The Tell-Tale Textbook

About two months ago I was perusing a bookshelf and found a short elementary reader published by Abeka, Pensacola Christian College’s program for Christian school and homeschool curriculum. The book is titled My America: 1986 Edition and comprises a series of rudimentary civics lessons. There are sections, for example, on the symbols of the United States, a few key figures in American history, and some major American landmarks and natural wonders. While I thought the sections on freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly (pp. 6-10) are well put—reading them renewed my thankfulness for each of these freedoms—what I found both disconcerting and comical about the rest of the book is its insistence on American exceptionalism even as it keeps skirting close to undermining that insistence. The very first page says, “I think it is the best country in the world,” and a few pages later the book only slightly qualifies that claim: “Our country is not perfect, but it is still the best country in the world” (p. 4). Yet the rest of the book inadvertently sows doubts about this thesis. 

I am not opposed to patriotism, but I take issue with a patriotism that comes at the expense of other nations. (You can be thankful to be an American without saying it’s better than being a Canadian or German.) More to the point, I take issue with a patriotism that’s propped up by half-truths and selective evidence. The trouble with this textbook is that to support its argument for American superiority, it has to omit any mention of the nation’s sins against ethnic minorities, particularly against Native Americans and African Americans. No mention is made of the expulsion and decimation of indigenous tribes, or of slavery or segregation. This may be why, despite the book’s contemporary photos depicting Americans from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, all the “Great People of America” catalogued on pages 21 to 33 (the Pilgrims, George Washington, Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln) are white. If Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass, for example, had been included in the list of great Americans, the book might have had to mention the peculiar institution they became great for resisting. 

One could say that these issues were left out of My America because they weren’t considered age-appropriate, or that the author Judy Hull Moore wanted to leave it up to teachers or parents when to broach these sensitive subjects. But it’s impossible to tell the story of this nation honestly without giving considerable attention to these issues—and the irony is, the book betrays an awareness of this impossibility. It calls attention to the very omissions it has made, and I think even young readers would notice that something is missing. In its section on Abraham Lincoln, the book says he “led the states of the North in a war against the states of the South” (p. 31). The cause of the Civil War is entirely passed over, but any inquisitive child could be expected to wonder why such a great country would fight a bitter war within itself, and most likely would ask a teacher or parent about it. Similarly, during the section on landmarks and natural wonders, the text implies the expulsion of Native Americans not once, not twice, but three times: “We learn that Indians once lived [in the Rocky Mountains]” (p. 51); “Some Indians live on reservations” (p. 53); and “Indians used to live in Yosemite Valley” (p. 55). It’s not hard to imagine the young reader looking up and asking Mommy or Daddy or Mrs. Smith, “Why don’t they live there anymore? What’s a reservation?” Thus this little book reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” in which the narrator seems compelled to lead the police as close as possible to the hidden corpse even as he insists there’s nothing amiss. The very uncomfortable truths the text wants to side-step to prop up its claim that America is “the best country in the world,” it seems it cannot help but tacitly acknowledge.

Why do I mention any of this? Who cares what’s in a 40-year-old textbook meant for children? Initially, the book struck me as interesting because it gave me a tangible example of how American exceptionalism depends on historical amnesia. A few weeks later, though, I became aware that the current presidential administration is intent on (re)teaching American history in the same way it’s taught in Abeka’s My America. For proof, look at Section 4.a.iii of the executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” issued March 27 of this year: it directs the Secretary of the Interior “to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead”—and here the directive could be  a jacket blurb for the textbook—“focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.” Based on examples I’m seeing of how this directive is being applied, to “inappropriately disparage” includes saying anything that puts American history in an unflattering light. It would be nice if this historical revisionism were limited to children’s books from the 80’s, but we’re probably going to see a lot more of it for the time being.

Maybe You Shouldn’t Rely on the Audience’s First Impressions

When I began this Notebook blog two summer ago, my first post was titled “Maybe You Should Give That Film/Book/Album a Second Chance.” In it I argued that “so often, the first viewing/reading/listening is for finding out what the film/book/album is not. It isn’t until the second viewing/reading/listening that I can begin to appreciate what the film/book/album actually is.”

At the time of writing that post, the work that was at the top of my mind and prompting these reflections was Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, which I had seen in the theater a few weeks prior. I went into that film with high expectations and came out feeling somewhat disappointed. At the same time, I strongly suspected I would need to give it another try. Having recently rewatched Dead Reckoning in preparation to see its follow-up, The Final Reckoning, I can confirm that Dead Reckoning was worth the second chance, and I look forward to giving it a third and a fourth. There is more going on in that film than I could appreciate on a first viewing.

I didn’t mention Dead Reckoning or any other film or book or album in that post, since the point there was to describe the hermeneutic principle and not to argue for the merits of any particular misunderstood or underrated work. But when my friend Timothy Lawrence wrote a similar post about unreliable first impressions to inaugurate his blog, he did cite Dead Reckoning as one of his examples. So, funnily enough, we both started blogs in the summer of 2023 while mulling over how Dead Reckoning challenged us to move beyond first impressions.

Now that The Final Reckoning is out and Tim and I have both seen it, the added irony is that reflecting on this new film has prompted both of us to consider the corollary of that principle I repeated at the top. If the audience shouldn’t rely too much on its first impressions of a work, then the corollary is that the makers of that work shouldn’t rely too much on the audience’s first impressions, either.

As I wrote in my Letterboxd review of The Final Reckoning, the film’s director “Christopher McQuarrie said they made substantial changes to this film after the underwhelming responses to Dead Reckoning … I wish they had stuck to their guns, because this finale did not provide the payoff I was hoping for after all the exciting possibilities set up by its predecessor.” Now, to be consistent with the first principle, I’ll acknowledge I’ve only seen The Final Reckoning once and may yet change my mind about it. As I said already in the Letterboxd post, “It may grow on me as Dead Reckoning has.” But right now my inclination is to say that, by being too sensitive to initial audience reactions to Dead Reckoning and by being too eager to please the audience with The Final Reckoning, McQuarrie failed to carry over into The Final Reckoning the elements that made Dead Reckoning a great film. I’d add that Tim, who has seen The Final Reckoning multiple times now (and therefore is not as tied to a first impression as I still am), is of the same mind. In a recent blog post, he writes that “The Final Reckoning’s determination to be ‘for the audience’ is its greatest weakness.” (I recommend reading the whole post, “Is Art for the Artist or the Audience?”) The Final Reckoning is to some degree a failure because McQuarrie thought that Dead Reckoning failed—and that because the initial audience said so or implied as much. If McQuarrie had made The Final Reckoning closer to the way he had envisioned it before audiences reacted negatively to Dead Reckoning, it may have garnered similar negative reactions, but it might have gained a stronger chance of standing the test—or should I say reckoning—of time.

You Love Him More Than I Do

There is a scene somewhere in the second half of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life in which Fani Jägerstätter is praying for her husband, Franz, who is in prison and facing execution. Fani tells God, “You love him more than I do.” It is a moment of recognition that, if Franz should die for his faithfulness to God, it will not be because God abandoned him.

I don’t know if this line originated with Malick or if it came from his reading the real Franz and Fani’s letters. But in the past eleven months since I last watched the film, this statement, “You love him more than I do,” has been a comfort and help to me. 

The idea seems so obvious. If I am finite and God is infinite, He has an exponentially greater capacity for loving others than I do. Moreover, if am a sinner and God is holy, His love is pure and it is far wiser and more constant than mine. 

And yet, the idea that God loves my loved ones more than I do is hard to accept in practice. It is more intuitive to me, in my pride and from my limited frame of reference, to think that I know what would be the most loving thing to do for so-and-so—and for some reason God doesn’t see what I see and is failing to love so-and-so in that way. It also comes more naturally to me, when I don’t know what would be the most loving thing to do for so-and-so, to despair and think there is no remedy as he or she wanders in error or sinks deeper into suffering. I assume that if the situation is beyond me, it’s beyond God as well. I’ve also realized that I tend to think that if I don’t do something for so-and-so or pray to God and his or her behalf, so-and-so’s plight will escape God’s notice or fall further and further down His priority list. God is so busy managing the cosmos, after all, and if I don’t help him out with some of his minor administrative tasks, or if I don’t keep spamming his inbox with petitions, He may never get around to loving so-and-so in the way I think so-and-so needs to be loved. Indeed, I take for granted that if so-and-so’s sufferings increase, or if so-and-so departs from the faith or never receives the faith to begin with, I will be at fault because I did not love so-and-so enough to intervene in action and intercede in prayer at the most crucial moments. It sounds ridiculous to think this way once I say it loud, but this is how my mind works.      

“You love him more than I do” is an antidote to this way of thinking that, even though it purports to be about my love for others, is really more about propping up my skewed sense of my own importance.

First, it has made a difference in how I pray. Several times in the past eleven months, when my heart has ached over the situation of a loved one and how little I can do to help or don’t know where to start, God has graciously brought it to mind that He loves that person more than I do. If my heart, with its weak, imperfect love, aches for them, how much more is His heart, with its strong, perfect love, intensely moved for them—and not only moved, but moving to do something for them, even if I can’t see or understand it? If He is as all-powerful and all-wise as He is all-good, then can’t I trust Him to love them with that fierce, faithful, all-surpassing love of His in a way that will be truly best for them? When I remember this, it relieves me of the false burden of thinking I need to convince God to care about so-and-so or figure out for Him (presumptuous thought!) a strategic plan of response. Instead, when I don’t know what else to ask, I can pray, as Fani does in the film, “Lord, you love this person more than I do.” When I acknowledge that truth before God, I release the person into God’s care—or rather, acknowledge that the person was always in God’s care, not mine—and find myself more at peace.

