As the son-in-law of a career preacher, and a regular church attendee, and as someone who teaches research, I know that preacher's stories aren't all they're cracked up to be. In fact, anyone who's spent any time in church knows that preachers' stories are illustrative fish tales. As literary texts, they belong structurally to the genre of myth. I don't mean "myth" in the popular sense of meaning "false." I mean that as narrative constructs, preacher tales work in the same way as other mythical works such as old parables, nursery rhymes, and (dare I say) the Bible. Myths are texts use common archetypal tropes in order to teach the hearer and they put their emphasis, not necessarily on the historical and chronological accuracy of the story, but on the message. In other words, myths privilege truth over facts.
So, having foregrounded this post with that, I should say that I don't particularly expect preachers' tales to pass the muster of rigorous research. Nevertheless, when I tried to find a quote from a preacher's story I recently heard (because I wanted to use it on facebook), I got a first hand look at just how shifty and shaky the literary form of the sermon illustration is. So today, just for fun, I will present to you a dubious sermon illustration followed by my own research and finally a bit of speculative questioning as to how a story (actually, more correctly, stories as we shall see) goes from half true anecdote to sermon illustration.
First, the story itself, from the best of my memory, as I heard it from the pulpit:
Harmon Killebrew, the baseball great, once told a story from his childhood about his father. Harmon was the youngest of four brothers, and his father used to play catch with his boys in the front yard. One day, a neighbor, who was known for his well-manicured lawns walked by and said to Harmon's father, "You'll never grow any grass if you keep playing on it like that." Harmon's father looked at the man and replied, "I'm not trying to grow grass; I'm trying to grow boys."
Here is the actual quote from Killebrew (which is quoted to death all over the inter-webz):
My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys."
The best context I can find for Killebrew's quote, without doing the kind of serious actual research for which I may have to log into EBSCO, is from a 2004 interview in with Killebrew in Baseball Digest in which he says:
"Dad used to work with my brother and me on different things that were important in all sports--football, basketball, baseball. One evening we were out in the front yard, and my mother came out on the porch and said to my father, "Clay, the boys are digging holes in the yard, tearing up the grass." And my father went over to my mother and very sternly said: "Kate, we're not raising grass here. We're raising boys."
Though it doesn't particularly diminish the quality of the quote, the elements of the preacher's story are markedly different. Where is the idyllic scene of playing catch in the yard? Where is the turf-vain neighbor who acts as something of a villain, and who we can imagine flaunts his "Yard of the Month" sign and yells at neighbor kids who stray into his grass? Can this story have gone this wrong?
First of all, yes, of course it could. If one has ever played the game in which several people sit in a circle passing a message around to see how much it changes before it gets back to the message's originator, than one can understand how these tales get so out of control. One preacher hears a story in a father's day sermon and decides he likes it. The next year, when preparing his own father's day sermon, he says to himself, "self, we sure did like that story we heard last year. Now what was it again?" and he does the best he can from his memory of a sermon he half listened to a year before. The youth-intern from the nearby Christian college hears his sermon and sacks it away for a few years later when he'll be the pulpit minister for the kind small congregation that hires brand new grads. And so on the story goes.
Of course, with this story, there is something else, an element of the story which lets Reverend Preacher off the hook a little. And that is this fact: this story is not original (or at least not singular) with Killebrew. Instead, there is another version of this story that involves college football great Amos Alonzo Stagg.
In 1965, just before Stagg's death, the football coaching great and champion of the cause of amateur sports had a bunch of kids playing football on his front lawn. A neighbor told Stagg that if he allowed the kids to play "the grass with never grow that way." Stagg replied, "I'm not trying to grow grass. I'm trying to grow kids."
