J4P – Power in Weakness/Branded by God/Set Apart for Something Better

Guest Blogger: Mark Sprinkle

These sections are part of the continuing long prologue to (what I expect will be) the explicitly political part of the book that comes later; so we continue to get Claiborne and Haw’s quick overview of the Hebrew Bible from the big picture (i.e., narrative theology) viewpoint, which asks not what every little part means by itself, but how all the parts go together, bit by bit showing us what God was/is doing in His world and in history and in His people. To do that, and as in previous sections, the authors here take time to re-tell specific stories and try to relate their dynamics and characters to incidents and people of our time (Gideon & the Midianites, King David’s anointing and battle with Goliath), while also glossing whole sectionsor themes fromscripture pretty quickly to suggest that we can get too bogged down in details and miss the critical point (Leviticus and Deuteronomy). Not that this part isn’t political itself, of course, as the way that the authors connect the Biblical story with our own times is meant to be laying the groundwork for the later stuff; really, even the production quality of the book–it’s signature style of casual, slightly goofy writing and funny illustrations to go with the words–is political, polemical, rhetorical, in that it says to the presumed reader, “Hey, this stuff is important, but don’t get your panties in a wad over this text or that (or this book), because then you’ll miss the fun and excitement and surprising way God is doing his redeeming thing.” Not that they’d say it like that, exactly (they don’t use as many parentheticals, for one thing), but the medium and message are linked in that the way Claiborne and Haw want to tell the truth and the truth they want to tell are both (literally)disarming.

So, on with the actual text: The first part, Power in Weakness, is the longest of the three with two-and-a-half pages of actual text and a half-page picture, compared with four pages for both of the other two sections (which are really just one section) of mostly pictures and some funny stuff on the Levitical law. In fact, because this is the internet and I’m so post-modern (and because the authors do a little time warp between the talk about David here and that in the last section), I’m just going to take care of these later two (really one) sections first (and in reverse order) and then spend more of your valuable time with the first section afterwards.

Branded by God and Set Apart for Something Better are the bits that try to make sense of the whole part of ancient Hebrew culture that seems the most weird to modern eyes and ears and also causes a lot of trouble for/by those who wish to understand the Bible in the rule-book rather than story-book fashion. Set Apartgives the message away in the title, which could and maybe should have worked for both: after the title, it’s really just a list of Jewish Holidays (notably not just those called for in the Torah, but also later additions to the calendar like Hanukka (166 BC), a celebration of violent protest against forced assimilation of the Jews into pagan Greek imperial culture), all of which focus on and remind the people of Israel that they were chosen and rescued by God to be His. The central theme of the Jewish yearly schedule, then, is “Remember who God is and what He has done for you; then act accordingly.” The acting accordingly (differently) gets us to the laws, which were a means of living out the identity. In short, the authors say that while many of the laws about EVERYTHING in the lives of the Israelites may have conveyed specific health or other practical benefits, the main reason for the laws was to provide a way of life that set God’s people apart from the nations around them–to mark them off (or rather, begin to train them up) as the people of God, through which he would bless the whole world. This context also means (so the authors imply) that we shouldn’t try to claim most of those laws as appropriate for our own cultural situation, but need to be thinking about what behaviors and practices in the culture(s) around us today should be “off limits” to us–again, not to condemn others, but to mark ourselves off as a different and even inviting communityto those around us. This point is made not directly, but by the inclusion of a satirical bit from Garry Wills’ What Jesus Meant. I got something very much like it as an e-mail awhile back, and it’s a very funny way to point out that professing to take all (or every) bit of Scriptural rule literally in our context is just plain silly, as it would mean (among other things) that the Fashion Police would have blanket authorization to use deadly force. It’s a good point, although I was slightly bothered by the way the letter (obviously a totally sarcastic fabrication) was introduced in perhaps too-deadpan a way. I would have liked to see some more discussion on the various macro-economic reasons why it’s more convenient (not more Levitical) to own Mexicans as slaves versus owning Canadians.

