Tag: Jesus Christ

After That, the Dark by Andrew Klavan

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

Let me fangirl for a minute

I am not a person who eagerly awaits the latest release in a series, and pre-orders books as soon as they become available. Usually, I am the one who discovers the series 20 years after it came out. In fact, this series by Klavan is the only exception I can think of. I pre-ordered After That, and it came, as promised, on Halloween.

Mini reviews of the whole Cameron Winter series

This is the fifth book in the Cameron Winter series. The other books are:

  1. When Christmas Comes (O.K. Sets up Winter’s history, shrink, and issues.)
  2. A Strange Habit of Mind (I like it because my mind is also strange.)
  3. The House of Love and Death (Tragic!)
  4. A Woman Underground (Also tragic, but satisfying. Wraps up Charlotte)

After That, the Dark takes Winter on the next stage of his journey. It’s designed to be readable as a stand-alone, but you will find it more satisfying if you’ve been with him all along.

The Basic Review

Like every Winter book, this one deals with Winter’s psychological journey, and on a parallel track there is an equally devastating crime that he is trying to solve and, inevitably, prevent. Subplots include Winter’s love life and his battles with the leftie professors at the university where he is an English professor.

The title for this book is taken from a poem by English Romantic poet Tennyson:

… Who imagined that his death would be like sailing over the sandbar near the coast and out into the greater ocean.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

ibid, p. 160

Cameron Winter’s academic specialty is English Romantic poetry (about which Klavan recently published a book, himself). Throughout this series, it’s sort of felt as if Klavan wants to have the best of both worlds with his hero. Winter is a former government operative, a dangerous man, and also a soft, spiritual guy who just wants everyone to appreciate poetry. Sort of like a medieval knight. I haven’t felt that this tension was 100% successful in past books, although it does lead to the Superman dynamic where the nerdy guy takes off his glasses and messes up the bad guys good, which is always fun. But in this volume, Winter starts to integrate these two different sides of his personality.

The crimes in this book deal with transhumanism. The victims and potential victims are mothers and babies. One potential victim is an expectant mother who has noticed changes in her husband and can’t articulate them well enough to get anyone to believe her. It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t have been able to handle a few years ago, when my kids were smaller. I kept reading only because this is Klavan, and I know he doesn’t like stories where women get butchered gratuitously. “Look, when there’s a killer chasing a girl with a knife, I’m on the side of the girl!”

So, if you like poetry, action scenes, demonic possession, or personal growth, you will get all of that here. It’s not exactly like any other action/crime book I’ve read. The hero is usually wrestling with his own demons, but in other books he doesn’t spend so much time talking to his shrink. It’s a bold move on Klavan’s part to allow the hero to actually start beating the personal demons. I don’t know how he’s going to continue a noir-type series once his hero becomes psychologically healthy, but I’m sure he’ll find a way.

As you can see, I’m a little conflicted about Cameron Winter. But I still wholeheartedly give this book five stars, and if you want to find out why, read on for some major spoilers.

Spoilers … and Jesus

I have mentioned before that what I live for in books is when the characters’ concrete experience and myth coalesce, so they are walking the specific path in front of them, but also enacting a mythological scene at the same time. This is a little hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. It’s what makes great art.

This fusion of the everyday and the eternal is most often found in the fantasy or sci-fi genres, because to be honest, it’s easiest to set up there. But to my delight, Klavan has here pulled it off in a modern thriller/true-crime type novel.

Let’s go back to the pregnant woman who starts to suspect her husband. Her name is Tilda, a name probably chosen for how vulnerable it makes her sound. Tilda used to be a “bar girl,” one of the town’s easy marks. Then, her husband Martin picked her up with the line, “Do you have a minute to talk about Jesus Christ?” Tilda thought that was a pretty good joke, but then Martin actually did. He actually did talk to her about Jesus Christ. And he was a perfect gentleman. Tilda married him, and she became a Christian and her life completely changed. But now, the man who led her to this change seems to have become a completely different person and Tilda, understandably, doubts herself. Sometimes, she secretly wonders whether she’s really faking this whole Jesus thing.

Winter, meanwhile, is on the track of a man he knows is out there. He knows this man will have undergone a dramatic personality change recently, and that if not found he will begin to commit gruesome crimes. Winter, though an atheist, is dating a Christian girl and she has given him a cross for his spiritual protection. Winter keeps the cross in the coin pocket of his jeans. When the bad guys, after beating him rather severely, have him handcuffed to a chair, he is able to get the cross out and use it to pick the locks on the cuffs. There follows an action scene wherein Winter, still holding the cross, manages to escape the bad guys and run barefoot into a cornfield. As he runs, a cornstalk punctures his foot. When he finally stops running and wonders why his hand hurts, he looks down and finds that the cross has pierced the inside of his fist. He has to dig it out.

When I read that, I looked up and said to my husband, “The hero just received stigmata.”

But Klavan isn’t done with Winter yet.

Tilda, meanwhile, is tied up in the crawlspace in a house her husband has been working on. She knows her husband is about to come and finish her off. Her mind is a hurricane of incoherent prayers for Jesus to spare her unborn baby.

Then Winter shows up, having already decommissioned the husband outside. Because he has been beaten so badly, his face is a swollen mess, “like a monster.” And the first thing he says to Tilda is exactly what I knew he would say:

“Don’t be afraid.”

This is how Jesus comes to us. “His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being, and his form marred beyond human likeness.” (Isaiah 52:14) He shows up looking like that, and He says to us, “Fear not.”

As Winter strives to calm Tilda down enough to rescue her, he keeps saying the sorts of things that Jesus says:

“Listen to me,” the man said. “I’m going to use a knife. No, no, it’s all right, don’t be afraid. I’m going to use a knife to cut you free. It will look scary, but I will not hurt you. Nothing will hurt you now, but I have to cut you free. Don’t be afraid.”

… The man had climbed out of the space. He was above her again, reaching down for her with both hands.

“[Your husband] is not here. Let me get hold of you. Don’t you hold on to me,” he said. “I’m stronger. Let me hold on to you.”

… Tilda was crying hard now. “I prayed to Jesus and you came,” she explained.

“Oh. Well, good,” said the man. “It’s nice when things happen that way.”

ibid, pp. 305 – 307

That last line, by the way, shows that Klavan is not trying too hard with Winter. Nor is he writing an allegory. This kind of double vision in a book is all the harder to do when you let it grow naturally out of the story and don’t force it. Kudos.

A Monster Theology Post about the Three Types of Old Testament Law, because it is Theology November

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

A writing prompt from the Internet

Sometimes, you get into a discussion in a comments section that clearly is beyond the scope of the comments section, both because a) it requires really long comments, b) with footnotes, and c) your interlocutor is not actually going to be convinced. In other words, this discussion ought to be a persuasive essay instead.

When you have a theology blog, this is nothing but good news.

I recently got into such a discussion.

The context: Doug Wilson’s interview with Ross Douthat. Douthat asks Wilson whether, in his ideal Christian Republic 500 years from now, every sin would be against the law. Wilson makes the helpful distinction between sins and crimes. Not every sin should be against the law, he says. Failure to understand this concept got the Puritans into trouble, but we have learned a lot since then. Wilson then goes on to mention the well-known classification of “three types of law” found in the Old Testament: the moral law (universal, binding on all individuals before God), the civil law (what was legal and illegal in the kingdom of Israel, and with what civil penalties), and the ceremonial law (regulations having to do with the Temple, the sacrificial system, and various purity laws such as food laws). If you have been around Christian circles, particularly Reformed circles, you will have heard this distinction. (Edit: I’m now not sure whether Wilson brought up the three categories of law in the video, or whether it came up in the comments as we discussed the distinction he was making between sin and crime.)

Now we come to the commenter who kindly gave me a prompt for this essay. I don’t even know whether this person is man or a woman, but I’m going to call him Rufus.

Rufus says,

The problem is that the distinction [between sin and crime] is always arbitrary, and tends to align with the cultural norms of a particular period of time (e.g. USA in the 1950s).

The inconvenient fact is that moral/civil/ceremonial law distinctions are not in the text, either explicitly or implicitly based on the arrangement (e.g. if you read straight through Leviticus and Deuteronomy, you will find yourself constantly flipping between categories, sometimes verse to verse, without any indication you should be doing so.)

