A Scripture for the President

When I heard it, I laughed.

This last week, the Least Christian President in American History (tm) sat at the Resolute Desk and recorded himself reading from Holy Scripture.  It was part of a week-long cover-to-cover Bible reading with scores of participants, one whose intent was to remind America of the power of reading the Bible, or so the organizers hoped.  

I am, rather obviously, fond of reading the Bible on the regular.  It's not a single book, mind you, but a Sacred Book of Books, a collection of texts assembled over a millennia that reflects the journey of a covenant people with their God.  It has many authors, but also one Author, and all of it, every last bit of it, speaks transforming truths that we need to hear and understand.  Reading it changes us, if we're willing to read it deeply.

And so it was that Donald J. Trump, Forty Seventh President of the United States of America, a man who is happy to hate his enemies and whose not-going-to-church-today golf-trip-motorcade blocked the Beltway and almost made my family late for worship this most recent Easter morning, recorded himself reading from 2 Chronicles. 

Trump?  Reading from Chronicles?  It was perfect, just perfect, so much so that again, I laughed.  The textual portion itself centered around national humility and repentance, which is not something Trump's America does, ever, not ever.  Demanding that people you despise repent, sure.  But actual, sackcloth-and-ashes we-messed-up-Lord repentance?  That's a sign of weakness.  The cardinal rule of MAGA is to always double down and punch back, and never, ever admit fault. 

It is, in a plain reading, wildly ironic.  

But it gets weirder if you go deeper.  

The books of 1 and 2 Chronicles are among the most MAGA-friendly books of the Bible.  Or, to be more accurate, they're all about Making Judah Great Again, even if M'JuGaH doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.  Sounds too much like meshuggah, eh?

Like the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, Chronicles was most probably written in the period closely following the Babylonian exile.  The people of Judah were rebuilding, having been returned to their land by Cyrus of Persia.  Tradition holds that the author of Chronicles was Ezra the scribe, and though there's the inevitable scholarly debate around that, it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis.  Rebuilding requires having a powerful sense of what came before, and, well, that's the whole point of Chronicles.

1 and 2 Chronicles are a scribal retelling of the history of the national aspirations of the Hebrew people, as Ezra took the story that spans the older books of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings and edited them to meet his interests.  He cuts and pastes those histories as vigorously as Thomas Jefferson, and those editorial choices are striking.  They speak to the purpose of Chronicles.

Because Chronicles...like Ezra...tells of a deep yearning for the restoration of a nation to greatness, and looks to the past with a powerful hunger.  That shapes the way memory is recalled, and the way that the story of the past is told.  

There are many changes, like largely ignoring the history of those cursed "northern Kingdom" Samaritans.  Most relevant, given the liturgist in question, is how Chronicles approaches King David, first and greatest of the kings of the Jewish people.

In the older stories of David, those told in the Deuteronomistic History, he is remembered as deeply human.  In 1 and 2 Samuel, David is an emotionally complex soul.  He cares deeply for Saul and his son Jonathan, even though the erratic, moody Saul threatens his life over and over again.  When David's son Absalom rises up to take power from him, David desperately clings to hope for reconciliation, and when the news of Absalom's death is brought to David, his heart is utterly broken.  David knows indolence and lust, murdering the honorable Uriah to cover up his infidelity with Uriah's wife Bathsheba.  The prophet Nathan is forced to confront David with the horror of his actions, and David is shattered and repentant.  At the end of his life, David is a weak and diminished old man, easily manipulated by Nathan and Bathsheba so that Bathsheba's child Solomon can take the throne.  

These are meaty, real, earthy stories, ones that speak to the truth of our human mess and the ways even the best of us fail to uphold God's covenant.  They teach and they preach powerfully to the human condition, and are willing to question power.  Particularly the power of kings, because kings are people, and people are a mess.

That ain't how Chronicles presents David.  

Even though Chronicles is almost entirely reliant on the history recorded by those earlier books, it spins their story with the doggedness of a White House Press Secretary.

David, or so Chronicles describes him, was perfect.  He's buffed and without blemish, run through an Instagram filter, naturally tan and with a full thick head of hair.

Ezra's David almost never puts a foot wrong or makes a bad choice, unless Satan himself leads him astray.  He never weeps or shows weakness.  The conflict between David and Saul is only mentioned sotto voce, and there is no discussion of any of the intrigue in David's house.  There is no Bathsheba-canoodling in Chronicles.  The fight with Goliath isn't mentioned, likely because that would suggest David was once small and not mighty.  David fights, and wins, and fights, and wins, and gives long set piece speeches about building the temple with specific attention to the choice of only the best and most expensive materials.  He hands over the throne to Solomon completely of his own volition.  

