was the only person in Congress who did this.

Consistent constitutionalist, or Lone Star loony tune? You decide.

8. Pimp. Paul favors the legalization of prostitution, a big business that the government could then regulate and tax. You know what they call the guy who oversees the girls and takes his cut off the top, don’t you?

9. No Man. There have been many votes taken in Congress with just one No vote tallied: Ron Paul’s. And after some 22 years in Congress, Paul has sponsored 620 bills, but only four have made it to the floor for a vote, and of those, only one has passed. One. For the sale of a Galveston customhouse. Woo hoo!  Liberty marches on! Apparently he has said No to all of his colleagues, and they have all said No to him. Can you see him working with the Congress as President, when he apparently couldn’t when he was in it?

10. Bigots’ Choice. It would be the easiest thing in the world for Ron Paul to renounce the support of the white supremacists who endorse him. It would pose no political risk whatsoever, and most Americans probably think it would exhibit just the very baseline of decency. Yet he refuses to do so.  They endorse him, they send him money.  He has also refused to disassociate himself from the Holocaust-denying American Free Press, which publishes Paul’s columns, presumably with his consent. Pro-Paul forums are littered with anti-Semitism, against which he has never uttered a word. What’s wrong with this guy?

This, taken with his view that we were wrong to go to war against Nazi Germany(!), and his other racist and conspiratorial views, places Paul under the darkest shadows of modern history. If you support Paul, and if these things don’t trouble you, or you simply refuse to face them squarely, I’m afraid you walk in those shadows with him.

This was followed on the social networks by numerous posts quoting the Bible and Martin Luther King, Jr. (with embellishment) that suggested people were wrong to exult in the death of an enemy. The most quoted was Proverbs 24:17: “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice.” It seems to me there is considerable confusion on a number of fronts, and I’d like to attempt to sort through a few of them.

First, the Bible says a lot about enemies and about the execution of justice. In some places it commands love and goodwill toward enemies; in other places it suggests their frustration and defeat are a source of joy. When justice prevails, we are to be glad; but when we ourselves are the victims of injustice, we are to patiently endure, and appeal to God for our cause.

We run into problems trying integrate all these ideas if we have a one-size-fits-all definition of “enemies,” if we neglect the context of a given passage, or if we cherry-pick the verses that suit our mood.

We may also be tempted to think we’ve got the holier attitude by simply falling back to a default position of love and mercy. Navy SEALS aren’t in the love and mercy business, nor is the President of the United States, at least in the way most people think of love and mercy. But from another point of view, killing a certain kind of person may be selfless, heroic, righteous and yes, just.

In the Bible, murder is a sin, a serious one. Osama Bin Laden was the perpetrator of murder, but not a victim of it. He was killed. If you’re going to use the Bible to make your point, please recognize that killing in warfare or the execution of criminals is the taking of a life, but it is not murder (the Commandment says, “You shall not murder,” not “kill,” Ex. 20:13). If you don’t agree with that, fine, but do not then selectively use Scripture to support that point of view, because the Old Testament and the New Testament both agree that governments rightly wield the sword, the power to take human life.

So this raises some interesting questions.

Should Osama Bin Laden have been killed?

If he was our enemy, shouldn’t we (Christians) have loved him and blessed him?

Since killing, even if just, is at best a necessary evil, how can we (Christians) be happy about it?

Let take these one at a time.

Should OSB have been killed? A perfectly moral and rational case can be made for killing Bin Laden. It hardly seems necessary. He was a mass murder, by his own confession. He bragged about it. 9/11 gave him a big belly laugh. He killed thousands, in numerous countries, innocent people of all nationalities and religions, especially his own. He declared war on our country, which makes him an enemy combatant, not just a criminal. He would not have willingly surrendered. His ongoing campaign against innocent civilians of the world made him a continuing threat. Capturing him for arrest and trial would have made about as much sense as arresting Hitler or Tojo. Have him blow himself up as our men closed in? Have him lawyer up and use the Southern District of New York courtroom as his pulpit to the world for three or four years?  Thank you, no.

The value of human life argues for his killing, not against it. It is precisely because the value of life is so high, that the one who murders others – or makes war on a peaceful nation -  forfeits his own. It’s not that his life suddenly has no value, it’s that he has lost his right to it. This is the biblical basis for justifiable killing. By the way, this is not revenge. The US has a Department of Justice, and a Department of Defense,  but we do not have a Department of Revenge. This killing was morally just – he had relinquished his life when he made murdering innocent civilians his life’s aim – and a justifiable military action undertaken for the defense of our country. But it was not revenge for his attacks on our country. If it was revenge we were after, he would have gotten much worse than a couple of bullets in the head. We would’ve started with his family. There would have been pigs and dogs involved. That’s not how we roll. And we’re following the Bible on that, by the way.