What you are doing is looking at the text vs. normative Christian practice and trying to figure out a system that explains why we follow some of the commandments and not others. Then once you have devised the system, you apply it to the text and say that’s why we follow these and not those. This is a circular argument. The fact you can’t explain satisfactorily how Matthew 5:18 – 20 fits with normative Christian practice is why the Hebrew Roots movement exists. Their position is wrong, but it’s totally reasonable given the premises they’re starting with.

Thanks for the prompt, Rufus. This will give us a lot to chew on.

The trickiness of not knowing who you’re talking to

First, let me clear up just a few simple misunderstandings that Rufus can hardly be blamed for.

Rufus mentions, or implies, that Wilson is just taking a sentimental look back at 1950s America and assuming that, if he can get his Christian republic to look like that, he will have applied the law of God in a culturally appropriate way. Now, it happens that Wilson, in this interview and elsewhere, does mention 50s & 60s America as a place he remembers fondly. He usually brings it up in order to make the point that sodomy was banned back then, and yet America did not resemble the Handmaid’s Tale, which must mean laws against sodomy don’t necessarily produce that kind of society.

However, if Rufus knew Wilson a little better, he would know that Wilson does not look back at the 1950s with a sentimental and uncritical eye. In fact, Wilson has compared the position of the U.S. in the 1950s to that of someone who has just fallen out of an airplane, but is still only a yard below it. Now, we are approaching the ground, but going back to one yard below the plane, if we could do such a thing, would not help in the long run.

If Rufus knew the neoReformed world from within Wilson is writing even better, he would know that, when we do romanticize historical eras, it ain’t the 1950s we usually choose. It’s more likely to be Jane Austen’s England, or Knox’s Scotland, or Jonathan Edwards’s Puritan New England. This shows that Rufus does not really know who he is talking to. He can hardly be blamed for this, on the Internet, but if he wants to attain a “touche” moment, he needs to find out the actual position of his interlocutor, not talk to somebody he has in his mind (maybe a Southern Baptist?).

Then Rufus says to me (or perhaps it’s a general “you”), “What you are doing is looking at the text vs. normative Christian practice and trying to figure out a system that explains why we follow some of the commandments and not others. Then once you have devised the system, you apply it to the text and say that’s why we follow these and not those. This is a circular argument.”

Why yes, it would be a circular argument, if that were something I was doing. And perhaps there are some people who do that, and these are the people Rufus had in mind as the intended audience for his comment. However, I am not those people. I am a person who lived overseas, trying to get a Bible translation movement started in jungle area that boasted a lot of paganism still, a strong Muslim presence as well, and heavy influence from Christian norms that were not American Christian norms. Both before and after living there, I took anthropology and missiology classes where almost all we did was discuss how the Bible can and should be applied in different cultural contexts. I’ve prayed with native people who use their language’s name for the Creator (Mohotara), and it was glorious. I’ve attended a traditional dance ceremony that had been adapted for Christian purposes to give thanks for something. I’ve listened to people discuss whether Christians can keep in their homes heirlooms that were once used for pagan purposes, and what happens when a Muslim man with multiple wives converts to Christianity.

So no, Rufus, if I was the intended audience for your comment, you have me wrong. I was not just taking a received American Christian practice and backfilling it to make it look biblical. But there is no way you could be expected to know this. After all, I don’t even know whether you are a man or a woman.

O.K., so my claim is that people who talk about the three categories of the Law are not just arguing in a circle, or justifying sentimentality or lazy thinking. What is our biblical argument, then? Let’s address Rufus’s exegetical objections.

Rufus is right … sort of

First, let me say that Rufus is technically right in his comments about Leviticus and Deuteronomy:

The inconvenient fact is that moral/civil/ceremonial law distinctions are not in the text, either explicitly or implicitly based on the arrangement (e.g. if you read straight through Leviticus and Deuteronomy, you will find yourself constantly flipping between categories, sometimes verse to verse, without any indication you should be doing so.)

Rufus 100% is correct that nowhere in the Law are there headings that say “Moral Law,” “Civil Law,” or “Ceremonial Law.” He is also correct that all these three types of commands tend to be mixed together, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which one a given commandment is. In this essay, I will argue that his correctness about the distinctions being “not in the text” only holds if you confine yourself to the texts of the actual commands, ignore the narrative parts, ignore the New Testament, and play dumb.

Mysterious Accounts and Emerging Distinctions

First, let’s acknowledge that the Books of the Law (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) strike the modern person as disorganized. These books toggle back and forth between law and narrative. They give the Ten Commandments, and then a bunch of differing elaborations on them in different places, organized in different ways depending upon the book, the passage, and what is foregrounded after the narrative that just took place. Sometimes, Israel acts up, God says He’s going to reject them, Moses talks Him around, and then all the commands are repeated as they are reiterated. In Numbers, new applications and case law are given as new situations arise (for example, how inheritance should work if a man has only daughters). Some of the annual ceremonies (not to mention the daily ceremonies) work differently when the people of Israel were dwelling in tents with the Tabernacle right there, versus when they were living on their homesteads throughout the land, days, or weeks’ journey from the Tabernacle and later the Temple. So, no, the laws are not organized and laid out conveniently, the way modern people would like a code of laws to be. In some ways, they are more like a tribal history, which is how laws often worked back then.

In fact, I’ll do you one better. The narrative accounts from the times of the patriarchs and Exodus are also mysterious and confusing. All this was so long ago, and so little is known about the context, that it can be difficult to re-construct, for example, Israel’s exact route out of Egypt, despite the many, now obsolete, place-names given. So yes, this is an ancient, ancient document, not a simple user’s manual.

But the distinction between ceremonial, civil, and moral law is far from the only distinction that was not present in the ancient mind, and emerged over time with progressive revelation. Another great example of this would be the doctrine of the Trinity. In the Old Testament, we often see the LORD appearing as a man. Sometimes “the Angel of the LORD” does the same thing, and very occasionally, such as in Genesis 18, we see them together. (See Michael Heiser and his discussion of “two powers in heaven” in his book The Unseen Realm.) We also see “the spirit of the LORD” coming upon people in the Old Testament. The result was usually that they prophesied, or had a kind of battle madness come upon them. Thousands of years later, in the New Testament, we see Jesus say that He is God’s Son, and that “I and the Father are one.” We see the Spirit come down upon Jesus in the form of a dove. In John 15 and 16, Jesus talks openly about both the Father and the Spirit. Finally, in Matthew 28, we get “Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” You could not get trinitarian doctrine out of just Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but if you take the whole Bible as inspired, you can’t avoid it.

C.S. Lewis has said somewhere, I think in The Abolition of Man, that the ancient mind did not make a distinction between spiritual and physical. When ancient people saw a king’s throne, for example, they reacted to it as a totality. The physical throne and the concept of majesty and authority were one thing. As time has gone by, and humanity has made a sharper and sharper distinction between physical and spiritual, we can readily infer when the ancients were talking about one, the other, or both.

In the same way, once we have been given the “three categories of law” as a tool to help us in reading Leviticus, it’s usually pretty easy to tell which kind we are looking at. Civil laws usually come with some kind of civil penalty, anything from remuneration to death. Moral laws are usually just commands: “If you see the donkey of one who hates you falling down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure to help him with it.” (Ex. 23:5) Ceremonial laws are often prescriptions of how to handle ceremonial objects and what sacrifices to offer; the subclass of ceremonial laws called purity laws usually come with some kind of purification ritual if someone becomes “unclean.” All this may not be explicit, but neither is it arbitrary.

Now, we acknowledge that these categories are not completely watertight in the context of ancient Israel. Some offenses are both civil and ceremonial, and these often call for death. Examples would be a wide range of sexual offenses that not only wrong the victim, but also defile the nation and dishonor God. Some offenses are just ceremonial but not civil or moral: touching a dead body. Some are both moral and civil (false testimony in court), where others are just moral (envy, gossip). Having said all this, you can usually tell the category(-ies) of the offense by using common sense.

Also – ahem – the New Testament

Finally, I’d like to call Rufus’s attention to the fact that the New Testament exists. The question of the difference between a sin and a crime, and of what parts of the Old Testament Law were binding on non-Jewish believers, occupies large swathes of the New Testament. I mean large swathes. This is discussed at length.