So Stagg's story fills in the missing elements from the Killebrew story. In Stagg's story, we see the neighbor presented as a character instead of the father's own wife being used as the foil, and the quote is a bit more direct (substitute "boys" for "kids" and it's exact.) What I can't yet be sure if is what these stories have to do with one another. Did the preacher's story grow out of an accidental combination of the two, as if one of the preachers in the archetypal chain heard both stories and confused them? Did in fact one of these men (Staggs and Killebrew) steal the saying from the other? Reportedly, Staggs made his remark shortly before his death in 1965, by which time Harmon Sr. had been dead for twelve years. But I don't know when Killebrew started telling his version of the story. So did Staggs borrow from Killebrew's language when he made his remark to his neighbor, or did Killebrew borrow from Stagg's language when he began telling his own childhood story about his father sternly replying to his mother's concern about the yard? Or did in fact both men make remarkably similar statements, allowing for later preacher story confusion? I can't say for certain, as it is 0034 hrs and I'm tired of researching something that will be of no use to me in my dissertation. More on this controversy as I get bored enough to pick the research back up.
Monday, July 05, 2010
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Thoughts on State Sponsored Death and Old Testament Law
Anyone who knows my politics knows of my ambivalence toward the death penalty. On one hand, I do not doubt the justice of it. If a man kills another, it is fitting that he should be killed. One need only look back to the Noahic Covenant: "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood me shed" (Gen 9.6) (of course, I'm not sure that this verse is a command for the state to kill murderers so much as it is a karmic statement like "live by the sword, die by the sword"). Also, as a man who has been face to face with horrific personal tragedy caused by another's crime, I feel a deep longing for justice. When I here about the nine year old child who had been killed in a drive-by, or I talk to the woman who has been raped, or see the body of a brutally murdered man whose only crime was to become addicted, I cry out for something to be done. There are some crimes for which only death can atone.
So it is not the justice of the death penalty that I question. Rather, it is the state's competence in deciding who should live and die. When people bring up the jurisprudence of the Bible as support for a state sponsored death penalty, I am quick to remind them that the Old Testament nation of Israel was a theocracy. Therefore, at least within the narrative context of the Bible, God himself was the appeals process. It was God who ultimately decided who lived and who died. From a historical perspective, it may be optimistic to say that God's oversight prevented the killing of the falsely accused, but it's not out of the question to say that this would be the Bible's perspective. In our own imperfect and secular legal system, on the other hand, we can make no claim to the ultimate oversight of God himself (although some probably would).
When one looks at our system, one must consider the examples of Willie Francis, whose story is told by Gilbert King in his book, The Execution of Willie Francis. Willie was a seventeen year old African-American sentenced to death for the murder of a Louisiana pharmacist. He was convicted on evidence so lousy that, today, he would not have even been charged. He was sent to the electric chair twice when the intoxicated jail trustee entrusted to electrocute him the first time botched the wiring, sending Willie enough electricity to torture him, but not to kill him. One must consider the cases of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz who were sentenced to death and to life in prison respectively for a murder they did not commit and who spent thirteen years in prison until DNA evidence exonerated them. Consider the men sent to death row on the false testimony of Joyce Gilchrist whose testimony helped lead to the execution of eleven men (we may never know if some of these were innocent), and who was willing to trade men's lives for her own career ambitions.
I don't use these examples to say that our criminal justice system is irreversibly corrupt. Indeed, I don't believe that such is the case. By and large, our system is dominated by men and women who are trying to do the right thing, and I truly believe that our system gets it right almost every time. But the cost of failure is so high. Get it wrong, even once, and you've killed an innocent person. And killing an innocent person makes you a murderer. And so, while I long for the justice that seems to come with the death penalty, I find that I can't quite support it either. And this is the view that for a couple of years I have stuck with.
Then, a few days ago, I listened to stories about serial rapists and listened to a few interrogations in which these men talked about their crimes. Many of these men spoke flippantly about actions that had forever changed the lives of their victims. Some of them masturbated while speaking to detectives or even while listening to their victims' testimony in open court. It is easy to see the unmitigated evil in the hearts of these men.