Anyway, on to Power in Weakness:

If Jesus For President’s walk-through-the-Bible is about pointing out how various themes in God’s plan for redeeming the world through His people are brought out over and over throughout the whole of Scripture, preparing the Jews and us for the story’s culmination in the life and ministry of Jesus, then this section treats one of the most significant: that God does the redeeming, not human actors on their own; and (to make sure we don’t get confused on the point) that He does it by using otherwise-powerless agents to upend our expectations about the way power works. Great point, even better Divine Reality; but I found a good bit of this section in the book fairly (OK, singularly) flawed in its use of (verbal) illustrations.

It opens with three lovely examples that show not only that God chooses whom he wills (i.e., not the folks we’d probably choose), but also that often he does things the way we wouldn’t: Joshua takes down Jericho with trumpets and yelling; the traitor/prostitute Rahab helps Israel against her own city and gets numbered as an ancestor of Jesus; and Gideon defeats the Midianite army with a tiny force and a bizarre battle plan. Well-done, point made several times, and all to the end of suggesting that Jesus–while radical–was also going to be continuing and magnifying and clarifying the way God had been working all along–that Jesus was both a singular rupture with the past and it’sfulfillment. But I guess those examples didn’t suggest enough modern-day connections or parallels, so the authors bring back King David before he was king, for, they say, the ultimate weak-over-strong story: the anointing of a shepherd boy as King and the boy’s fight against the Philistine giant. The problem is not just that these examples (though central to later Jewish nationalidentity) don’t work as well as the other images of God doing wacky things to defeat worldly power; it is that the writers at once try to make the early David story do too much work, and then get sloppy about the modern connections/parallels. It was like a big speed bump to me as I was reading, and the jolt was enough to throw me out of alignment (to strain my own metaphor) so that it kept coming back to me as I kept reading, kept making me wonder about the next big bump to come rather than enjoying the ride. More about why that matters in a minute, but first a couple of specific issues to either prove I’m not crazy or, conversely, to convince you, gentle reader, that I’m way too picky:

The book talks about how unlikely a choice was a shepherd for king when kings were expected to lead their armies into battle, calling the choice “not the most logical” because shepherds tended to be young, poor and untrained for war. But sermons and studies of David we’ve probably all heard would suggest that this is surely not a case of it being an “illogical” choice but one based on God’s ability to see David’s qualifications for being warrior-king when no-one else yet could: a young shepherd was used to hardship and had to defend his flocks with skill-at-arms and valor–just of a different variety than being arrayed in ranks and weighed-down in armor. In fact, it was precisely the kind of military skill that was called-for against Goliath, coupled with David’s righteous indignation at Goliath’s mocking of the Lord that made him see Goliath for what he was–nothing more than a wild beast harassing God’s flocks, and one to be dealt with not mano-a-mano according to the honor code of battle, but smartly, almost dismissively (knowing that God would defeat His foe), from a convenient distance. Entirely logical way to get the job done. Think of the way Indiana Jones (in the first movie) dealt with the giant scimitar-wielding Arab in Cairo when the crowd parts to make room for the epic battle: Jones just pulls out his gun and shoots the guy, and then turns to get on with the next thing. Now cut back toClaiborne and Haw’s telling re-telling of the David story: theyrun their David scene trying to keep it light, as if David were skipping to and fro behind the lines: “Saul . . . loaded David up with armor and a sword, ready for battle. But David said, just like a child, “I cannot go in these. He took them off, grabbed a few stones, and headed into battle to face the nine-foot embodiment of power. . . .But little David toppled the giant with a slingshot. Now that’s humor” (p. 48-49).

So here’s the trick question: When you saw that Indiana Jones scene for the first time, did you laugh? Is it really funny? Do Claiborne and Haw really think the David scene is humor? Sure, humor can just be the play of the unexpected, but they seem (and continue on shortly) to be referring to more of the funny “ha-ha” kind of humor. David didn’t say “oops!” after he intentionally buried a pound of rock in Goliath’s forehead; he went over, took Goliath’s own sword and cut off his head as a trophy and taunt to the other Philistines. Pretty gruesome stuff, which David seems to have taken in stride. Not that there’s anything wrong with that . . . in a future warrior-king who would get into trouble because the women of Israel sang of the ten-thousands he killed to Saul’s thousands. . . It just doesn’t seem to really support the point of God working to confound human wisdom and power in the same way the other (even military) interventions Claiborne and Haw mention did. Anyway, that’s a lot to say, “maybe they could have chosen a better illustration,” but it actually just set the stage for the next couple of things . . .