The entire book of Hebrews establishes that the ceremonial law was a preparation for Christ, was fulfilled by Christ, and now is no longer necessary. Hebrews was written not too long before the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. It warns repeatedly that the whole sacrificial system is “passing away.” Galatians discusses at length whether circumcision, a purity ordinance designed to differentiate Israel from other peoples, is necessary for a Christian to practice (answer: No). Large chunks of Acts are devoted to early believers trying to figure out which parts of the Law are binding on Gentile converts to Christianity. God Himself reveals to Peter that the food laws no longer apply. This gives us a pretty good case that the ceremonial laws associated with temple system, and the purity laws associated with separateness, are their own category.

But there were some prohibitions that were moral, civil, and ceremonial offenses in old Israel, which now are just moral offenses. Fornication, adultery, and sex with temple prostitutes are prime examples. These things were legal in the Roman empire. They are not ceremonial offenses for Gentiles who are no longer under the ceremonial law. But Paul is at some pains to point out in his letters that they are still moral offenses against God. (“Then they should not be illegal in a Christian republic!” Whether they should be civil offenses, they were not in the Roman empire. This shows there is a distinction between moral law and a civil law.)

There is also a fair amount of discussion in the New Testament as to what should be the Christian’s relationship to the civil magistrate — the legal system of the country they live in. In Luke 3:14, when Roman soldiers ask John what they should do to demonstrate repentance, he doesn’t tell them to quit working for Empire, but he tells them not to be corrupt and oppressive. Paul says that Christians should be known as law-abiding (Romans 13:4). He seems to feel that the civil magistrate has actual real authority to enforce civil laws, but that he should not get involved in disputes within the church (I Cor. 6). Similarly, Jesus tells us that paying taxes to pay for law enforcement and national defense should not burden our conscience (Matthew 22:15ff). If someone who has legal authority over others becomes a Christian, Paul (Philemon 1 – 25) and Jesus (Matt. 24:48) say that they should use their authority to do good. Jesus also says that we should use our wealth to do good (Luke 16:9). The general picture is of two different spheres of authority, which overlap in commonsense ways. A Christian may have to engage in civil disobedience if ordered to bow down to the golden statue, but he is not culpable merely by virtue of participating in the system in which he finds himself, and should be law-abiding except in extraordinary circumstances. A Christian who finds himself with some civil power should use that power like a Christian: don’t be corrupt (the prohibition on taking bribes goes all the way back to Exodus), and try to use your influence to do as much good as possible. Long-term, this was going to lead to things like the abolition of sex slavery, then polygamy and wife-beating, and then slavery in general. But the early church could not dream of such influence.

In sum, the New Testament has a lot to tell us about ceremonial, moral, and civil law, but it is not neatly organized. It is in the form of letters and narrative history.

Looking Matthew 5:17 – 22 in the face

So now we can address Rufus’s claim that “you can’t explain satisfactorily how Matthew 5:18 – 20 fits with normative Christian practice.”

I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

You are right, Rufus, but again, you are only right if we squint and play dumb. I can certainly explain it if you back up and include Matthew 5:17:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

Jesus fulfills the Law and the Prophets. How does He do it? By being the last High Priest we’ll ever need (Hebrews 7), the last sacrificial lamb we’ll ever need (John 1:29), the true temple (John 2:19 – 22), the true Ark (I Peter 3:20 – 21), the one for whom the prophets searched intently (I Peter 1:10 – 12), the second Adam (Romans 5:12 – 21), and so on. When His ongoing work is done, then “everything will be accomplished.” At the moment, He has accomplished a lot of it, including making the ceremonial law obsolete. At the time He was speaking in Matthew 5, He had not yet accomplished a lot of this, so the ceremonial Law was still in full force. For a little while.

Jesus did take major issue with how the Law was being applied (all out of emphasis, and contrary to its own spirit). He had been so outspoken about this that some people got the impression He was throwing out the whole thing, and they didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified. In Matthew 5:17 – 22, Jesus hastens to clarify that He is still on the side of the Lawgiver. He wanted us to know that, although large parts of the Law were shortly going to be “accomplished,” they were never going to become wrong. That book is closed, you might say, but it is not burned. It will never be the case that God was wrong to give the Law He gave to the ancient Israelites. It will never be the case that that Law was not good. We cannot accuse God of giving an imperfect Law, which I think is the main point of this passage.

O.K., that’s it. Rufus, if you’re out there, you say that you have looked into these issues deeply, “for decades.” I don’t know what your experience has been. Clearly, it has differed from mine. I hope we can stop talking past each other.

Theology November: A Review of a Book about New Thought

On By Jennifer Mugrage13 Comments

Happy Lies by Melissa Dougherty, Zondervan, 2025

This review was originally posted, in a slightly different form, on Goodreads in June 2025.

This book is a capable history of New Thought in the Christian church, particularly in America. The author first sketches how she grew up around a lot of New Thought and mistook it for Christianity. Then, she sketches how after she realized many of these beliefs were wrong, for some years she was calling them New Age because that’s what everyone else called them. She discusses how she learned of the term New Thought and how it differs from the New Age.

Both belief systems partake of Gnostic/Hermetic cosmology and theory of human nature. However, New Age embraces neopaganism and the occult, whereas New Thought instead tries to cast these Hermetic ideas in “Christianese” and read them back into the New Testament. This is made easier because many New Testament writers were talking directly back to Gnostics, and even re-purposing their terms.

Melissa unpacks the Gnostic/Hermetic assumptions behind such common “Christian” practices as the Prosperity Gospel, visualization, affirmations, “I am” statements, and the like. But instead of just dismissing these practices as “ppf, that’s pagan,” she actually shows where they originated and how they differ from orthodox Christianity.

This book does not dive deeply into the pagan side of Gnosticism and Hermeticism. It doesn’t discuss these philosophies’ relationship to Western mysticism, Eastern mysticism, Kabbalism, or German philosophers like Hegel. It doesn’t discuss the attempts in the early centuries after Christianity to integrate Gnosticism with Christianity. The history of these philosophies is a huge topic that could take up a lifetime of study.

Melissa’s book is not meant to be an intimidating doorstop of a book that covers all of this. She’s zooming in on one little twig on this big, ugly tree: New Thought and its influence on American Christianity. Her book gives well-meaning Christians the tools and vocabulary to recognize this kind of thought and to talk about it. I have bought copies to give to all the women in my family. New Thought can be difficult to talk about because it portrays itself as “what Jesus actually taught.” If you know someone who is into New Thought, you cannot just dismiss it as “No, that’s Gnostic.” Even though you are right, to them it will sound like you’re just brushing them off. This book might be useful in such a situation.

If you want to find out how Hermeticism gave birth to Marxism through Hegel and Marx, there is a fantastic series of lectures about it on YouTube by James Lindsay. I also recommend Melissa’s YouTube channel and the YouTube channel Cultish.

Finding God in the Literature of Darkness

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

A review of noir writer Andrew Klavan’s The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness. I have already posted this review on Amazon and Goodreads.

This is a very readable book that fleshes out Andrew Klavan’s thesis:

The opposite of murder is creation–creation, which is the telos of love. And because art, true art, is an act of creation, it always transforms its subject into itself, even if the subject is murder. An act of darkness is not the same thing as a work of art about an act of darkness. The murders in Shakespeare’s Macbeth are horrific, but they are part of a beautiful play.

page 17

In other words, Klavan is wrestling with the problem of evil. Based on his decades of thinking about this, he has concluded that in this life, there is no theological answer that can redeem evil for those who have suffered it. Theological answers there may be, but those are not what redeem it for us. The only answer to suffering is not an answer, exactly; it is beauty. The example he frequently re-visits is the Pieta, “the most beautiful statue in the world,” a statue of Mary cradling her maimed and innocent, dead son.

I think Klavan’s thesis is a very strong one. I think of the book of Job. Job suffers horribly, and apparently undeservedly, and to add to his suffering, he is told that it must be his fault. He asks God why. Now, as it happens, there is an explanation for everything that is happening to Job. But God doesn’t give it. He just starts talking to Job about the wild animals and their habits. This is beauty, it is wonder, and it is far beyond Job’s experience. But ultimately, God answers Job with Himself, with His presence. He answers Job out of the whirlwind. He mentions just a few of His mighty, mysterious works in creation. And this is a good answer. It is enough. It is a much better answer than if God had said, “Well, it all started when I got into this argument with Satan …”

Kingdom of Cain is a hard book to read because of the real-life crimes described in it. Klavan tries not to get too graphic unless he has to, but this is a book about murders after all, including copycat murders. The blurb says it examines the impact of three murders on our culture, but there are a lot more than that, both fictional and–this is the hard to read part–real. The hardest one for me was the kidnap, rape, and murder of a 14-year-old boy by a pair of older teenagers who were later lionized in fiction.

