LISTEN, LITTLE ELLA

"Listen, little Ella; draw up your chair close to the edge of the precipice, and I'll tell you a story."

So wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, who knew that stories fascinate us. Whether we're Little Ella or a more mature Ella, stories grab our minds, emotions, and souls and just won't let go. We celebrate and relish master storytellers--we tune in to hear Garrison Keillor tell us the latest news from Lake Wobegon; we find it hard to wait for the next John Gresham legal thriller; we'll pay  outrageous prices for a ticket, popcorn, and a Coke to see the cinematic craft of Stephen Spielberg.

BACK THEN 

The master storytellers of days long gone survive--craftsmen like Daniel Defoe who told us about Robinson Crusoe, like Alexandre Dumas who wove the tale of three musketeers, like Charles Dickens who chronicled lives of Sydney Carton and Madame Defarge, like Mark Twain who related the adventures of a boy named Huckleberry. and then there was C. S. Lewis who took and continues to take millions of us to Narnia.

AND NOW

But I'm not only thinking of the great fiction writers, but also the non-fiction storytellers who fascinate us with biography (David McCullough and Richard Brookhiser) and the recounting of historical events (Erik Larson, Barbara Tuchman, Shelby Foote). As they think through their fingers, the pages they produce remind us that no one possesses more influence than a master storyteller.

OUT OF THE ARMS OF THE GOD MORPHEUS

Watch students in a classroom as an erudite professor drones on and on about the importance of the cognate accusative, while all the students wish they were Ferris Bueller for a day. But when the learned professor stops mid-lecture and says, "Let me tell you a story about what happened to me when I was kidnapped," and the sophomores snap to mental attention. Sit with a congregation as the pastor marches through his three points, a poem, and a prayer as their minds grow numb and their eyelids limp, but when he stops his presentation of "The Three K's of the Kenosis," and says, "This reminds me of the time an escaped maniac knocked on my office door," and they're all ears.

I had the misfortune to be required to attend weekly chapel services in a school where I taught. One morning, the speaker began by saying, "The last time I spoke in chapel, I spoke on, 'The Five Points of Prayer.' But just this week, God gave me two more points." (Trapped! You could almost hear the energy draining out of the auditorium.) So, we sat there, suffering through his magnificent seven, and, for each one of us, the mental countdown had begun until we reached the end, the much-anticipated 7th point. I left chaffing, upset that God had given him two more points.

OUR CREATION

Jesus, the Creator, certainly knew how He created us--"He structured the human brain to learn and remember stories effectively, . . .  our brains are practically designed to be story vaults," as one author wrote. Jesus mostly taught with stories, never three bullet points, all beginning with the letter "B." His now 2,000 year-old stories still fascinate Jews, Christians, and even non-Christians. What Ella doesn't love the story of a son gone rebellious, eats what pigs eat, but comes back home to be greeted by a father who's loved him all along? Who doesn't sit on the edge of his seat when he hears of a man who gets attacked, robbed, beaten, stripped naked, and left barely clinging to life?  Those stories still resonate and have been the theme, in one way or another, of countless books and movies.

THIS IS WHERE IT GETS SERIOUS

Kimberly Schimmel scored a bull's eye when she wrote:

"To destroy a culture . . . one must make people forget their stories–or else convince them their stories were all wrong. There is a reason totalitarian governments burn books and control mass media. There is a reason they imprison or execute the most educated citizens when they take over. Stories are powerful! Plato understood that those who control a society’s stories control the society. In modern times, author Ray Bradbury said, 'You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.'"

ELLA'S HISTORICAL AMNESIA

Our culture has experienced just what Schimmel was talking about--we have either forgotten our stories or become convinced that they're all wrong. Instead of the account of of our special creation, they've fed us the story of evolution. Instead of the story of Christ and Him crucified, they've fed us the story of the celebrity of the month. Instead of Christ's feeding the 5,000, they've substituted the story of how government is man's bread of life. Instead of the story of Jesus walking on the water, they've given us the the story of the politician of the month who can almost do that or promises that he (or she) will, once elected.

On the national level, we've forgotten our stories or become convinced they're all wrong. Because our nation's stories are deemed wrong, certain statues, plaques, and names on buildings must go. (They recently renamed an annual dinner.) If we're going to change the names, we must rename the JFK Airport because his moral problems remain legendary. If this keeps up, the only name suitable for public buildings will be "God," since He's the only perfect One, but that won't go well with the re-namers.

From surveys and interviews, we're learning that college students can't recall the stories of our nation's founding, but they can recognize any photograph of any Kardashian. They can recite the lyrics of a rap song, but are hard-pressed to recall snippets of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, or the Gettysburg Address.

ISRAEL, REMEMBER!