Second, more recently I’ve realized that “You love him more than I do” is a counter to my over-scrupulosity and my paranoia about the possible effects of my actions or inaction, or what Faith Chang identifies as a Christian variation on perfectionism. In Chapter 7 of her helpful book Peace Over Perfection (The Good Book Company, 2024), Chang writes about how perfectionism can keep us from trusting God’s providence. Earlier I mentioned my fear that “I will be at fault because I did not love so-and-so enough to intervene in action and intercede in prayer at the most crucial moments.” Now, it is true that people bear responsibility for others, including their souls, but Chang reminds us that, “though Scripture affirms both human responsibility and God’s providence as equally real, they are not equal in influence. The Christian’s future is not ultimately determined by her own power to always know and do what is right but by the gracious providence of God” (p. 119). That’s good news! If it weren’t so, we would all be doomed—and doomed to doom others by our shortcomings and failures to love them well enough. Chang goes on to say that “it is the love of God for those I love which anchors me when I’m tossed around by regret and fear—his love and his power to accomplish his perfect will, in spite of my weaknesses” (p. 124). Thus, when I trust that God’s love for others is greater than mine, I can still take responsibility for loving them as well as I can, but I can do so without suffering under the debilitating presumption that my failure to love them could separate them from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39). 

When I was reading this chapter a few weeks ago, the phrase “the love of God for those I love” immediately reminded me of Fani’s prayer in A Hidden Life. In fact, at the end of the chapter Chang includes “A Prayer for When You Fear Missing the Way (and for All That’s Left Undone),” which includes this almost-identical statement: “You love these dear ones more than I do” (p. 130). I wonder if Chang has seen the film. Either way, she confirms the liberating power of acknowledging this simple yet profound truth.

New Article: 32 Books for 32 Years

When I published the article “31 Albums for 31 Years” in August, I wrote that “Here’s hoping there will be a ‘31 Books for 31 Years’ article soon, and not a ‘32 Books for 32 Years’ article later!’” Oh well.

Some Thoughts on Burnout

How intent should Christians be on avoiding burnout? How do we balance Christ’s call to come to Him so He can give us rest from our labors (Matthew 11:28) with His other call to pick up our crosses to follow Him even unto death (Matthew 16:24)? 

This summer my pastor shared with me a Facebook post from another pastor who wrote that, with all the discourse about “soul care, sabbath’ing, and rest,” he is seeing a trend of younger pastors shrinking from the typical demands and sacrifices of ministry. The post made me wonder how many people may be using the fear of burnout as an excuse to not commit themselves to costly and exhausting acts of service. 

Not long after my pastor told me about that Facebook post, I read a blog post by Tim Challies (whose book Do More Better has been immensely helpful for my productivity) about how, despite how long and how hard he’s tried, he has never found a cure for his struggle to stay asleep. This reminded me of people I know (or know of) who have experienced chronic fatigue. But life goes on, and the people God has placed under our care still need whatever time and energy and attention we can give them. For some of us, at least, sleeplessness might be one of those Paulian thorns that reveal God’s power and all-sufficient grace through our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:7–10).

These two posts put me in mind of something I had read a decade earlier in Kevin DeYoung’s Crazy Busy: “One of the reasons we struggle so mightily with busyness is because we do not expect to struggle” (Crossway, 2013, p. 103). When we expect or demand that our lives not be so busy, it makes the feelings of being overwhelmed worse. This, too, raises the question of whether we just need to accept tiredness as an unavoidable side effect of doing good work.

I think there’s truth in all this. If I had written this post in August when I first had the idea for it, I might have left the matter there. But then I went through a semester when I was at risk of burnout myself—until I lowered my expectations for what I could accomplish this semester and the next—and meanwhile I observed the ominous warning signs of burnout in a close friend. These experiences lead me to conclude that we do need to guard against burnout as much as we can, while also resisting the temptations to sloth and self-preservation. 

What that pastor posted on Facebook, warning against under-exertion, is a timely, needed corrective, but even he acknowledges that burnout exists and is harmful. And I suspect—because of what I know of my own predilections and of the many hard-working, driven people I’m surrounded by—that there are still many people out there who need to be warned against over-exertion. Some people who are scared at the thought of burning out may not even be close to it themselves, but those who are on the point of burning out risk far more than a season of exhaustion. I’m not thinking only of the risks of depression, of hospitalization, of needing years-long recovery, or of never fully recovering. The overworked also risk hurting those they are trying to help. As Christopher Ash warns in Zeal without Burnout, “The problem is that we do not sacrifice alone. It may sound heroic, even romantic, to burn out for Jesus. The reality is that others are implicated in our crashes. A spouse, children, ministry colleagues, prayer partners and faithful friends, all are drawn in to supporting us and propping us up when we collapse” (The Good Book Company, 2016, p. 24). Ash goes on to quote a pastor who is a volunteer firefighter: burnout is “a form of heroic suicide that is counterproductive because you’re now no longer effective in fighting fire and the resources that were dedicated to fighting the fire are not dedicated to saving you” (25). Moreover, as David Murray warns in Reset (Crossway, 2017), burnout can precede major moral lapses. His book opens with the warning, “Slow your pace, or you’ll never finish the race.”

Challies is right that God may withhold the gift of deep and thoroughly restorative sleep, but he also clarifies that we still have a responsibility to seek it. He writes, “I have decided I ought to receive this as God’s will—as a reality to be accepted rather than resented.” At the same time, “That doesn’t mean I won’t keep praying and won’t keep trying—praying for sleep and trying to get better at it. That doesn’t mean I won’t try the next herbal concoction someone recommends as the one that changed their life.” God can still use us when we are sleep-deprived, but Scripture, scientific studies, and street smarts all attest that He designed us to be at our best when we get good sleep. As Ash and Murray each argue in their respective books on burnout, to act as if God didn’t create us to be finite and sleep-dependent is dangerous hubris. So we should do what we can to sleep well, and above all trust God: trust Him to use sleep as He designed it, to restore us, and trust Him to sustain us even when good sleep eludes us. “Either way,” Challies concludes, “it falls to me to trust that he loves, that he cares, and that he knows best.”

I don’t need to nuance or counterbalance what DeYoung wrote, either, because he did so himself in that same chapter of Crazy Busy that’s haunted me so long. I remembered his startling diagnosis that “You Suffer More because You Don’t Expect to Suffer at All” and forgot the careful qualifications he placed around it. He writes, “This may seem a strange way to (almost) end a book on busyness. But keep in mind that this is the last of seven diagnoses, not the only one. … There’s a reason this chapter is not the only chapter in the book” (101). Even as DeYoung is concerned that “We simply don’t think of our busyness as even a possible part of our cross to bear” (103), he also reiterates that we need “rest, rhythm, death to pride, acceptance of our own finitude, and trust in the providence of God” (102). My takeaway from DeYoung is the same as the one I get from Challies: I should do what I can to rest in the midst of my work, and hold on to God’s goodness when that rest isn’t enough and the work won’t ease up. 

DeYoung is right to ask, “If we love others, how can we not be busy and burdened at least some of the time?” (105). So, to return to my opening question, we should be intent on avoiding burnout, but not on avoiding sacrifice. But as soon as I say that, I must also add that we should just as vigilantly guard against the martyr complex. DeYoung quotes John the Baptist: “I freely confess I am not the Christ” (48; see John 1:20). Neither are we! The questions we should be asking are: What are these sacrifices for, really? Will they be worth it? Are they actually for God and others, or are they for propping up our own egos? Or as DeYoung puts it, “Am I trying to do good or to make myself look good?” (39). And do our sacrifices—of time, of sleep—proceed from unbelief in God’s redemptive involvement in all things and a proud self-reliance, or do they proceed from a bold confidence that God will use the seeds that fall into the ground and die to bring forth new life (John 12:24)?

Election 2024

With only three weeks left to go until U.S. Election Day, here are my two cents—two thoughts that I’ve been pondering the past few weeks and that I put out there for whoever might want to pick them up.

One, I think that honesty requires all of us to admit that there are no good options. I suspect that Republican-leaning voters who minimize or dismiss the problems of the Republican candidates and exaggerate the problems of the Democratic candidates—or invent new, slanderous charges against them—do so because the urge for self-justification runs deep and the alternative—to admit how bad a shape our entire political system is in—is terrifying and demoralizing. Likewise, I suspect that Democratic-leaning voters who minimize or dismiss the problems of the Democratic candidates and exaggerate the problems of the Republican candidates—or again, misrepresent them—do so for the same reasons. Everyone is tempted to look for someone else to blame for how we’re all stuck between a rock and a hard place, so that we can all feel vindicated for the far-less-than-ideal choices we make under duress. Partisans find it easier to blame supporters of the other party than to accept their own share of the blame for the state of the nation—and, because misery loves company, partisans of both parties tend to rally together in pointing their fingers at those who vote third-party or don’t vote at all, accusing them of helping the wrong people get into office by throwing away their votes. All this is preferable to admitting the faults in our own political stars and confessing that the moral fog is so bad that none of us can see a north star overhead to lead us back to political sanity. We should be grieving that our only choices for president are Trump, Harris, some third-party candidate who has no chance of winning, or refusing the choice entirely. Instead we want to beat our chests in pride and act as if our choice is the obviously right one, or at least the least wrong one, and conclude everyone else is a fool or a coward.  