This book is very insightful. Perhaps if I had never heard Klavan make these points before, I’d have given it five stars. But I have been following him for years, and he has been working on this concept for years, so the idea was not new to me. Especially in the later chapters, it felt a little belaboring. Hence, four stars.

Mic Drop of the Week

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

The Law of Attraction isn’t biblical. It’s anti-biblical. It’s occultic, not Christian. It makes Jesus your life coach and God your loyal servant. But “believing in Jesus” is not a magic formula. And God isn’t your golden retriever.

Happy Lies, by Melissa Dougherty, p. 141

I Got Nominated … Sort of

On By Jennifer Mugrage17 Comments

(Is the above really the latest Sunshine Blogger Award logo? Looks kinda messy.)

So, Bookstooge sort-of-nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award! Thank you, Bookstooge! I am so flattered. I think his exact words were, “If you’re reading this, consider yourself nominated, because it means you have a pulse.”

Rules For The Sunshine Blogger Award:

  • Display the award’s official logo somewhere on your blog.
  • Thank the person who nominated you.
  • Provide a link to your nominator’s blog.
  • Answer your nominators’ questions.
  • Nominate up to 11 bloggers.
  • Ask your nominees 11 questions.
  • Notify your nominees by commenting on at least one of their blog posts.

Questions from Bookstooge:

  1. Why Would Anyone Consider Cereal to be Soup?

It’s because they are trying to categorize things according to algorithmic rules/decision trees instead of the way the human mind normally works, which is by constructing a schema for the thing in question and then eyeballing it.

With schemas, if the thing mostly resembles the schema, it is considered an instance of that thing, even if it misses checking some important boxes. And if it checks all the boxes but manifestly does NOT resemble the schema at all, then it’s not an instance of that thing.

Cereal is in the latter category. It’s an ungodly modern creation of Mr. Kellogg, who believed that eating meat was morally wrong as well as unhealthy, and sought to banish it from the breakfast table. And I say this as someone who very much likes breakfast cereal, particularly as an evening snack, even though I know it has wreaked havoc with my metabolism (see question #10).

2. Why Do You Blog?

I blog to get you interested in my books. Go buy ’em. BUT, warning, don’t buy the Kindle version of The Strange Land until the end of next week, when it will cost 99 cents because of a special promo.

3. How Do You Justify Your Existence? (I got that one from the Tales of the Black Widowers, good isn’t it?)

Yep, it’s a good one.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

“So God created man. In the image of God created He him, male and female created He them. And He said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, the cattle and the creatures that move along the ground.'”

Edit: By quoting this passage, I am NOT asserting that the only justification for our life is to reproduce … i.e., that your life somehow has no meaning if you are not a parent. I happen to have been given three children, but that’s God’s gift to me, not mine to Him. No, the point of quoting this passage is this: I justify my existence because God made me. He made us. He wanted there to be people. He wanted us to exist as male and female. And, per the latter part of the passage, He wanted there to be a lot of us. If you exist and you are a human, He is happy about that.

4. How Do You Choose Who to Follow?

Unfortunately, I’m a lot like Trump in this way. If you say nice things to me, I like you and then I follow you.

An alternative route is that you posted something that really interested me. This usually means book reviews, discussion about writing, theology, ancient history, and sometimes art.

5. If John McClane and John Wick were tied on a railroad track and you could only set one of them free, which would you choose and why?

O.K., I had to duckduckgo him, but John McClane is the Bruce Willis character in Die Hard. I would save John McClane instead of John Wick for the following reasons:

  • John Wick could definitely save himself.
  • I only saw the first Die Hard, but in it, John McClane is a family man, whereas John Wick doesn’t even have a dog anymore.
  • Once when we were in Indonesia, somebody swore that my husband looked exactly like Bruce Willis and now I can’t unsee it. That makes me think Bruce Willis is even more handsome.

6. In a game of Parcheesi, who would win, Spongebob Squarepants or the Doom Slayer?

I expect Spongebob to win in the same way that Bugs Bunny would.

7. Do you feel guilty about all of my oxygen that you are breathing?

Yes. My gosh, don’t remind me!

8. What is your favorite movie?

It’s a tie between The Princess Bride and a little hidden gem called Undercover Blues.

9. If you were going to be “accidentally but on purpose” killed tomorrow, how would you spend today?

I would write long letters to each of my children. If I had extra time, I’d move on to my husband, then other close family and friends.

I might try to transfer the rights to my books so they don’t go out of print, but I don’t think that could be done in one day. If you snooze, you lose, and I guess I snost and I lost.

10. Are mirrors Friend, or Foe?

Friend, but only in the sense of “faithful are the wounds of.”

11. If you could change ONE THING about your blog, what would it be?

Every single visit to my blog would result in a book purchase and then a breathless review on Amazon GO BUY MY BOOKS PEOPLE!

Ahem. I Nominate:

I nominate seven friends (the number of perfection!) plus Bookstooge cause I want to hear his answers too. And I nominate you, Reader, if you want to do it! After all, you are breathing! Which might provide the answer to my first question!

To Answer These Questions:

  1. What is the best gift God has given you?
  2. Without sharing details you don’t want to share, how did you come out of your darkest hour/day/year?
  3. What kind of biome would you most prefer to live in (one that can be inhabited by people)?
  4. In real life, how are your social skills (and do you have any tips for me haha)?
  5. What is your favorite genre of fiction?
  6. Do you ever read nonfiction and what makes you pick it up?
  7. Tell me one nice thing about your grandparents.
  8. If you could speak any language, ancient or modern, fluently besides your native one, which one would you choose?
  9. What are your feelings on the Harry Potter series?
  10. Do you have a favorite YouTuber/podcaster? What do they talk about? Now’s your chance to promote them!
  11. When did you first seriously consider the claims of Jesus of Nazareth? If you never have, would you do me a solid and consider doing so?

Redemption

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

It’s been an emotional week.

But that’s partly my own fault. After all, I had to go and listen to this heartrending testimony …

Jonathan Gass’s story is remarkable for how it consisted of essentially unremitting pain until he came to Christ … and then, for how fast he came to Christ and was transformed.

I say remarkable, but I don’t say unique. Many, many other men and women out there are, as we speak, going through the same unremitting pain. This does not make his story easier to listen to. But look at the peace on his face now.

And then, the same week I listened to Jonathan, I was reading my class of elementary-school students The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I came upon this passage:

For a second after Aslan breathed upon him the stone lion looked just the same. Then a tiny streak of gold began to run along his white marble back–then it spread–then the color seemed to lick all over him as the flame licks all over a bit of paper–then, while his hindquarters were still obviously stone, the lion shook his mane and all the heavy, stone folds rippled into living hair. Then he opened his great red mouth, warm and living, and gave a prodigious yawn. And now his hind legs had come to life. He lifted one of them and scratched himself. Then, having caught sight of Aslan, he went bounding after him and frisking round him whimpering with delight and jumping up to lick his face.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, p. 184

Aslan turns him back into a lion, and he immediately starts behaving like … a lion.

But not only the individual creatures, but the Witch’s house itself is a picture of a human soul:

“Now for the inside of this house!” said Aslan. “Look alive, everyone. Up stairs and down stairs and in my lady’s chamber! Leave no corner unsearched. You never know where some poor prisoner may be concealed.”

But at last the ransacking of the Witch’s fortress was ended. The whole castle stood empty with every door and window open and the light and the sweet spring air flooding in to all the dark and evil places which needed them so badly.

[And when the castle gates had been knocked down from the inside], and when the dust had cleared it was odd, standing in that dry, grim, stony yard, to see through the gap all the grass and waving trees and sparkling streams of the forest, and blue hills beyond that and beyond them the sky.

ibid, pp. 187 – 189

Becoming, and then Being, Elisabeth Elliot: a review

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

Quick! Who do we know who’s a linguist, a former missionary, a gifted writer, and wants to capture in novel form the human condition and God’s grace to us in it?

Who is awkward, reserved, and can come off as rude and abrupt, but actually has passionate emotions, a deep love for others, and a rich inner life?