This got me thinking about the reasons the Old Testament supported the killing of their worst criminals. Proponents of our death penalty will often argue one or all of the following points: 1) putting these criminals to death insures that they will never hurt another innocent person, 2) putting criminals to death sends a message to other would-be criminals that they too will be killed if they commit these crimes and 3) putting criminals to death saves on the cost of feeding and sheltering these criminals for life. Each of these arguments is easily defeated. Argument 1 is easily countered by saying, "so does putting them in prison for life," (and retort usually countered with argument 3). Argument 2, a logical anecdotal argument, seems to be invalidated by crime stats. Though we are the only developed Western nation that still has a death penalty, we are also the nation among these with the highest rates of violent crime. The fear of death seems to have done little to stem violent crime in our country. Thus, the commission of these crimes seems to have little, if any, correlation to the severity of punishment possible. Finally, argument 3 is just flat false. It costs more money to put a criminal to death than it does to feed them for life because of the expense of the appeals process. Even a wealthy defendant will become indigent after his first trial. This is because, in most cases, whatever he does not spend on his defense, will be seized for victim's compensation funds. Thus, his appeals will all be tax-payer funded. It could be (and often is) argued here that the appeals process could be expedited so that is is less expensive, but the types of injustices that I have already pointed out show the danger in that; If Dennis Fritz's appeals process had been expedited, he would have been executed.
Interestingly, you see no arguments like these in the Old Testament Law. I think this is explained by the differences in the way we see crime and punishment. Modern Americans see the law from a very individual perspective; what needs to happen to this individual for this crime. Hebrews, on the other hand, thought of crime and punishment as communal acts how does this person's crimes relate to us as a people. I don't mean this in the same sense as when we ask, "what is the danger to the public if we allow this person to remain at large." But rather, I think their question may have been, "what have we, as a people, done through this person." Hebrews saw a type of connectivity between people and other people and indeed through people and creation that we do not. Thus, scripture explains its use of the death penalty thus, "If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death at the evidence of witnesses. . .So you shall not pollute the land in which you are" (Num 36.30-33). As anyone who is even a little familiar with the Bible knows, there are many other offenses in the OT for which one should either be put to death or expelled from the country. Interestingly, in all these statutes, the idea of punishment is never really about stopping the crime from occurring again, sending an example to the people, or even about punishment at all. Instead, the OT is obsessed with cleansing the land (and the people) of evil. The Hebrew people killed their offenders, not because they deserved it (though they may have), but because they believed that the evil in one person remained in the community as a whole. I don't mean to say that they knew that if they allowed an evil person to remain that the person would continue to do evil to others and thus he had to be stopped. Rather, because the evil person belonged to our community, so did the evil within him. And the people of God simply cannot abide evil.
These thoughts do not necessarily change my mind about our death penalty today. After all, God no longer exists within a particular state as he did with Israel, but among a people, not defined by an earthly government. So I don't see OT Law as jurisprudence for our own secular law. Instead, these thoughts make me wonder how we, as a people, are effected by the presence of evil among us. Does the evil within one of the rapists I listened to the other day remain, at least in part, within me as well? Does it pollute not just our society but indeed creation as a whole that we abide evil? And if so, what do we, as a people, do about it?
So it is not the justice of the death penalty that I question. Rather, it is the state's competence in deciding who should live and die. When people bring up the jurisprudence of the Bible as support for a state sponsored death penalty, I am quick to remind them that the Old Testament nation of Israel was a theocracy. Therefore, at least within the narrative context of the Bible, God himself was the appeals process. It was God who ultimately decided who lived and who died. From a historical perspective, it may be optimistic to say that God's oversight prevented the killing of the falsely accused, but it's not out of the question to say that this would be the Bible's perspective. In our own imperfect and secular legal system, on the other hand, we can make no claim to the ultimate oversight of God himself (although some probably would).
When one looks at our system, one must consider the examples of Willie Francis, whose story is told by Gilbert King in his book, The Execution of Willie Francis. Willie was a seventeen year old African-American sentenced to death for the murder of a Louisiana pharmacist. He was convicted on evidence so lousy that, today, he would not have even been charged. He was sent to the electric chair twice when the intoxicated jail trustee entrusted to electrocute him the first time botched the wiring, sending Willie enough electricity to torture him, but not to kill him. One must consider the cases of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz who were sentenced to death and to life in prison respectively for a murder they did not commit and who spent thirteen years in prison until DNA evidence exonerated them. Consider the men sent to death row on the false testimony of Joyce Gilchrist whose testimony helped lead to the execution of eleven men (we may never know if some of these were innocent), and who was willing to trade men's lives for her own career ambitions.