If he was our enemy, shouldn’t we have loved him and blessed him? Bin Laden was undoubtedly an enemy. Of you, me and every decent person on the planet. If that is the case, and we want to uphold the commands of Scripture, and the very words of Jesus, what should our attitude be to this enemy? Is he an enemy in the sense that Jesus had in mind when he told us, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…” or Paul when he wrote, 

Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ”Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Therefore
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
If he is thirsty, give him a drink;
For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:19-21)

Jesus and Paul speak of personal enemies, individuals who set themselves against me.  But there is another kind of enemy in Scripture, like the enemies of King David. David faced attack from the Philistines, Saul, the Amalekites, the Ammonites and Syrians, and later his own son, Absalom. Deborah, after a victory over the Canaanites, sang, “Thus let all your enemies perish, O Lord! (Judges 5:31).

These are national or collective enemies. The question of how I relate to them is not merely personal, because their actions are not against me alone. I don’t have to kill in self-defense, though it is certainly not wrong to do so. But I don’t have the same kind of choice when an enemy attacks my neighbors. Then the obligation to defend others is in play. To do so, I might have to kill an enemy, even if I personally love him and bear him no ill will. I am in effect choosing the life of his intended victim over his. Biblically speaking, this would be the right thing to do. When all is said and done, I may have blood on my hands, but not innocent blood, and I didn’t stand and watch a wrongful killing happen that I had the power - or at least the responsibility to try – to stop.  I can’t let a revulsion toward violence keep me from defending the defenseless, or think I am too good to meet evil with force. In our world, we engage soldiers and police to undertake this, but we shouldn’t think we are morally above the fray: they do it for us.

I think the New Testament has two different issues that it addresses, and we should ask whether either of those properly apply to the killing of Bin Laden. One is the matter of personal enemies. The neighbor who steals your newspaper or poisons your cat is a personal enemy. The matter of forgiving, loving and blessing that person is mine alone.  Regarding our personal enemies, I shouldn’t retaliate against them. I shouldn’t delight in their misfortune. I should repay good for evil. Furthermore, we do not make enemies of others, they make themselves our enemies by their choice. “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peacably with all men” (Romans 12:18).

The other issue is our relationship to a government that rightly has the power to punish “evildoers” (Rom. 13:3-4). Peter describes governing authorites as ” those who are sent by him (God) for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good” (1 Pe. 2: 13-14). This makes a category of enemy that is against the community, the state, the nation, not just against me or my cat. The state has no obligation to forgive, though it can grant pardon; rather it has an obligation to justice . We as individuals can show love and mercy, but we’d be in a world of hurt if the state did the same. Likewise, I can decide for myself to accept injustice at the hands of the government, or even a foreign enemy, but what right do I have to make that decision for my fellow believers or my fellow citizens? When someone murders 3000 of my fellow Americans, or 200 Africans or 460 Indians – what standing do I have to forgive them? Rather I must stand with my nation in defending itself. If I don’t, my so-called love and mercy is a joke. At that point, to whom do I owe my love and mercy more? To the thousands throughout world who are threatened by this killer, or to the killer? To put them on an even moral plane, as if his murders and the response of the civilized world to those murders is the same, is absurd and makes a mockery of the notion of love and of justice. Such moral equivalency has no justification.

If the government justly punishes a person like Bin Laden, then the killing is by definition just. In what case should such justice make us sad? Some have said that we should pray for such a person, and lament him going to his grave without having repented. I would suggest you don’t have much business praying for him until you have spent a lot of time praying for the thousands of people around the globe who have been devastated by his campaign of terror, death and dismemberment.

Since killing, even if just, is at best a necessary evil, how can we be happy about it? Let’s consider this idea that Bin Laden’s death should make us sad, at least somber. The corollary to that is that his every day of  life on the earth ought to have brought us some joy and relief and gratitude to God. I wonder, those of you who think it is shameful that anyone would celebrate his departure from this world — did you thank God every new day that Bin Laden was given? Have you been glad these last ten years that the US was not able to take his life? If it is a sin to exult in his demise, then are we not obliged to exult in his extended life? Or have you been indifferent to whether he lived or died until he was dead? Do you believe he was entitled to live? Do you really value his life as much you value his victims? The thought is ludicrous, especially if you consider that he was responsible for his own actions, that we reap what we sow (Gal. 6:7), and that “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (MT 26:52).