Who loves nature? Crosses cultures happily, but doesn’t fit in so well in the American evangelical context? Who has a secret desire to be admired, but also suffers from poor judgement about the opposite sex?

Why, Elisabeth Elliot, of course!

Me and Elisabeth Elliot

When I was college and just discovering the things I ranted about last Friday, like the fact that we as a culture could use some guidelines about the how the sexes ought to relate to each other, I came across Elisabeth Elliot’s book Passion and Purity. I devoured it.

This book was exactly suited for me at the time. I was just starting to grow in Christ. I really wanted to do God’s will. I also, unbeknownst to me, had a lot in the common with the author of Passion and Purity: socially awkward, ascetic tendencies, perfectionistic, a longing for old-fashioned values. This book is basically about the lessons Betty, as she was called at that time, learned during her five years (!) of waiting for Jim Elliot to make up his mind that God had given him the go-ahead to marry her. Their courtship story strikes many Christian young people as really spiritual upon first hearing, and then on a second look, it starts to look as if he didn’t treat her very well possibly. But I bought into it fully.

Anyway. Full of missionary zeal to win other young people over to the idea of an extremely awkward, chaste, long courtship, I gave this book to a friend. She read it, and her reaction was, “There are the Elisabeth Elliots of this world, but I am not one of them.”

That annoyed me at the time (someone had rejected my idealistic ideal!), but from my perspective now, that friend of mine didn’t know how right she was. In fact, not even Elisabeth Elliot herself was one of the Elisabeth Elliots of the world, at least not in the sense of having perfect wisdom and self-control. At the time she was writing this (early 1980s), Elisabeth was enduring an extremely controlling marriage with a man she married because she didn’t want to be lonely. She stayed with him for the rest of her life, despite an intervention by her family. It’s chilling to realize that the woman who wrote Passion and Purity could make such a foolish decision.

Before Passion and Purity, I remember as kid seeing black-and-white photos of Elisabeth toting her small daughter Valerie into the jungle to serve the Waorani people (then called the Auca), a few years after her husband Jim was killed by them. These were the photos taken by Hungarian photographer Cornell Capa. They, and the books Elisabeth wrote about the Waorani, had made her and her martyred husband Jim famous throughout the evangelical world.

Both greater and lesser than I thought

When you think you know a story, you expect it to be boring. I put off for some time reading this duology by Ellen Vaughn, until it finally floated to the top of my reading list. Once I opened the books, I found that I couldn’t put them down. Vaughn is an excellent researcher and a vivid and sympathetic writer, and though I had read a number of books by and about the Elliots, I certainly didn’t know as much of their story as I thought.

Vaughn, aware that she is telling a story the outlines of which are familiar to readers, moves skillfully back and forth through time, as in a novel (though in rough outline, the first book deals with Betty’s early life and the second book with her post-Ecuador years). Vaughn doesn’t try to tell every story–there are too many, many of which have been told elsewhere, and others of which are apparently too private and will stay hidden forever in Elisabeth’s prolific journals. In fact, as I read these books, I felt I was getting to know two fellow woman writers: Elliot and Vaughn.

When you are a former missionary, it’s difficult to read other missionaries’ stories without comparing them to your own. Usually, this means you are reading about people who were far ahead of you in dedication, selflessness, toughness, and in what they suffered. This is certainly true of the Elliots. At the same time, so much of their personalities and stories seemed shockingly familiar. For example, young Jim Elliot was, besides being a great guy, an insufferable holier-than-thou know-it-all, of the “I’m going to go read my Bible” type. Betty, as Elisabeth was then called, was quiet and reserved and often didn’t realize that she was coming off as standoffish. Jim’s family verbally eviscerated her after her first visit to their home in Portland, and foolish young Jim passed all these criticisms on to Betty in a letter. She was devasted, but thought and prayed over the things they had said, and then concluded that none of them were things she could actually change. Later, Jim couldn’t believe he had shared his family’s words with Betty. As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a maroon. What an imBAYsill.”

They were just people, you see. Not angels. Which means that “just people” can always serve God.

Jim Elliot, you beautiful dunce.

The things they suffered also rang poignantly familiar. They suffered setbacks that lost them a year of their work–for her, language work; for him, building a mission station. Neat and tidy Elisabeth at some points had to live in squalor, and felt guilty for the fact that it bothered her. Fellow missionaries (not all) and Waorani Christians alike (not all) proved manipulative and controlling. In fact, it was relationship difficulties that caused Elisabeth eventually to leave the Waorani, after spending only a few years with them. This was not Elisbeth’s fault: person after person found it impossible to work with Rachel Saint, her fellow translator. But she took on as much of the responsibility for it as she possibly could, agonizing before God in her journals, because that was the kind of person she was.

Elisabeth the Novelist

Now we are getting into events of the second book, Being Elisabeth Elliot. Elisabeth knew that she had a gift of writing. She had made so much money from her books Through Gates of Splendor and The Shadow of the Almighty that she was able to build a house for herself and her daughter near the White Mountains of New Hampshire (talk about living the dream!) and settled down to become a writer. She really wanted to write great literature, the kind that would elevate people’s hearts and give them fresh eyes to see the great work of God all around them in the world.

If I were writing a novel about Elisabeth Elliot, I would end it there, and let her have a period of rest, in the beautiful mountains, with her daughter, writing her books, for the rest of her days. I wish that was how it had gone. I kept hoping, as I read this duology, for there to come a point when Vaughn could write, “And then, she rested.” Alas, that moment never came.

Elliot was indeed a really good writer. Sometime in the twenty-teens, when I was a young mom who had come back from the mission field hanging my head over my many failures, and had unpacked my books and settled into a rented house to minister to my small children, I found on an upstairs shelf a slim volume that looked as if it had been published in the 1960s or 70s, called No Graven Image. This was the novel that Elliot wrote when she first settled down in New Hampshire. She wished, through fiction, to give her readers a more powerful, truer picture of missionary life than her biographies had done.

This is not the cover my copy of the book had, though it also had an image of a condor.

No Graven Image was not well received when it came out. It was the old problem of marketing. To what audience do you market a genre-bending book? The people who liked to read tragic, worldly novels were not interested in a so-called “novel” about a young missionary woman, probably expecting that it would be preachy. The Christians who liked to read missionary stories were shocked and dismayed by a novel in which the protagonist flounders around, makes mistakes, and ultimately, accidently kills her language informant when he has a bad reaction to a shot of penicillin. And then decides that her desire to have a successful language project had been a form of idolatry.

Some readers appreciated the novel (particularly overseas missionaries), but most found it shocking, even blasphemous. They wanted a triumphant novel, not the story of Job. They wondered whether Elisabeth had lost her faith.

When I picked it up, in the twenty-teens, it made me feel extremely understood.

One thing that killed me as I read of Elisabeth’s later years is that this was the only novel she wrote. She very much wanted to write others, and she got as far as making notes for another novel. But life (read: men) intervened, and she was in demand for speaking and for writing nonfiction books such as Passion and Purity. She wasn’t able ever again to get the extended periods of time to concentrate that it would have taken to gestate a novel. She convinced herself that she just didn’t have what it took to write actual good fiction (and perhaps, that it was selfish to try). I am so sad to watch this dream die. I believe that she would have been a good novelist. I don’t know whether her publisher would have kept publishing her books if she had turned to fiction, or whether she would have had trouble finding another publisher. Spiritual non-fiction was what she had already become known for. She probably would have made less money, perhaps found it difficult to support herself. But still … you know … it’s hard to watch. So many things about the second volume of her biography are hard to watch. At the same time, because of Vaugh’s amazing research and writing, it’s hard not to sit back and just stare at this major accomplishment.

A Tale of Two Lost Boys: Perry Smith vs. Ikash son of Endu

On By Jennifer Mugrage6 Comments

Left to right: Dick Hickcock and Perry Smith, killers of the Clutter family; In Cold Blood by Truman Capote; The Strange Land by Jennifer Mugrage; “Don’t Eat My Family” by Jennifer Mugrage.

I hope this image gallery shows up right. I’ve never tried to make one before.

It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t find an image of either Perry or Ikash alone, but in some ways it’s fitting that the image I found for Perry features a mugshot and the image of Ikash shows him protecting his family.

This post will contain spoilers for The Strange Land, which has been out since 2021, and In Cold Blood, which has been out since 1966. This will be a rambling comparison between two character studies. Come along if you like that sort of thing.

