Theology Thursday: Two Little J’s
Yes, I realize I used an apostrophe in the title. And I am aware that “Js” would’ve been perfectly acceptable in a way that “As” wouldn’t be. (Because “As” is a word and not clearly the plural of the letter A.) But since I’d rather be consistent in my letter pluralization, it’s “J’s” for me. (Numbers I generally leave unapostrophied. Stupid spell-check doesn’t recognize “unapostrophied,” an obviously good word. Or “pluralization” for that matter)
Well, the whole year has been leading up to this, my last Theology Thursday post of the year. And all I’m going to do is ramble very briefly about 3 John and Jude, since they’re the last danglers from The List that I can get to this year. The others will have to wait until I get back around to them sometime around the middle of next year.
Which, by the way, reminds me to remind you that I’m totally open to topic suggestions, or even Bible questions you’ve always wondered about and just didn’t have anyone to ask. Not that I’ll know the answers, but I can ferret out an answer with the best of them, so fire away if you’d like. I also take book recommendations, though I’ve got a stack of theology books to work through next year. A quick count tells me the tally is seven. So that should get me through a few months. But I’m not promising to read one per week, so still lob me those suggestions. (Use the Suggest a Topic! form.)
For anyone wanting to read along with my Bible read-through, I’m planning on reading the English Standard Version again. My extremely exact and precise plan is this:
- Read one Psalm per day. You might actually enjoy them one at a time, and they’re great when read as prayers (in general).
- Read between three and five chapters (five is more likely than three, but whatever makes sense at the time) of the Old Testament per day, reading straight through, skipping Psalms (on account of I’ve already read it by the time I get to it) and perhaps Proverbs (on account of I finished Psalms and Proverbs is next).
- One day per week, which will be decided on later (I’m going to say Tuesday for now), read five chapters of the New Testament. Why not one chapter per day in addition to the OT? Well, because the NT is downright boring to read one chapter at a time. The Epistles, in particular, just should not be read a chapter at a time. You lose the whole flow of them.
(You could do three chapters of the OT, one in the NT if you want. Don’t let my absolute statements throw you off, even if I’m absolutely right.)
Generally I finish in late November by following this plan. The really great part about reading the Psalms one at a time is twofold:
- Psalms shouldn’t be read in big chunks. How can you meditate on something you’re flying through? They should be read individually in order to be fully appreciated. (Though I’ll admit that I get impatient to finish Psalms and double-up or triple-up on the last few dozen of them, on account of their being shortish. Lousy spell-check again!)
- By the time you finish Psalms, you’ve pulled ahead of your church’s read-through by several weeks. Alternatively, you’ve just built in several weeks of “I got bogged down in (round up the usual suspects here)” catch-up time.
So much for this being a quick post. But it’s the end of the year, and this way maybe I’ll inspire a couple of non-read-throughers (spell-check!) to sally forth and kick some serious Bible-reading booty next year.
(Seriously, if you haven’t read through at least once, you really owe it to yourself. And it gets easier every year. And if you’re a Dad, do you really want, when your child asks you a tough Bible question, to say, “Ask your mother.”? Didn’t think so. So man up and read that thing! And do it in the morning. Get up early if you have to. If you try for night-reading, it won’t happen. Trust me on this.)
(And if you honestly don’t think you’re up to a full read-through, at least do the New Testament. It’s really ridiculously easy. One. Chapter. Per. Day. Not challenging. Do it!)
(Too many parentheticals? I can never tell?)
Right, so wasn’t I going to write about 3 John? Jude, even? I’m already 750 words in and now I’m getting to today’s topic? Feel free to bail if you need to.
(At this point I’ve let this post sit for about a week and a half, and now I’m finding that I have no idea what I was going to write about the two little J’s.)
So, what to write about 3 John? Well, something that everyone might not notice is that the letter is apparently from “The Elder.” Historically, this was thought to be just John using a different title for himself, and a fitting one at that given that this book is generally accepted to have been written when John was in his eighties or nineties.
But there’s another school of thought that says “The Elder” referred to another John in Ephesus, who compiled and published John’s Gospel (adding a few bits here and there, particularly Chapter 21), and wrote the Johannine Letters and Revelation.
(I think there’s a good argument to be made about John 21 having been written by another author, but I’ll leave it until another time.)