It’s Osama Bin Laden’s life that we should mourn, not his death.

Lastly, do we truly love justice, as every religion and legitimate ethical system tells us we should? This killing was either just or unjust, and not some gray area in between. So let’s have it. If it was just, why may I not be glad, or at least relieved? And if unjust, how so? Really. Let’s save our tears for the dead and wounded and heartbroken. God is on the side of the victims, survivors, soldiers and others sworn to protect and defend them.

None of this is to say this death makes up for any others. We’re not them: We reject revenge. We don’t lust for blood. We’re not haters. We are not happy that fighting Al Qaeda has cost us so much. Unlike Bin Laden and the Islamicist death cult, we don’t sacrifice ourselves and innocent victims to a god of hate. The difference should be clear. And we must guard it.

Most of the time, God remains somewhat hidden from us. Why? For one thing, God in immanence is already too close to us, too intimate, too much at one with us to be a clear-cut object, and God in His transcendance is too great to be apprehended (Exodus 33:20).

More importantly, however, I think Paul’s words about the unknown God indicate another reason for God’s hiddenness; full and freely chosen love for God requires searching and groping. What would happen to our freedom if God, our perfect lover, were to appear before us with such objective clarity that all our doubts disappeared? We would experience a kind of love, to be sure, but it would be love like a reflex. Almost without thought, we would fix all our desires upon this Divine Object, try to grasp and possess it, addict ourselves to it. I think God refuses to be an object for attachment because God desires full love, not addiction. Love born of true freedom, love free from attachment, requires that we search for a deepening awareness of God, just as God freely reaches out to us. (p.94)

DeNorval Unthank, MD

In third grade at Alameda Elementary School in Portland, one of my friends was Gregory Unthank. Gregory’s grandfather was one of the best known names in Portland’s African American community. Dr. Unthank was one of those local heroes who persevered and served tirelessly through times of hostility and bigotry. Their sacrifices and courage made all the difference in the historic struggle for civil rights and justice.

You can read biographical sketches of Dr. Unthank here and here.

“A Negro may have a few more doors closed to him and he may find them a little harder to open, but he can open them.  He must keep trying.”

Dr. DeNorval Unthank, 1899-1977

At 9 years old, I was standing in our kitchen with my now divorced parents when Dad told Mom he was going to assist the Native American activists who had seized control of the South Dakota town and were surrounded by heavily armed US Marshals and FBI agents.

“We’re going to try to get some food in.”

My mom was plainly not enthusiastic about the idea of Dad entering a siege that threatened to explode into open warfare at any time, but she chose not to argue with him about it. He had made up his mind.

“Well, be careful. Don’t get yourself shot.”

It was commonplace when I was growing up that adults, especially young adults, had no idea what was so often was falling upon the ears of children. I know from my own experience as a parent that it is easy to forget that children are completely unable to take in certain words or conversations without utter bewilderment or fear.

Shot? I thought to myself. “Where are you going, Dad?”

“South Dakota. I should be back in about a week.”

Dad didn’t just look at the siege on the evening news one night and decide to go help. He had been deeply involved with the Indian community, particularly the Sioux, for some years. He worked at a social service agency in Portland called the Urban Indian Bureau. His close ties to the community had made him almost an honorary member. He made ceremonial drums and gave or traded them to his Indian friends.

Frank in 1976

One such friend was Frank White Buffalo Man, the last surviving grandson of the famous Sitting Bull. For one drum Dad made, Frank traded a wonderful oil-on-canvas he had painted of a bald eagle in flight, which still hangs in Dad’s house. Dad’s friendship with Frank also rendered another honor. Dad presented each of his children to Frank to receive a Siouan name. I went with Dad to meet him, and Frank White Buffalo Man named me Hoksila (pronounced Hoke-sheela), which means, “Young Man” or “Boy.” At age 8 this left me rather underwhelmed. On the one hand, I knew I was being honored (or rather Dad was), but I had hoped for something like “Bear Killer” or “Big White Wolf.” Young Man? Gee, I hope I can live up to that! Even so, I have never forgotten the meeting or the name I was given. I have recently learned that this very word was also applied affectionately to warriors or soldiers, just as in English we might say, “our boys in uniform.”