It may seem — and O.K., it is — pretentious to compare a book of my own to Truman Capote’s masterpiece. My reasons for comparing the two characters will become clear, but to belabor the obvious, I am not comparing myself to Capote as a writer. It’s my blog, so I can be a little bit pretentious if I want, right? Shall we?

What the two lost boys have in common

The character of Perry Smith has a great deal in common, on a superficial level, with Ikash, the focus of my coming-of-age story The Strange Land. The similarities were strong enough to disturb me when I read Capote’s classic. After all, Perry drifts through the world aimlessly and then commits a senseless murder, whereas Ikash remains kind and courageous and goes on to become the shaman of his people. Perry is real, Ikash is fictional. Does this mean that I had fatally romanticized my character Ikash, a person who would not be nearly so noble in real life?

I do have a tendency to romanticize the sensitive, artistic guys, and ladies, if you share this tendency, it is something you need to watch. Just because a guy is not harsh, does not necessarily mean he is kind. As Jordan Peterson has said, “If you think strong men do a lot of damage, wait ’til you see the damage weak men will do!”

To start at the most superficial level, Smith and Ikash kind of look alike. Both are short and stocky (Smith had underdeveloped legs and feet), with wide faces, fine features, and dark eyes and hair. In fact, both are American Indian, though they are so far removed in time that this fact has no relevance for anything except their appearance. Smith’s father was John “Tex” Smith, an Irishman, and his mother was Florence Buckskin, a Cherokee. Ikash is a fictional character but was supposed to come from a tribe that was ancestral to the American Indians.

Both grew up in rough circumstances and eventually suffered the breakup of their families. Smith’s parents were both drunks. His mother left his father when he was small, and he turned to crime, lived in a series of orphanages, then on the Alaskan frontier with his father as a teenager. He eventually joined the Navy, then proceeded to drift from friend’s house to friend’s house to park bench to jail, not really having a place to go home to. His shrimpy stature was probably from malnutrition as a young child.

Ikash (again, fictional) had it slightly better. He did not suffer from hunger, because the tribe’s Beringian environment provided for them abundantly. However, his father was abusive to mother, leading eventually to her suicide, and periodically to his sons as well. After his mother’s suicide, Ikash’s family essentially broke up, and he and his brother lived together as bachelors. He was a bit of a pariah in the tribe because of his family’s reputation.

Both men are quiet, sensitive types. Both play the guitar (lute, in Ikash’s case) and sing. Both think of themselves as spiritual. In Perry’s case, he has occasional premonitions, visions, and, as he gets more beat up by the world, what appear to be dissociative episodes.

“I could give you a hundred examples. I don’t care if you believe me or not. For instance, right before I had my motorcycle accident I saw the whole thing happen: saw it in my mind–the rain, the skid tracks, me lying there bleeding and my legs broken. That’s what I’ve got now. A premonition.”

… “About that premonition stuff. Tell me this: If you were so damn sure you were gonna crack up, why didn’t you call it quits? It wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed off your bike–right?”

That was a riddle that Perry had pondered. He felt he’d solved it, but the solution, while simple, was also somewhat hazy: “No. Because once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won’t. Or will–depending. As long as you live, there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it’s bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living. Like my dream. Since I was a kid, I’ve had this same dream … What it comes down to is, [in my dream] I want the diamonds more than I’m afraid of the snake. So I go to pick one, I have the diamond in my hand, I’m pulling at it, when the snake lands on top of me… he starts to swallow me. Feet first. Like going down in quicksand.”

Perry hesitated. He could not help noticing that Dick was uninterested in his dream.

Dick said, “So? The snake swallows you? Or what?”

“Never mind. It’s not important.” (But it was! The finale was of great importance, a source of private joy. [It was a] towering bird, the yellow “sort of parrot” … which had first flown into his dreams when he was seven years old, a hated, hating half-breed child living in the California orphanage run by nuns–shrouded disciplinarians who whipped him for wetting his bed. It was after one of these beatings, one he could never forget, that the parrot appeared, arrived while he slept, a bird “taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower,” a warrior-angel who blinded the nuns with its beak, fed upon their eyes, slaughtered them as they “pleaded for mercy,” then so gently lifted him, enfolded him, winged him away to “paradise.”

As the years went by, the particular torments from which the bird delivered him altered, but the parrot remained, a hovering avenger.

pp. 90, 92 – 93

Perry has no outlet for his artistic nature and believes that no one appreciates his depth and intelligence.

Ikash, for his part, wants to have visions like his cousin Ki-Ki who is the tribal shaman, and eventually does have visions, but then worries that they are endangering his loved ones.

Ikash can spend a lot of time alone, thinking or praying. Smith travels with a box full of books, papers, maps, and magazines, even when homeless, which is a habit that endeared him to me before I heard more details about the murder he committed.

Ikash, as has been mentioned, moves into a protective role towards members of his tribe. Smith, despite being an unstable character in some other ways, several times protects girls and young women from the predations of his partner in crime, Dick Hickcock.

he had “no respect for people who can’t control themselves sexually,” especially when the lack of control involved what he called “pervertiness”–“bothering kids,” “queer stuff,” rape. And he had thought he had made his views obvious to Dick; indeed, hadn’t they almost had a fist fight when quite recently he had prevented Dick from raping a terrified young girl?

page 202

Finally, another burden these two young men have in common is chronic, or recurring, pain. Smith’s legs were smashed up in his motorcycle crash and appear not to have healed properly. There’s a memorable scene in In Cold Blood where the two criminals, on the way to their heist, stop at a gas station. Perry goes into the bathroom and stays in there for so long that both Dick and the gas station attendant are filled with disgust and impatience. In fact, Perry is first sitting on the toilet, then trying to rise to a standing position, with his legs hurting so badly that he’s holding onto the sink, sweating, and shaking. Ikash has periodic recurring pain from some old broken bones (collarbone, ribs), and also suffers periodic “phantom” pains in other parts of his body, that while short-lived, are severe enough to be temporarily debilitating. Ikash believes that these episodes represent instances of his “bearing” the actual sufferings of other members of his tribe, for them. They can also be understood as the lingering effects of trauma and grief, stored in the body. As can Smith’s health problems.

So what accounts for the different outcomes between these two lost boys?

Easy, you might say. You made Ikash up, so you can make him turn out however you like. Perry Smith lived in the real world, where there are no happy endings.

Well, O.K. I did not write a nihilistic book where characters are trapped by their abusive pasts, character flaws, and poor decisions by themselves and others, because I don’t believe that the world is, ultimately, a nihilistic place. But if you’re going to write hope into a book, it has to come from somewhere. It can’t be deus ex machina hope; it has to be Deus ex caelo, or should I say credo in unum Deum, Patrem Omnipotentem, Factorem caeli et terrae.

Some reviewers of my book said they found the scenes of domestic abuse difficult to read. Actually, I kept them as minimal as I could and still convey the problem, and there is much that I spared Ikash, as can be seen when we compare him to Perry Smith, who had it much worse.

Smith was the youngest in his family, so he was very small when things got chaotic between his mother and father. His mother would bring strange men home and fornicate with them in view of the children, something Ikash’s mother Sari definitely would not do. One of these episodes led to a fight “in which a bullwhip, hot water, and gas lamp were used as weapons.” After the breakup of the family, Perry ended up in orphanages where the nuns would shame and beat him for bedwetting. Ikash was also a bedwetter, as is not uncommon among little boys. Perry Smith had even more reason for it given the instability in his home. This problem continued into adulthood. He believed that his kidneys had been ruined by a childhood diet of bread dipped in sweetened condensed milk, which during the Smith family’s nomadic days was often all they had for supper.

Ikash’s family, though unhappy, remained intact until he was fifteen.

When Smith joined the Merchant Marine, Capote strongly implies that he had another horrible experience which Ikash escaped.

“But I never would have joined [the Merchant Marine] if I’d known what I was going up against,” Perry once said. “I never minded the work, and I liked being a sailor–seaports, and all that. But the queens on the ship wouldn’t leave me alone. A sixteen-year-old kid, and a small kid. I could handle myself, sure. But a lot of queens aren’t effeminate, you know. Hell, I’ve known queens could toss a pool table out a window. And the piano after it. Those kind of girls, they can give you an evil time, especially when there’s a couple of them, they get together and gang up on you, and you’re just a kid. It can make you practically want to kill yourself.”

pp. 133 – 134

Apparently, Smith was the victim of homosexual predators while he was at sea. This kind of violation, arguably the ultimate in horror, is not something I’ve ever felt up to subjecting my characters to. It is, sadly, quite common in the world (especially the ancient world), and I am not saying it’s something that a person cannot come back from. The grace of God is enough to redeem and restore anyone, no matter what they have been through (see The Sparrow.) But I have never had the slightest ability nor desire to put my male characters through this. Real life, on the other hand, is not so merciful.

