Cushlamochree!

If you think you recognize the kid at left, you're probably familiar with a cousin of his, a boy with a purple crayon. "Barnaby" was drawn by Crockett Johnson, the same man who brought you children's classic "Harold and the Purple Crayon." The two works share the same fondness for the fantastic, and promote the world as a much more interesting place than adults realize. It's a little hard to pin down "Barnaby," except for the beautiful minimalist drawing. It comes close to being a comic-strip version of what Tolkien would define as a true fairy tale, except that the fairies intrude upon the human world instead of the other way around. Mr. O'Malley, fairy godfather to Barnaby, leads the parade of fantastic characters. He's generally incompetent, perhaps because his magic wand suspiciously resembles a cigar. Barnaby suffers from Snuffleupagus syndrome, his parents never seeing Mr. O'Malley and believing their child to have emotional troubles. On the other hand, Mr. O'Malley is not sure Barnaby's parents exist, either.

Johnson drew the strip mostly during the 1940s, but stopped its production at that magical 10-year mark. It never had a wide audience, but those who loved it loved it. In the mid-80s an attempt was made to reproduce the strip's entire run in paperback, but as far as I can tell the project was dropped after five or six books.

QotD

"(Prayer) is, above all, fellowship with God and being brought under the power of His holiness and love, until He takes possession of us and stamps our entire nature with the lowliness of Christ, which is the secret of all true worship. ... The faith that always thanks Him - not for experiences, but for the promises on which it can rely - goes on from strength to strength, still increasing in the blessed assurance that God Himself will perfect His work in us."

- Andrew Murray, "The Prayer Life"

The Devil made them do it

The Vatican has announced that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were possessed by the Devil, hence some 55 million people killed. I don't doubt the existence of demons and their ability to inhabit people and pigs. As well, I doubt I'm really equipped to convincingly argue with Vatican theologians. However, pronouncements like these seem to me to be grounded in the idea that people generally are OK. It puts me in mind of Flip Wilson in drag: Whatever little thing happens, well, it wasn't me, the devil made me do it. The only way to explain monsters like a Hitler, or Dahmer, or Speck, or the child molester down the street, is to attribute their behavior to evil incarnate.

But that's not what scripture says about us: “Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Ps. 51:5.
“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one,” Job 14:4.
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men ...” Rom. 5:12a.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart …” Jer. 17:9-10a.
“But we are all like an unclean thing. All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. ...” Is. 64:6a.

James tells us, "But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death." (1:14-15). The sin we commit arises from our own lusts. The role of Satan, though he's often referred to as a tempter, more often shows up as accuser or in simple destruction: He takes over someone's life, ruins it, then throws the man (or pig) away. Note that Jesus' temptation came directly from Satan; He had no inner lusts, so His temptation had to come from an outside source. Not so with the rest of us.

Scripture shows that from God's perspective all mankind - the mass murderer, the child molester, the shoplifter, the evangelist, the nun - is evil to the core. Hitler, Stalin, and all those other guys did what they did because they were human beings, each put in a position with the opportunity and power to do whatever they wanted. We look at them with horror because we can't see ourselves doing what they did, but we'll never really know because we'll never have their opportunity. Know this, however: Hitler did not think he was evil; he thought he was doing the world a favor, particularly Germany. And while we find it impossible to join hands with Adolf Hitler in the brotherhood of man, remember too that God's perspective toward every last one of us is the same, so separate is He in His holiness and righteousness. Praise be to the Lamb! For He alone is worthy, and He has stood in the gap for us.

I Yam What I Yam

Meet Popeye. "Thimble Theater" began in 1919, but it wasn't until 1929 that Popeye appeared as an incidental character, gradually becoming the star. He became the dominant character, completely displacing the previous hero, Castor Oyl, and grew into a major animation star. He even brought spinach to the consciousness of mothers everywhere, much to the chagrine of their children. But many other memorable characters came out of the strip, including the genius moocher Wimpy, Li'l Swee' Pea and the evil Sea Hag.