Of course, none of this is unique to 3 John. It’s a very short book, one of the shortest in the Bible, only slightly longer than 2 John. In both 1 and 2 John, mention is made of antichrists, being those who deny that Jesus came in the flesh. In 3 John, a different kind of Bad Guy is mentioned, the kind who loves to have authority in the Church.
There are quite a few Bad Guys mentioned in the New Testament, among them:
- Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Tim 1:20 and 2 Tim 4:14)
- Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Tim 2:17)
- Diotrephes (3 John 9)
Interestingly, John follows up the mention of Diotrephes with a mention of Confirmed Good Guy Demetrius. Nice balance there, eh?
On the subject of Bad Guys, Jude makes mention of a group of false teachers. And then he insults them. Over and over. The letter was already a short one, but it could’ve been much shorter had he not decided to compare the false teachers to the following:
- Unthinking animals
- Balaam, deceiving people for pay
- Korah, perishing in their rebellion
- Dangerous reefs that can shipwreck the godly
- Shameless shepherds who care only for themselves
- Clouds blowing overhead without giving rain
- Autumn trees, doubly dead, bearing no fruit and uprooted
- Wild waves on the sea
- Wandering stars
Well, I’ve officially used up all my words for the year now, and I think that’s a wrap for my final post. I’ll certainly look to finish out any Bible books I’ve still missed next year. The list is much shorter now, comprising only:
- Ruth
- 1 Kings
- 2 Chronicles
- Esther
- Song of Songs
Looks like somewhere around April I’ll be starting up with these. So again, lob me any questions/ideas you might have for topics. I’ve got next week lined up already, and then I’m wide open.
I wish you a Blessed and Happy New Year!
Better Dead Than To Be Read, Or Wherever the Whims May Take Me
When I originally read about the To Be Read Challenge, I balked. Better Dead than To Be Read!!! And then I calmed down. But one of the 
reasons I’ve never wanted to be a book reviewer who gets sent books is that I don’t like anybody telling me what to read. Oh, I’m fine accepting suggestions from people, and I definitely pick up books based on reviews I read, but mostly I just like to read whatever, whenever.
And now that I’ve started thinking about What I Will Read Next Year, I know I don’t even really like it when I tell myself what to read.
I’ve often told The Fair Elaine that she likes to make lists just so she can beat herself over the head with them. So perhaps I’ve just gone the other way. If I don’t make a list, I can’t feel bad about not finishing it!
But, it’s almost to the New Year, and I suppose I should try to be more listy and regimented. So, I present to you my To Be Read list:
Fiction TBRs:
- The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
- Emma, by Jane Austen
- Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
- Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
- Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
Nonfiction TBRs:
- God of the Possible, by Greg Boyd
- The Inescapable Love of God, by Thomas Talbott
- Jesus and the Undoing of Adam, by C. Baxter Kruger
- The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, Edited by James Beilby and Paul R. Eddy
- Ball Four, by Jim Bouton
- 1776, by David McCullough
Now, I’ll admit that I’ve already started two of the nonfiction titles, but it’s been long enough that I’ll have to double back and basically re-read. And even if I don’t, I still have a good eighty percent of each that’s unread at this point.
I also plan to read 2010, on account of having read 2001 this year and for the other obvious reason. So consider it an alternate should one of the other titles not pan out. One other alternate is Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I’ll try to hit both alternates in case anyone objects to my Already Started titles.
(A nonfiction alternate is Feeding Your Appetites, by Stephen Arterburn.)
I can already tell that I’m going to have to seriously control my random library gleanings.
Wordful Wednesday: 2009 Reading Highs and Lows, a.k.a. Books That Transported Me or Made Me Pine For Illiteracy
My “thumb-through” process is sufficient to prevent me from reading truly bad books. Nonetheless, sometimes I feel it’s incumbent upon me to take one for the team, as it were, and press on through a real stinker.
At other times, a book doesn’t need a thumb-through, because I’m excited about the subject material or have a good deal of comfort with the author. Or the book comes so highly recommended that I know I’ll read it just as soon as I can get my hands on it.
There are also, rarely, books that trigger a twinge of I’m Not Sure-itis during the thumb-through, that turn out to be the Best Thing I Read All Year.
So this is my collection of Goods and Bads for the year. My full list of everything I read will come later this week, after I’ve finished my last title.
First, the Goods:
Favorite Non-Fiction:
Escape From the Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew, by Alex Kershaw. Great subject matter? Check. Good writing? Check. Inspiring and gripping.
AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War, by Tom McNichol. I’m a big-time sucker for History of Science books, and this one was just fascinating. Edison v. Westinghouse was quite the epic battle. “Savage” isn’t far from the truth.
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller. I don’t generally like Christian Inspiration titles. But this one actually inspired me, and I can’t recommend it more highly.
Favorite Fiction:
Blindness, by Jose Saramago - Just remarkable, really. I doubt if I will ever read a more unique book. I loved the characters, loved the story, loved the style. Definitely some difficult material in it, in a Lord of the Flies kind of way, but it’s the best Fiction I read this year. And for its uniqueness, I’ll call it my Favorite Book of the Year also.
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. It’s rare that a fiction book lives up to the hype. This one did, by a comfortable margin.
Colossus, by D.F. Jones. Took me back to the era of Cold War paranoia, with shadows of Terminator mixed in. And the ending was perfect.
The Inimitable Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse. My first Wodehouse, but not my last, I imagine. Charming and hilarious. I read it before I started doing book reviews, but that’s not a reflection of how much fun it was to read.
Favorite Read-Aloud (The Pancake-Eating Boy’s pick):
The Indian in the Cupboard, by Lynn Reid Banks. Click on through for the Boy’s full review.
Favorite Audiobook:
(This is the place where I would recommend Audio Renaissance’s production of Speaker for the Dead again if I hadn’t already done it a bunch of times. But in case you missed the other times, know that it’s close to a perfect audiobook.)
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. Excellent narration by Anton Lesser, with terrific character differentiation (without being overdone). Oh, and a great story, too.
And now for the Bads:
From the “How the Other Side Thinks, Depending On Your Definition of ‘Thought’” Category:
Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. Pathetic, whiny and completely underwhelming. Makes me much less likely to read any other “New Atheist” titles.
From the “Grab-Bag of Truly Insightful and Just Plain Puzzling” Category:
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, by Lynn Hiles. I’ve softened somewhat on my opinion of this one, and there definitely was some thought-provoking stuff, but it was mixed in with some very bad editing and even worse hermeneutics.
From the “Lack of Creativity on This Scale Takes Effort” Category:
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Bible!, by Jonathan Goldstein. Inspiring, in that if this kind of tripe can get published, there's hope for the rest of us. I just really hope he didn’t get an advance for it. Easily garners my Worst Read of the Year award.
Theology Thursday: Jesus, Joshua and Zombies
Working through the List, I’ve come down to Zechariah and Haggai. I’ll still have a couple of Old Testament books to hit next year, so look for those starting back up around April.
First, I need to get my Haggai bit out of the way. So it’s a history lesson of sorts. Most Biblically-literate folks know that Judah went into captivity in Babylon, which was subsequently conquered by the Medo-Persians. And then Cyrus let some of the Jews return home.
(This is covered in Ezra and Nehemiah. The last chapter of 2 Chronicles is also a good resource. Hmm…2 Chronicles is also on the List. But I’ll hit it next time around.)
During the rebuilding of the Temple and of the Jerusalem City Wall, a couple of prophets lent their encouragement (pointed and severe at times) to the builders. You guessed it: Zechariah and Haggai. Malachi probably figured in there somewhere, too.
Summary of Haggai: Build, folks! Build! And by the way, there’s a future Temple coming that’ll make this one you’re working on look pretty sad by comparison. (Might be referring to the Church.)
So that’s Haggai in a nutshell, although it’s not really in need of condensing, comprising only two chapters. Still, you will note that I’ve now included Haggai in a blog post.
Now, about Jesus and Joshua and Zechariah. I’ve actually already written a blog post titled The Three Joshuas, wherein I observed that there are three (at minimum) Important Dudes in the Bible who are named Joshua. The first is fairly obvious, being the Joshua of the Book of Joshua. The second, and the one mentioned in Zechariah, is Joshua the High Priest in the days of the rebuilding of the Temple after the Babylonian captivity. The third, to spoil my other post, is Jesus.
(I just re-read my old post and noticed that I’d already mentioned Haggai. Can you believe that? How’d I miss that when I did all my Bible-book-tagging?)
Now that I’ve gone back and read the third chapter of Zechariah, I’m reluctant to deliver on the Zombie promise. But a promise is a promise. But Chapter Three is absolutely beautiful. I think, and I may be way off base, that there’s a picture of Christ’s redeeming work being presented. It’s only ten verses, but I really don’t want to copy the whole passage in here. Brevity is the soul of wit and all that. Ship. Sailed.