Ultimately, though, it’s not Perry’s additional bad experiences that left his character to turn sour; instead, it’s relationships that he lacked and Ikash had.

Like Perry, Ikash’s immediate family was not great. His father and his older brothers bullied him. Unlike Perry, Ikash lived in a tribal situation where there were, close at hand, uncles and aunts, cousins, and a grandmother. This kind of situation is not automatically good, of course; tribes can be hotbeds of gossip and social pressure. And indeed, Ikash’s early experiences do cause him to mistrust older relatives who might otherwise be helpful to him. But he is fortunate to have quite a number of kind people in his life who wish to aid him and his mother. Grandmother Zillah does her best to provide breaks for Sari; cousin Ki-Ki mentors Ikash, and a model of a healthy marriage is provided by his father’s sister Ninna and her husband. Even with all these good helpers and models, it is barely enough.

Perry does not seem to have had anything like this kind of potentially beneficial community. His father and mother were itinerant, having met on the rodeo circuit. They don’t seem to live near any extended family. Perry does form connections with friends who he believes understand him, but because of his vagrant lifestyle, the connections are not lasting. At one point, he travels across the entire United States hoping to stay with an old Army buddy, only to find to his dismay that the buddy has moved and left no forwarding address. These kinds of near misses are the story of Perry Smith’s life. What might be called his last friend, Dick Hickock, is a cellmate who wants to use him to pull off a heist, and ultimately puts him in a situation that leads to the moral ruination, and then the death, of both of them. Dick does not understand Perry, nor does he have any concern for the best interests of Perry, the Clutter family–or anyone but himself.

In a counterintuitive dynamic, Perry’s very isolation tends to make him not only lonely, but also increasingly conceited. Having no long-term relationships means there is no check on his delusions. With no one to praise, appreciate and love him properly, there is also no one whose critiques he can take to heart. He’s left to his own assessment of himself, and not able to develop strength of character or clarity of mind. Ultimately, when he cuts Mr. Clutter’s throat, he does it without intending to. “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” (p. 244)

Ikash, on the other hand, is surrounded by judgmental relatives who have known him since he was small, who can love on, scold, praise, and criticize him.

Without Hope and Without God in the World

At fourteen, Ikash begs his older cousin Ki-Ki, the tribal shaman, to teach him how to have a vision.

Ki-Ki, the shaman, seemed to be in love with the world and with the many specific things in it. He was in love with his dogs, for example, with the horses, with the wild animals, in love with his wife, in love with God. It was this quality that drew Ikash to him. Ikash would love to approach the world like that. But he had never felt such love for anything, except when it was stirred in him for a few moments by some story or song of Ki-Ki’s. He longed to live in the world of the stories, but he had never been able to manufacture such love inside himself.

p. 93

Ki-Ki is uncertain this will work, or that is even viable (as he says, “visions are dangerous“), but he is willing to give it a try.

They sat, cross-legged, each with his back against a tree. Upstream, there was a view of the grey top of a mountain.

The atmosphere seemed somewhat lacking to Ikash. He looked at his older cousin and muttered, “Aren’t you going to beat a drum or something?”

Ki-Ki grinned whitely. “Then you wouldn’t be sure it was real,” he said. “Besides, God is everywhere. We need no drum to talk to God.”

As soon as he said the word “God” for the second time, a presence was felt in the gully. It was so palpable that Ikash actually gasped.

Ki-Ki apparently felt it too, for he reached out a large, hard hand and grasped Ikash firmly around the wrist as if to keep him from being swept away.

Immediately Ikash knew what his cousin had meant about danger that was not a physical danger. He felt no threat, nor any hostility, such as he had often felt from his father. But the presence was overwhelming, crowding, as of something too huge for the valley to contain.

This was not the sort of vision he had hoped for.

He heard Ki-Ki speak. “It’s too much for him,” he said, and for a second it was as if some great face had turned its terrible eyes towards Ikash … and then, oh thank goodness, the presence was gone suddenly.

pp. 100 – 102

In other words, Ki-Ki, without really trying to, functions as an intermediary to introduce Ikash to God. Later, when quite a few other tragedies have happened and Ki-Ki has been taken from Ikash, the young man has a vision of his own that he can only describe as “a father.”

“A father?” [his brother] Sha blinked, completely thrown.

“A good father.” Ikash was staring earnestly at his brother, as if willing him to grasp this difficult concept. “It gave me a sense of a really good father, the kind we’ve always wanted but never known.”

“What did it look like?” asked [cousin] Mut. He was picturing a bigger, two-eyed version of his own father.

“I told you, it wasn’t visual. I didn’t see anything except the cloud. But I felt the Father. … We have a father.” He made a slight sweeping gesture with his hand that took in himself and, somehow, the entire camp as well. “That’s what makes us able to bear the loss of all the others.”

pp. 512 – 514

A perceptive reader has pointed out that the definition of a horror story is all the bad stuff in the world that happens, minus God. God is what keeps Ikash’s story from remaining one of unremitting horror. This was the horror–the horror of other people’s sins against him, the horror of a complete lack of adequate love, the horror of his own increasingly weak mind, and eventually, his own grievous sins against others–that Perry Smith lived.

Before Smith and Hickock committed their planned robbery, to which Hickock insisted they leave “no witnesses,” they stopped by a Catholic hospital. Perry Smith knew that nuns were guaranteed to have black nylons, and he wanted Hickock to obtain some so the two could cover their faces when they went to rob the Clutter family. Perhaps, if the two had managed to do this, they would not have ended up killing the Clutters. Dick, however, came out of the hospital without having tried to get any nylons (“it was a pukey idea”). Perry was not willing to go in. He believed that nuns were bad luck.

After Smith and Hickock’s arrest, Perry Smith was kept in a cell in the home of the town undersheriff and his wife, a cell that until then had been reserved for female prisoners. (The reason was a desire to keep the two culprits separated.) Sherriff and Mrs. Meier were “deeply Catholic.”

Mrs. Meier had been rebuffed by Perry when she had suggested a consultation with Father Goubeaux, a local priest. (Perry said, “Priests and nuns have had their chance with me. I’m still wearing the scars to prove it.”)

pp. 288 – 289

Now, of course, “nuns and priests” are not necessarily the only way to find out about the redemption offered to us by the God who gives life to the dead, and calls things that are not as though they were. They might not even be the best way. My only point is that unfortunately, for Perry Smith, the only people in his life whom he associated with God, were also people who were abusive to him. He never had a chance to be introduced to the concept of God by anyone he loved and trusted. This is the opposite of the case with Ikash.

Later, in jail, Perry did make friends with a former pastor, now a fellow inmate, who was mystical and simpatico with Perry. This man, however, seemed to be a bit of an apostate, and by that time Smith had already hardened against the whole idea of God. God, certainly, can overcome stories this sad and sadder, but in this case, for whatever reason, He didn’t.

We don’t know whether Perry Smith had a deathbed conversion in the last few seconds before being hung, but tragically, from all appearances, it doesn’t appear so. Neither did Dick Hickcock. That, plus the apparent senselessness of the fate of the Clutters, is what makes In Cold Blood such a tragedy. It underlines how much Smith and Hickock–and indeed all of us–need Jesus, and that is what makes this unedifying event such an appropriate topic for this Easter season.

Jesus, with some well-timed Trollery

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

Here are some thoughts I had when reading through the book of Mark a while back. Peruse them at your own risk. I hope you find them entertaining, maybe a slightly fresh take on Jesus, but remember this is not authoritative teaching.

Defining “Troll”

Let it be noted that my husband objects to use of the verb “troll” as applied to Jesus.

He was kind of shocked when I brought this up, as a step in my thinking-through-it process. And, I get it. One meaning of “troll” is when someone insults strangers just to be smug, superior and unkind. Obviously, Jesus doesn’t do that. He doesn’t need to cut other people down in order to build Himself up. And He isn’t bitter.