Elzie Crisler Segar, who signed his name with an "S" made of smoke coming from a stogie, was the son of an olive oil (!) distributor. He had a relatively long career but short life, dying at age 44. More than any cartoonist of his time, he worked the environment of vaudeville/cinema into his comic strip. He also gave the world the words "jeep," after the dog-like creature Eugene that could disappear and reappear at will, and "goon," a weird, giant creature named Alice, who wore a delicate flowered hat. Afterwards soldiers took the vernacular for their "general purpose" vehicle that could go anywhere, "G.P.", and merged it into Jeep. And thugs hired to beat up union activists came to be known as goons.

Good Grief!

The name was forced upon him by the syndicate, and he always hated it. Its funny shape was due to the syndicate's desire to sell it as a "space saver," so editors could cram three strips into the space of two. They gave the strip little care or thought, but what they got was the most successful and beloved strip IN THE WORLD! And Charles Schulz carried these insults with him all his life, as he did every indignity that added to his insecurity, and wove them into the first pop-psychology, -theology, -philosophy comic strip. It's no wonder that the catch phrase of the hero (or anti-hero) was "good grief," a contradiction in itself, mankind's habit of reacting to constant disappointment with illogical hope. Schulz may have actually invented the phrase, along with the security blanket, the Great Pumpkin, and Snoopy.

Schulz drew from the sorrows of his life to reflect on the futility of it all. The little red-haired girl was real, his first love, who in turn spurned him. As Randall Goodgame has pointed out, "Peanuts" is ripe with unrequited love, only the best example of the failures we all endure. Schroeder is a prodigy who can't get rid of Lucy. Lucy takes her frustration out on Linus, a genius who depends on a blanket to quiet his fears. Charlie Brown fails at everything. And through it all dances Snoopy. And along with Schulz' introspective meditation, as the panel above testifies, he could draw a funny picture.

We're doomed

I realized something today that makes me lose all hope for the world. In other words, I've had to submit to the words of Christ.

The acquisition and maintenance of power is everything in this world. In most places, certainly through most of history, it's not the enlightened people who talk who come to power, it's the thugs with weapons. But even in societies where you can talk your way into power, still the desire to retain it is intoxicating (witness Robert Byrd, in the Senate since WWI and running again this year). Wars are fought primarily to either force governments, or particular people governing, to change, or to prevent them from changing. This is why we will ultimately fail in the war against terrorism: Terrorists don't threaten governments. Their purpose is to stop cultural and economic activity through terror - frightening everyday people into changing their habits for fear they will die. But the survival of governments, even Israel's, are not seriously threatened. This is incredibly cynical, but political leaders will eventually lose resolve because their power is not on the line.

Now consider antichrist. Let this war go on another 30, or 50, or 100 years, and how many peace-loving people around the world are going to be completely exhausted opposing the tiny, tiny percentage of the population who enjoy blowing them up? Already I hear many Americans say they wish the war in Iraq would go away, after some three years. In the meantime, terrorist groups grow into political parties, as they already are. So then a terrorist leader arises, either an individual or a group, and promises an end to all the violence, even against Israel. How many people are going to flock to him? Everyone? Governments won't play the key role in this decision, the general population of the world will welcome this peace.

I think the American ideal of spreading peace through representative government, personal liberty and economic opportunity is sincere. It is also doomed. "There will be wars and rumors of wars;" "And he will confirm the covenant with many for one week; and in the midst of the week he will cause the sacrifice to cease;" "If any man say to you, 'Lo, there is Christ,' believe it not;" "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

Muslim mafia

It seems to me, in the aftermath of the latest terrorist plot hatched in London, that Muslim extremists have very little to do with religion and are more like the mafia than any other organization we know of. They deal in human life as if it had no value at all, opulent lives and deaths (funeral arrangements for mafioso, screaming passions for Muslims) being their most highly regarded reward. Both groups have leaders that own the lives of their underlings: If Don Ayatollah sends you out on a "hit," then you go, regardless of danger to yourself, while he sits safely in his suite. As well, the inference that every law-abiding Italian-American had to live with is now being felt by law-abiding Muslims — they are suspect by virtue of their heritage. Any Muslim who wants to live at peace with the modern world needs to take notice of this. It is human nature to lump the majority of a group in with the worse aspects of its minority. This is how we develop stereotypes.