As narrative, it's pretty danged flat, and Ezra's scribal compulsion to insert Lists of People and Things don't help that cause none, neither.  There's a reason that all the stories we retell and remember aren't from Chronicles, because generally speaking, we don't read aloud from spreadsheets in worship. 

Taken as a whole, Chronicles is history as hagiography, history as a glossing-over of anything uncomfortable or difficult or messy, history that desperately wants to find perfection in the glories of the past and the shine of remembered wealth and power.  

Which, I would contend, is precisely why it is God's will that Chronicles remain forever part of sacred scripture.  Because human beings are great at editing out the hard parts, not being challenged or changed, and utterly failing to learn from our mistakes.  We need to remember

Lord, does history teach how we're great at that.

Product and Service

I'm typing this on an iMac, which is unsurprising, because my house is littered with Apple products.

The wife and I both have iPhone 4s.  That's 4s, plural, not Four - Esses, which we probably won't get.  My Four is the fourth iPhone I've owned, as the first two met untimely demises at my clumsy hands, and the last one got handed down to my son.

The boys both have old nanos, which see intermittent use.  One has a Touch, which is his camera and primary portable gaming platform.  The other has that repurposed, de-simmed iPhone 3GS, which is serving the same function.  To replace our recently flamed-out first-gen Intel Macbook Pro, we acquired an Air, which is a lovely piece of kit.  Oh, and my wife has a 3G iPad, first gen.

If you've invested in Apple over the years, our family has done our part to insure that your investment yielded handsome returns.

The legacy of Steve Jobs is, without question, those exceptionally well-designed products.  His legendary precision and unrelenting focus on product excellence was what made him such a competent CEO.  The bottom line, if you are making something to sell in the marketplace, is to make that product as well-designed and constructed as possible.   That was always Job's focus, which meant that he had absolutely no tolerance for mediocrity.  He was an absolutely legendary perfectionist, and had an unerring sense of what makes for a solid product.

That, frankly, is what guarantees the profitability of a corporation.  If you focus on making an excellent product, and price it fairly, you will succeed.  If you focus on profit above all else, you will become distracted from that primary goal.  You will start making Chevy Vegas, and you will fail.

In that, Jobs knew and lived out what it takes to be successful in business.

But in the thickets of hagiography for this profoundly accomplished entrepreneur and businessman, I hazard to ask:  is that what matters?

Jobs created great, innovative, well-designed products.  But do they make the world a better place?  I remember what it was to be alive in the pre-iMac era, and a time when Apple was not my preferred provider of quality electronic devices.

Honestly?  It makes no difference.  What has been created is ethically neutral.

Sure, I can use that iPhone to open up new lines of communication with a deaf shut-in, or help a lost stranger find his way.  But that same tech allows that guy down the street to video-sext with his lover while "working late" in his upstairs office while his wife sits alone in their bedroom, or your 15 year old daughter to send NSFW pictures to her manipulative 18 year old boyfriend.   Sure, I can use my Air or my iMac to blog about justice and grace, or to drop a supportive comment on the Facebook page of someone in need of prayer or kindness.  But I could also use them to spew anonymous hatred as the stalker-troll on some other human being's online presence.

The world is shinier and faster and more elegant.  But better?  To speak true, it does not feel so.

As I consider Jobs' life, I wonder at the meaningfulness of a life driven by perfectionism.   Having worked in the field of philanthropy for a while myself, I know that unlike many leaders in industry, Jobs had no interest in charity.  It simply didn't process.  He had no time for it.  He was far too busy and far too focused on product.  Unlike Bill Gates, who has poured his wealth into fighting diseases, or Warren Buffett, who has used the fruits of his business acumen to support Gates in that effort, or countless other leaders in the business sector, Jobs did not use his wealth...or the wealth of Apple...towards any end other than the improvement of Apple products.

Though the products are desirable, and exceptionally well crafted, they are just that.  Products.

And I wonder...is perfectionism what makes for a worthy existence?

And I wonder...is creating profitable and elegantly-designed products what merits a "that'll do, pig, that'll do" at the completion of this life?

I respect Jobs ferocity of purpose, and his creativity, and his intelligence, and his showmanship.  There was much to admire in his life.  I'm just not sure I'd want to live it.