Two, if all the options are really as bad as I suspect they are, then we need to have charity for those who choose differently, and we need to accept responsibility for the consequences of our own choices. 

Concerning having charity for one another in political contentious times, we’d do well to practice the intellectual humility that Alexander Hamilton modeled in the first letter of The Federalist Papers. Hamilton firmly believed adopting the Constitution and having a stronger centralized federal government would be for the benefit of all the States, and he did not withhold this opinion: “Yes, my countrymen, I own it to you, that, after having given it an attentive consideration, I am clearly of the opinion that this is the safest course for your liberty, your dignity, and your happiness. I effect not reserves, which I do not feel.” And he expressed a concern that some were opposed to the Constitution because they either stood to lose power through federal consolidation or stood to gain power from the continued fracturing of the union (see his third paragraph). And yet, he chose not “to dwell upon observations of this nature,” because “I am well aware that it would be disingenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men … into interested or ambitious views: candor will oblige us to admit, that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions.” That is, Hamilton didn’t want to attach impure motives to everyone who disagreed with him. He admits that “we upon many occasions see wise and good men on the the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society.” This should be “a lesson in moderation” for all of us. “And a further reason for caution,” he adds, is “that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists.” We shouldn’t presume to know why people make the choices they do. You could pick the “right” candidates for bad reasons; you could pick the “wrong” candidates for good reasons. If we’re honest, we’re all flying blind here. So, this election cycle, can we believe the best of each other and give grace to those who are no more perplexed and fearful, and no more vulnerable to mixed motives, than we are?

Think with Your Chest?

Yesterday my YouTube feed recommended a newly released music video by a band I’d never heard of, Gable Price and Friends. The song is titled “Think With Your Chest.” If the song had been titled “Think With Your Heart” I wouldn’t have given it a second glance, dismissing it as another variation on the wrong-headed (ha!) “follow your heart” cliché. But the use of the word “chest” intrigued me. Being me, I naturally wondered: Could the song be a response to The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis and its critique of a modern education system producing “men without chests”?

Alas, I don’t think Gable Price and Friends have read The Abolition of Man. If they had, and had been convinced by it, their song wouldn’t have so simplistically opposed the Chest to the Head, as if only one can win and the other must lose. Lewis argues the Head and the Chest must work together. To be sure, he believes the Head should lead, but he also says the Head will be ineffective or go astray without the Chest. And I think the reason that the song is stuck in this zero-sum binary is that it doesn’t consider an idea that has been around for two millennia: the tripartite soul.

In Lewis’s understanding of the human person, which he gets from Plato, there are not two but three parties jostling for control: the Head, the Chest, and the Belly. According to Plato, it’s this third, appetitive part of the soul that craves pleasure, and especially money to secure its pleasures. It’s to regulate the desires of the Belly that the Head and the Chest must work together.

In the song, the Head is associated with “surviving,” “the calculated outcome,” “the status quo,” and “thinking with me income.” Lewis and Plato would say that’s the Belly talking, not the Head. People who think with the Head are seeking to discern and live according to transcendent ideals. Contrary to what the song says, people who are living to make enough money to just get by and maintain their comforts might be using their brains—it takes some strategy to climb the corporate ladder or develop a strong portfolio—but ultimately they’re using their brains to serve their stomachs. The struggle described in the song is not really between the people who think with the Chest and those who think with the Head, but between the people who think with the Chest and Head and those who think with the Belly—and think with the Belly because they haven’t strengthened and harmonized the other two parts of the soul which should be in control.

The song is right that repressing the Chest in the name of a cold rationality is making people “depressed.” But ignoring the Head to follow the Chest is no solution. The song anticipates the objection that “the heart can be misleading,” and even validates that concern: “I can admit [my heart has] made some mistakes.” While I agree “I’d rather live with [the heart] than die so comfortably”—I’m reminded of what Lewis says elsewhere, in The Four Loves, about the necessary risks of loving others—how can a person think with the heart without falling into grave error? The song doesn’t offer a way out of that conundrum. 

Yes, we shouldn’t live for comfort, or as if we were computers or disembodied and soulless brains. But instead of living by the whims of unregulated emotions, which is just another way of thinking with the Belly, we need what Lewis calls the “trained emotions” and “stable sentiments” of the Chest. And training and stabilizing our feelings so that they accord with reality is only possible through exercising reason to discern reality.

P.S.: It’s ironic that, in the first few seconds of the music video, you can see a bust of young Anakin Skywalker, in his podracing helmet, sitting on the dashboard of a car. As Timothy Lawrence has convinced me, Star Wars is all about resolving the tension between reason and emotion by rightly ordering the tripartite soul.

Readers Are Unpredictable

To continue my train of thought from the previous two posts—on what the humanities can do, and why we need not worry so much about whether such a claim instrumentalizes them—I want to add the following qualification: it is impossible to say with any confidence, “This is what studying the humanities (or reading good literature or attentively watching good films and the like) will do for you.” There is much that engaging with philosophy, literature, and the arts could do for us, but so much will depend on our disposition: how we approach these things and what we seek to gain from them. So much depends on our hermeneutical framework and whether we have (or at least seek to cultivate) the virtues needed for the kind of reading that has a chance of changing us for the better. 

Regarding our hermeneutic: Are we seeking to learn or be challenged by the text, or only to have our biases confirmed? Are we seeking to understand what the author is intending, or are we projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto the text? 

And regarding the requisite virtues: Are we practicing patient attentiveness? Are we both discerning and charitable? Do we have the humility to be receptive to new or challenging ideas?

Of course, the worth and excellence of the text studied also matters. Some books or films will be much better suited to aiding our moral formation than others; indeed some can only be corrosive. But Karen Swallow Prior is right to say in the introduction to her book On Reading Well that, if reading is to help us become more virtuous, we must practice certain virtues as we read. It will not do to say that if only so-and-so would just read Republic or Pride and Prejudice, it will reshape their vision of the good life. Reading is not a “just add water” solution.

Unfortunately, there are very good readers out there who are terrible people. I think of the scene in the Coen Brothers’ remake of The Ladykillers (2004), in which the lead criminal played by Tom Hanks waxes poetic about the power of literature: “I often find myself more at home in these ancient volumes than I do in the hustle-bustle of the modern world. To me, paradoxically, the literature of the so-called ‘dead tongues’ holds more currency than this morning's newspaper. In these books, in these volumes, there is the accumulated wisdom of mankind, which succors me when the day is hard and the night lonely and long.” He is seen enjoying his reading, but clearly it hasn’t softened his conscience. On the other hand, it’s possible for good people to be poor readers, prone to take passages out of context or just not have the desire to sit down and read at all.

But if anything should give us pause about making grand promises about what the humanities will do for the renovation of a soul or the renewal of a culture, let’s consider the greatest and truest story ever told, which does indeed have the power to change a heart: the gospel. “The Parable of the Sower” in the gospels shows that even the gospel will fall on deaf ears, be rejected, or even just forgotten and abandoned in the course of the cares of life. The Spirit must be at work to make the heart receptive, otherwise mere hearing does nothing.

Lacking God’s omniscience, for us the response of a hearer or a reader is unpredictable. A person could read the Bible and be drawn to faith and repentance, or twist its words to justify selfish ambition or abuse, or think it’s boring, or say, “How inspiring and life-affirming!” and miss the point. And if that can be true of a person’s encounter God’s holy, life-giving Word, how much more uncertain it is whether even the best works of fallible humans in the fields of literature, art, and philosophy will make a positive difference! A person might not have the knowledge of how to read well, or may simply choose not to.

That’s a downer note to end on, I know, but it’s worth sitting with and pondering, and this post is long enough already. 

That's Not Your Story

For years I’ve been reminding myself—or rather, God keeps graciously reminding me—of something Aslan tells Shasta and Aravis in The Horse and His Boy: “That’s not your story.”

Actually, that’s a misquotation. What Aslan tells Shasta in Chapter Eleven, in response to Shasta asking him why he attacked Aravis, is “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own” (p. 165 in the 1994 HarperTrophy edition). And in Chapter Fourteen, Aslan tells Aravis, in response to her asking him about what will happen to the slave girl who was whipped when Aravis ran away from home, the same thing: “I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own” (p. 202).

But “That’s not your story” comes to the same thing, and I can’t say how many times those four words have resurfaced in my mind to  either convict or comfort me. 

When I am tempted to ask Person A for the details of Person B’s difficult situation: That’s not your story. When I am tempted to tell Person B what I know of Person A’s difficult situation: That’s not your story. When I want to know what is going on with Person C, who I thought was a Christian but has been living in a way inconsistent with the gospel and the cost of discipleship: That’s not your story. When I wonder why Person D seems to have it so easy compared to me: That’s not your story. 

When, like Asaph in Psalm 73, I am bothered by how the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer: That’s not your story. When, like Job’s friends I want to know why a believer is suffering so intensely: That’s not your story. When, like Peter at the end of the Gospel of John, I want to know what God may have in store for another believer: That’s not your story. I think also of what Jesus told Peter in that moment: “What is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:22).

Of course, telling ourselves “That’s not your story” won’t do much to quell our confusion or envy or love of gossip if we don’t believe there is a Storyteller who is both sovereign and good. But if there is such a Storyteller, we can trust Him to bring our stories and every other person’s story to a fitting end. He is telling us our own stories, and no one else’s. Let’s follow Him.

