Avdat

Media hype

I'm ambivalent about Howard Kurtz's Hurricane of Hype article which slams the media for fearmongering before Irene's landfall.

Yes, the media outlets do seize on the crisis of the moment like a pit bull on a mailman's cuff. And yes, this crowds out badly needed coverage of other important events (cough, cough; Fall of Tripoli; cough, cough).

Furthermore, it's entirely questionable whether stationing reporters on beaches is an exercise in good journalism or good entertainment. When the reporter screams into the mic, "It's too dangerous to be out here!" the message is, "Do as I say and not as I do," which amounts to waving a red cape in the face of jackasses everywhere (as this NSFW video shows).

All that said, Kurtz seems to argue that the media hyped the storm because it was forecast to hit New York, and since New York wasn't destroyed, the hype amounted to over-hype. Kurtz:

The fact that New York, home to the nation’s top news outlets, was directly in the storm’s path clearly fed this story-on-steroids. Does anyone seriously believe the hurricane would have drawn the same level of coverage if it had been bearing down on, say, Ft. Lauderdale?

And:

As the storm weakened, a tone of reality crept into the live reports. After heading to Battery Park, on the low-lying southern tip of Manhattan, CNN’s Anderson Cooper said: “There has been some flooding—not a huge amount of flooding, and some of the water is already starting to recede … It’s actually not bad at all.”

But there is always the prospect that something bad might happen soon. “Is Wall Street going to open tomorrow?” business correspondent Bob Pisani asked on MSNBC, the towers of the financial district behind him.

Well yes, New York is the media capital of the U.S., but it's also the biggest city in the U.S. When a natural disaster threatens the biggest city in the country, doesn't the shear number of people involved, to say nothing about the threat to the nation's financial infrastructure, demand a lot of media attention?

And the threat was real. Just two days before Irene made landfall in New York as a tropical storm she was a category three hurricane off the coast of Florida. The forecast called for a near direct hit on New York (which was accurate), and not much weakening (which turned out to be inaccurate). It takes time to evacuate highly populated, low-lying regions. They didn't have the time to wait to see whether or not their forecast would hold. I think they acted appropriately given what they knew.

All this ignores the fact that things have turned out to be quite bad outside of New York. Irene's death toll has climbed to 45. She racked up damages in the tens of billions of dollars. The flood waters have yet to recede. By any metric Irene was one of the worst storms in recent U.S. history. This is what Katrina has done--it's ruined us for A- and B+ disasters.

By their very nature the 24-hour cable news networks focus attention on "breaking news," have a regrettable tendency to gin up "breaking news" when there is none, and tend to ignore the larger context and the less dramatic, more chronic problems people face. A good example is last week's other natural disaster, the earthquake in Virginia. Media types freaked out big time over that, then promptly moved onto the next crisis.

It turns out that the earthquake needed less attention at the time, but needs more attention now. Although tens of millions of people experienced a highly unusual event, it didn't amount to a natural "disaster" for the vast majority.

And yet it is turning out to be a disaster for the locality of the epicenter and perhaps for the state of Virginia. Two schools in Louisa County were heavily damaged, perhaps beyond repair. And the nuclear power plant in Louisa was not built to withstand an earthquake of this magnitude, which raises questions about its present safety and the design of a third reactor proposed for the site. Rather than sending a reporter out for the inane "Man on the street" interview which features startling insights such as, "Wow! Everything was shaking!" media outlets need to be reporting on what's happening in Louisa and the implications for other communities.

Long story short: I'd like to see wall-to-wall coverage when its warranted, but more discernment about when its warranted. And some interest in the chronic not just acute crises we face.

Obligatory post on Bachmann's natural disaster comments

A lot of what I post here is about politics or religion. So when Representative Michelle Bachmann labeled the earthquake and the hurricane a shot across the bow from God, that's just begging for comment, right? For the record, this is what she told a crowd in Florida last week:

I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending.

Now, there's at least two things wrong with this kind of statement. For one, when people identify some calamity as a warning from God, it seems like it's always somebody else who's getting warned. I'd be more inclined to accept anyone's reading of the signs of the times when they discern that it's their own ox that's being gored.

Second, and closely related to the first, Augustine said somewhere that the only nation's history that's utterly transparent to God's providence is Israel in its biblical theocratic phase. But for every other nation things are just a lot more murky.