Terrorists are Muslims in the same way mafioso are Catholics, and I doubt God will be pleased with either of them. The weakness of a works religion is that the world is forever undermining your works. If you're busy trying to do good, as you define it, and the world (i.e., the people) around you only heap more temptation at your door, the only reaction left to you is hatred. Of course you're going to hate the people trying to drag you into Hell, and the best way to end the temptation is kill the people. So the last error is worse than the first, unless your organization just doesn't value human life. But the world goes on anyway, regardless of how many you hate or kill, and the only way to save your weak religion is to make it grind to a halt in the year 632 (or perhaps 1950), that simpler, gentler time. Works are useless to change the nature of people or the world at any point in history, but the grace of God through Christ is stronger than all creation.

The Divine Comicy

Whenever you get together a bunch of comics eggheads, if such a thing is possible, you will no doubt get the consensus that "Krazy Kat" was the ultimate comic strip. This comes from its simple theme, revisited constantly over the course of some 30 years, of the poetry of life. Krazy Kat featured three main players: The Kat, who loved the mouse; the dog (Offissa Pupp), who loved the cat; and the mouse (Ignatz) who loved himself; and never the trey shall meet. The mouse took no better joy in anything but lobbing a brick at the cat, and the cat took no more joy than receiving the brick, for that was testimony that the mouse was thinking of him ("him," we think; it was never quite certain.) This look at the fickle nature of being was reflected as well in the surreal backdrops in the background and ground-breaking graphic design of the Sunday pages.

The strip was drawn by George Herriman, who had all the typical newspaper credentials going in. He was born in Louisiana and was thought to have some African ancestry, which no doubt made life difficult in that enlightened state in the post-Reconstruction world, so his family moved to California when he was still a toddler. The landscapes of the desert southwest inspired Herriman and were the models of some of the bizarre formations that appeared in his drawings. Krazy Kat developed out of a kind of footnote to another strip, "The Family Upstairs," in 1910 and survived until Herriman's death in 1944, largely because William Randolph Hearst ("Citizen Kane") loved it.

Anti-semitism

By now we're all familiar with Mel Gibson's scree. These are terrible things to hear, especially from the mouth of a brother, and Gibson realizes that. An interesting angle here is that he's in the middle of a project about the Holocaust, which now will probably never see the light of day. But what's more interesting to me is how the news coverage of the incident opens a window to the mass media.

The talking heads are all horrified by Gibson's words, but these are the same people who ask us to try to understand Muslim terrorists. Gibson's career, in spite of his plea for mercy, may well be over, and this incident will surely follow him the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iraqi insurgents are given largely sympathetic media treatment. The leaders of militant Islam are driven by one thing: hatred of Israel, not just the division of the land but also the identity of its occupiers, Jews. Many radical Muslim teachers even use classic Nazi propaganda, e.g., Jews are some kind of sub-human race (never mind that Arabs and Jews claim a common ancestor.) But this basic hatred is glossed over in the media in favor of emphasizing political and economic issues. Israeli Jews in turn deal with this with utter disdain: They've been hated for centuries, and a few more people hating them isn't going to make the persecutions and pogroms any worse.

Of course I realize that there is hatred to go around, Israel is no doubt full of people with no love lost for their Muslim neighbors, and radical Jewish groups exist as well. My greater concern is what the Christian response should be: certainly not Mad Max's after a few drinks, but neither should we necessarily be Israel's cheerleaders. We should not wink at hatred from either side, particularly when it leads to mass killing, and certainly not join in that hatred. At the same time we have to accept this is the way the world is and will continue to be ("You will hear of wars and rumors of wars ..."). Meanwhile, God winnows His chosen, and all creation groans. Peace will not come to the Earth until the Prince of Peace comes to the Earth.