But I’ll summarize (go read the full text if you like). Zechariah has a vision of Joshua (Jeshua) the High Priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and he’s wearing filthy garments, and Satan is accusing him. Satan is rebuked, and Joshua’s filthy clothes are removed, along with his sins, and he’s clothed in fine priestly garments.
I wonder if this is a picture of Christ being clothed with our sins, then having them removed from him. The passage actually indicates that there’s symbolism at work here:
Zechariah 3:8 (NLT):
“Listen to me, O Jeshua the high priest, and all you other priests. You are symbols of things to come.”
The passage goes on to say that the Lord would one day remove the sins of “this land” in one day. I know from my past studies that “land” is the Hebrew word “erets,” which can also be translated “world.”
One other thing of note is that Paul encourages Christians, “clothe yourselves with Christ.” Maybe there’s a parallel with Zechariah’s imagery?
Well, that’s about all I have to say about that. Let’s move on to the much anticipated and probably very disappointing bit about zombies. Appropriate, don’t you think, that one of the “Z” books of the Bible should have a description of something sounding a bit like zombies?
Here’s the passage:
Zechariah 14:12-13 (NLT):
12 And the Lord will send a plague on all the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their people will become like walking corpses, their flesh rotting away. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. 13 On that day they will be terrified, stricken by the Lord with great panic. They will fight their neighbors hand to hand.
It’s really quite vivid, isn’t it? Flesh and eyes rotting away, attacking people with their hands rather than weapons? Looks a lot like your standard Zombie Movie. I have really no idea how this prophecy was or will be fulfilled, though as a partial-preterist, I’m inclined to think that all of Zechariah 14 was fulfilled spiritually by the ministry of Christ and the Church. But I need to study the issue further.
But if you look for a literal fulfillment of this, there may well be a Zombie Apocalypse in store for the world.
Wordful Wednesday: James and the Giant Peach
Some books make tough read-alouds. I’m not really sure why that’s the case, but it’s true. Being a movie-quoter-voice-imitator-accent-annoyer type, I like to have nicely differentiated character voices, without being too over the top. When everyone in a book is basically the same kind of character, that can be a bit tough. For instance, I’ve had a hard time coming up with different characterizations for all the Hardy Boys’ friends. Because they’re basically all the same age, ethnicity, etc.
So in that sense, James and the Giant Peach was a dream. Because if you can’t come up with different voices for a bunch of giant bugs, you may as well hang it 
up. A quick rundown of the voices I went with:
- Aunt Spiker – a quick, slightly masculine, crusty British.
- Aunt Sponge – think Hyacinth from Keeping Up Appearances.
- James – nondescript English boy.
- The Old Green Grasshopper – Albus Dumbledore, as portrayed by Richard Harris.
- The Centipede – Moss from The IT Crowd (nasal and nerdy sounding).
- The Earthworm – An inconsistent Northern English accent (kept slipping into Scottish, but not a bad job overall). Something like Michael Palin from the “Tracts of Land” sketch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
- Miss Spider – Irish. I don’t know why.
- The Ladybug – Babs from Chicken Run. “I don’t want to be a pie! I don’t like gravy!” (pronounced “grehveh”)
- The Glowworm and the Silkworm – something inconsistent. The characters didn’t appear often enough for me to remember what I did for either of them.
James and the Giant Peach is in the collection of books I had read to me in school, along with How to Eat Fried Worms and Where the Red Fern Grows (which I’m really looking forward to reading to the Pancake Eater).
As such, my memories of it were fairly fuzzy. Wow, totally unintended Peach Pun there. Anyhow, I loved everything about the book. I loved the way Roald Dahl used language, love that he didn’t mind having both Evil Aunts crushed to death under the peach, and loved the way he described things. I’m not even sure what was so great about his descriptions. All I know is, when he talked about people taking bites of the Peach, it made me yearn for Summer.
(Cards on the table here: Peaches are without question the greatest fruit in the world. And if you can’t agree peach pie is superior in every way to apple pie, I’m not sure we should be friends. Well, okay, we can be friends, but let’s just not discuss fruit. Because you’re wrong, wrong, wrong!)