We are told, in clear and unambiguous language, that God favored the House of David over the House of Saul. Also no locust plague in the Bible is ever just a locust plague. But we have no such clear instructions about partisan politics, public policy or the meaning of crop failures elsewhere, be they delivered by prophetic voice or act of God.

That doesn't mean that God's providence is invisible, but there is margin for error in one's discernment of the signs of the times. In very extreme cases it becomes abundantly clear which side God is on, but most of the time, as Abraham Lincoln told a group of clergy visiting the White House, we ought to be asking whether we're on the Lord's side, not glibly assuming that God is on our side.

That said, Bachmann is only articulating what a lot of average religious Americans think. They're reading the same Bible she is, and reading it as naively as she is, and are likely to conclude (contra Augustine) that the newspaper is as transparent to God's providence as Holy Writ. So the takeaway lesson here is for religious teachers to educate their people on how to read the scriptures in a pious but more sophisticated way.

Finally, Bachmann has departed from the script in such matters. What politicians are supposed to say in times like these is, "First responders are awesome; we're working with X, Y and Z to address the situation; we've seen the inherent bravery and generosity of the American people at work here, and with God's help we will persevere." 

Either Bachmann doesn't know this script, or she's consciously departing from it. Either way, she's showing her political naivete here, not just her hermeneutical naivete. Voters don't want politicians to be their preachers. They want them to be believers (I think I've seen an opinion poll somewhere showing that atheists have a harder time getting elected than Muslims in our society), but not outwardly pious and mainly pragmatic.

Bachmann (and Republicans in general) are channeling Jimmy Carter here, our last Scold-In-Chief. Carter diagnosed the problem of his day as malaise--the existential emptiness of consumerism. Republicans have diagnosed our problems as the evils of debt, incurred by deadbeat homeowners or the government on behalf of selfish, lazy citizens. Both approaches tell people, You're only getting what you deserve.

I imagine we are to blame for the mess we're in, not just the banks or the politicians or our neighbor who got foreclosed upon. But most people don't want their Presidents saying such things, either because they doubt his/her competence in that arena or they'd rather not be held accountable. And that's why Bachmann isn't a viable general election candidate, even if Obama can't or won't do anything to revive the economy by next year.

A body that TSA screeners would love to pat down

In today's Times-Dispatch, Barton Hinkle tells the story of Aaron Tobey, arrested at the Richmond airport last December for disorderly conduct. When TSA staff directed him to enter one of those see-through screening machines, Tobey yanked his shirt off revealing the text of the fourth amendment penned across his bare chest. This act may or may not be illegal.

Let's set aside the security and civil liberties issues for a moment. It strikes me that both Tobey and his more famous partner in TSA resistance, John "Don't touch my junk" Tyner, are fairly young men and fairly touchy about being touched. Could there be a demographic or cultural issue lurking here?

Maybe. The issue would be Male Insecurity About Body Image.

Of course women have been made to feel insecure about their bodies for a long time. "Your boobs are too small; your hips are too wide; your butt is too big," are just some of the insults, spoken or implied by Barbie dolls, super models and jerk husbands and boyfriends.

But in these more egalitarian times, men too can be made to feel physically inadequate. Just read Men's Health, or it's soft-porn partner Maxim. Listen to the ads on sports talk radio, or play a video game. The not-so-subtle message that these media outlets pitch to young adult men is that even a healthy body will no longer do. You need a washboard stomach. Your chest needs to be large enough to merit its own zip code. Male pattern baldness is a capital offense.

Even the notoriously high young adult male sex drive isn't high enough. You've got to push it into the stratosphere. Here's a Cialis. Now chase it with a red bull and vodka. You need the stamina of a porn star because that's what the ladies expect, don't they?

Only a miniscule few are able to sculpt their bodies and jack up their libidos to meet the new and impossibly high standard. Which leaves the ones who accept the standard as gospel feeling woefully inadequate.

And I wonder if that's not behind some of the pat-down backlash. The bravado in the face of so-called "unreasonable searches and seizures," or "sexual assault" by TSA screeners may be over-compensation for massive insecurity about one's own body.

Young adult heterosexual males need their own version of the It Gets Better campaign. Call it, It Can Get Better: work out less; work at being a better person more; fall in love with someone who's committed to being a better person, and you know what? They won't love your body because it looks like it was chiseled out of granite. They'll love your body because it's yours. And that brings a security that makes the occasional indignities that the human body has to bear--like colonoscopies and airport pat-downs--a bit more bearable.