I Go Pogo

In my mind "Pogo" was the greatest of all comic strips. I remember as a kid hearing about how great it was and never really understanding, although I did like the fairy-tale parodies that appeared on Sundays. The problem was that I was born too late, because the golden age of Pogo was in the 1950s. I discovered this in college when I found some book reprints from that period. Like most great comic strips, Pogo had about ten years of brilliance before burning out into repetition and trying too hard. Of all the great strips, only "Peanuts" seemed to avoid this downfall, and that may have been because it was less about being fall-down funny and more about wry comment on the human condition.

Walt Kelly, a brilliant satirist, poet and artist, wrote and drew "Pogo." He had spent years working in newspapers and had been an animator with Disney, working on "Dumbo" and "Fantasia" (IMDB also gives him a writing credit for a Bugs Bunny cartoon.) He was incredibly generous with his work, giving away untold hundreds of his strips, and loved to travel. He apparently was also a two-fisted drinker and something of a womanizer. Late in his life diabetes hit him hard and just before he died he had pretty much lost his sight, and both legs had been amputated. But, as all artists hope, his legacy lies in the brilliance of his work, though it be but a tissue of paper reveries.

Dispensationalism

I did not grow up in the Baptist church and can't claim to know what goes on in those arcane halls, but a number of my post-Baptist friends often bring up the idea of dispensationalism. Apparently it is taught as "God had Plan A (the law), but that didn't work, so He had to come up with Plan B (the cross)." This presupposes the idea that man could, and was expected to, earn his salvation under the law. Any serious OT student knows that doesn't ring true. This confused me, because most of my Christian life I've studied out of the Scofield Reference Bible, C.I. Scofield being one of the early proponents of dispensationalism, but never did I come across the Plan A/Plan B idea. So I have to conclude that dispensationalism has been corrupted by the people teaching it now.

My further comment would be that I don't think dispensationalism should be considered a doctrine. To me it's no more than a useful roadmap to the revelation of the cross. It's noteworthy that at each of the seven dispensations that Scofield identifies, a major type of Christ is revealed, until you get to the sixth dispensation, the Church, at which point the antitype has already appeared. Anyway, just so you know, here is the footnote that the Scofield Bible places at Gen. 1:28.

"A dispensation is a period of time during which man is tested in respect to his obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God.

"Three important concepts are implied in this definition: 1) a deposit of divine revelation concerning God's will, embodying what God requires of man as to his conduct; 2) man's stewardship of this divine revelation, in which he is responsible to obey it; and 3) a time period, often called an "age," during which this divine revelation is dominant in the testing of man's obedience to God.

"The dispensations are a progressive and connected revelation of God's dealings with man, given sometimes to the whole race and at other times to a particular people, Israel. These different dispensations are not separate ways of salvation. During each of them man is reconciled to God in only one way, i.e. by God's grace through the work of Christ that was accomplished on the cross and vindicated in His resurrection. Before the cross man was saved in prospect of Christ's atoning sacrifice, through believing the revelation thus far given him. Since the cross man has been saved by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ in whom revelation and redemption are consummated.

"On man's part the continuing requirement is obedience to the revelation of God. This obedience is a stewardship of faith. Although the divine revelation unfolds progressively, the deposit of truth in the earlier time periods is not discarded; rather it is cumulative. Thus conscience (moral responsibility) is an abiding truth in human life, although it does not continue as a dispensation. Similarly, the saved of this present dispensation are "not under law" as a specific test of obedience to divine revelation, yet the law remains an integral part of the Holy Scriptures which, to the redeemed, are profitable for 'instruction in righteousness.'

"The purpose of each dispensation, then, is to place man under a specific rule of conduct, but such stewardship is not a condition of salvation. In every past dispensation unregenerate man has failed, and he has failed in this present dispensation and will in the future. But salvation has been and will continue to be available to him by God's grace through faith.

"Seven dispensations are distinguished by Scofield: Innocence (Gen. 1:28); Conscience or Moral Responsibility (Gen. 3:7); Human Government (Gen. 8:15); Promise (Gen. 12:1); Law (Ex. 19:1); Church (Acts 2:1); Kingdom (Rev. 20:4)."

© 1967 Oxford University Press, Inc.