The peach descriptions affected the Pancake Eater the same way. Which isn’t surprising, since he’s always been a peach-pounder himself. (One of my favorite videos of him I titled “Singing While Eating,” and it can be viewed over on The Fair Elaine’s photo site. The video is from seven years ago. I feel old.)
I don’t expect to finish any more read-alouds with the Boy this year, leaving my total for Read-Alouds-That-Count at sixteen. And we didn’t even read Narnia this year!
Next up is probably Halley’s Bible Handbook, though there’s an outside chance I’ll finish something else. And Halley’s should probably get a Theology Thursday Book Review, which doesn’t work for me right now since I’ve got two topics already lined up. What shall I do?
Best Gig, Russell, Bleak House, Cranford, Blocks
Now that I’ve had my last Fireside Carolers gig of my first year, I can report that I plan on doing it again next year. For one thing, the time investment alone in learning the 50+ songs needs to be paid off. For another, I just love singing Christmas songs, and I really like the other folks in the group.
Saturday I participated in the shortest and best gig of the year for me. It was less than half an hour, but it was in a home, and we were a surprise for the guests. We sang to a room of appreciative and festive people, and if I might say, we sang brilliantly. I really wish I’d recorded it.
Sunday I was in my longest gig, singing at the Woodburn outlet stores for two hours, both in an octet and strolling with a quartet. It was a cool experience, but that house gig was just the kind of thing that really makes it worthwhile. Getting paid for it didn’t hurt, of course, but knowing we elevated the evening was even cooler.
It was a slow year, so I’m told, in terms of the number of gigs we had. At first, I was fine with this, because I thought it’d let me ease into things. But once I got into the swing of it, it was kind of a bummer that I didn’t get to sing more. There’s always next year, though.
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I’m not a rabid, crazy Survivor fan. I’ve even basically skipped a couple of seasons. But I know what I know. And I know Russell should’ve won last night. I’ve tried to see my way clear to Natalie winning, and I’m not saying she’s not at all deserving, because she was a beast in a couple of challenges, but Russell ruled this season. But I guess nobody should expect a Survivor jury to be objective.
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As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, we’re on a BBC trip right now. After thoroughly enjoying Little Dorrit, we took in Bleak House, which was written for the screen by the same writer as Dorrit.
On the whole, it was a good production. The acting was still terrific, and there were definitely memorable characters. But I definitely preferred Little Dorrit. In part, I think it’s because I loved the main two characters in it, and in Bleak House there was really only one character who provoked anything like the same affection.
(By the way, I was very impressed with Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock. At times I actually had to remind myself she’s not English.)
One thing about Bleak House that we found distracting was the directing. There were so many fast cuts and weird sound effects during transitions. Not sure what the director was going for, but it didn’t always work. (The sound effects reminded me for all the world of the popping sound preceding the Flame Spurt in the Fire Swamp in The Princess Bride. And when you’re watching Dickens, you don’t necessarily want to be thinking of ROUSes. Just saying.)
I should dutifully point out that regardless of our impressions of the series, “Oh, my bones!” and “Shake me up, Judy!” have made it into the Heasley lexicon.
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So we enjoyed Bleak House, though it didn’t measure up to Little Dorrit. On the other hand, Cranford was simply wonderful. I loves me some Dame Judy Dench, so the production had some built-in Seth-appeal. (See what I did there? Seth-appeal. It’s the new Internet buzzword. Or not. But “baby fishmouth” is sweeping the nation. Now, did you recognize not one, but two When Harry Met Sally references there?)
I will say that Cranford is somewhat, shall we say, estrogeny? Which makes it fairly hilarious for a guy who grew up in a household with four women in it. Actually, it was entirely hilarious in a few places. “There’s lace at stake!” It was also profoundly sad in places, so I don’t recommend it if you’re averse to sad. But it’s not Summersby or anything, so don’t worry about it having a bad ending.
Oh, and if you haven’t heard of Alex Etel, you probably will in the future, because he’s an amazing child-actor. Just incredible.
I just found out there’s another Cranford series out there, so we’ll be taking that in just as soon as my Library Hold Request goes through.
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Somehow, we’ve resisted getting a game console system, even though it seems most folks have one. I can think of a few reasons.
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We have a computer, and we can always get games for it.
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I’d rather not spend the money.
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I really don’t need to want to play video games more, and I’d rather read.
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I never had one growing up. Uphill. Both ways!
On the other hand, it might be fun to play with the Pancake-Eating Son sometimes. But then I’m reminded that sometimes, it’s the simplest kind of interaction that works best.