David with the Head of Goliath, c. 1607, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemldegalerie, Vienna.

The paragraph continues: ” . . . That’s like a few campaneros in Latin America toppling a multinational corporation with a few fair-trade coffee beans. [to which I say, "what?"] That lampoons power, like a kid with s super-soaker taking on Osama bin Laden. Which does seem to hold promise for a better world. What would the world look like if all the child soldiers were playing with supersoakers instead of US-made AK-47s?” To which I say, “Aaaaaaaaah!” I’ll reiterate: David was not “lampooning power” in the way kids with supersoakers (or protesters with Banana-cream pies) might, making the pretentiously powerful looked silly and foolish, shaming them into leaving town or at least seeking cover. David was applyingless obvious, but stillreal, focused and available force shrewdly to great effect–he leveraged his resources, to use a term rife with overtones that the authors might find disturbing in their own way. And Osama bin Laden? The bitter truth (even assuming you are against American Imperialism) is that bin Laden got to be David to the WTC’s Goliath, by doing exactly the same thing, as far as leveraging available techniques and materials goes. His reaction to being supersoaked? I don’t know; but I’m not at all confident lampooning would go over real well. Would the world be better if child-soldiers used water-guns? Lord, yes, please. But they’re not using “US-made” AK-47s, as there’s no such thing: check out this handy page on the weapon, especially the “cultural influence” section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47#Variants, looking for the phrase “Free of charge.”

Anyway, what drove me nuts about this section is that there is a centrally important point here about turning expectations of power’s power upside down, of God using the lowly to shame the mighty, of working to show us what (elsewhere) Claiborne calls a “third way” between violence and passivity, ultimately (but not only, since we get to participate) in the person of Jesus. But that point gets more than muddied by the strange attempt to produce humor in the Goliath story, and then link it to even more weirdly and sloppily to images that try to bring in the American Empire/consumer capitalist theme. (I still don’t get how the Campaneros vs. Evil Multinational thing works–are they going after Starbucks, I hope? And, in the last paragraph, that was Joseph, not Moses, giving advice on being meek before Pharaoh.) I know that the evil of acculturation to the modern imperial ethos is the ultimate theme of the book, and I’m all for a take on that, a good-humored “how to” (Sorry, Brent) on the theme, at least in terms of thinking differently, if not resulting in all of us moving into a monastic community, but it’s important that the authors not let the goofy, unorthodoxy-is-hip thing lead to sloppiness, in thinking or presentation; that leads to a loss of credibility and leaves the message neglected or rejected. I, myself, have been reading a lot more critically since I hit this section, which isn’t all bad, of course.

So, I didn’t ever intend to do a critique of this section, or the book–especially because I’ve been really getting a lot out of it, and there are some really keen insights, large and small, about both scripture and culture (Beth’s fave so far has been that the “eye for an eye” law was actually to limit the typical pattern of escalating retribution, not advocate mutilation on its own merits). But here it is that the section I got makes me really uncomfortable for the way it goes about the task of communicating, rather than the message itself. Maybe this is just my attention (preoccupation?) with the way images and stories work to convey meaning (or not), but I want the authors to be really careful to do this right, especially because there’s obviously so much weight put on the production values, the look, the hand-madeconversational scrapbook esthetic as a way to get the message through. It’s something that I struggle with, too, but it’s not enough just to tell cool stories and paint interesting pictures about the Kingdom: these images have to really work, using Jesus’ use of parable as a model. Otherwise, we get a picture that looks pretty cool on the surface, and maybe even half-way down, but then starts to fall apart or just not make sense. (Have a good, careful look at the Geico billboard with the big shadow on it sometime (and then really think about what it’s saying) to see a pretty frivolous example of what I’m talking about. ) How God wants His kingdom to be brought about on earth through us is hard and important stuff, and resisting the empire means resisting the culture saturated by fast-appearing, free-floating, and faux-”authentic” images, even if they’re written or drawn out longhand in the margins.

Mark Sprinkle is an artist, craftsman, and writer who most days can be found painting stories, enjoying a glass of wine with his wife and gazing into outer space with his three brilliant boys. You can see his artwork at his online studio: www.marksprinkle.com