Bonhoeffer on the Dangers of Idealism

A quick addendum to two previous posts, one at The Jedi Archives and one in this Notebook, on what can go wrong when ideals eclipse principles and relationships. There are Count Dookus and Mr. Hollingsworths in the church and other Christian institutions, too. Here’s Bonhoeffer in Life Together:

“Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

“God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. … He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

[…]

“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate” (pp. 27-28 and 30 in the HarperOne edition).

Pauline Patience for Difficult Relationships

Here’s a passage of Scripture that’s been reorganizing my mind and heart lately:

“But one thing I do [consider]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Philippians 3:13b-16, ESV).

I don’t remember when I was first struck by this realization: Paul is so convinced of the power of God to work in people’s hearts (see Philippians 1:6 and 2:13) that he isn’t fazed by the immaturity of believers, whether with underdeveloped theologies or a disconnect between their doctrine and their behavior; instead Paul trusts God to teach or correct them in due time. But in the past week two different reading group discussions, and multiple conversations with friends about rifts in our other relationships, have brought this passage back to my attention and have made its message all the more compelling, convicting, and comforting.

First, in my church my pastor has been leading discussions of Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry’s book You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Weary Churches (Crossway 2023). This past Sunday we discussed Chapter 6: “Leave Behind Lord-It-Over Leadership: A Culture Guided by Gentle Shepherds.” One of the points of that chapter is that, when a pastor trusts that “God himself is the ultimate shepherd, [he] can breathe. [The pastor has] responsibility—sobering responsibility—but God has the ultimate responsibility” (p. 108). When a pastor understands and embraces this truth, he won’t feel the need anymore to pick fights with cantankerous church members over secondary or tertiary issues, or to be pushy with those who are weaker in the faith and slower to grow (see 104-105). Instead the pastor can trust that God knows His sheep and is looking after each of them. I think this is a very Pauline take on patient, humble ministry, and indeed Ortlund quotes what Paul says just a few sentences after the above passage: “Philippians 4:5 says ‘Let your reasonableness [or gentleness, ESV margin note] be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand’” (113). From this verse Ortlund draws the conclusion that “a culture of gentle leadership means that people who differ on serious issues can belong together in the same church” (113). Imagine: if we really believed that people who received the same gospel and have the same Spirit don’t have to all be at the same level of maturity or agree on all the issues to have true, loving fellowship, there would be far fewer church splits, far fewer blogger brawls, and far fewer cage-stage Christians torpedoing perfectly fine friendships just to score points.

Second, I’m also reading J. Gresham Machen’s classic Christianity & Liberalism (1923) with two grad school friends, and on Monday we discussed Chapter 2: “Doctrine.” The point of the chapter is to dismantle the common refrain among theological liberals that doctrinal distinctions don’t matter, or at least distract from what they think is more important, following Christ’s ethics. But Machen doesn’t just expose the dangers and incoherence of this kind of thinking; he argues there is still space for a healthy ecumenicism, and even “tolerance,” when it comes to nonessential disagreements. And to make this point, Machen also turns to Philippians. In 1:15-18, Paul isn’t bothered that some other preachers are pursuing gospel ministry with the intent of upstaging him and making him jealous. Paul shrugs this off and praises God anyway: “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” Machen writes, “It is impossible to conceive a finer piece of broad-minded tolerance” (p. 22 in the 2023 Westminster Seminary Press edition). Of course, Machen goes on to point out how intolerant Paul was of false teaching in Galatians—and I’ll add that in Philippians itself Paul has strong words for the Judaizers who insisted on circumcision (see 3:2). But there is no contradiction here, Machen explains, because in one case immature people are preaching the true gospel, and in the other case even more immature people are preaching a false one. Paul can live with the former, whereas the latter threaten to destroy the church at the root (22-25). And my own point is that Paul could be unflappable about these upstarts who “proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition” (1:17) because he trusted the Spirit could work in and through them, just as He had in his own life, and could get them to a place where they could say with Paul that nothing else matters but pressing on to know Christ (3:7-16). Imagine: if we really saw people the way Paul did, and trusted the Spirit’s power like he did, a fellow believer could try to egg us into arguing about something trivial and we could respond, “No thanks. I have better things to do, and so do you.” 

Ortlund and Allberry apply Paul’s patient mindset to pastoring and Machen applies it to theological disputes. But, finally, in my own life I’m finding these passages in Philippians immensely helpful for staying hopeful about fading or lapsed friendships. Some friends and I have each been grieving the abandonment or disengagement of people we considered close friends. These people have hurt us and either do not realize it or haven’t yet sought reconciliation. But what steadies me is Paul’s confidence that God always finishes the work He starts in a person (1:6, 2:13); that even misguided people can do transformative gospel work (1:15-18); and that God teaches and corrects His own in His own good timing (3:15). These friends of ours may not repair these breaches for months, years, even decades. But what if God has a long-term plan for bringing them to greater maturity and godliness, and only later will they be ready to reconcile? What if our conversations with them planted seeds that won’t grow to fruition until after a long, dark winter? Maybe, and maybe not. But if we take the promises of God’s Word seriously, we can at least rest assured that, if the other person is a brother or sister in Christ, we will be reconciled in heaven. Our disagreements, our grievances, or even just a lack of emotional intelligence will not separate us any longer. As I said in my last post, one day we won’t have to choose between our friendships and the Truth. God Himself will bring our erring Christian friends into the Truth.

Friends in the Truth, Forever

Two weeks ago I wrote a post about how, if they had to choose between having friends and being just, Aristotle might choose friendships whereas Plato would surely choose justice. As I was wrapping up writing that post, I asked myself, what would be the Christian’s response when faced with this dilemma? Providentially, this week I started to revisit Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, and within the first few pages Bonhoeffer helped me formulate my answer. 

Of course, it should be conceded that Bonhoeffer’s book is about Christian fellowship in general, not Christian friendships in particular. But I think everything I’m about to quote or summarize from him can apply to a Christian understanding of friendships. I should also signal that I’m going to use ‘truth’ instead of ‘justice’ as my other key term. This is because Bonhoeffer talks about truth, not justice, and living in the truth is a major part of what it means to be just.

First, for the sake of living in the truth, we may be separated from our friends. Bonhoeffer would seem to side with Plato in recognizing that in pursuing wisdom the just man may have to make enemies, and that those enemies may prevent him from living with his friends. He says on the very first page of Life Together that “It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers” (p. 17 in the HarperOne edition). Christ warned us that a servant is not greater than his master (John 15:20). If He had to part with His friends to be faithful to God, we must be ready to do the same—just as Bonhoeffer was. He was imprisoned and executed for living in the truth that Hitler should not have any man’s allegiance.

In my last post I had talked about the difficulty of balancing the Already and the Not Yet in our eschatology. I think Bonhoeffer does an excellent balancing act here. Christians were intended to have fellowship with one another and can enjoy much of that Already because of what Christ definitively accomplished on the cross—but we are Not Yet able to enjoy that fellowship fully and without hindrances, not until we get to the New Creation. Bonhoeffer writes that “between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians” (18). He repeats, “the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us” (20). 

Even though God made us in such a way that it is not good for anyone to be alone (Genesis 2:18), we cannot insist or demand that God never put us on a deserted island or in solitary confinement. That might be just what it takes for God to sanctify us and glorify His Name through us. God doesn’t owe us a healthy or legal church in which to participate, or a best friend who pledges loyalty like Jonathan did to David, or Ruth did to Naomi. It is a mercy and a kindness that, on any given day and for however long on that day, we get to interact with any of our friends in Christ. Read this conclusion that Bonhoeffer reaches and let it weigh on you for a few moments: 

“Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren” (20).

Second, for the sake of living in the truth, we may have to separate ourselves from our friends. Bonhoeffer distinguishes between spiritual and human love. One of the differences between the two is whether they submit to God’s truth. Bonhoeffer says that “Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person” (34). Human love would choose friendship over truth, ten times out of ten. But spiritual love cannot be divorced from truth. Without truth—or more precisely, Christ the Truth—love ceases to be love, for “love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ” (37). It is only because the truth in Christ transforms our hearts that we can truly love one another. And sometimes, Bonhoeffer cautions us, this Christ-transformed spiritual love will require ending a friendship: “Where [Christ’s] truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love’s sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love” (35). 

Once again, insofar as Bonhoeffer is presenting a biblically accurate view, it would seem Plato is closer than Aristotle in agreeing to the Christian answer regarding what to do when faithfulness to the truth and loyalty to friends would push us in opposite directions. However, to return to the above point about eschatology, it is only in the present time, in the Already-Not Yet, that we will ever face this impasse and ever have to walk with Bonhoeffer and Plato’s mentor Socrates away from our friends and toward our deaths for the sake of truth. This is because:  

Third, ultimately we will not have to choose between friendship and the truth. As I said in the Plato and Aristotle post, rather than pitting them too much against each other Aristotle sees justice and friendship growing up alongside and reinforcing each other. But in this fallen world, that won’t always be the case. Yet the Christian is looking forward to a new and better world, where there will be no enemies to our friendships and no need to end a friendship for the sake of convictions—because everyone there will pledge allegiance to the same Lord and love the same Truth.

