The Fate of Prophets
by Philip Ekstrom
|
Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
part 4
Interlude
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Subject: Too long
Well, I’m graduated, installed as a post-doc, and through the initial flurry. Embarrassed to say, I have only now really thought again about you and about that ethics bit to write.
Not quite right. I have been rubbed up against ethics by several events in my new situation. No rules could possibly be prescient enough to cover them exactly, but some badly needed covering. Thinking about the moral codes and commandments I know about, I admire how they convey general principles in their specific examples.
I can’t hope to match old codes worn smooth by the centuries, but my version — in story form — is attached.
Where are you? How are you doing? And all that. Please tell.
To: Andrew
From: Paul
Re: Too long
Another home run for our team! But do you really mean to prohibit self-defense?
I’m in Walla Walla, a small city with a small college in Eastern Washington. It also has a larger variety of churches than you will commonly find. I should fit right in. Counseling is not a growth industry here, but my psychology practice is slowly filling up. It’s now profitable, but I’m not going to start anything else yet. I want to get my savings built up again before doing anything that might be controversial. After all, I got thrown out once already. Do please keep at it. My namesake Paul wrote letters to young churches. Like to try a letter to mine?
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Re: Re: Too long
No, of course I didn’t mean that about self-defense. Glad that you caught the implication. A revised version is attached.
You have suggested remarkably few corrections. In fact, none other that I can remember. I’d appreciate (even if I didn’t like) hearing about anything else that you see to fix.
To: Andrew
From: Paul
Subject: Too long again
Looking back at the date on your last e-mail, I count up three years. Too long to be out of touch.
Local conservatives and dissident parishioners made it too hot for me in Walla Walla. When they organized a boycott of my practice, I had to go.
I’m getting established in Bend, Oregon, and will eventually try it all again. At least I think so now. If you ever do write a letter to young churches, and I hope that you will, could you perhaps promote a bit of doctrinal humility in view of our limited human understanding?
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Re: Too long again
Good to hear from you, and my face is red for letting it go this long. I have also had to move at the end of my post-doc. I’m at U of Wisconsin as a junior faculty member, teaching a heavy load of classes and trying to get an experiment going. If I thought prayer could help, I might pray for my research funding proposal. This is a stiff business to get into.
Still, I have been pecking away at something that may interest you. It’s not a Pauline letter, but rather a set of parables cast in the form of history. It goes between Origins and Raymond — a kind of object lesson in the fates of righteous and unrighteous groups, from families to bands to tribes and by extension to corporations and nations.
Natural consequences replace reward and punishment. Indeed, virtue turns out to lie in what an action does to, or for, the most vulnerable. Internal justice and kindness are enforced by natural selection: groups that take care of their people are more stable and, in the long run, stronger; not always, but often enough to make a crucial difference. But you will see all that when you read it.
Maybe your congregation could find something useful here.
To: Andrew
From: Paul
Re: Re: Too long again
Thank you! This is better than any letter would be. I will quit trying to tell you what to write about.
Roll on.
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Subject: Moriah
This time I pop up again after only a couple of months. The other day I had a little dispute with a divinity student which prompted a short piece. I’ll just insert it here.
The Book of Moriah
When young, Nathanael and his sister Moriah went often to the priest for instruction. In these lessons Nathanael heard commands and punishments. In his life he did all things with care and did little, for that was his nature. Moriah heard the same lessons promise joy and call for acts of service. In her life she did all things with vigor and did much, for that was her nature.
When grown, Nathanael went first to the desert with those that kept themselves apart to study holy books. It was his pleasure to know books and to think of the spirit.
Moriah went first to find any teacher who knew what she did not know. It was her pleasure to study the world, to learn any skill, and to know the manner of plants, of beasts and birds.
In time, Nathanael found place in the house of a wealthy man, to preach on holy days and to give instruction. In time Moriah went to teach where lived the poor and those from other lands.
When the ill or injured came to her, she cleansed and bound wounds and gave herbs as wise women of the countryside had taught her. She would lead children out from the city and show them the ways of birds and plants and animals, of clouds and winds.
Nathanael would also go to wild places to think and to pray, and on a day he met Moriah with her group of children. He said to her, “Should you neglect things of the spirit to study birdsong?”
Moriah replied: “You study things written in books by the hand of man, and you teach those things. That is well for you to do. I study a book written by the hand of he who made the world, and I teach what I learn in it. I honor him in doing so. Do you honor any other? I think that my study and my teaching are no less worthy than yours.”
On another day Nathanael said: “The Creator’s mysteries teach us his power. You do evil when you seek to explain them.”
Moriah replied: “His mysteries are wonders hidden from us by our ignorance. Uncovered, the wonder shines more brightly than the mystery for those willing to see.”
Nathanael stood silent as Moriah led the children away.
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Re: Moriah
Thanks for the charming piece. I can imagine the dispute that prompted it.
Here I go again with another suggestion. It begins with a curious bit left over from my time at seminary.
Do you know that the story of Jonah is not about the whale, at least not mostly? That’s a device left over from oral tradition and a big distraction for readers.
The book is not even about Jonah’s disobedience. The big deal is that Jonah was sent to preach about Yahweh in Nineveh, a foreign city. This marks a change away from the tribal god of a henotheistic people and toward one God of all peoples.
