The Dilettante's Dilemma

I met with a group of friends this week, some around the table and some by Zoom, and failed to resolve an issue. Again. I imagined, in preparing for the session, that I would have to push a little to get through the initial opposition, which I expected. The “initial opposition” got stronger the more we talked about it. I never did get through it.

Looking back, I think I have an idea about why. As you might expect, the two sides were not arguing about the same thing. My favorite example of this kind of dilemma is the “debate” about abortion, where one side argues that saving lives is important and the other that the right to decide is important. Neither wants to argue on the others’ terrain, so the argument goes on.

The texts before this group were two parables from Luke. I should admit here that this was a Bible study group, but it was a secular Bible study group. The quick back-of-the-envelope test I use is this: was the discussion of these texts different in any important way than a discussion of two texts from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? If the kinds of argumentation were the same, I get to claim the designation “secular” for my Bible study group.

The two parables are ordinarily called the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16—21) and the Wicked Steward (now, often the Cunning Steward) in Luke 16:1—8. My argument was that there is a single trait that unites these two parables. It is the duty of any wise person to know that the life they are living is brief and to take the resources they currently have (or, as we will see, have access to) and invest them in the next life, where they will be more important.

That’s it. The Steward passes that test; the Fool does not.

A number of members of the group took issue with that simple lesson. They wanted to see in Luke’s parables an interest in the clear violation of enduring norms. Theft, in the case of the Steward. They pointed out that the Steward defrauded his employer, as the text clearly says. That is true. And the master says not one word about it. He praises the Steward’s “astuteness.” Luke says not one word about it. Jesus has a saying appended to the end in which the main trait to be considered is astuteness; Jesus is in favor of it. You cannot find an interest in the Steward’s dishonesty in any of those sources. If you find it, you brought with you or you imported it from other texts.

We find that the Rich Fool was not astute. He had a short term surplus—as did the Steward—and the surplus actually belonged to him. This is the difference between having a safe full of your money and having a safe full of someone else’s money but you know the combination of the safe. The Fool has the money; the Steward knows the combination. Nevertheless, he is called a fool because he does not see the end coming—the narrator knows, but the fool does not, that he will die that same night—and therefore fails to plan for it.

It is true that the fool that makes plans to spend the money on himself in lavish ways, It is also true that there are many scriptures that disapprove of spending your money in lavish ways. None of them are here. The battle as I see it, is between Luke, who says, “I want to talk about astute planning” and those members of my group who say, “You can’t talk about that without also talking about how wrong theft is.” Or luxury. [1]

We can make this little friction a good deal more respectable by considering it more generally. We could say that there are two ways to read the Bible: in little pieces or as one large lump. In the pieces way, the guiding questions are about what the author is saying in this passage, to whom, and why. In the lump way, you imagine that “the Bible” has a position on whatever we are studying at the moment, and you take that position into account in each passage. [2]

There are many passages that condemn theft, for instance. In the lump view, those condemnations ought to be imported into other passages where theft is alleged, but not specifically identified. The pieces view is that the passage under consideration is best studied as a topic of its own. What is being considered HERE is the question.

A very general concern for “fairness” will require that the Steward be condemned for cheating and that the Farmer be condemned for the way he used his wealth. He really should have saved it against the coming lean years or he really should have shared it with his neighbors or given it to the poor. My view is that importing into Luke’s presentation a concern for “fairness”—which Luke fails to show in many of the Jesus stories he offers—saddles him with someone else’s concern unfairly.

That’s my summary of the arguments. I may be a little more sensitive to this issue than I would otherwise be because I know what other stories are coming up later in the term and a number of them are much worse than these.

[1] I know we have forgotten it, but “luxury” was once the name given to a deadly sin.
[2] There is an intermediate position that I like much better. It takes the themes or the word choices of a particular author into account. “Most of the time (many citations here) when Matthew uses this word, he means X.” That doesn’t guarantee that Matthew means that in this passage, but it does give some guidance.