Bonhoeffer, writing Life Together while running an underground seminary and understanding that a government crackdown could happen at any time, was looking forward to that “Last Day,” too (18). He writes of the astounding reality that “we also belong to [Christ] in eternity with one another. … He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ” (24). We may have non-Christian friends turn on us; we may have to let some of them go. But our Christian friends—even if those relationships should cool due to time, distance, or conflicts—truly are our BFFs: best friends forever.

A few days ago I was reminded of a song by Sanctus Real called "Benjamin." The song is addressed to a friend who is approaching death around the same time that his son is born. The singer tells the dying father: “We've been friends for a long, long time, / So if you can't talk, just cry, / And know that we will talk on the other side.” And he tells Benjamin, the son, “And we will be friends for a long, long time, / So until you can talk, just cry, / And know that we will talk for the rest of our lives.” 

That is our Christ-accomplished hope for our Christian friends: We will be friends for a long, long time. As we wait in the Already-Not Yet, we can cry for the friends we’ve lost to death or disagreement or never even had, because friendship is a good thing worth grieving. And we can trust we will have friends to talk to for the rest of our lives, on the other side. 

A Tale of Two City Rankings

In Book VIII of both Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, there is a taxonomy and ranking of different kinds of governments for a city-state. Plato names five kinds of cities and ranks them thus: 1. Aristocracy (which includes Kingship); 2. Timocracy; 3. Oligarchy; 4. Democracy; and 5. Tyranny. Aristotle’s list uses all the same terms, but it distinguishes between Aristocracy and Kingship so that there are six kinds of cities. His ranking is almost the same, too, except for one thing: he puts Democracy over Oligarchy. His ranking is: 1. Kingship; 2. Aristocracy; 3. Timocracy; 4. Democracy; 5. Oligarchy; and 6. Tyranny. So why does Aristotle break from his teacher Plato and say that having an oligarchy is a worse way to run a city than having a democracy?

The first thing to notice is that Aristotle’s Book VIII is not about politics first and foremost, but about friendship. The discussion of kinds of cities is included as an analogy for distinguishing between kinds of friendships. Aristotle ranks the cities in the order he does because he believes that a city ruled by a king is the most amenable for friendships and that a city ruled by a tyrant is the most inhospitable to friendships, because a tyrant is no friend to his subjects. In his scheme, a democracy is better than an oligarchy because in a democracy there is greater political equality, allowing for greater relational equality.

But Plato’s Book VIII—like the entirety of Republic—is about justice. Moreover, it is not about justice in the city first and foremost, but about justice in the soul. All the discussion in Republic about how to form a just city is incidental and analogous to the driving question of how to be a just man. Plato ranks the cities in the order he does because he believes that an aristocracy corresponds to a soul that is most ruled by wisdom (leading to justice) and a tyranny corresponds to a soul that is most ruled by lawless appetites (leading to injustice). In his scheme, an oligarchy is better than a democracy because an oligarchy corresponds to a soul that is ruled by necessary appetites (more just), and a democracy corresponds to a soul that is ruled by unnecessary appetites (more unjust).

What I’m suggesting is that, if they had to choose between a democracy and an oligarchy, Aristotle would prefer to live in a democracy because that’s where he would hope to find better friendships, and Plato would prefer to live in an oligarchy because that’s where he would hope to find greater justice.

Granted, it would be misrepresenting Aristotle to drive too great a wedge between friendship and justice, because in Book VIII of his Ethics the two are inseparable. For him, justice in the city and the health of friendships in the city rise and fall together. Aristotle writes that “friendship and justice would seem to be about the same things and to be found in the same people. For in every community there seems to be some sort of justice, and some type of friendship also. … And to the extent that they are in community, to that extent there is their friendship, since to that extent also there is justice” (p. 152 in Hackett Third Edition). And he says later on that “Friendship appears in each of the political systems, to the extent that justice appears also” (155). Moreover, Ethics Book IX argues that the just person is a friend to himself.

Still, Aristotle does place a higher value on friendship than on justice, because he holds that friendship “is most necessary for our life. For no one would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other goods” (141). Moreover, “friendship would seem to hold cities together, and legislators would seem to be more concerned about it than about justice. … Further, if people are friends, they have no need of justice, but if they are just they need friendship in addition; and the justice that is most just seems to belong to friendship” (141). For him, if friendship comes first, justice will follow: “Justice also naturally increases with friendship” (153). 

Conversely, Plato does seem to place a higher value on justice than on friendship. He would rather be alone if that was the cost of being just. Whereas Aristotle says that “no one would choose to have all other goods and yet be alone” (176), Plato’s Republic repeatedly emphasizes that the true philosopher will often be misunderstood, maligned, and isolated. Indeed, Plato’s teacher Socrates, the protagonist and main speaker in Republic, was executed by Athens because he chose convictions over company. Socrates refused to recant his beliefs to regain friendships with the city’s leaders, because that would have made him an unjust friend to himself.

All this fits with the general tendency in both Aristotle’s and Plato’s thinking about the good life, visualized in Raphael’s painting The School of Athens. Plato is pointing up, but Aristotle’s hand, while not pointing down, is almost level. Plato lives for his ideals, but while Aristotle also has his ideals—he wants to be a just man just as much as Plato does—he wants them to be grounded in community, because “good people’s life together allows the cultivation of virtue” (177).

Some More Dangerous Idealists

In my most recent post for the Jedi Archives, “Dangerous Idealists,” I wrote about how Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, and Count Dooku fall along a spectrum that illustrates how idealism can put someone on a dangerous path toward sacrificing people and principles for the supposed greater good. Two classic works of American literature that I read in the past few months also dramatize this temptation and its consequences.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852), the narrator Miles Coverdale joins a nascent utopian community that is doomed from the start—but not, as the reader would expect, because of flaws in its own ideals or the failure of its members to live up to those ideals, though those are issues at Blithedale, too. Instead, the community is ruined chiefly because a prominent member is a more inflexible idealist than everyone else at Blithedale and his ideals are opposed to theirs. Mr. Hollingsworth is a philanthropist who came to Blithedale, it turns out, not because he believes in its vision but because he wants to seize its land for his own social-reform project. He is so convinced of the righteousness of his own cause, he either does not see or does not care about the unrighteousness of lying about his intentions and betraying other idealists. As more than one character realizes, Mr. Hollingsworth will abandon a friendship as soon as he realizes the friend cannot be made into a cog in the machine he would build. But the worst consequence of his zeal is not the communal and relational costs, but the cost to his own soul. As Coverdale summarizes at the end of the novel:

“The moral which presents itself to my reflections, as drawn from Hollingsworth’s character and errors, is simply this:—that, admitting what is called Philanthropy, when adopted as a profession, to be often useful by its energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the individual, whose ruling passion, in one exclusive channel, it thus becomes. It ruins, or is fearfully apt to ruin, the heart … I see in Hollingsworth an exemplification of the most awful truth in Bunyan’s book of such;—from the very gate of Heaven, there is a by-way to the pit!” (p. 243 in the 1983 Penguin edition). 

As the adage goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. In fact, Hawthorne’s novel warns that the greater the intentions, the greater the peril, since “the higher and purer the original object, and the more unselfishly it may have been taken up, the slighter is the probability that they can be led to recognize the process by which godlike benevolence has been debased into all-devouring egotism” (71). The word “egotism” is key. It isn’t actually true that Hollingsworth lives for his ideals, though he may have started that way. He lives for himself. To apply C. S. Lewis’s tripartite terminology in The Abolition of Man, when the idealist Head suppresses or cuts out the relational and principled Heart, the Head won’t be able to subdue the self-seeking Belly on its own.

The language of Head and Heart is a good segue to the other novel I have in mind, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952). (I only just now realized this novel was published exactly a century after Hawthorne’s. Uncanny!) In fact, Ellison uses the terms “head” and “heart” frequently enough that I wonder if he had read The Abolition of Man, which came out a few years prior.* At one point, the unnamed narrator who calls himself “an invisible man” gives an impassioned impromptu speech about an elderly couple being evicted from their apartment. He says of the woman that “She’s let her religion go to her head, but we all know that religion is for the heart, not for the head” (p. 278 in the 1995 Vintage International edition). His speech draws the attention of a Socialist-type organization called the Brotherhood, who want to use his oratory to build inroads into the Black community in Harlem—although some in the Brotherhood are worried his speeches are too emotional, even anti-intellectual. One of the brothers says his debut rally speech “was the antithesis of the scientific approach. Ours is a reasonable point of view. … The audience isn’t thinking, it’s yelling its head off” (350, italics added).

For the rest of his time with them, the Invisible Man will be at odds with the organization because he is not willing to sacrifice the claims of the Heart for the agenda of the Head. The leader who recruited him, Brother Jack, believes that “There’s hope that our wild but effective speaker may be tamed”—hope that the Head can subdue the Heart—so “For the next few months our new brother is to undergo a period of intense study and indoctrination under the guidance of Brother Hambro” (351). Later, Brother Jack is even more explicit: “you were not hired to think. … you were hired to talk” (469-470). But the indoctrination fails. The Invisible Man cannot stop thinking in ways that run counter to a rigid ideology that has no real sympathy for his own people. Ultimately he realizes the Brotherhood does not care about him or the Black community at all except as pawns in a much larger game. Brother Hambro tells him at their last meeting that “there’s nothing to be done about [the violence in Harlem following the death of a Brotherhood member] that wouldn’t upset the larger plan. It’s unfortunate, Brother, but your members will have to be sacrificed” (501). Brother Hambro goes on to say, “We follow the laws of reality, so we make sacrifices” (502). To the Brotherhood, only the Head—or more specifically, the heads of the Brotherhood committee—has access to “the laws of reality” and the wisdom to know how to obey them. The Heart is expendable, as it was for Mr. Hollingsworth, and once again the result is not enlightenment and progress but manipulation and betrayal.