You can do this even if you never fall in love and mate for life. Seek truth and goodness, and beauty will take care of itself.

Finally, to return to the security and civil liberties issues, we do live in a world where people try to do bad things on airplanes like blow them up, hijack them, and/or crash them. It would appear as though we need security that's equal to the threat.

Now just what is that? I read here and there that a lot of what you experience in an airport is public relations. It's there to make you feel better. Leave it to the government to annoy people in an attempt to make them feel better.

Are see-through imaging machines and aggressive pat downs necessary? As to the latter, the Israelis have been doing it for some time now. Aside from my wife and my doctor, no one has touched me more intimately than a security guard at the Frankfurt, Germany airport before I boarded a flight to Tel Aviv. If I had objected, their attitude would have been, "Fine. If your junk is that precious, don't go to Israel!" And you know what? Terrorists don't do bad things to jets that fly in and out of Tel Aviv.

Long story short, I'd rather get felt up than blown up. Provided that feeling people up is a legitimate technique for keeping bad guys off of airplanes.

Web sites that suck: www.pcusa.org

To follow up on my previous post, in which I mentioned both Andrew Sullivan and the awful PC(USA) web site, there's a thread on Sullivan's blog about web sites that suck. So why don't you go the PC(USA) homepage and decide for yourself. Does it suck like a restaurant website?

 

 

Or like a college website?

 

 

That thing about not being able to copy and paste anything because it's in Flash makes me bang my head against the keyboard, and sadly, it's true of so many church web sites.

What I love about our front page is how the link to PC(USA) Agencies follows you as you scroll down the page. Yeah, like curiosity about the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program is generating Google searches on "Presbyterian."

A Facebook friend pointed out that the PC(USA) web site blows so bad that somebody created a Wiki to help navigate it. I had to use it to find the page on what Presbyterians believe. It's four links from the PC(USA) front page and the clicking sequence is bizarre:

Home-->General Assembly Mission Council-->Mission and Ministry-->Communications and Funds Development (Huh?)-->Presbyterian 101.

So I think it's less a matter of not knowing what we believe; maybe a bit more of beliefs being irrelevant on a web site by and for ecclesiastical paper-pushers, and maybe a whole lot of not wanting people to know what we believe--the page on predestination is another two clicks deeper into the bowels of the site.

(Although that's understandable; I mean, when the Mormons land on your front porch they don't lead off with getting your own planet and multiple wives after you die).

If you Google "what we believe," eight of the top ten returns are denominational web sites with prominent links on their front pages. Everybody from the United Methodists and Evangelical Lutherans to the Foursquare Church and Seventh Day Adventists. If it occurs to practically everybody else to put their faith front and center online, why not us?

Church growth

Running past the lovely Metropolitan Community Church of Richmond the other day, a question occurred to me: Now that the Presbyterians have joined the Lutherans, Episcopalians and UCCs in ordaining gay and lesbian people, is there any need for the MCC anymore?

Andrew Sullivan has been documenting the death of gay culture for years now, beginning with this 2005 piece in The New Republic. Is the MCC, like the music of Queen or the flamboyance of Elton John, an artifact of a time in which gays and lesbians had to form a subculture of resistance?

If so, we Presbyterians need to jump on this opportunity. I'm talking mergers and acquisitions, baby! A friendly takeover of one irrelevant denomination by another irrelevant denomination.

You're dubious; I can tell. But isn't this how other institutions grow? Two guys cook up some cool new software in their garage. They start making a little money. And then the Redmond mafia show up with an offer they can't refuse. Next thing you know, that hot little app or innovation is folded seamlessly into the latest version of Windows, and one of those two guys is on Househunters International, trying to decide which condo in Dubai to purchase.

The question is, What's the offer that the MCC can't refuse? Well, there's Montreat, of course. And we have lay elders in the PC(USA) and no high and mighty bishops. That's gotta give us a leg up over the Episcopalians.

But I think that our best selling point is the Board of Pensions. A beyond fully-funded, defined benefit plan and medical coverage that's second to none. We have hit them up hard over the years--two open heart surgeries, a renal surgery, and God-awful expensive ABA therapy--and they pay out, right as rain. If you want to know what the Presbyterian bureaucracy does really well, it's taking care of the clergy.

So we pitch the BOP to the MCC clergy, and get them to bring along their laity with the awesome accessory of Ruling Elder.