Dad would take us to pow-wows. There was a big one every year at Delta Park in Portland. I was utterly entranced by the real ti-pis, traditional dress and the fry bread. The music and dancing I found hypnotic. Even as a teenager in Montana, I didn’t pass up opportunities to go to Native dances or other events.

I didn’t understand what was happening in South Dakota, exactly. It sort of blended in with the general upheaval of the times. My own experience was of the demonstrations that my parents went to, and some of which they had taken me to. I vaguely understood there was something to be upset about. I also knew this meant marching and picketing with signs and chanting and singing songs and making your own cigarettes which didn’t smell anything like the ones my parents smoked. The police often showed up and that meant trouble. That I had I seen on the news, not in person. But the occupation at Wounded Knee was on a whole other level. The AIM militants had machine guns, not folk songs. The Federal response was to prepare for a full military engagement, and this meant tanks, cannon and fighter jet fly-overs. Luckily I didn’t know this at the time. My parents, whether by design or by accident, manged to shield us kids from most of the insanity that we would have seen on the evening news.

When Dad came back, he brought two things. One was the story of his attempt to sneak food into the besieged Indians under the cover of night. With another person they were creeping through a field when they were spotted and arrested by the FBI. They were booked and locked up for the night. The next day they were kicked loose and had to leave.

He also brought souvenirs for us kids. He gave me a copper c-shaped cuff bracelet with an Indian design on it. I put it on and wore it for the next seven years. I rarely took it off. I slept and bathed and showered and swam with it on. I got used to washing off the green mark it left on my wrist. I was occasionally teased by my peers for wearing a bracelet, even though there wasn’t anything especially feminine about it.

I invested the bracelet with immense personal significance and value. It was from my dad. It memorialized an adventure that epitomized for me his courage and sense of justice. It represented the Native culture we both admired. It held every bit of this meaning and reminded me of it every day, every time I looked at it. I was going to wear it forever.

I certainly tried to. When I was in high school, I had to take it off for sports fairly often. Eventually a crack appeared in the middle of the band, and I knew it was going to break in two. I asked someone if it could be welded back together, but I knew that it was time to give it up, not repair it. I took it off some time in my sophomore year when it finally broke, and eventually it was lost as I moved around over the next two years. Since I stopped wearing it because I had to, rather than by choice, I told myself that everything that it meant to me I could keep with me always, even though the bracelet was gone. I had seen Citizen Kane when I was eleven; I knew my little Rosebud could end up in the flames, but that I didn’t have to lose what it stood for. I let go of my childish idea of wearing it forever — reluctantly, though.

The summer before I started high school (1978), Dad, Jane and I drove across the country from Portland, stopping in Missoula to put all our things in storage. Then we headed toward the East Coast. Along the way, as I sat in the back seat of our Ford Pinto, I read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. As we drove through the country where so much of the history took place, the whole sad drama of the clash between Indian tribes and the American settlers came vividly to life for me. On the third day of  our trip, we came to the Little Bighorn Battlefield. It was one of the most impressive and haunting places I have ever visited. There Sitting Bull, among others, led a huge army that  destroyed the Seventh Cavalry, killing every last man. The graves stand where they fell. And here I stood, with my Instamatic camera, 102 years later, privately cherishing the name given me by the grandson of the warrior chief. I felt connected to the land, its memories, the fallen, and the continuous thread running through time that ties the past to the present moment. I think Dad must have felt something like this, too.

A day or two later, driving through South Dakota, we walked through a tourist stop gift shop, and I saw some bracelets like the one I was wearing, the one that Dad had bought five years before. They cost a couple of dollars at the most. There was nothing special about them — not like mine: My bracelet had gunfire and war paint, Sun Dance and campfire and starry Great Plains nights. My bracelet remembered fallen warriors,  my brave Dad and the sons of Sitting Bull; it smelled like bison jerky and fry bread; it held courage and love and remembrance and a good name: Young Man.  If you can get all of that in a bracelet, it turns out you probably don’t need that bracelet – not forever, anyway.

As a teenager I worked at a downtown Seattle cinema, in the old days when our corporate chain was obliged to employ union projectionists. Our projectionist would arrive a half-hour before the first show in our single screen, 900-seat theater, and would leave minutes after the last reel had rolled out. Without him the show did not go on. We, the ticket-takers and concession clerks,  did not know how to operate the projector, and even if we did, we were not allowed to.