Here is a line of dialogue from the Netflix show The Diplomat, which I enjoyed the first time I saw it and have enjoyed more every time since. This is a conversation between Kate Wyler, Ambassador to Great Britain (Keri Russell) and Stuart Heyford (Ato Assandoh). her principal staff aide.

Except that those designations are only superficial. The White House actually wants Kate to be the next vice president and Stuart is part of the team vetting her. Kate doesn’t know either of those things when she agrees to come to London; Stuart knew both.

What Kate knows is that she wants to be part of the diplomatic mission to Iran where she is a veteran and knowledgeable diplomat. Stuart keeps bringing up the vice presidency, which she resists and which eventually irks her into doing what she does in this little clip, which begins at 12:52 of Season 1, Episode 4. I’ll pass along the dialogue and enough remarks to tell you why I liked it so much.

This is one of those awful times when someone who thinks a joke is hilariously funny, tries to explain just how it is funny. Such attempts are notoriously unfunny, but there is a sublety to the interplay that I am hoping you will enjoy.

The Characters

It is easy to like these two people. He appears earnest and reasonable. She appears decided and energetic. Kate is a ball of fire. She is decisive and action-oriented. When we hear one of her pair of secret service agents say, “There she goes again.” we know what he is talking about.

The Setting

They are in her office. She is sitting at the table. He is standing in the middle of the room. I’ll bring the dialogue down to the line I want to highlight and then talk about it a little. Here is Phase 1.

Kate: I don’t want to talk about the vice presidency

Stuart:That’s fine

Stuart:Is Mr. Wyler the reason? Would you consider it if your marriage wasn’t—

Kate: A dead horse?

—if it wasn’t the issue?

Kate: It is the issue.

Phase 2

Stuart takes a moment and begins revising his approach. He knows he is pushing a topic his boss does not want to consider. He probably expects her to continue to be as candid as she has been. That means that he starts to miss some cues that he would otherwise have caught. I missed them too the first time through.

Stuart: People have… arrangements

Kate: Like what?

Kate knows exactly what Stuart is talking about. From this point onward, bringing him out to where the ice is thin is what she is after.

Stuart: Whatever…works.

And here is the line. This dynamo of a diplomat, candid, confident, and action-oriented, manages to project a halting, wide-eyed confusion that requires him to continue even if he is beginning to sense already that this is not going the way he hoped.

Kate: I— I just—-I don’t see how it would, I mean. How would it work?

Stuart gives a careful answer. This is not going the way he thought it would. She is neither accepting nor rejecting.

Stuart: Separate bedrooms. Separate lives. It’s a professional partnership.

We know now just what “works” means in the question “how would it work?” but at this point it is too late

Kate: Sex or no sex?

Stuart: Um…whatever you want. You get to make the rules.

There is a long pause here. She is still seated at the table. She looks up at him inquiringly. Stuart is beginning to get wary but he is too late.

Phase 3

Kate: Like, just oral?

Stuart sees now that he has been being led astray for most of the conversation. Everything since “It is the issue,” probably. Now he is just looking for a way to end it.

Stuart : Ma’am, are you messing with me?

Kate: I was gonna ask for a drawing.

I think that answer counts as a Yes.

Stuart: Sorry. It’s none of my business.

And the point has been made. Right. It is none of your business and don’t mess with me. Actually, we know that it is part of his business. He has been given specific instructions by the White House to do what he is doing. But she doesn’t know that—yet—and he knows, White House or not—that she is not someone to tolerate being messed with.

But what makes it funny is that Wiley Coyote moment when he realizes that he has just run off the cliff and knows that there is nothing he can do about it.

I have a fantasy in which the people who make the points I like best use language that makes sense. The way I look at it, the language I use actually does make sense and if these other people would just use it, it would make me happy.

As you might suspect, I have an example in mind. David Brooks wrote a column today in which he appreciated Tim Keller’s insight into life in a very broad way. One of the teachings Brooks cites is Keller’s emphasis on what he calls “self-sacrifice.”