Now the MCC only has 44,000 members, and we lose that many members each year. But you gotta start small. This is how pidly a Charlotte-based bank named NCNB became Bank of America. They gobbled up all the little fish in the Old North State; then they swallowed C&S/Sovran, and then unhinged their jaws to consume BankAmerica.

If the MCC acquisition goes well, we can set our sights on the Reformed Church of America, and then the Disciples of Christ. After that, we can either acquire the UCC or bypass them, letting them die on the vine while we land the Big Kahuna: the Southern Baptist Convention. And I know we can offer them: guilt free trips to the liquor store!

You may point out that conservatives will object to a transfusion of tens of thousands of homosexuals and their straight allies into the PC(USA). But here's the thing: the MCC is a theologically traditional denomination. Read their statement of faith. It's as clear and lucid a description of Bible-believing Nicene-Chalcedonian orthodoxy as you'll find out there.

Not only that, it's easy to find! All you have to do is click on the "Who We Are" tab on their home page, and a link to "Our beliefs" pops up. I can't find anything like that on the PCUSA homepage. Either because Presbyterians don't know what they think, or because the PC(USA) website is created by bureaucrats for bureaucrats. But the home page link to the Board of Pensions is nice!

Conservatives in the PC(USA) often conflate theological and social radicalism. But the MCC is living proof that the two don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. So here's an opportunity for a grand bargain: buy out the MCC, and move the denomination to the right theologically and to the left socially. It's like revenues and spending cuts! Two great tastes that taste great together!

I anticipate one last objection: Marvin, you're talking about sheep-stealing here! This isn't evangelism! This isn't legitimate church growth.

Look. Conversion is off the table for now. The public face of Christianity these days is Fred Phelps and Michelle Bachmann. When the unchurched think "Christianity," they think that's the North American branch of the Taliban. Who wants to convert to that?

So, until we rebrand the Christian label, let's concentrate on increasing our share of the shrinking slice of the U.S. pie that self-identifies as Christian.

Plus, I'd just love to get my hands on that church in the Fan! What a handsome building!

A dog's life

The good people of Brett-Reed Presbyterian Church in King William County welcomed me to their pulpit this morning! And this is what I had to say about things that defile and the great faith of a Canaanite woman:

Sermons on Jacob

Last month I led worship at the Ogden and Lawrenceville Presbyterian churches in Brunswick County, Virgina (home, they say, of the original Brunswick stew!) Three Sundays and three sermons on Jacob, whom the lectionary featured in its Old Testament lessons. So if you didn't get enough of Jacob last month, here's some more. A sermon on Jacob's ladder is below the fold; a sermon on Jacob's accidental marriage to Leah is here, and a sermon on Jacob's all-night wrestling match is here.

Sermon on Jacob's wrestling match

Genesis 32: 22-31

 We have gotten to know the youthful Jacob, the up-and-coming, hard bargaining con man. We have gotten to know the young adult Jacob, a heart sick young man tricked on his wedding day into marrying the wrong woman by a father-in-law even more shifty than Jacob himself.

Today we meet Jacob at mid-life, or a bit beyond. Twenty years have passed. A lot has changed. Jacob arrived at Laban's home with just the clothes on his back, a fugitive from justice, alienated from his family. Now Jacob is the husband of two wives, the father of twelve sons and a daughter, and the owner of a vast herd of livestock, donkeys, camels, cattle, and sheep. All this despite being repeatedly deceived and swindled by his father-in-law. There wasn't a bargain Laban made with Jacob that he didn't somehow alter or find a loophole to get out of, yet Jacob has rolled with the punches and finally bested his deceitful in-law. Jacob is a resourceful survivor, and middle age finds him blessed in innumerable ways.

But now, the prosperity of the present has fallen under the dark shadow of the past. Jacob is returning to Canaan, to his homeland. That means meeting up with the older brother from whom he wrestled his birth right and from whom he stole his father's blessing. Jacob sends a vanguard of servants on ahead of him, and they return with ominous news. "Esau is coming with 400 men!" It would appear as though the older brother intends to administer some vigilante justice to redress past grievances.

Perhaps it would have been easier for Jacob to stay put in the east, despite having to sleep at night with one eye open, looking out for his crafty father-in-law, despite the smoldering resentment and even open hostility he endured from his less prosperous cousins. But No. Jacob returns to Canaan. He confronts the past. He confronts the brother he wronged, even at the risk of losing life, family and fortune.