Whereas God countless times instructed Israel to remember, remember, and remember again the stories of their history, instructed the fathers to tell their sons "what these stones (memorials) mean," and built the Passover and other celebrations of His miraculous working into their national history, we're telling little Ella to forget the old, old stories. And they know what they're doing. Cut all the Ellas off from their historical, biblical heritage, and you destroy the culture. Then you can mold your own society, based on new stories.

Are we paying the price for instructing each Ella to forget? Look around.

THE DAN RATHER SYNDROME

Here's what the university where he teaches says about Joseph Ellis:

"Joseph Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke since 1972, is one of the nation’s foremost scholars of American history. He is the author of seven books, including bestsellers American Sphinx, which won the National Book Award (1997); Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary Generation, which received the Pulitzer Prize in history (2000); and His Excellency: George Washington (2004). His most recent book, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic (Knopf, 2007) is a study of political creativity in the founding era."

The university says a great deal more in its laudatory comments, but you get the idea, this fellow is one smart guy.

But let's back up a bit. I don't know about you, but Presidents' Day is one of my least favorite holidays. No mail. Banks closed. Mattress sales. Nobody cares about that day dedicated to all the presidents of the United States. All the presidents? Didn't February used have a holiday dedicated to the birthday of President George Washington whose birthday is on the 22nd?

Yes, and like so much junk that came out of the 1960's, the shift from Washington’s Birthday to Presidents’ Day began late in the decade when Congress proposed a measure known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Now, the Father of our country no longer has his own day, but is lumped with all who've held the office, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Now, on that day, we're supposed to honor all the presidents, even the two who were impeached as well as Buchanan, Polk, and Wilson (shudder).

And this brings us to Dr. Joseph Ellis, scholar, historian, and esteemed professor. Dr. Ellis recently wrote an article in "Time Magazine" in which he said that President Washington "began the political tradition that produced Social Security, Medicare and, more recently, Obamacare.” He also wrote that Washington began the tradition that led to FDR's being in office for almost four terms.

Wait. What? Washington, one of our Founding Fathers began a tradition of taking from some and giving to others? Washington began a tradition of the welfare state? Washington said, "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. Government is force; like fire it is a dangerous servant -- and a fearful master.”

The welfare state operates by taking from those who earn money and giving it to those who don't. Thomas Jefferson said, "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

The Founders knew history and had learned that once people get on the dole, it's both difficult and dangerous to try to get them off. Many a riot was caused in Rome when official tried to stop their bread and circuses given by the government.
Not only that, but David Azzerod points out that "Ellis even had the gall to hail Washington—the man who gracefully and voluntarily relinquished power after two terms when he could have stayed on for life—as the father of 'strong executive leadership' and the precursor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who stayed in office for an unprecedented 12 years."

So how can such a man of scholarship like historian Ellis write such things? It's easy and the Bible tells us why. Because of man's fallen nature, no one is without bias, although we like to claim we're free from it. Jesus referred to this when He said, "He who is not with Me is against Me." Fallen will hang onto that bias no matter what. I would suppose that Ellis is a passionate partisan of FDR and nationalized health insurance, so no matter what, he will hogtie George Washington to the causes for which he's passionate.

The Pharisees saw Jesus perform so many miracles that all the books in the world couldn't hold them. The Pharisees heard the words He said, speaking like no other man had ever spoken, yet most of them held on to their bias against Him, no matter what evidence, including fulfilled prophecies, to the contrary.

A recent example of the bulldog tenacity fallen man has to keep on holding to what's false, no matter what was Dan Rather's passionate opposition to candidate George W. Bush who was running for a second term against John Kerry. According to The New York Post, Dan Rather was given "photocopied memos that purported to show Bush had been AWOL for a significant portion of his National Guard tenure." Yet, there was a problem. "The font and spacing on the memos perfectly matched the default settings on a 21st-century Microsoft Word program," which, being interpreted meant, "They're fake."

But that didn't stop Rather; no matter what, to this day, he still refuses to admit it that the information was false.

This leads us to the point. Fallen man will hold to the false, even that which has been demonstrated to be a lie, a fiction, and a myth, no matter what. Take evolution for example and a favorite ploy of the evolutionist. He will say things like, "Science says . . ." or "Science tells us . . ." Sounds good, doesn't it? We hear it all the time. But there's a logical fallacy in those statements--science doesn't "say" or "tell" us anything, people do. People look at what's there and interpret what they see, rightly or wrongly, and then those people tell us something. People talk; science neither talks nor interprets. Yet he holds to his premise, "Science says."