But there’s another definition of trolling, which is: intentionally to violate a social norm, in order to make a point. This is the sense in which trolling can be an art form. And this sense of the word is values-neutral. Trolling in this sense can be mean, or it can be strategic. It depends entirely upon who is the target, and what point you’re making.

I’m in Mark chapters 11 and 12, if you want to join me.

The Triumphal Entry

This in itself is a political powder keg, but we don’t have time to get into all that. I want to focus on the events of the Monday and Tuesday that followed. I just want to note Mark 11:11:

“Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the Temple. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, He went out to Bethany with the Twelve.”

The Turning over Tables Incident

The next day (Monday, the second day of their work week), Jesus goes to the outer court of the Temple and starts making a scene. It is obvious that He planned this the night before. I imagine Him sitting on Mary and Martha’s front porch in Bethany, quietly braiding his leather whip and savoring what He’s about to do. He has probably wanted to do it for years.

Also, notice that He didn’t just turn over tables, let the sacrificial animals free, and then leave. He “would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the Temple courts.” (v. 16) In other words, He essentially barricaded the Temple and sat there all day. I can only imagine the disciples’ mortification. “When evening came, they went out of the city.” (v. 19)

But we still haven’t gotten to the trolling part yet.

The Fallout: The Direct Challenge

Well, Jesus goes right back to the same place the next day (Tuesday), and there are the authorities waiting for Him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” (v. 28) And furthermore, “who gave you the authority to do this?” (also v. 28) You can tell they are mad because they repeat it.

Jesus puts off this direct challenge by posing them a riddle about John’s baptism. This won’t make them any less mad (quite the contrary), and it won’t stop them from killing Him eventually, but it does prevent them from arresting Him right there, because after that great answer He just gave, it would cause a riot. He needs a few more days, partly because He has more teaching to do and partly because His death has to happen on the Passover.

Also, they aren’t mad enough yet.

Jesus Uses the Time He Has Bought to Troll

Mark 12:1 – 12:

Jesus tells what has since been dubbed ‘The Parable of the Tenants,’ in which some ungrateful vineyard tenants refuse to pay their rent, beat or kill bill collector after bill collector, and finally kill (!) the owner’s son.

And then He adds, “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”

Hmm, their top-secret plan to kill Him is not so secret. He just told a thinly-disguised story about it, and wrapped up by saying, “You’ll get what’s coming to you.” This is the ultimate finger in the eye.

The Fallout II: The Obvious Political Trap

Mark 12:13 – 17

Having been stymied in the direct challenge, and still maddeningly unable to arrest Him because of the Jesus mobs, they re-group and send some different people (ooo so tricky!) with some flattery followed by a demand for His position on an impossible political issue.

“Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are, but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

He responds, with an almost audible eye roll, “Why are you trying to trap me?” Which is great, but that’s not enough when a political trap is sprung. You also have to know how to get out of the trap.

“Find me a denarius.” There is then a pause while they hunt one up, because not everybody carries denarii of course, and probably a bigger crowd gathers, wondering what is going on. Finally, they find one.

“Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s.”

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

And that, a devastatingly spicy one-liner, is how we get out of a political trap.

(For what it’s worth, I don’t think Jesus was laying out a whole socio-political philosophy here. I don’t think that with “render unto Caesar” He was saying that all of our money rightfully belongs to the State (since they print it), or that there is no such thing as an unfair tax rate, or that the ideal country could have as high taxes as it pleased and still be perfectly just. Nor do I think He was trying to imply that civic government (Caesar) is a completely different realm from the worship of God, and should never be influenced by it. I’m sure that He had some thoughts about civics and religion, and might even have shared them if someone had asked Him in a more relaxed setting. In this situation, He was just answering a sound-bite-length question with a sound-bite-length answer. Ask a snappy, poorly framed question, get an answer that meets it on its own level.)

The Fallout III: The Elaborate Hypothetical Theological Question Trap

Mark 12:18-27

The political sound-bite thing having failed to work out, the Sadducees decide they are going to ask Him a really hard one. They believe “there is no resurrection” – i.e., no afterlife or future life for those who have died. They have been thinking about this a lot, and the implications are just too absurd. For example, Leverite marriage allows (actually requires) a man to marry his brother’s widow if his brother dies childless. In the unlikely (but possible!) event that one woman married seven brothers in succession, how would that work out? “Whose wife would she be at the Resurrection?”

I could be wrong, but I imagine that by the time the Sadducees got done posing this question, many in the audience had glazed over. All that was left were the theology nerds, and the twelve who were desperately trying to keep up. Scholars love this kind of reductio ad absurdum with an elaborate hypothetical, and to lay people, when it’s not boring it’s intimidating.

The question does sort of confuse Jesus, but not for the reason they meant it to. He’s momentarily thrown by the shallowness of their understanding of the Resurrection type of life. His answer is essentially, “Huh? What do you mean? The Resurrection isn’t like that.”

“Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?” He then drops a statement that to Him seemed obvious, but which the rest of us have been puzzling and speculating about ever since: “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”

Wait! we cry. What do you mean, no marriage? If we aren’t allowed to pair off, how can the resurrection life be any fun? Also, will we get to be with our family members from this life? What if we don’t want to, though? Also, what age do people appear to be in heaven? What about those who died as babies… do they grow up, or are they babies for all eternity? Do martyrs get to keep their scars? What about …

Jesus does this a lot. “What are you on about? Of course [insert mind-blowing new doctrine that raises a ton more questions]!” He does know how to talk to regular people and relate to us, but, my gosh, He is sooo much smarter than we are and His perspective is so different! And many of the things that cause us to do a double take, aren’t even His main concern when He’s talking to people.

So He gets back to the main point, which is whether there is another life for the dead, and proves it with one reference to a very basic and well-known verse in Exodus.

And now for something completely different: A Sincere Question

Mark 12:28 – 34

Someone who was impressed with Jesus’ answer to the theological question asks Him a sincere one: “What is the most important commandment in the Law?”

Jesus, recognizing the sincerity, gives him a straight answer. (I won’t spoil it. Go look it up.)

And interestingly, the questioner repeats Jesus’ answer back to Him with enthusiasm. “Well said, teacher!”

I don’t think this guy is sucking up to an authority (since Jesus is not exactly persona grata right this moment), and neither can I fault him for his utterance being not very original. I think he has been turning these things over in his mind, is delighted to get his instincts confirmed by Jesus, and is verbalizing it again as a part of his learning process of really nailing it down. (Some of us can’t learn unless our mouths are moving.)

Jesus agrees: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Trolling II: A Riddle

Mark 12:35 – 37

“How is it that the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared,

‘The Lord said to my Lord,/Sit at my right hand/until I put your enemies/under your feet.’

David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?”
The large crowd listened to Him with delight.

I usually don’t like being presented with puzzling things that I can’t understand, but the crowd’s response is, “Teacher, I have no idea, but I love it!” This shows how ready they are to soak up anything He has to say after yesterday’s and today’s performance.

Notice, the Emperor Has No Clothes

Mark 12:38 – 40

Having just given the severely underdressed Emperor a light smack on the behind, Jesus now wants to make sure that the lay people clearly understand the man is naked.

“Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and and be greeted in the marketplace, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely.”

Why was this necessary? For the same reason it’s necessary right now to point out, “Big Pharma is a scam. They collude with government agencies and push expensive, harmful drugs on doctors and patients rather than cheap and effective ones.” When someone has been a trusted authority for a long time, many people might not know about their dirty dealings. They might find it hard to believe. They might believe that what the authority says on the surface (the “lengthy prayers”) is sincere. Exposing it through trollery is good but it’s not enough. Jesus needs to use the cachet He has with the crowd, right now, to let them know about WidowsHousesGate and to let know that God is, in fact, just, and is not pleased with all of this. He won’t be around to shepherd these particular people much longer, so He wants to warn them about the wolves that, in a little while, will be the only voices they’ll hear.

Someone Jesus Will Not Troll

Mark 12:41 – 44

“Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.

“Calling His disciples to Him, Jesus said, ‘I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything — all she had to live on.'”

I love it that, during what is one of Jesus’ last three days to live, He chooses to spend some of it people watching.

I also love it that, even though He is relatively young and has never had to support a wife and kids – that is, He’s not in a demographic that is normally very sympathetic to widows — He immediately recognizes her situation and is aware of her struggle to survive, almost as if He were an older person with years of hard life experience.