 For you see, returning to Canaan is not only a reckoning with the past, it means embracing the future as well. Canaan is the Promised Land, the land that the Lord swore to give to Jacob's descendants. So if he and his children are to have any kind of future, they must put themselves at risk in the present in a daring confrontation with the past.

How does Jacob confront the past? Well, there's something of the old deal-maker still afoot. He sends gifts of livestock on ahead of him, thinking that the one who traded his birth right for a mess of pottage might be mollified by mutton and steak. He also divides his main company in two thinking that if Esau and his men destroy one, the other might escape. Jacob still thinks that there's no problem that flattery and resourcefulness cannot solve.

But in the midst of Jacob's planning, he stops to pray. It's the first time that we've seen the man pray, and it really is a thing to behold. "O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, 'Return to your country and to your kindred and I will do you good,' I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two companies. Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children. Yet you have said, 'I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted for their number.'"

Jacob reflects on his life, on his stunning reversal of fortunes, and gives all the credit to God, and none to himself. He confesses that he's not worthy of all the good that God has done for him. He boldly reminds God of the promises God made to do him good, and confesses that he's filled with fear despite those promises. So he asks the Lord to deliver him, admittingthat  in the midst of all his planning and strategizing it's not within his power alone to exorcise the demons of the past. Ultimately, only God can "deliver us from a past that we cannot change, and open to us a future in which we can be changed."

Coming to terms with the past means coming to terms with God. Before we can reckon with our nemesis, there must be a reckoning with the Almighty. This is why Jacob prays in the midst of his planning, and this is why Jacob's confrontation with Esau is preceded by a night-long wrestling match with the Almighty.

This reckoning with the Almighty, this coming to terms with the Lord, isn't a pleasant experience. The paradox is that peace with God doesn't come without a fight. To make peace with us, God fights against us. God wrestles with us, tests us and wounds us.

This takes place in many ways. God invites us to tell the truth when keeping quiet is the prudent thing to do. God rouses us to action when circumstances would dictate lying low. God lifts us out of our comfort zone and puts us among people and in places that generate extreme discomfort.

And just as God wrestles with Jacob at night, God challenges us at night. We have nightmares in which we face horrible adversaries and situations, or nightmares in which we do horrible things, and I wonder if in these bad dreams the Lord is not showing us the evil that lurks within us.

Now in his commentary on this scripture, John Calvin notes the absurdity of a human being struggling with God. I mean, surely Jacob is in good shape, having lived the life of a rancher for a couple of decades, but is he buff enough to wrestle with the maker of heaven and earth? Yet the nighttime visitor is unable to prevail over Jacob, who won't let him go unless he blesses him. How can this be? How can a mere mortal go toe-to-toe with the Almighty?

Calvin replies that the same God who fights against us also fights for and with us, by giving us the faith and patience and stamina to withstand the strongest blows. The result of this struggle in which God both pins us to the ground and fills us with the power to throw off our adversary is a faith and discipleship that is tougher and stronger.

What becomes of Jacob after his dark night of the soul? The sun rises on a new man, with a new name and a new identity. Before he was Jacob, which in Hebrew means, "he takes by the heel, or he supplants." It’s not a flattering name, and a name that Jacob has spent his whole life trying to live up (or down) to. Jacob is a heel. But after a night of grasping and grappling with the source of love and justice, Jacob has become Israel, meaning "one who strives with God and humans and prevails."

In his letter to the Romans, Paul argues that in order to attain righteousness, one must strive for it based on faith. Jacob/Israel has obtained righteousness; the next day when he meets his brother Esau he offers to return the blessing he once wrestled from him. Of course the blessing is not Jacob's to dispose of, but it's a powerful gesture nonetheless. The grasper has become a giver. And he makes this gesture on the basis of faith, for in his prayer he acknowledged that the Lord and not his own craftiness was the source of his blessings, blessings he did not deserve.

But the new man with a new name and a new righteousness greets the new day with a permanent disability. Israel, the one who prevailed in his struggle with God, limps to his meeting with Esau.

Jacob didn't emerge from his wrestling match with God unscathed. Jesus, who rendered perfect obedience to God, didn't leave this world without being scarred and wounded. The same is true for us. We too will be marked, scarred, wounded and disabled by the God who fights for us and against us. The limps and scars testify both to the seriousness of our sin, which God can only be hostile to, and our costly triumph over sin, made possible by the wounds of Christ.