Look at the form and order in the universe, a universe which operates by observable rules. These rules hold true whether you live on Mars, the moon, or the earth. Yet, we're told, "Science says there's no Person, no intelligence who formed the rules, set them in motion, and sustains them; it's all by chance. But science doesn't say that, scientists do. Like someone said, "To suggest that the precision of the universe came about by chance is far more ridiculous than claiming that the sand castle on the beach appeared spontaneously as the result of natural conditions."

But, no matter, Rather-like, fallen man holds on, no matter what.








 

WHY CAN'T I DRESS AS A TACO?

I like columnist George Will, although I admit that he can be annoying, since he's a practicing sesquipedalian, a type of person that drives us all up the wall.

But nonetheless, Mr. Will used a term in his syndicated newspaper column of February 7, 2016, that explains what's going on in our culture, something he calls, "manufactured frenzy."

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY

The context of his verbal coinage was Super Bowl Sunday, something that's become a national religious holiday, observed by 111.9 million viewers. Specifically, he was talking about the fact that as the big game draws closer, a manufactured frenzy occurs. For example, CBS aired a Super Bowl 50 pregame show titled The Super Bowl Today from 2:00-6:00 p.m. (ET) before the big game began on Sunday, Feb. 7. (That was four and a half hours before the game started.) Not to be outdone, ESPN's coverage of Super Bowl 50 began Monday, Feb. 1. That's 144 hours before the coin toss!

Whatever that is, it is "a manufactured frenzy."

LOOK AROUND

Getting away from athletics and our obsession therewith, let's apply George Will's term to our culture in general. What are we worried about or rather what might fall into the category of a manufactured frenzy to worry about? There are several frenzies that come to mind. You might have your list, but let's take a look at a limited, but not an exhaustive posting.  (There's not enough time to produce such a list, and  no one has the patience to read it.)

1. I'm told that I need to worry about the name of Washington D. C.'s football team. This frenzy has produced speeches in Congress and other legislative bodies, as well as people on television orating on this important subject. I'm also supposed to worry about the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves because of their names.

2. I'm told that I need to worry about nouns. A professor at the University of Florida has banned students  from using the word, "husband," "wife," "mother," and "father." This prohibition is so important, that if they use such language, the teacher will take her anger out on their final grade and lower it.

3. I'm told that I need to worry about pronouns. The University of Tennessee has told its staff and students to stop calling each other "he", "she," "him," and "her." Instead, they are to start referring to one another with terms like "xe," "zir," and "xyr" instead. Those sound like words from a language on another planet, but I'll try.

4. I'm told that I need to worry about the Oscars. This will take some doing, because I never worry about, watch, or care about the Oscars anyway. But I'll try.

5. I need to worry about dressing as a taco. At some colleges, donning this costume might land you in sensitivity training. This one will be difficult to refrain from doing, because one of my favorite things is to dress as a taco and on some occasions as a burrito, hold the cheese.

6. I need to worry about a Doritos commercial. Cal Thomas explains: "For those watching 'Downton Abbey' instead of the football game, here's the scenario. A pregnant woman is receiving a sonogram in her hospital bed. The screen shows the baby. The father is snacking on Doritos and he notices the child's arms moving in the direction of the chip, as dad takes it from the bag and puts it in his mouth. Finally, the baby can stand it no longer and emerges from the womb to grab his own chip." People are all upset that such a commercial humanizes the fetus. It does, for one good reason--that's what the fetus is!

WHAT'S GOING ON?

There are things that are really important. (The above list doesn't include the important.) Our nation is $19,013,512,956,000 in debt. (I made up the last three zeros, because, if you've never looked at the National Debt Clock, I challenge you to write the figure as it runs. The debt is going up too fast to record the last three and maybe six digits. (Go to: http://www.usdebtclock.org) That's a debt of $58,000 per citizen, $158,000 per taxpayer. That's all very staggering, but what's even more staggering is that nobody with any authority cares. Instead, we care about people dressing up as a taco.

There are things that are really important. Immigration. But we're supposed to obsess about the Oscars.

There are some things that are really important: National Security. But we're supposed to worry about pronouns.

There are things that are really important--students can't read their own diplomas. But we're supposed to worry about the Indians, the Braves, and the Redskins. My junior high was so worried that they changed their name several years ago.

There are things that are really important--How did I get here? What's my purpose? Where am I going? But we're supposed to worry about Doritos. 

WHY THESE FRENZIES?

You get the idea. But why is this happening? Why is our attention on those manufactured trivial matters? Is it because no one that knows what to do about what's really important? I know, I know--every person running for president knows what to do, but do they ever really do anything or are we to the point that they can't do anything even if elected?

So, maybe this is where we are. We've come to the point that we don't know what to do about the real issues, so we have to focus on the trivial; after all, we must have something to do. Have we come to the point where  most have just given up, and needing something to concentrate on, we turn to pronouns, costumes, chips, nouns, and team names? 

