Truckin' Through Genesis

Robert Alter reviews '60s comic artist R. Crumb's illustrated version of Genesis. I can't wait to get my copy from Amazon, though I don't think it will quite work for my 5th grade religion students at St. John's. Like Torah's first book, Crumb's illustrations are rated R. That's Abraham at left, about to sacrifice Isaac.

Six Recessions and A Depression

It's a sunny afternoon at St. John's, and the 5th graders await a lesson on Abram and Sarai (When's the change to Abraham and Sarah? Anyone?... Anyone? That's right: In Genesis 17. It's on the test, kids!). As always, a few indecent people are behaving indecently, and yet the vast majority are doing the best they can. On the bread front, housing numbers are encouraging, the Dow's up nearly 2% (as of five minutes ago, at least), and Ben Bernanke is steady in the buggy. On the circuses front, the AIG scandal is better than "Dallas." And now TIME has this chart on job losses, which makes the Bush-Obama recession of '08-'09 look an awful lot like Carter-Reagan's of '80-'82. Still terrible for those who are suffering. But there's hope this week, suddenly, isn't there?, that isn't not like Hoover-FDR's. Hope that it seemed almost reckless to feel just two weeks ago.

There's just something about Lent.

"As Good As Dead": Sermon For II Lent

Reading "Watchmen" (to catch up with a 20-year-old pop cultural phenomenon as well as plumb its Nixonian resonances), I started having apocalyptic dreams as the story's looming nuclear holocaust resonated with the world's real-life economic nightmare. Friends and fellow worshipers tell me they're feeling oppressed by dread that bad times will get even worse as well as by the private emergencies of sickness and alienation that plague the people of God irrespective of the Dow Jones average.

One friend told me that her limbs felt heavy and weak from constant worry over a problem at home. Because of the scripture readings for this week, her comment reminded me 100-year-old Abram (later Abraham). He and his wife Sarai had no heir. Everybody in town was no doubt gossiping about him. He was exhausted and disillusioned and probably didn't have a tooth in his head. In his letter to the Romans, Paul says Abram was "as good as dead." And yet on whom did God settle the responsibility for building a whole universe of faith? None other than Abraham, father of many nations.

In a riveting interview last week with Terry Gross, Donovan Campbell, who commanded a Marine platoon in Iraq in 2004, said the only way he could do his job was decide that he was already dead, a mind trick that freed him to make effective and indeed moral choices in the most chaotic, amoral environment possible. By the same token, Jesus counsels his followers to accept the inevitability of his death so his (and our) triumph over it (and over all deathly things, including dread) could be revealed.

We're all as good as dead. And yet God wants us to feel safe, free, and bracingly alive. Check out Campbell's book, Joker One. My Sunday sermon is here.