[*Here are two suspiciously Abolition of Man-like statements spoken by people in the Brotherhood: [1]  “You have to be pure in heart and you have to be disciplined in body and mind” (394). [2] “At the proper moment science will stop us. And of course we as individuals must sympathetically debunk ourselves” (505).]

Welch Writes a Paragraph: A Rhetorical Analysis

I love this paragraph that begins Chapter 7 in Edward T. Welch’s thoughtful, practical, encouraging book on ordinary Christians counseling one another, called Side by Side (Crossway, 2015). Welch writes: 

“I had been keeping my recent fears to myself. My wife knew, and she was helpful, but a good rule of thumb is that when you are stuck in hardships or sins, you keep enlarging the circle of those who know until you are no longer stuck. I think this is a good rule, but I had decided I could get through it on my own” (p. 67).

It may not seem like much—it’s nothing flashy—but this is a great piece of writing. I say this because of its elegant simplicity and because of how the form matches and serves the content. 

This is a book about Christian counseling, written by a Christian counselor to be read by Christians giving and receiving counsel. So it’s appropriate that, throughout the book, Welch shows a gift for writing in a way that approximates the way I imagine he would talk in a counseling session or with friends. Reading the book, I can imagine Welch talking to me and one or two other listeners in a comfortable, non-threatening living room or office. His writing style conveys a feel for the kind of atmosphere that would support the personal, sensitive conversations Welch wants Christians to be able to have with one another. 

Because he is writing to an audience of ordinary Christians who may not have formal theological training—precisely to convince them that they don’t need that advanced training to be competent to counsel one another well—he uses uncomplicated syntax and simple words. There are only three sentences in this chapter-starting paragraph. The first one is short and to the point; it brings us right into the heart of Welch’s story. Though the second one is a long one with several clauses, it isn’t jumbled at all; it has a progression that is easy to follow. The third sentence is of medium length compared to the other two, and it closes the thought opened by the first sentence. If William Zinsser, the author of the classic book On Writing Well, had read this paragraph, I think he would have commended it for its sturdy sentences and lack of clutter. Zinsser might also have pointed out that this is a paragraph made up almost entirely of one- and two-syllable words. The only three-syllable words are ‘enlarging’ and ‘decided.’ If Welch had used larger, more technical words or a roundabout syntax, it would have undercut his purpose of communicating the accessibility of counseling for all believers. 

The simplicity is also important because in this passage Welch is demonstrating some vulnerability. He is sharing about his own weakness. When we confess to something, we can’t dress it up in niceties. We have to be direct and plainspoken, and Welch models that here.

Finally, I notice his use of repetition. ‘Good rule’ appears twice. ‘Stuck’ appears twice. “Knew” is echoed by “know,” and “get through it on my own” is a restatement of “keeping … to myself.” This is another feature that reinforces the conversational immediacy of the text. In conversations or speeches, repetition is needed for underlining main points more than it is in writing.

Being me, I also notice this repetition creates a pattern that is suspiciously chiastic: 

• I had been keeping my recent fears to myself [A’: the problem of self-reliance]

• My wife knew, … but a good rule of thumb is that when you are stuck [B’: ‘knew,’ ‘good rule,’ ‘stuck’]

• in hardships or sins, you keep enlarging the circle [X: the solution at the crux of the matter—puns intended]

• of those who know until you are no longer stuck. I think this is a good rule, [B”: ‘know,’ ‘stuck,’ ’good rule’]

• but I had decided I could get through it on my own. [A”: the problem of self-reliance]

Probably the chiasmus was unintended, but isn’t it interesting that he uses the word “circle” at the very point that the paragraph turns around to come full circle itself? But a chiasmus doesn’t have to be deliberate for it to exist. This is a form that is embedded in our patterns of thinking and speaking. Again, this paragraph is so effective because it seems so ordinary. But this is extra-ordinary craft in writing. But this level of intentional craft can be learned through observation, imitation, and practice, just like Christian counseling.

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait

Timothy Lawrence and I have wondered whether George Lucas had ever read C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and whether it influenced Star Wars. But now I’m also wondering whether he ever read Lewis’s That Hideous Strength and whether it influenced his contributions to Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

Initially this thought occurred to me because both the novel and the film have a group of villains, who, to help them take over the world, try to harness a higher power, even though this is at odds with their ideology. The anti-Christian N.I.C.E. wants to use Merlin for his magic, but magic is antithetical to their stated scientism, and Merlin, it turns out, is a Christian. The anti-Jewish Nazis want to use the Ark of the Covenant, which necessitates that they perform a “Jewish ritual.” In the violent finales of both the novel and the film, the cynical, impious villains are destroyed by the very power they sought.

But that last point of overlap led me to consider what may be a more important thematic connection between That Hideous Strength and Raiders. The fact is that neither Dr. Ransom and Co. nor Dr. Jones and Co. have to do almost anything to foil the N.I.C.E. or the Nazis. Dr. Ransom sends people to find Merlin before the N.I.C.E. do, but Merlin finds him. All Ransom does is instruct Merlin what to do and present him to the eldils so they give Merlin the power to destroy the N.I.C.E. And, as some plot-hole sleuths are quick to point out as if it were a weakness of the film, the outcome of Raiders would have been the same no matter what Indy did or didn’t do. He could have stayed home.

But to think that Raiders was supposed to be about Indy defeating the Nazis and instead he turns out to be useless is to entirely miss the point. The great revelation at the end is that the God of Israel does not need any man’s help to defeat His enemies. The point is that Indy moves from, as Tim puts it, “fram[ing] his search for the Ark in purely material, rational terms” to “at least [having] enough holy fear” to know to close his eyes when the Ark is opened. What if Indy is there, not to save the day, but to learn firsthand that our God is in the heavens and He does all that He pleases (Ps. 115:3)?

Ransom’s skeptic friend MacPhee would share Indy’s disdain for “superstitious hocus pocus,” and he’s also the kind of person who would make the above complaint about Raiders of the Lost Ark. In That Hideous Strength, he doesn’t understand why Ransom’s strategy for countering the N.I.C.E. is so passive, so deferential to the eldils (whom MacPhee does not believe in), and so much like just living ordinary lives. He says at one point, “It may have occurred to you to wonder, Mrs. Studdock, how any man in his senses thinks we’re going to defeat a powerful conspiracy by sitting here growing winter vegetables and training performing bears. [OK, that last part isn’t so ordinary.] It is a question I have propounded on more than one occasion. The answer is always the same; we’re waiting for orders” (p. 189 in the Scribner 2003 edition).

Then, after Merlin has overthrown the N.I.C.E., MacPhee seems to wonder whether he, too, could have stayed home. He says, “I’d be greatly obliged if any one would tell me what we have done—always apart from feeding the pigs and raising some very decent vegetables.” To which Ransom replies, “You have done what was required of you … You have obeyed and waited” (368). Ransom’s response reminds me of the last line of Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness”: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Waiting on God and being ready to act at a moment’s notice is itself a form of action.

Besides, what MacPhee doesn’t see is that the communal life being cultivated at Ransom’s Manor at St. Anne’s is a valuable form of resistance to the cruel, manipulative culture of the N.I.C.E. HQ at Belbury. At Belbury, animals and people are tortured; at St. Anne’s, they are rehabilitated. At Belbury, people are used and turned on each other; at St. Anne’s, they are cared for and submit to one another in love and respect. I like Jake Meador’s recent observation at Mere Orthodoxy that the community at St. Anne’s is practicing something like the Benedict Option, which is say that Lewis puts the emphasis on spiritual formation within Christian community instead of on political action. 

It may seem like Indiana Jones is superfluous in his own story, or like the only characters that matter on the side of the good guys are Ransom and Merlin. Likewise, we may question what good it does to follow Paul’s command to lead quiet lives (1 Thess. 4:13) in a world of so much noise, when maybe we could try pulling the levers of political power to bring it down a few decibels. I say all this not to endorse quietism, but to ask whether we trust that God has the power to vindicate His justice in His own time and in His own way, and whether we are striving to first be faithful in the little things He entrusts to us, things as simple as growing winter vegetables.

Men with Chests

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis famously coined the phrase “men without chests” (p. 26 in the 2000 HarperOne edition). But what does it mean to be a man with a chest? What is the Chest?

Lewis is adapting Plato’s idea of the tripartite soul. In his Republic, Plato says the human soul has: [1] a rational, philosophic part (literally, the wisdom-loving part); [2] an appetitive part (the pleasure-loving part, though more specifically the money-loving part because money helps satisfy all the other appetites); and [3] a spirited part, which loves honor and victory (p. 251 in the 1992 Hackett edition). According to the Republic, the spirited part should submit to the rational part, and together the rational and spirited parts should rule over the appetitive part (117). And Lewis agrees with all this: “Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’” (24). Yet Lewis makes two significant changes. 

First, Lewis brings in an analogy between the soul and the body that Plato does not use: “The [rational] head rules the [appetitive] belly through the [spirited] chest” (24). More on that in moment. And second, he expands the range of functions encompassed by the concept of the spirited element. 