Before this broadening of their horizons, the ancient Hebrews recognized their neighbors’ territorial god Chemosh as a real god, just not their own god, Yahweh, who was better and stronger and who said that they weren’t to have another (like Chemosh) before him. But after that change of viewpoint, they hailed their Yahweh as the only god, the proper god of their neighbors as well. At least a little harder to invade and kill everybody, I suppose, when you share God.
What does that say to you?
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Re: Re: Moriah — and then Jonah
I think I’d do a rather different story centered around breaking down the wall between “them” and “us.” Of course, if it is to be a riff on Jonah, it needs a remarkable event, but you know me, it has to be a possible natural event. Anyway, this is what it says to me:
A firebrand xenophobe is urged by his friend to a broader viewpoint but isn’t having any. Then a stupendous storm, tornado-like, blows him into the air and across the border into the territory of his most-hated nation. He is detained there long enough to have enlightening experiences.
We’ll see what actually happens when — and if — I get around to writing it.
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Subject: Jasper
Writing that Jonah thing got me started off in a different direction for yet another. It is the longest one so far, and I’m a bit diffident about it. I want you to click on the document link right now and read the attachment before going any further here. Please form your own impressions before you read my notes below.
Don’t go below this line until you have done that.
Well, if you didn’t wait, you didn’t. I suppose I should show more trust, but in your place I would have trouble not peeking.
Jasper stands for any leader who has said, “Let my people go.” For Moses, of course, who said it to the Egyptians, and Esther to Ahasuerus, but also for Jesus who said it to Rome (though we don’t see much of that in the surviving records), Simon Bolivar who said it to Spain, Mohandas Gandhi who said it to England, Martin Luther King who said it to white USA, Desmond Tutu... and you get it. Jasper is not anchored in time or space so he can represent any or all. That’s why it is never clear who is holding his people down. There never were any Cataphalonians.
All on that list risked their life, and some lost it, as Jasper does.
When such a hero is recent enough so we can learn details, we usually see some character flaw on a scale comparable with his greatness of heart. I intend Jasper as an exemplar of courage and dedication, even if he is stubborn about some of the wrong things. He has a fully human kind of courage and dedication.
So — did I get there? How do I get closer?
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Subject: Apocalypse
I’ve been morose these last few months and have thought of writing an apocalypse. It would round out the set of stories and would be easy to start.
Imagine that I am writing several centuries ago, but with some kind of revelation of the then-future up to now and some way into our future. I could write how people will grow in knowledge and power, harness energies, communicate and travel in unimaginable ways, and act to improve lives. Not all lives at all times, and too much of it driven by greed, but fewer will starve, and the ones served best will live very well indeed.
But few will be sufficiently thoughtful to consider, much less understand, long-term costs and, increasingly, there will pile up a debt to nature that must eventually be paid — a debt that for a while no one will see in full.
There will be flickers of light: one seer (Thomas Malthus in 1798) will understand and try to teach about population and resources. Another (Svante Arrhenius in 1896) will understand and try to teach about the “greenhouse effect,” but no one then can guess that we will — or ever could — do things on a scale that could cause a planet-wide upset.
Then in another century (now) many will understand far more and will speak, and those who are willing to learn can know far more. They can know that disastrous climate change is imminent on the scale of one or two generations, but they will not meet the challenge.
Models of the impending changes are now good enough to make useful predictions, and the story could extend into the future with some confidence. It could be dramatic about situations like the empty center of the USA when the Ogallala aquifer runs dry, the mass migrations of people as southern farmlands turn into desert and arctic regions melt to become farmland.
About ugly events at borders. The souls of nations will be disfigured by how they defend themselves from what will eventually become a genuine invasion.
Things come further apart in ways I have not thought through. And always, too many people. I can’t see the resurrection of society after this. Maybe, if I were to write it, I would see a glimmer.
But I am saved from the doleful task. It would be too easy and too tempting to make it sound like ancient prediction. Someone would take it literally as an actual supernatural revelation, and I don’t want any part of that.
Ah well. I think that I have written the last of these little stories.
To: Andrew
From: Paul
Re: Apocalypse
Your apocalypse would be a wonderful platform for teaching social responsibility. Are you sure that you couldn’t write it?
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Re: Re: Apocalypse
Would you really try to teach virtue based on a lie?
To: Andrew
From: Paul
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Apocalypse
No, of course not. Someone really could take it literally. Too bad we don’t have a real revelation, but I suppose it would mean a huge upheaval in your worldview and mine to have any of those.
To: Andrew
From: Paul
Subject: Looking back
It’s hard to realize that we started our exchange more than twenty years ago, and that it has been ten since you finished your last piece. I have had all eight printed up as a book, and that book plays a crucial role in my work.
I may not have told you, but these days I start a church, get it stabilized, and then choose a member of the congregation to succeed me, someone with the right head, heart, and skills.
That is often the one who has been the most trouble. I train him or her as a minister, stay with my replacement for a while, gradually transferring the work and what little authority goes with it, and then I move on and start again. It’s usually a smooth transition, and I do better with each new start.
I’m now in Butte, Montana, in the middle of getting a church going here. Always a lot of work, most of the time rewarding.
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Re: Looking back
It has been all of those twenty years since we have seen each other, and that famine must end. Suddenly, I’m eager to see what you have made of my ideas and, of course, your own wisdom. In a month or so, I’ll be in your area for other reasons, and I’d love to see you. How would it work best?
But I count seven things that I wrote, not eight.
To: Paul
From: Andrew
Re: Looking back
Hello, hello. Are you OK? I have no reply to my last message and just realized that I also have no address or phone number for you.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Philip Ekstrom