The other day, Ethan and I got out the wooden blocks. We made the Taj Mahal. Or at least that’s what we called it. Then we took turns running a die-cast car through the bottom of it, seeing how long it would take before we accidently took out a key support member.
Sixteen minutes, by the way.
(Ethan also made the Eiffel Tower, which he called the France Tower. Pictures of our wooden block creations can be viewed over on the Fair Elaine’s daily picture gallery.)
And now the boy frequently asks to build stuff and knock it over. We have approximately a bazillion Legos, and he wants to build with wooden blocks. So I guess we won’t be getting that Wii anytime soon. I don’t grieve over this.
Theology Thursday: Prophetic Pop-ups, Part Z
(Bible-Reading Update: Finished with the Once Through the Old, Twice Through the New Read-Through! Now I just have to go back and finish reading Halley’s Bible Handbook.)
I’ve always thought that whoever put the Minor Prophets in their current collected order did us all a favor by having four of the last five alternate their first letters. Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah is fairly easy to remember. Though I suppose one still has to remember which H and which Z goes where…
You know, this introduction worked much better when I had it titled “Catching some HZs.” I love coming up with titles, and since I probably won’t use it next week, I just had to tell somebody, because I really liked it.
Of course, I’m still trying to write Theology Thursday posts about all the books of the Bible I’ve managed to miss. Habakkuk I’ve covered. Reeeeallly tangentially, or to use a word I’ve seen used by such persons as myself, orthogonally. Actually, to be honest, I really just wanted to write that word again. Because if you follow the link I provided, you’ll find the Habakkuk passage is quite important, even material, to the argument I make.
I’ll save Zechariah for next week, and even throw in a bit of Haggai because they go together really nicely. But what a smattering of topics one finds in Zechariah. Jesus and zombies. Seriously. Tell your friends.
But for this week, it’s just Zephaniah. (I was going to do Haggai and Zephaniah, hence the defunct “HZ” title, but they just don’t play well together.)
Side note: Thinking of nicknames for Zephaniah, I thought “Zeph,” which reminds me of either third or sixth grade (Mr. Sayles for both), when we had two girls named Stephanie, and Mr. Sayles called one of them “Steph” for short. Which sounds a lot like “Seth” when you’re not really paying attention. Not that I was ever not really paying attention. I was just paying attention to thinking about Star Wars or something.
I also may have been called “Zeph” by microcephalic baseball coaches. I know Zeke and Zed were employed as approximations of my extremely difficult name. And I definitely had a boss (my rock-crushing job) who called me “Zeth.”
(A Theology Thursday post is like a box of chocolates, don’t you think?)
One thing you find when reading the prophets is that, after predicting judgment on Israel or Judah, there’s generally a ray of hope in there, too. Zephaniah prophesied only a short time before Babylon came and sacked Jerusalem in 586BC. But he promised them that it wouldn’t be the end of them:
Zephaniah 3:15 (NLT)
15 For the Lord will remove his hand of judgment
and will disperse the armies of your enemy.
And the Lord himself, the King of Israel,
will live among you!
At last your troubles will be over,
and you will never again fear disaster.
The interesting thing you notice here is that the last line I just quoted seems to fly in the face of what we know of the rest of the history of Israel. In 70AD, the Romans sacked Jerusalem, and later made a complete mess of the rest of the country. And need I mention the dreadful things that befell the Jews at the hands of the Nazis? Or any of the other pogroms executed against them in various places?
So what’s this supposed promise that they’ll never see trouble again?
Mightn’t it be that this prophecy applied to a certain group and not the nation as a whole? The believing remnant, perhaps? Those who would eventually follow Christ? It would certainly make the “King of Israel will live among you” part make more sense.
For the sake of balance here, a premillenialist would apply this to a Future Millennial Reign of Christ, which manages to handle the literal interpretation quite well. The problem with this interpretation is that this prophecy really doesn’t seem to be a far-future prediction, given that Judah hadn’t even been exiled yet.
Either way, it seems this prophecy was targeted at something that would be fulfilled after the return from exile. I just favor a past/present fulfillment of it.
So, that’s one HZ down, one to go!
Wordful Wednesday: Catching Fire
I deliberately avoided picking up Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins, when I saw it on the bestsellers rack at the Library. Several times. My esteemed partner in pavement pounding talked me down once when I almost picked it up. He reminded me that I had about six books already checked out and that I should finish them first.