The index of my copy of Republic tells me the Greek word used for ‘spirit’—thumos—also means ‘anger’ (299). And in fact, Plato puts a lot of emphasis on how it is “the spirited part by which we get angry” (115; cf. 251). Those who live for honor or take honor the most seriously are proud, and the proud can be quite, well, touchy. Plato acknowledges that, at worst, the spirited part can be “hard and harsh” and marked by “savageness.” But, at best, if the spirited part is rightly channeled, the anger and pride that are aroused whenever honor is at stake can produce courage, one of Plato’s four cardinal virtues (87). 

Lewis also associates the spirited element or Chest with courage, using the example of a soldier in battle to show how, without having a courageous Chest, the soldier will not be able to fulfill his duty while under fire (24). But Lewis, being a Christian who knows Christ’s command to turn the other cheek and who has read Paul’s celebration of humility—and above all, has been soul-transformed by the gospel of grace—cannot give anger and pride the controlling interest in the Chest. Instead of associating the spirited element with anger, pride, and honor, Lewis associates it with the terms “trained emotions,” “Magnanimity,” and “Sentiment” (24-25). He says the Chest is “the seat … of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments” (24-25). In most people, anger is volatile, not stable. I think we can infer from Lewis that the person who follows his anger all the time is controlled by his appetitive part, not by his spirited part as Plato supposed. But if anger were reined in by reason and habit and if it was only heeded and acted on when the emotion corresponded with reality—if someone could be angry only about those things that rightly merit anger, and in the right degrees—then anger would be at home in the Chest. But it wouldn’t be the only emotion at home there. So what else is included in Lewis’s conception of the Chest?

To approach a clearer, fuller answer to that question, I’ve found it helpful to ask, first, Why does he use the word “Chest” and not “Heart”? Actually, he does use “heart” at least once in the text. He says: “The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it” (19). But within a few pages he has swapped out “Heart” for “Chest,” and he clearly prefers the latter term. Why? Is it just that for modern readers the heart has all kinds of mushy, sappy connotations that Lewis wants to avoid? Maybe, but I think there’s more to it. The image of the Chest is richer, more complex. Consider basic anatomy. The chest houses the heart, yes, but it also houses the lungs, and both are held in place and protected by bones: the spine and the rib cage. What if Lewis has all these parts of the physical chest in mind? The Chest encompasses the heart, which we popularly associate with emotions and conscience, but it can also encompass the lungs by which we breathe—and in the Bible, breath is linked to spirit—and it also recalls the English idiom we use to tell people to have courage: “show some backbone.” Thus, the Chest concept retains Plato’s emphasis on courage and honor while making room for other virtues and pointing to how we are ultimately spiritual beings, not just spirited ones. God breathed life into us so we could know and love Him. 

So what does it mean to be man (or woman!) with a chest? It means having strong bones, strong lungs, and a strong heart. It means having “the harder virtues” we need when the going gets tough and painful self-denial is called for (24). It means living in reliance on God just as we live by the breath he gives us moment-by-moment. And it means having an emotional life that is rightly ordered, meaning our feelings are appropriate and proportionate to the realities and situations that evoke them.

(An aside: Likening the parts of the soul to the physical body underlines why we must be led by the rational and spirited parts and not by the appetitive part. The human brain, just like the heart and lungs, is shielded by bones. The stomach is not. It is the most vulnerable of these essential organs. In the same way, the human soul is most vulnerable to falling into vice by way of the appetites.)

This post is indebted to recent conversations with Tim Lawrence about the tripartite soul, and to a Malcolm Guite lecture on Herbert’s poem “Prayer (I)” that I had the privilege of attending a few days ago. It was when Guite explained the line that prayer is “God’s breath in man returning to his birth” that he pointed out how in Scripture breath and spirit are inextricably linked; that was when I had the “Aha!” moment that resulted in this post.  

Praying and Sleeping in Gilead

Reading Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful novel Gilead a few weeks ago, I was struck by how it joins together two things I tended to think of as being at odds with each other: prayer and sleep. 

I first noticed this about halfway through, when the narrator, the aging and ailing Reverend John Ames—the whole novel is an extended letter written to his young son—closes a section by saying, “Much more prayer is called for, clearly, but first I will take a nap” (125). And then, he says something similar just a few pages later: “Now I will pray. First I think I’ll sleep. I’ll try to sleep” (131).

My initial reaction reading these lines was concern. My thought was that prayer should come first, then sleep. When I think of prayer in relation to sleep, my mind automatically goes to the disciples falling asleep while Jesus prays in Gethsemane, and I know from experience that tiredness is a strong temptation to not pray. So, naturally, reading these lines, I thought, “Uh oh.” It seemed to me that sleep was keeping Ames from bringing to God the troubles weighing on him.

True, Robinson’s novel does recognize that sleep can be a way of avoiding hard things. In one scene, Ames’ best friend, Boughton—also an aging, ailing pastor, seems to fall asleep, and Ames explains why: “Boughton sort of nodded off then, as he does when conversations get difficult” (212). 

Tiredness can also make people irritable, working against the kindness they pray to able to show to others. At one point, Ames gets up before sunrise and goes to his church’s sanctuary to pray—until, just like the disciples in Gethsemane, he falls asleep. When he is woken up by Boughton’s prodigal son, Jack—the very person he had been “praying for the wisdom to do well by”—Ames confesses in his writing that “I was immediately aware that my sullen old reptilian self would have handed him over to the Philistines for the sake of a few more minutes’ sleep” (167). Sleep, it’s true, can be a hindrance to love of God and neighbor.

But Robinson’s novel ultimately shows that prayer and sleep can work together. First, sleep can be an answer to prayer. Ames says the reason he fell asleep in the sanctuary that morning is because he had been “praying for tranquility”; as a result, “I had arrived at a considerable equanimity, there in the dark, and I believe that is what permitted me to sleep” (168). This reminded me of Psalm 127:2: “he gives to his beloved sleep.” The ability to sleep is a gift God gives us out of love; so we should pray for it.

(As an aside—this doesn’t seem to be a point implicit in Gilead—prayer and sleep can both be ways of submitting our lives and cares to God. In Psalm 127:2, resisting the gift of sleep is a symptom of “anxious toil,” of not trusting God to provide. But the person who has prayed in the faith that God provides can fall asleep trusting He will answer. To quote another psalm, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” [Psalm 4:8].)   

Second, the novel suggests that prayer and sleep work together to help us see clearly. Ames writes later on that “I have prayed considerably, and I have slept awhile, too, and I feel I am reaching some clarity” (201). Notice that the clarity comes not from depriving himself of sleep so he can pray all night, nor from sleeping in and neglecting prayer; instead, Ames associates the clarity with praying and sleeping. 

Elsewhere, Ames reflects that “right worship is right perception” (135). To worship God rightly, we have to see Him as He is. That’s hard to do when we aren’t praying, as Jesus did in Gethsemane, “Thy will be done.” When we aren’t praying “Hallowed be Thy Name,” we are following after our own skewed vision of reality, in which everything revolves around glorifying ourselves. And it’s also hard to see God as He is when we are exhausted or sleep-deprived. How many times have I thought the sky was falling and God had forgotten me, when all it took to show my fears and unbelief for what they were was a good night’s rest? 

The novel ends with the line, “I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep” (247). Is this a sign that Ames was wrong to put sleep before prayer earlier, and now he’s got the order right? I think not, because taken as a whole the novel treats both sleeping and praying as ways that Ames receives peace from God. This last line is instead a sign that, after weeks of spiritual trial leading to “elusive … grueling” sleep (155), he is at peace with God and neighbor once more.

Plato's Republic and Nolan's Gotham, Part IV

For the past few weeks I’ve been writing posts on ways that I see Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy interacting with Plato’s Republic. I’m sure that next time I watch the films I will see even more connections, but for now I’m ready to move on to other topics. To cap off this series, here are three closing thoughts—or rather, as it turned out, three more posts combined together. 

First, although earlier I had written about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, oddly enough I didn’t think much at all about the literal caves Bruce falls into, first in Batman Begins (the cave that becomes the Bat-Cave) and then in The Dark Knight Rises (the prison pit into which he is cast by Bane). Yet these also fit the allegory. 

The scene where young Bruce falls into the well on his family’s estate, and his father descends by a rope to pull him out, supports my suggestion that Thomas Wayne is the closest thing Gotham City has to a philosopher-king. In pulling his son out of the well, he resembles how the prisoner-turned-philosopher returns to the cave to free others of their ignorance. After all, he tells Bruce in that moment, “Don’t be afraid,” and fear is the result of ignorance. To quote Ducard again, “Men fear most what they cannot see.” 

Speaking of Ducard, this scene of Thomas and Bruce in the cave underlines the fundamental differences between Thomas and Ducard, his foil. Ducard, with his corrupted understanding of justice, cannot really lead anyone out of the cave, and while Thomas dispels fear, Ducard instead preys upon it. When Bruce is in the prison pit in The Dark Knight Rises, he learns that Ducard once descended into that cave to exact vengeance on those who killed his wife. Just as when he attacked Gotham in Batman Begins, he did not descend into the cave to liberate captives but to slaughter them. If Thomas represents the aristocratic soul, Ducard represents the tyrannical one.

As Timothy Lawrence and I discussed in a FilmFisher dialogue some years ago, the tension between Bruce and his alter-ego Batman corresponds to how Bruce is caught between these two mentors. The choice he faces is whether to become more like his father or more like Ducard. I see now that this conflict can be rephrased in Platonic terms: Will Bruce, having a timocratic soul driven by a love of honor, evolve into a wisdom-lover or devolve into someone who is ruled by his appetites? 