I don't use these examples to say that our criminal justice system is irreversibly corrupt. Indeed, I don't believe that such is the case. By and large, our system is dominated by men and women who are trying to do the right thing, and I truly believe that our system gets it right almost every time. But the cost of failure is so high. Get it wrong, even once, and you've killed an innocent person. And killing an innocent person makes you a murderer. And so, while I long for the justice that seems to come with the death penalty, I find that I can't quite support it either. And this is the view that for a couple of years I have stuck with.
Then, a few days ago, I listened to stories about serial rapists and listened to a few interrogations in which these men talked about their crimes. Many of these men spoke flippantly about actions that had forever changed the lives of their victims. Some of them masturbated while speaking to detectives or even while listening to their victims' testimony in open court. It is easy to see the unmitigated evil in the hearts of these men.
This got me thinking about the reasons the Old Testament supported the killing of their worst criminals. Proponents of our death penalty will often argue one or all of the following points: 1) putting these criminals to death insures that they will never hurt another innocent person, 2) putting criminals to death sends a message to other would-be criminals that they too will be killed if they commit these crimes and 3) putting criminals to death saves on the cost of feeding and sheltering these criminals for life. Each of these arguments is easily defeated. Argument 1 is easily countered by saying, "so does putting them in prison for life," (and retort usually countered with argument 3). Argument 2, a logical anecdotal argument, seems to be invalidated by crime stats. Though we are the only developed Western nation that still has a death penalty, we are also the nation among these with the highest rates of violent crime. The fear of death seems to have done little to stem violent crime in our country. Thus, the commission of these crimes seems to have little, if any, correlation to the severity of punishment possible. Finally, argument 3 is just flat false. It costs more money to put a criminal to death than it does to feed them for life because of the expense of the appeals process. Even a wealthy defendant will become indigent after his first trial. This is because, in most cases, whatever he does not spend on his defense, will be seized for victim's compensation funds. Thus, his appeals will all be tax-payer funded. It could be (and often is) argued here that the appeals process could be expedited so that is is less expensive, but the types of injustices that I have already pointed out show the danger in that; If Dennis Fritz's appeals process had been expedited, he would have been executed.
Interestingly, you see no arguments like these in the Old Testament Law. I think this is explained by the differences in the way we see crime and punishment. Modern Americans see the law from a very individual perspective; what needs to happen to this individual for this crime. Hebrews, on the other hand, thought of crime and punishment as communal acts how does this person's crimes relate to us as a people. I don't mean this in the same sense as when we ask, "what is the danger to the public if we allow this person to remain at large." But rather, I think their question may have been, "what have we, as a people, done through this person." Hebrews saw a type of connectivity between people and other people and indeed through people and creation that we do not. Thus, scripture explains its use of the death penalty thus, "If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death at the evidence of witnesses. . .So you shall not pollute the land in which you are" (Num 36.30-33). As anyone who is even a little familiar with the Bible knows, there are many other offenses in the OT for which one should either be put to death or expelled from the country. Interestingly, in all these statutes, the idea of punishment is never really about stopping the crime from occurring again, sending an example to the people, or even about punishment at all. Instead, the OT is obsessed with cleansing the land (and the people) of evil. The Hebrew people killed their offenders, not because they deserved it (though they may have), but because they believed that the evil in one person remained in the community as a whole. I don't mean to say that they knew that if they allowed an evil person to remain that the person would continue to do evil to others and thus he had to be stopped. Rather, because the evil person belonged to our community, so did the evil within him. And the people of God simply cannot abide evil.
These thoughts do not necessarily change my mind about our death penalty today. After all, God no longer exists within a particular state as he did with Israel, but among a people, not defined by an earthly government. So I don't see OT Law as jurisprudence for our own secular law. Instead, these thoughts make me wonder how we, as a people, are effected by the presence of evil among us. Does the evil within one of the rapists I listened to the other day remain, at least in part, within me as well? Does it pollute not just our society but indeed creation as a whole that we abide evil? And if so, what do we, as a people, do about it?
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