He loaded and unloaded the reels, focused the lens, and switched from one projector to the next just as one reel finished and the other began. He had to time it; it wasn’t automated. Most importantly, he was there should the machine jam, or the celluloid melt or break. We could count on his skill to quickly splice the print back together and get the movie up and running again.

I see art as a kind of projection, a projection of the human soul. But it comes from the broader human urge to create, to fashion, to shape, to invent, to solve. Therefore to limit this impulse to the arts would be to miss the full scope of human creativity. An engineer, a relief worker, a car mechanic, a librarian, a counselor, business owner, is each projecting their soul, communicating that part of themselves that comes out of a deep human need to create what was not there before – machines, enterprises, order, solutions, plans, tools, survival.

Where does the urge to create come from? The Creator. We have this because in making us He stamped us with Himself:

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. -Gen. 1:27

What we see when we observe the creative endeavors is the work of the soul, the projection of the image of God expressing itself through work and personality in the visible and audible world. Creating may come from a desire, as in childbearing, to leave something behind, a posterity, something reaching into the future beyond our own lifespan. It may come from a dim apprehension of the eternal. It may be a kind of mirror-making: “I see myself in what I have made.”  It may be a way of opening our inner selves to others: “See who I am by what I have made.” There is an element of mystery to this;  we don’t completely understand it. And there is something that holds us in awe when we see it produce really marvelous and beautiful things. But there is without any doubt a reflection of the Creator God in it all, the One who calls something out of nothing, and it is good.

Since every human being bears God’s image, this creative urge I suppose is present in everyone. But it is sometimes suppressed. It is sometimes perverted and becomes twisted into various desires to destroy. (In Graham Greene’s  short story, The Destructors, some boys in post-war bombed-out London discover a creative outlet in demolishing a building.) It can also be hindered through our physical, mental and emotional limitations. But as a Christian, the question arises: How is creativity, especially in the artistic arena, different -  if at all -  for the Christian? Does it make a difference  that we acknowledge God, that the Holy Spirit lives within us? Would the Spirit be like a divine Projectionist, making sure that everything is as should be in the projection booth?

I have wrestled with this question for many years. I cannot cite any authority or scripture, just my thoughts and observations.  But across the board, it seems the answer is: not necessarily. I’m sure it can, and probably should. What that difference should be, though, I’m not at all sure of.  Should it make a difference whether or not an artist is a Christian? Yes, but it clearly does not, much of time.

This is for the same reason that a person’s character, their lifestyle, their worldview, does not necessarily reflect the influence of God’s Holy Spirit on their inner selves. They have some responsibility in letting the Spirit take hold of them and work that influence. But what would such influence be on their creative expression? Leaving the question of skill or talent aside, how would one paint differently, or sing differently or write differently? You see the problem: for every outstanding artist you might point to who believes, I can offer one (or five) who does not believe in God or even the soul. But they are masters of their medium. Believing does not equal better.

Two answers are usually offered. One is that the Christian artist possesses a worldview that colors everything that the artist concerns herself with, and always takes God and His revelation into account. The other is that a distinctly Christian ethic oversees everything she does in her work.  To put this in plastic-wristband terms, “How would Jesus see this?” and “How would Jesus do this?” I think for some people, these questions do not lead them into deep waters, but very shallow ones. Instead of experiencing freedom in such inquiry, they suffer the imposition of very tight constraints on their creative vision and sensibility. Often they end up seeing themselves as conscripted into a Ministry of Propaganda for God, in which every effort must be baptized with Godly Messaging or worse yet, Christian Retail. The saccharine and the trite, the manipulative and the tacky often win out.

The other way in which they might go astray is to not ask these questions at all, and concern themselves only with the mundane — without the least penetration of truth and grace into their creative work.

A person who abides in Christ, who walks in intimate friendship with God’s Spirit, is a person who is being changed. A changed person is a changed artist. But does a changed artist mean changed art? This I do not have an answer to. I have a vague idea that the art the new person makes maybe better than what the old person made, but in what identifiable way? I keep coming to the fact that the Spirit is in the business of changing what we do by the more important work of changing us. But what does He want the Christian artist to do? As with most questions of the Christian life, we begin on the inside.  Do I create what I do because of who I am, or do my creative efforts go to making me a different person? It seems that these two things work together , much the like the Spirit and the person who seeks to be ever more yielded to Him.  So why should I want to create? What do I want to do?

Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. -1 Cor. 10:31

I ought to seek God’s glory. Our creative work can do that, whether it’s poetry, prose or photographing a duck. I ought to love my neighbor. I can do that through my creative work. But I have learned that one of the things that marks a spiritually mature person is their desire for Jesus. More than what He gives, they want Him, to simply be present with Him and grow to see and know Him more. If I have turned my creativity over to Him, I believe He will use it to reveal Himself more deeply to me. Just as love and generosity on my part bring me closer to Him in his love and generosity, my creativity brings me into a more intimate knowledge of Him as creator. Now I am beginning to sense that how and why I create may cause what I create to recede in importance. Perhaps now I am finding my way into the freedom that the Spirit brings. I find freedom in a simple truth I learn in the first chapter of Genesis: the Creator is always above what He creates, and that is true for us as well.

•  •  •

I have contended that there is no qualitative difference in the  Christian artist’s work. They may or may not photograph the duck differently, or choose different subject matter, but it won’t be better simply by virtue of their faith or spirituality. This may not seem to comport very well with what I have said God wants to do and may be doing on the inside of the faith-filled artist. But how can one deny that many traditionally minded Christians live in an  impoverished subculture, where art seems to be just another tool, or a distraction from truly spiritual realms of life.  And much of the schlock we sell as art is derivative at best, “christianized” versions what we admire in the “secular” world. The truth is, for whatever reason (and it may be what I alluded to above), we lack the freedom to fully express ourselves in the arts the way we do in other vocations and avocations. We produce engineers, nurses and counselors (which, again, can be creative work) but few artists. Consequently, there are few Christians found among today’s prominent painters, sculptors, choreographers, playwrights or filmmakers. And where we produce the most, in music, few have mastered their art or exercised the same degree of freedom as their secular counterparts.

Consider one of my favorite movies of all time: The Elephant Man. No Christian producer or director has ever made as beautiful and moving a statement of  the sanctity of human life as this. The creator? David Lynch, a follower of the late  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and a practitioner of his Transcendental Meditation®. And one weird dude. I know people who would decorate their homes with Thomas Kincaid® prints but would never consider Lynch to even be an artist. Yet, I would contend that he has better represented a Christian perspective in this film than Kincaid’s® country cottage pastorals ever will. (Until very recently we have been offered the Left Behind movies as the best evangelicals could produce. Thankfully that is changing.)

This leaves me loosely holding the conclusion that it is the soul as the image of God (or having the image) that projects  -  produces -  the creative objects that the souls of others respond to in such profound ways. And if this is true we should expect the work of any great artist to be worthy of our attention. They may be running their booth without  the Projectionist, and without Him, things could spin out into chaos or the abyss at any time. But remarkably they manage to occasionally give us the extraordinary and the profound.

The fact that people with no regard for God often project the true and the beautiful is testimony to God’s patent on the human soul, the infinite worth of the image of God and the one who bears it.

This is what all of us, regardless of what our chosen medium is, should aspire to: a real soul-to-soul communion with our neighbors that leaves them different, encouraged, enlightened, thinking, opened to the unseen, reaching for something better and higher. And my hope would be that we fix our dependency on the Projectionist, the Spirit of Jesus, to accomplish that.

.  .  .

Here are the link lists so far for February’s SynchroBlog.

• Bethany Stedman – How God Creates
• EmmaNadine – Creativity and Christianity
• Bill Sahlman – Created, Continued Creativity
• Heidi Renee – Synchroblog Creativity and Christianity
• Annie Bullock – Old Things are New
• John O’Keefe – What is Half of 11
• Kathy Escobar – open.
• Tim Nichols – Artist-Priests in God’s Poetic World
• Maurice Broaddus – The Artist and the Church
• Jeremy Meyers – Creativity First Christian Act
• Ellen Haroutunian – Creativity and Christianity: It Matters
• Tammy Carter – His Instrument His Song
• Steve Hayes – Creativity and Worship
• Marta’s Mathoms – Mythos and Create-ivity as a Spiritual Act
• Peter Walker – Creativity and Christianity?
• William Lecorchick – Heaven and Hell
• Jacob Boelman – God’s Magicians
• Liz Dyer – Divine Seeing
• Minnowspeaks – DNA
• Christine Sine – God Created the World by Imagination

You lust and do not have.
-James 4:2

When I moved back to Portland in the summer 1977, I was excited that I would be attending Whitaker Middle School for 8th grade with half a dozen Community School alums, including my best friend Dave Linn. When school started I also was reunited with my best friend from my first two years of school, Mike Pitts. And a friend from third grade, Ricky Munson, was in my home room. The grades were divided into two teams who had most of their classes together, and unfortunately Dave and I were on different teams, so we rarely if ever were in the same class. But I also found that Dave was moving in a social circle I would probably never be included in, the ‘popular’ kids. It seemed like we were on passing ships every day.