I think Bruce does become more like his father, and more like a philosopher, in the end. In Rises, he defies his fear in order to climb out of the prison pit; he liberates Gotham from the League of Shadows (again, “Shadows” suggests the shadows of the Plato’s cave); and finally, he passes the mantle of Gotham’s protector to Blake. Significantly, as I pointed out in that FilmFisher dialogue, well before I ever read Plato, “The first scene of the first film has Bruce falling into the cave, and the last shot of the last film has Blake rising on a platform in the cave.” If Thomas descended into the cave to lift out Bruce, Bruce descends into the cave to lift out Blake. Republic envisions a process by which the philosopher-kings would raise up and train their successors, and that succession is reflected in the beginning and end of the trilogy.

Second, for all the similarities between the films and Plato’s Republic, Nolan seems to refute the idea of using myths and useful falsehoods to govern the kallipolis. 

As Plato’s Socrates lays out a theoretical blueprint for the ideal republic, on two occasions Socrates devises a myth that would be used to convince the next generation to abide by the republic’s laws and prefer justice to injustice: The Myth of the Metals in Book III, and the Myth of Er in Book X. The Dark Knight ends and The Dark Knight Rises opens with a myth or useful falsehood invented by Batman. He convinces Jim Gordon to lie about the fate of Harvey Dent, in order to keep the city from being demoralized by Dent’s corruption. The lie does motivate the city to stamp out organized crime, but once the truth is revealed, the results are reversed, and the city is plunged into a worse chaos than before.

In contrast, The Dark Knight Rises concludes with Gotham receiving a true myth to inspire the citizens to justice. The city watches Batman fly the bomb away from the city. Although the audience knows that Bruce somehow escaped the detonation, this doesn’t drain the action of its meaning or nobility. He really did save the city. Blake thinks it unfair that people don’t know it was Bruce Wayne who saved them, but Gordon is right: “They know who it was; it was the Batman.” Earlier in the film, in two different scenes, Bruce/Batman had told Blake and then Gordon that the point of Batman’s secret identity is that “A hero can be anyone.” That is why a statue of Batman—a symbol of justice that can be embodied by anyone—is dedicated at the end of the film, not a statue of Bruce Wayne. This statue represents a better, truer Myth of the Metals or Myth of Er.

Third, I return to the way Plato treats the state of the just/unjust city as analogous to the state of the just/unjust soul. If Bruce becomes more just in the end, does Gotham? 

As I’ve already touched on above, Bruce can be said to become more just because of how he grows to resemble his father, and as I said in the first post, because of how he persists in pursuing justice even when no one rewards him for it. Indeed, when Bruce fakes his own death, for all Gotham City knows, he died a very unjust man. In the Republic, justice is a combination of moderation, courage, and wisdom, but any citizen would be forgiven for thinking Bruce was immoderate (“Look how he wasted his inheritance on pleasures!”) and cowardly (“Look how he ran for cover when the Joker attacked his home!”) and foolish (“Look how poorly he managed his company!”). In reality, the case could be made that Bruce is (or becomes) moderate, courageous, and wise. Moderate, he is never corrupted by the profligate playboy persona he plays before the public. Courageous, he overcomes his fears and holds to his conviction against killing even when he is sorely tempted to abandon it. Wise, he continues to seek after true justice and will not settle for the false alternatives propounded by Ducard (like Polemarchus, that justice involves doing harm to enemies), Falcone (like Thrasymachus, that justice is whatever benefits the strong), the Joker (embracing the view that Glaucon summarizes, that being just isn’t worth the effort), or Dent (that only chance is just).

But what about the city? In the previous post, I closed with the troubling suggestion that, because of its slide from aristocracy to tyranny over the course of three films, “Gotham City would seem to worse off at the end of the trilogy than at the beginning.” And so I find myself in arriving at the same answer as I did at the end of the dialogue I wrote with Tim: it doesn’t seem like Gotham is capable of becoming a just city. Bruce would seem to have failed to make it more just. Maybe Alfred is right and Bruce went about it all wrong, misdirecting his energies to be a guardian of the city as Batman and not doing enough to be a philosopher-king like his father.

However, this may be the result of asking the wrong question, the result of assessing Bruce by the wrong objective. In his own words, Bruce’s objective was never to make the city more just but to give it a vision of justice. He tells Alfred in Batman Begins, before returning to Gotham, that “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I'm flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed; but as a symbol—as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.” And if that was the goal, he would seem to have succeeded in the end. Gotham does not become a just city, but with the example and symbol of Batman as its inspiration, it could become one yet.

Plato's Republic and Nolan's Gotham, Part III

[I have a theory that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy is influenced to some degree by Plato’s Republic. At the least, the two texts would make for good conversation partners. Plato draws correspondences between the just or unjust city and the just or unjust soul, and the films are as much about the struggle for justice in Gotham City as they are about Bruce Wayne’s struggle to become a just man. In this series of posts, I point out some potential links between the book and the films that occurred to me while re-reading Republic recently.]

Third, is Gotham City’s descent from order to chaos over the course of the three films a reflection of Socrates’ theory of how the ideal kallipolis can devolve into a tyranny? 

In Republic Book VIII, Socrates says there are five kinds of cities. His ideal, healthy city is the kallipolis ruled by an aristocracy of one or more wisdom-loving philosopher-kings. The other four are each “diseased cities,” diseased because they are ruled by leaders who love or live for something other than wisdom (p. 214 in the 1992 Grube & Reeves translation). They are the timocracy, in which the leaders love honor most of all; the oligarchy, in which the leaders love money and how it satisfies their necessary appetites; the democracy, in which the people use their liberty to follow their unnecessary appetites; and the tyranny, in which the city is terrorized by someone who is himself tyrannized by his own lawless appetites. Plato puts the five cities in this order because, as his Socrates sees it, the kallipolis—kind of like the nuclear bomb in The Dark Knight Rises—“must decay” sooner or later (216). The kallipolis will fall, not to external enemies, but to “civil war breaking out within the ruling group itself” (215). It will corrode from within. First, it will regress to a timocracy, which will then turn into an oligarchy, and so on.

I think that Gotham City reflects all five types of cities at different points in The Dark Knight Trilogy, and in this same order.

First, in the flashbacks of Batman Begins, Gotham is like the wisdom-loving aristocracy—or at least, it’s trying to be. Although he isn’t the mayor, the aristocratic Thomas Wayne is the spiritual leader of the city. He uses his billions to better the city and—like the philosopher-king compelled to go back down into the cave—he doesn’t sit idly by enjoying his privileges in his mansion on a hilltop outside the city, but works as a doctor in the city. That’s appropriate given how Plato portrays cities as either sick or healthy, and good rulers as good physicians. Thomas Wayne is seeking to find a way to cure Gotham’s citizens, both physically as individuals and economically as a whole, and he seems to be having some success—until he is killed by one of the very people he is trying to help. Then, just as the aristocrat’s son can become a timocrat if he sees how the love of wisdom seemed to fail his father, Bruce grows up to be someone more likely to jump into a fight to defend his honor than engage in philosophical inquiry. He drops out of college and tries to avenge his father.

Following Thomas Wayne’s death, the Gotham City of Batman Begins is a timocracy in that it is caught in a constant tug-of-war between two groups of people who are governed by codes of honor: the police and the Falcone crime family. On the one side, Commissioner Loeb hates Batman because, as a vigilante, he makes him look bad—that is, causes him to lose honor. Batman succeeding where the police have failed shows them to be too corrupt or inept to be the guardians of the city. On the other side, Falcone says to Bruce, “Yeah, you got spirit, kid. I'll give you that. More than your old man, anyway.” It is the people who are led by the spirited element of the tripartite soul who are most concerned with honor. 

Then, in The Dark Knight, Gotham City is more like an oligarchy. In the iconic bank heist opening, the banker allied with the mob tells the robbers that “criminals in this town used to believe in things. Honor. Respect.” Instead, as the Joker puts it to a mobster later in the film, “All you care about is money.” Indeed, much of the film is about money. Batman, Jim Gordon, and Harvey Dent are trying to cut off the mob’s sources of funding and put its leaders in prison on charges of racketeering. The mob hires the Joker to help them get their money back. A police officer’s debts drive her to betray Dent and Rachel.

The oligarchy continues into The Dark Knight Rises, although under a different guise. The money-laundering mob has been defeated, but now the great conflict in Gotham is between the haves and have-nots, which finally boils over into an open war. Bane deposes the oligarchy French Revolution-style—recall that the ending of the film quotes from A Tale of Two Cities—and he tells the downtrodden masses, “we give it back to you, the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere. Do as you please.” This sounds a lot like what Socrates says of citizens in the democracy: “each of them will arrange his own life in whatever manner pleases him” (227).

But, as Batman and his allies know, Bane’s Gotham isn’t really free. It is under the sway of whoever is holding the trigger to the nuclear bomb that is carted around the city. That person turns out to be the daughter of Henri Ducard, Batman’s nemesis in the first film, and all her actions are controlled by the all-consuming desire to finish his mission of destroying the city. Gotham is under her tyranny, and she herself is a slave to her own wrath and warped understanding of “true justice.” 

If this reading is correct, Gotham City would seem to worse off at the end of the trilogy than at the beginning. Ominously, Plato only portrays how a kallipolis can be lost, not how it can be gained, as if there were no way back from the brink of tyranny’s destruction. I’m going to think on that problem a bit more and return later with a fourth and final post in this series.