Limping, Jacob looks up to see dust rising in the distance. Esau and his 400 men have arrived. Jacob goes before his wives and children, putting himself between them and a potential enemy. The con artist is a man of courage. He has changed! But the courageous, disabled supplanter is astonished when Esau dismounts, runs to him, hugs him, kisses him, and weeps, like a long lost brother with a better history might. Has time healed all wounds? Has God restrained the wrath of the not-chosen one, Esau?

Or perhaps this is not their first meeting in twenty years. Jacob named the site of his wrestling match Penuel, meaning, "Face of God," for there he'd seen God face to face, yet lived to tell about it. Now, before the gracious, forgiving Esau, Jacob says, "Seeing you is like seeing the face of God." Is that because Esau's mercy is a reflection of merciful God who blesses the unrighteous? Or perhaps it was Esau who snuck across the creek the night before and waylaid Jacob. It happened at night. We didn't get a good look at his face. He never would tell us his name. We don't know. But Jacob recognizes him the next day. Maybe Esau is in a move to forgive today because he already got some good licks in last night.

It remains a mystery, the relationship between the wrestling match at Penuel, and the reconciliation in Canaan the next day. What is clear is that only by confronting God and by confronting the past can Jacob have any hope for the future.

We know what it's like to walk in Jacob's shoes. We too have skeletons in our closets. We too have wronged others or been wronged, both individually and corporately. Those old hurts and grievances cast a shadow that even the glitter of our present treasures cannot entirely chase away.

We’d rather let sleeping dogs lie. But rest assured, the only way forward is backward, to return to what grieves us, and hurts us, deal with them, and put it to bed. We too, like Jacob, have been promised a homeland, a time and place of abundance, where every wrong will be righted, and every tear dried and every sin forgiven. But the road to that blessed land run through the past that we as individuals or as a society have been spending our whole lives running away from. Along that way, the Lord lies in wait for us, to test us and ultimately to do us good. It is a difficult way, but only by coming to terms with the past, and wrestling with God in the present can we hope to have any kind of a future.

Sermon on Jacob's weddings to Leah and Rachel

Genesis 29: 15-30

 

            “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” said the poet Robert Frost. That’s not quite true of Jacob’s family of origin, but fortunately for him, Frost’s statement it is true of Jacob’s extended family. Upon reaching Haran, Jacob runs into the beautiful and gracious Rachel and gallantly removes the stone from a well for her so that she can water her sheep. When Rachel hurries home to announce to her father, Jacob’s uncle Laban, that a long-lost relative has arrived, Laban rushes to greet the young antihero of our story.

            Laban knows and practices all the social graces. In opening his home to Jacob he shows hospitality to strangers, and expresses due joy at this surprise family reunion. Now he intends to do right by his troubled nephew who needs a new lease on life, and a little guidance maybe. “I could use a man like you in my organization. But you’re family. You’re not just another hired hand. Name your price!” Jacob thinks about it and replies, “I will work for you for seven years in exchange for the hand of your daughter Rachel in marriage.”

            Jacob has already met Rachel, whom the narrator of our scripture passage describes as beautiful and gracious. These two characteristics don’t always go together. I think of the artificial beauty and bad behavior of the cast of Jersey Shore or any number of pop culture icons (skin baked to an unnatural shade of orange in the tanning salon, mouthy, mean). But Rachel’s not a mean girl. She learned from her father the meaning of words like honor, hospitality, manners, humility, and she coupled those virtues with natural good looks. Rachel is Jackie Kennedy without the pill box hat, or Kate Middleton without the tiara.

            But Laban has another daughter, Leah. Now Leah’s distinguishing feature is her eyes, which some translations report as being “weak,” while others report as being “lovely.” Which is it? Is Leah the four-eyed ugly duckling in the family? (I say this as someone who’s worn glasses or contacts since I was 11). Or could Leah star in a mascara commercial?

            It’s ambiguous. But there’s nothing ambiguous about Rachel’s qualities, and Rachel’s the one with whom Jacob is smitten.

            Laban agrees to Jacob’s terms. Really, it’s a win-win situation. Laban gains a son-in-law and doesn’t lose a precious daughter to someone outside the clan (those considerations ranked highly in that time and place). For his part Jacob gets to marry a gracious and beautiful woman. So Jacob sheared the sheep, pruned the vines, and harvested the wheat for seven years, but for him it passed by like a mere seven days on account of his love for Rachel.