At Whitaker I continued to feel like an outsider. But now that I was with some people that I had grown up with, Northeast Portlanders, my tribe, not seeming to fit in was a different sort of a ordeal than my alienation in Estacada had been.

Our school was a hive of fads. Though I loved Star Wars, there were other trends and fashions I could not or did not want to follow. Saturday Night Fever had brought the disco craze to new heights. In our school, for some strange reason, ski jackets were in fashion, even though it hardly ever snowed in Portland or got below 40 degrees. There was a lot of polyester and feathered hairdos and curly perms, even on boys. Dave and his friends had taken to dedicating songs to one another. I don’t mean calling a radio station as in days of old and requesting a song and and having the DJ dedicate it to someone. If a song came on the radio, and you thought it was especially illustrative of a classmate, you would say, “I dedicate this song to you.” Someone would dedicate to the new kid in class the Eagles’ New Kid in Town. A girl who was a good dancer was bound to have a friend dedicate to her Abba’s Dancing Queen.

The only time I approached the cutting edge was when I got a newly popular brand of tennis shoes. When I showed up in gym class wearing a pair of red waffle-soled shoes with a yellow Nike swoosh, even the jocks took notice (“Pre wore Nikes.”) But it wasn’t enough to get a scrawny, bookish nerd like me into their circle.

And having friends in the circle also did not get you in. In the spring, when we took our big outdoor school trip to Lake Malheur in southeastern Oregon, I spent most of the second day on the bus sitting with and getting to know Carolyn Wetter, in my eyes just about the prettiest girl in 8th grade and firmly established in the circle. We had a great time together, and the whole day I kept wondering why she was willing to even be seen talking with me — even taking a walk together at our lunch stop. But when outdoor school was over, the ref sent us back to our corners, and we never got back in the ring, so to speak. At school, she’d smile at me when no one was looking and I’d nod, but I wasn’t in the circle, and I wasn’t going to be.

Problem was, my friend Dave was in the circle. We couldn’t hang out at school and I lived miles from the school and everyone else who went there. So when Dave invited me to join Sea Scouts with him, I jumped at it, even though I had no personal attraction to the idea. Sea Scouts was an organization within Boy Scouts, something like a naval auxiliary. It was to the Navy what the Civil Air Patrol was to the Air Force. Each troupe was called a ship, and we dressed and conducted our meetings in Navy style. It really wasn’t me, but it was something new, I would learn how to sail, and I liked the leaders and other scouts. Each ship owned a sailboat and we had a 32-footer our ship had built that we moored on the Columbia River. There were girls’ ships as well, and all the ships in the Portland area collectively owned a WW2 PT boat, like the boat commanded by JFK in 1943 when it was split in two by a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands.

Our boat had been disarmed and the gas engines replaced with one diesel engine: they didn't want to hand over that kind of speed to teenagers.

The highlight of the year was an annual trip up the Columbia on the 80-foot disarmed motor torpedo boat. The crew was coed. We met with a girls’ ship to plan the trip with our leaders, and at that meeting I met Marti.I don’t recall how that meeting went, but we must have shown an obvious interest in each other, because at the end of the evening, Ben, one of the older scouts, took me side. We looked up to the older guys. Ben, probably 17, took his job as a role model seriously.

“I saw you met Marti. Cute, huh?

“A fox.”

“Well, I just want you to understand something about her.” He had a sincere, big-brotherly bearing that fixed my attention.

“I wouldn’t want to see you get mixed up — I wouldn’t want to see you have your feelings hurt by her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Marti — I’ve seen her, we’ve all seen her… go from guy to guy. She’s a –” He stopped himself from using that word, or the other word.

“She’ll make you think she cares about you, then she’ll be onto the next guy. You see what I mean?”

“I guess. Well, I just met her.”

“I know, but we’re going on this trip together. I’m just warning you, because you don’t know her like I do, okay?”

“Okay.”

Yeah, okay. But I was 14. The part of my brain that knows good advice when it hears it did not yet function in any useful way.