I love the idea. I strongly dislike the language.

Here is the idea: “The only way forward is to recognize that your own selfishness is the only selfishness you can control; your self-centeredness is the problem here. Love is an action, not just an emotion, and the marriage will only thrive if both people in it make daily sacrificial commitments to each other, learning to serve and, harder still, be served. “Whether we are husband or wife,” the Kellers wrote, “we are not to live for ourselves but for the other. And that is the hardest yet single most important function of being a husband or a wife in marriage.”

What kind of thing is this “self” that is sacrificed in building a stable cooperative marriage? The first step is to define “the self” as a shrunken grasping little demon. In order to work, this will have to be an essential description. This not something all of us are vulnerable to from time to time. This has to be who we truly are all the time. This is what a “self” is.

Well…that’s nonsense. Selves are much more complex; they are also dynamic. They are mixtures of traits we approve of and traits we deplore. They are not things that need to be sacrificed.
If a self is necessarily and essentially as defined above, there is no reason not to sacrifice it. But who will do the sacrificing? Who else is there? You see the problem. Even the proposed treatment defies the diagnosis.

Here’s some better language. In offering this language, I have nothing more in mind that to affirm the “message” Keller was preaching according to Brooks. In order to achieve a very important thing—real relationship—you have to curtail some aspects of your self. Which aspects? Those that are incompatible with the new good that you want to pursue.

How bad is that? I desire to love and serve, and to be loved and served by, my partner. Together, we can be so much more than either of us could be alone. So I sacrifice the parts of my life that are incompatible with this new relationship; I do it willingly and gladly because I want what I can have only if I do.

It’s all good. It’s not all fun, but it is all good.

This is no more “self-sacrifice” than the changes a high-scoring point guard makes in adapting to a new team. He can’t be ignored by the defense because everyone knows he is a good shot. So he becomes the team leader in assists; the team thrives; the fans are ecstatic. What has been “sacrificed?” The old role.

The language of self-sacrifice does us all a disservice. What the self gains by sustained and mutually beneficial exchange does not need to be sacrificed. Such an active and thriving self does not need to be sacrificed. It needs to be celebrated.

I know Eleanor Rigby as background music. I’ve never actually paid any attention to the words. But I belong to a singing group that is getting ready to sing a Beatles concert and we are learning some Beatles songs. Kind of.

I have learned that Beatles songs are hard to sing unless you are the Beatles and my guess is that they sang them differently from night to night and they were all “right” because they were, after all, the Beatles. But if you look at the music, you see right away that the notation and the rhythm are just suggestions. In the first line—hum a little “all the lonely people” to yourself and you will know where I am—the “the” comes on the second half of the first beat; the “lone” of “lonely” comes on the second half of the second beat; -ly comes on the second half of the third beat; and the “peo-“ of “people” on the second half of the fourth beat.

Briefly, none of the words starts on the beat. No big deal? Hah! There is only one way to be on the beat but there are a dozen ways to be “off the beat.” And if you are singing as an ensemble, you have to all choose the same amount of “off the beat” all the time. Music notation was not developed for that level of cooperation.

You can be as exact as you like with the notation and the best you can do is sing it “right.” But any audience will tell you that singing if “right” sounds wrong. And it is wrong. The music values will get you all in the same parking lot; they won’t get you in the same slot—particularly if the slot you are all supposed to be in changes from night to night.

That’s why “actually being the Beatles” is the only really good solution. People hear what you are doing and assume it is what you intended to do and that it is therefore “right.” Singing it “right,” which is the best you can do by looking at the sheet music, sounds wrong.

Some years ago I was singing in the tenor section of a choir which was trying to learn to sing a response that had been written by a guy in my section. I was sitting right next to him. I could hear him singing his music and he was singing it wrong. There were three quarter rests in the first line. He gave each of them a different value and he did it the same way every time. In other words, he knew what he was doing.