            This is the ideal work situation. Some of the more painful and tragic human predicaments arise when people find themselves trapped in work that exploits, degrades, or can’t cover the bills. But Jacob’s toil and the desires of his heart have converged in this contract he’s signed with Laban. We might even be tempted to speak of Jacob’s career in the employ of Uncle Laban as a vocation, a term which the author Frederick Buechner defines as, “Where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And we might add that such is the way with most young men, for whom love and passion is the highest motivator.

            But Laban is not a young man. Laban is an old man, and old men aren’t motivated by love. Old men are motivated by money. Laban has two valuable assets to protect, his younger daughter Rachel and his older daughter Leah. Laban’s interests diverge from Jacob, and while a deal is a deal, Laban will see to it that his interests are served in whatever agreement he comes to with his young, romantic nephew.

            Times up! Seven years toil means wedding bells should be ringing anytime. Laban is a man of his word. He finds a preacher, reserves the fellowship hall, and invites the entire neighborhood to share in the joy. But that evening, he turns Jacob’s joy to consternation. He sends Leah to the honeymoon suite instead of Rachel. Our narrator captures the shock and embarrassment in the short, eloquent sentence, “When morning came, it was Leah!”

            For this switcharoo to work we can assume a couple of things. First, we can assume that the women were veiled. The veil reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that this story is situated in a world in which women were property, which is still the case for many women. Second, we can assume that no small amount of alcohol was consumed between the words “I do,” and the happy couple retiring for the evening. At any rate, the groom awakes to discover that the woman he thought was his sister-in-law is his wife, and that his wife is not his wife, but his sister-in-law. In the dawn’s early light, it dawns on Jacob what kind of man his father-in-law is. Laban’s polish conceals a scheming mind and a heart of stone.

            “Why have you deceived me?” Jacob demands to know. A deal is a deal, and the deal was that he’d work seven years for Rachel, not Leah. He has a right to be angry.

            Or does he? This is rich, isn’t it? The man who took advantage of his father’s failing eyesight to steal his brother’s blessing wants to complain that in the low light of the bridal chamber somebody got one over on him? Not very self-aware, are you Jacob?

            Really the two incidents have nothing to do with each other. At the ground level, so to speak, Laban really has swindled Jacob, and it’s wrong to con people; end of story. It’s even wrong to con con artists.

            But we aren’t watching this story unfold at the ground level. We share the narrator’s omniscient point of view. We know all about Jacob’s history, and we can’t help but conclude that some kind of poetic justice is being served here, even though the Lord God, the ultimate source of all true justice, is absent as a character in this part of the story.

            The Hindus have the concept of karma in their religion, the notion that, to put it a bit crudely, what comes around goes around. There’s a similar idea the Christian Bible. In Samuel and Kings and Chronicles, the historical books of the Bible, the Lord often deals with Israel in a tit for tat fashion. If you obey, says the Lord, you will be blessed. But if you disobey, you will suffer. So when Israel’s kings worship idols and oppress the poor long enough, eventually they lose their kingdom to oppressive idolaters. And here in Genesis 29 we see the deceiver himself deceived. Our narrator never says, “This took place in order to punish Jacob for wronging his brother Esau,” but we can’t help but wonder.

            And wonder is what we do in our lives. Sometimes God speaks to us directly, as God spoke to Jacob in a dream in last week’s scripture reading. But most of the time, we have to infer God’s will for our lives. Whether life’s banes are crosses to bear or our just desserts, and whether life’s blessings are gifts from God or ill-gotten gains—that’s often a matter of interpretation.

            Laban is not only treacherous; he is smooth! When the young man Jacob gets hot under the collar, Laban replies, “Oh, it must have slipped my mind. You see, in our country, the elder daughter has to be married first. I’m sure this seems somewhat arbitrary to you, and I’ll admit that in a perfect world everyone could marry for love or whatever, but a man of my age has learned to respect the value of custom and tradition.” And then Uncle Laban throws his arm over Jacob’s shoulder and adds, “Now look out there at all those people we’ve invited. We can’t let them down, can we? It’s important that we not make a scene. Let’s keep up appearances and complete the reception, and I’ll tell you what. I really want to work with you on this. How about… I don’t know… another seven years, and you can marry Rachel too.”

            Now that’s how you do it! Not only does Laban double-cross Jacob, he makes Jacob a party to Jacob’s own exploitation! Waylan Jennings once sang, “Old age and treachery always overcomes youth and skill,” and he could have been singing about Jacob and Laban, couldn’t he?