On our trip we sailed 30 or 40 miles from our moorage in Portland down the Columbia to the small river port of Kalama, on the Washington side.

The Small Town with BIG Horizons

We each had a turn at the helm. We had to work with a fellow scout who was navigating, find the beacons on shore and use them to steer the boat down the river. When it was my turn, I sailed the torpedo boat on a choppy, gray Columbia, under leaden skies, with wind and rain sweeping over me. I pulled my sailor’s cap down tight and brushed my forearm across my face, keeping an eye out for river traffic, debris and other hazards. It was just about the most exciting thing I had ever done in my 14 years. Until I saw Marti.

That night, moored at Kalama, we were free to come and go until maybe 11:00. Below decks a radio was playing, and we were scattered throughout the boat, some playing cards or lying on their bunks. Somehow, I ended up alone with Marti, talking in the midship/galley section. The lights were off and only a little stray light kept us from complete darkness. I have no recollection of a single thing we talked about. Johnny Rivers’ Swayin’ to the Music (Slow Dancing) came on the radio and, as though scripted by a Hollywood cheese maker, she took my hand and stood up, and we were dancing. I had never danced like this, but that didn’t matter; she led. My heart was pounding as I realized I had no will of my own. The only will was Marti’s and I don’t think I could have said yes or no or man overboard. If I was going to give any more thought to Ben’s sober warning, it would have been now. But I didn’t.

It’s late at night and we’re all alone,
just the music on the radio.
No one’s comin’, no one’s gonna telephone.
Just me and you and the lights down low.

We’re slow dancin’, swayin’ to the music.
slow dancin’, just me and my girl.
Slow dancin’, swayin’ to the music.
no one else in the whole wide world…

I am not making this up, as Dave Barry likes to say. This really happened. Then we stopped for a moment and kissed. Excluding games of spin-the-bottle, which allowed for little pecks on the cheek, this was my first kiss.

The sad truth is I wasn’t that different from anyone, of any age, who can’t resist the feeling of being wanted. If this pretty girl wanted to dance with me, maybe I wasn’t worthless. If she wanted to kiss me, maybe I wasn’t a leper. In this little moment, in the dark, away from real life, it must not have mattered how I dressed, or what kind of haircut I had, or whether I followed all the fads. It seemed like someone wanted me. I couldn’t say no to that to save my life.

After a little more swayin’, we went ashore and walked through the dark, deserted streets of Kalama. We stopped under a street light in an empty gas station and kissed again. We slipped out of the light and stood against the shadowed wall of an old brick building. We stood in the dark and barren town, embracing and kissing and meaning two absolutely opposite things to one another. Everything and nothing.

— — —

“I’ve called her like three times, but she hasn’t called me back.”

Dave and I sat in his room a few days later, darkened like we had been by the clouds on our river journey: two 14 year old boys, carried by the elements of nature, driven from within by our own nature, and whipped and blown every minute. Life just seemed to be making less sense all the time.

I thought I would see her, maybe ask her out. I thought we’d gotten off to a pretty good start. Who could say these crazy feelings weren’t the first stirrings of love — the feathery kind of love they sing about on the AM. You know — you meet, you kiss, you get to know each other, you can’t live without each other — like that? Maybe my chronology was a little off, but she did give me her number. Why would she do that if she didn’t want to talk to me again?

“She’s not gonna call me back. Ben warned me about her, but when it was just me and her, I didn’t care what Ben said.”

“Girls.”

Dave’s mood mirrored my own, as if it had happened to him as well.

“Ben knew exactly what Marti was like.”

“She broke your heart.”

“I don’t think I’m in love, Dave.”

“But that’s how you feel. She lifted you up, acted like she liked you, then she threw you down.”

I felt thrown down.

Dave, friend to the end, would not be lifted out of this somber mood until I was. As we sat there with only the sound of the radio, Johnny Rivers was singing again,

As we dance together in the dark,
So much love in this heart of mine.
You whisper to me, “Hold me tight.”
You’re the one I thought I’d never find.

Dave lifted his head and looked at me earnestly.

“I dedicate this song to you.”

Apparently none of the really convincing photographs were available for the cover

I love odd old books. This “expose” was published in 1950, making it  fairly early in the “Age of Flying Saucers,” which I believe began in 1947. Unfortunately, the book is not as fun as the cover. But the back page is.

Five cents for shipping - Why not order them all?