I was right on the edge of getting snarky with him. I was singing it exactly the way the music said to sing it and he was not. Then, finally, it occurred to me that he was singing it the way he wanted it and it was the notation that was flawed. If there was a sign for pause for “about two thirds of a quarter rest” and another sign for “just a little more than one third a quarter rest” then the music could have been printed the way he was singing it. There is not.

Finally, I gave up and did what the Beatles do. I learned to sing it the way he was singing it. That means sensing how he is about to sing it and then singing it that way at the times when he sang it that way. It wasn’t easy, but is was exciting and singing with the composer was a real kick.

That’s the musical part of the Eleanor Rigby problem. The second part is easier. How on earth did this become a popular song? It’s not about love. It’s not about loss. It’s not about cheating. It’s about pervasive and meaningless failure. Oh boy!

Eleanor Rigby waits at a window in a church where a wedding has been. Not hers, obviously. She is “wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door.” It is not her face. She keeps it handy in case she has to wear it. As an image of profound alienation, I don’t see how Lennon and McCartney could have done any better.

Father McKenzie is busy writing the words of a sermon no one will hear. You would have to know a great deal to know that no one will hear the sermon, but Lennon and McCartney need it only as marker of futility and it does that really well. As does the last line, which remarks on the effects of Father McKenzie’s funeral liturgy: “no one was saved.” Saved? Really? Were they supposed to be? Well not really, but if you can hang a priest simultaneously for trying to do some pointless thing and also for failing at it, this is a marvelous line.

Eleanor is buried at the service where Father McKenzie gives the homily that doesn’t save anyone. No one attended the service. Eleanor lived an inconsequential life. The only marker suggested is that she might have left progeny behind and she did not. Her name was buried along with her body.

So these four young men with Liverpudlian accents get up and sing a rhythmically challenging song about a priest and a young woman who are living or have lived inconsequential lives. And the crowd goes wild.

Right.

We are not cheap moviegoers, really. It is just that we do stay and watch until the last credit has appeared on the screen. That is how Bette and I found out that the movie we had just seen, The Quiet Girl, was made from a book called Foster, by Claire Keegan. We stopped on the way home and got it out of the library.

I have enjoyed reading it several times now. The language is unusual. It is told from the viewpoint of a young girl; younger, I think, in the book than in the film.

The first line that really caught my attention was spoken by the husband of the family who agreed to keep the girl for the summer. his name is John Kinsella. Here’s the line; then I’ll give a little context.

“Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.”

John Kinsella’s wife, Edna, agreed to let a very nosy neighbor take the girl home early from a wake. The neighbor abused Edna’s trust by asking the girl a flock of inappropriate questions. That is what John Kinsella is referring to.

‘Strange things happen,’ he says. ‘A strange thing happened to you tonight, but Edna meant no harm. It’s too good, she is. She wants to find the good in others, and sometimes her way of finding that is to trust them, hoping she’ll not be disappointed, but she sometimes is.’

He laughs then, a queer, sad laugh. I don’t know what to say. ‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’

“Always remember that as a thing you never need do,” he says. That is the lesson that belongs with the proverb which begins, :Many’s the man…”

The summer ends—a truly wonderful summer for the Kinsellas and for the girl—and it is time for her to be taken home. Her mother is immediately suspicious.

‘What happened at all?’ Ma says, now that the car is gone.

‘Nothing,’ I say
.
‘Tell me.’

‘Nothing happened.’ This is my mother I am speaking to but I have learned enough, grown enough, to know that what happened is not something I need ever mention. It is my perfect opportunity to say nothing.

Look at the sequence of the girl’s reflections. “Learned enough to know, grown enough to know…” And then her conclusion. This is it; this is the time. “It is my perfect opportunity to say nothing.

The girl grew up in a lot of other ways, too, but this is the first one that caught my eye and the one I still like best. The perfect opportunity to say nothing.