I thought The Hunger Games was terrific, and I was in no big hurry to pick up its sequel. After all, the third book won’t be out until next August or so, so why rush 
to catch up?
And then my library Hold Request came through. Still, I had a Crichton and a Koontz to read, and I dutifully finished them both before starting Catching Fire.
I’ll try not to be too spoilery here, because anything I reveal about Book Two might spoil something in Book One. (You know, “spoilery” is a perfectly good word, so why does my spell-check not think so? Must add it to the dictionary. Done!)
I wondered if I’d like Book Two as much as Book One. In a word: Yes! It’s every bit as exciting, and the deeper look into the evil Capitol was just chilling. Even when the book started to retread some familiar Hunger Games territory, it managed to bring something new to it.
Suzanne Collins has managed to create a dystopian world with elements of 1984 and Firefly, and I know that seems strange. No spaceships, of course, but the whole difference between The Alliance and the Outer Planets parallels the Capitol and the Districts, particularly the Outer Districts.
I loved the pacing of the book, with nearly every chapter ending in something of a cliffhanger. It made it difficult to stop between chapters. Which I still did, because I didn’t want to just tear through it. I didn’t want to read it too quickly, and five days seemed quite leisurely to me. (BTW, how does “leisurely” fit with that whole ‘i’ before ‘e’ thing?)
Also, in good White Christmas fashion, the book even managed a slam-bang finish. (Anybody humming, “Because we love him, we love him, especially when he keeps us on the ball…”? You should be!)
And I think I’ll stop here. If you liked The Hunger Games, you’ll not be disappointed with Catching Fire. Hopefully the same holds for Book Three. Now if it would just get published a few months earlier!
(My newest nefarious plan is to get both HG and CF on audio from the Library and listen to them right before Book Three comes out! Sounds like a plan to me.)
Potluck, Shopping in a Tux, Robbie the Reindeer
Another week, another Fireside Carolers report. This weekend I got to drive out to Camas, WA, in questionable weather. (Though not so questionable as the onslaught of local weather coverage had hoped predicted.) It was my first quartet gig, and it could hardly have been less intimidating. We were basically background music at a party, and only a few people seemed to really notice we were there. So we got to sing some of the more challenging pieces and not worry about if there were some rough spots. So it worked as a rehearsal of sorts.
Sunday, I sang in an octet for Potluck in the Park, and that was awesome. It’s one of our outreach events where we volunteer our time, and it’s definitely a worthy cause, providing some cheer while anyone who shows up gets a hot meal. The place was packed and both the volunteers at the potluck and those being served were very appreciative of us. What a privilege to be involved in this kind of event. (BTW, it’s every Sunday that Potluck in the Park is put on.)
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After both the Saturday and Sunday gigs, I did some shopping in a tux. It was part, “it’s on the way home,” and part social experiment. And here’s my conclusion from the experiment:
Non-whites are just more friendly and open.
Seriously, if I think back to all the people who made comments about how I looked, I think there was only one white person over eighteen who made a comment who wasn’t actually working in a shop I was in. And the folks working in the shops might be expected to chat up the customers a bit.
I did get a few questions, mostly from teenaged girls, about whether I was getting married. But mostly, it was non-whites who just came right out and told me I was lookin’ good. It made me want to make sure to shake off some of my own interpersonal inhibitions and pay a compliment when one’s called for, even if the target is a total stranger.
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Somehow, movie lines are funnier when spoken with British accents. Such is definitely the case with the animated film Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire. I should warn at the outset that there’s another version of the film in which the voices are provided by such luminaries as Ben Stiller and Britney Spears. Nothing against Ben Stiller (Dodgeball cracked me up), but I can’t imagine the American version is anything but dreadful.
The story, and there’s not much to it, but who cares, is that Robbie, son of the famous Rudolph, joins up with the sleigh team, much to the chagrin of Blitzen, who feels that Rudolph gets too much press that should rightly go to him.
He doesn’t think much of Robbie, either, and expresses his feelings to the rest of the crew in these terms:
“I say we…crush him! Grind him into dust! Then feed the remains of the dust to the wolves! Then…blow up the wolves!”
This has to be one of my favorite movie lines ever. And on that topic, perhaps I should lay out a few of my other faves. (Unattributed, so it’s a fun game to play at home. Movie/Character/Actor if you really want to show your skilz.)