There is historical precedent for these manufactured frenzies. Acts 17:21: "Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new." The wisdom of the Greek intellectual elites had led their culture into a cul-de-sac of idolatry with an idol on every corner, even having a plaque inscribed to "The Unknown God," so that they'd given up trying to find meaning to life with their unaided wisdom. They then focused, not on the really important, but instead to "telling or hearing something new."

We are the new Athenians.  

 

THEY FOUND A BODY

At 1:20 PM on Friday, May 7, 1915, the commander of the German Submarine U20, Walther Schwieger, sighted the RMS Lusitania in the Irish Sea. He ordered ordered the submarine to submerge five minutes later to a depth of 36 feet. At that depth, out of sight, he would prepare his attack on the British behemoth. It was WWI, or as they called it then, The Great War. England and Germany were going at it, big time.

Observing the Lusitania through the periscope, Schwieger didn't think that U20 and the Lusitania would be in a line which would render his attack effective.  Then, RMS Lusitania turned.  Seeing the opportunity, Commander Schwieger brought his submarine into position. From 765 yards away, Schwieger ordered his crew to fire one torpedo. There is an account, unverified, that the officer he ordered to press the button to launch the lethal weapon refused to do so. No matter, someone pushed the button. 

It ran through the waters at a depth of 10 feet, full speed ahead. Its journey into the history books had begun.

BOOM!

The result was a direct hit on the 787 foot long, 31,550 ton Lusitania and its 1,949 passengers and crew. 18 minutes later, the RMS Lusitania sank beneath the waves of the Irish Sea. (Three years earlier, the RMS Titanic had taken 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink from hitting an iceberg.)

That one torpedo killed a catastrophic total of 1,198 men, women, children, and babies. Only 38.5% survived, even though the Lusitania contained lifeboats which could hold 2,605 people, more than enough to save all on board; the Titanic had taught the world a lesson. Crewmen were able to launch only 6 them successfully.

MACABRE SCENE

For weeks after the sinking, hundreds of bodies washed up on the Irish shores:

"A pitiful little group of men and women, many bandaged, some on crutches, besieged the Cunard Offices (the company that owned the Lusitania) in the seaport town of Cobh, Ireland. Grieving mothers wandered the town, looking for their children.

A report stated, that one parent, frantic and in deep grief, distributed this message: 'Lusitania – missing baby; missing a baby girl, fifteen months old. Very fair curly hair and rosy complexion.'"

Bodies pulled from the sea were laid out in as dignified display as possible so their loved ones and relatives could identify them. The US consul in Cobh, Wesley Frost, recalled seeing “five or six drowned women with drowned babies in their arms."

THEY FOUND A BODY

Some time later, a body washes up on shore, and the question of where he came from is easily answered. He was clutching a piece of wood in his hands and on the wood was one word: "Lusiatania." For whatever reason, he was not able to get into a lifeboat or one of the collapsible life boats or one of life rafts. For whatever reason, he was not picked up by the many ships and boats which came to the rescue. He grabbed his own conveyance, that piece of wood which would be his life raft. But, the raft on which depended failed him.

THE MANUAL

As high as the stakes were at 2:12 PM on May 7, 1915, when the German torpedo hit the Lusitania, they're higher when it comes to one's eternal destiny. And many are the pieces of wood that can't carry us to the shores of heaven's gates.

There are those who tell us that we can build our own life raft to heaven. They give us the instructions of its assembly. As one instruction manual says, its construction is a step-by-step procedure:

1. Hear
2.  Believe
3. Repent--feel honest regret for wrong doings
4. Confess--admit mistakes (How many? I can't remember them all.)
5. Try your very best not to do them again (Good luck with that one.)
6. Ask Christ to have a part in your life--John 1:11-12. (Read John 1:11-12 and you'll see that it says nothing of the kind.)
7. Remain faithful.
8. Present your body a living sacrifice with ongoing commitment.
9. Ask for His lordship and guidance throughout your life.

We see that according to the manual which I've quoted verbatim (except the personal comments in parentheses) there are 9 steps involved in building the raft. According to the instructions, the steps never end until you die; you have to spend your life building it; as it says in Step 9, "Ask for His lordship and guidance throughout your life." The manual presents a feel/work/try/remain/present/ask plan that's years in the construction.

No grace there; it's lordship salvation on steroids, The manual is rife with what man can do for God to be saved. It's filled with self-promotion.

God has written His manual, the gospel of John and it presents, not 9 steps, not 8 steps, but the same 1step 99 times just so we'll get it: believe. No works, no feeling, no trying, no remaining, no presenting, no asking. Salvation is not based on what man can do for God; it's based on what God has done for man.

God's plan is without cost to us. Man's plan builds a costly, albeit, deadly raft indeed.