            And if Jacob’s labor of love for Rachel’s hand represents the ideal work situation, then Laban’s underhandedness represents the reality. For when it comes to the exchange of goods and services, the strong, by hook or by crook, arrange things so that their strength is maintained or even increased, all while coming off smelling like a rose.

            “This is not done in our country, giving the younger before the firstborn.” Laban’s words remind us that what brought Jacob to Haran was his violation of his brother’s “natural rights” as the elder son. Is this some sort of veiled allusion to Jacob’s past?

            I doubt it. While our narrator does report that Jacob told Laban everything upon his arrival in Haran, I cannot help but think Jacob was a bit reticent to supply all the gory details. No. Laban is an accidental prophet. He’s not the only one in scripture. We think of Caiaphas. When Caiaphas prudently and rather cynically sold out Jesus to the Romans, he said, “It’s better that one man die for the whole people.” Had no idea what he was saying. So too with Laban. His words carry a double meaning to which he is blind, but which to us, is abundantly clear. The firstborns will get their revenge!

            Where does this all leave us? In the end, Jacob gets twice as much work and twice as many wives as he bargained for—one of whom he loves more than the other. Interestingly, the Lord, who has inexplicably favored the younger son Jacob to this point, now reverses course. Four-eyed Leah, married to a man who doesn’t love her, finds favor in the eyes of the Lord. She bears the majority of Jacob’s children, the eponymous ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. Yet the Lord does not overlook Rachel. After all, it’s not her fault that she’s pretty, is it? She too bears a son, Jacob’s youngest. And the conned son-in-law finally gets a leg up on the man who lives in the biggest house on the biggest hill in Haran. Jacob’s flocks outperform his uncle’s, and when trouble brews between Jacob and his jealous in-laws, Jacob flees with his wives, children and flocks, and Laban can’t do a thing about it.

            A pattern is emerging. In conflicts in which the power dynamic is unequal, the Lord God seems to put his thumb on the scale of the weaker party to make it a fair fight. At the same time, the successes and reversals which any one particular character in our story experience seem to be of a two steps forward, one step back quality. The Lord, who promised to Jacob that all families on the earth would be blessed in him, really does seem determined that blessing and not curse be the last word pronounced on each of these very questionable people. As we find ourselves in conflicts, whether they are within families or between nations, on the job, in the community or in society, let us not forget God’s hidden thumb on the scale and God’s resolve to bless everyone.

In defense of labeling

When the school for autistic children that our son attends came out with T-shirts, we snapped up three of them. Laura makes sure to put our son in one whenever we're out in public for an extended amount of time. The T-shirt functions as a kind of silent interpreter of our son's at times odd behavior.

It works. When we were at Busch Gardens in May Laura noticed a couple of teens looking askance at him for one reason or another, but the looks melted as they read the T-shirt. This indicates that there's a pretty broad awareness of autism among young folks and a desire to be tolerant rather than poke fun. The kids are alright!

Parents sometimes resist having their children diagnosed with a disability. Perhaps they think it reflects poorly on them. If this is the case, then these people should work a little harder on their own sense of personal identity.

Or perhaps they're worried that their child will be written off by teachers and the school system as incapable of succeeding. I think that this was more of a problem a generation ago than today.

Teens and adults who are diagnosed sometimes resist the label because they want to make it on their own without any special allowances for them. This is understandable and even admirable, but they wouldn't begrudge special allowances for people with asthma, so they shouldn't begrudge the same allowances for their own condition, whether it's for dyslexia, ADHD, Asperger's Syndrome or whatever.

A "label" such as "autism" doesn't permit or excuse anti-social behavior, but it signals the proper reasons for bad behavior as well as the proper strategies for coping with such behaviors. This is crucial if you want the behaviors to cease. To understand is not to excuse.

And in a very tangential way, I think that this has some bearing on the riots in Great Britain. The government over there will speak of nothing other than restoring order. Of course when people are leaping from burning buildings, it's no time to theorize about the root causes of social chaos. It's time for catching the falling, putting out the fires, and locking up the criminals.

But once that's done, some attempt to understand why this has happened is in order, especially if you want to prevent it from happening again. I have no idea if the label that finally gets afixed to this crisis will be "gang thuggery," or "the desperation of poverty," or "bad parenting," but a proper diagnosis will go a long way to ensuring the proper treatment.