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“Say…that’s a nice bike.”
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“Crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their women.”
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“Man, now that’s a real shame when folks be throwin’ away a perfectly good white boy like that…”
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“Yeah, vision is highly overrated.”
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“Lane, I’ve been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy!”
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“Alright, we waste him. No offense.”
As a couple of hints, two lines are from the same film. Two other lines are from the same director, and he’s got a new film with blue people in it coming out soon.
Anyhow, the film was funny and silly. And done in stop-motion, Wallace and Gromit kind of animation. There was a bit of innuendo, so adults might want to preview before showing it to kiddos, although I think it’d mostly go over the heads of the younglings.
Fiction Friday: Breathless
Sometimes I’m a fan of subplots in books, but they can be tricky. A good subplot can keep a reader interested when the primary narrative gets a bit dry. A bad one can get the reader flipping forward to find out when the real plot comes back.
Of course, why stop at plot/subplot? Why not just go with subplot/subplot/subplot/subplot? The tricky part in this case is in pulling the subplots together. Often, at least one of them gets left dangling (the “cement truck” sub from Clancy’s Executive Orders is a good example).
Well, with Breathless, the fourth Dean Koontz I’ve read this year, Mr. Koontz went with the multi-sub strategy. Six of them, if my count is correct. And I think it 
is. Here’s what I have, without getting too spoilery:
- A carpenter/former Army sniper and his dog, Merlin, encounter strange creatures.
- A veterinarian treats rescued dogs, then sees strange animal behaviors happening.
- A mathematician wins big money over and over at blackjack, then gives it away. Repeatedly.
- A vagrant hulk of a guy has an experience that sets him wandering off on an unknown quest.
- A sociopath attempts to take over his twin brother’s life but it doesn’t prove as simple as he’d expected.
- A guy arranges for his wife and son to be murdered.
The first two subplots tie together after a hundred pages or so. The third ties in after two hundred. Subplots four and six meet up about page three hundred, and subplot five dives for the finish line and just manages to squeeze itself in.
The book could’ve done without any but the first three subplots, but then we’d be looking at a hundred-and-eighty-page book. I almost suspect that Mr. Koontz had the ideas for the other subplots and might’ve written them into separate books but decided to beef up this one with them.
I didn’t find any of the subplots uninteresting, but I’m really not sure they added anything to the overall story. And the way in which subplots four and six fit in was extremely orthogonal. (Yes, I just wanted to use that word, and I’m not certain it makes sense the way I used it, but it works for me. And it was for Bob. Clear?)
I mused to myself during the reading that the book could’ve been called Plotless, but I think that’s overly harsh. Because by combining the various subplots, there’s an interesting whole in there.
Koontz has lately been writing a lot of fairly standard thrillers, with little or no supernatural/freaky stuff in them. Velocity, The Husband, Your Heart Belongs to Me, and Relentless stood in sharp contrast to, say, the Odd Thomas series or the Frankenstein series.
In fact, I broke my own No-Reading-Koontz-After-10pm rule for this one, because I didn’t find it even slightly unsettling, which is quite rare even for his more conventional works.
But Breathless wasn’t conventional. It’s more a science-fiction title, and actually could have been written by Michael Crichton, due to the prominent mathematician, who spouts some author opinions. At least I think they’re Koontzian opinions. And if I’m correct, he doesn’t put a lot of stock in Standard Darwinian theory.
(I’m just throwing this out there: Mr. Koontz, if you’re interested, I’d love to bounce a couple of questions off you. The publicity you’d get from such an interview could be easily measured as long as you’ve got extremely sensitive publicity detectors. We’re talking substantial, albeit tiny, blips on the detector. Talk to my people.)
Now, it probably sounds like I didn’t much care for Breathless, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It was easy to read, and I really liked the two main characters (three, if you count Merlin the Irish Wolfhound, which you do, because it’s a Koontz book).
It’s certainly not my favorite Koontz title. Lightning still is. And in his recent titles, I thought Relentless was absolutely chilling, and Life Expectancy was terrific fun.
And now, since I’ve finished a Koontz title, it’s time to request the next one from the Library. And now I find that there’s a new Frankenstein title planned for next year, and here I thought the series was done. The man is a machine!
(No new fiction titles yet added to the Library catalogue, so I’ll have to check back later.)
Next up is either Catching Fire (Hold Request finally came through) or James and the Giant Peach.