Lincoln Movie: Does the End Justify the Means?

The Moral Conundrum of Spielberg’s Lincoln.

After the brutally long season of political campaigning where standards of truth-telling were constantly butchered and ignored, I hoped that spending 2 1/2 hours soaking in Steven Spielberg’s movie about “Honest Abe” would purge some of the cynicism about American politics from my soul. I watched the movie in a crowded Texas theater and during the previews, wondered what it would be like to watch Lincoln in a location where many are actively petitioning to secede from the union and some still seem to be fighting the Civil War--er “War of Northern Aggression.”  How uncomfortable would this experience be for them? Would they boo when the slaves were freed or cheer when Lincoln was assassinated?  Did they know what they were getting into?

As the plot unfolded, it didn’t take long to realize that I didn’t know what I was getting into, that with every frame of the movie I was growing more and more uneasy and disillusioned with my hero. I had known that our 16th president wasn’t a consistent champion of racial equality. He had even remarked that if he could save the union without freeing a single slave, he’d do it. But that was never a real option. What I knew was that despite his misgivings he ended up on the right side of history and did the right thing when it counted the most and paid the ultimate price for it.

The film hit me in the gut with images of Lincoln intentionally misleading congress, orchestrating a scheme to bribe representatives with government positions to pass the 13th amendment, which freed the slaves. The sense of corruption was palpable. At several points, I yearned for the “better angels” of Abraham Lincoln’s character to rise up and show him a better path but at every point he doubles-down, using every trick up his sleeve. He comes across as being as shrewd and calculating as Michael Corleone from The Godfather. Despite his innate humility, he realizes that as president he is “clothed with immense power” and he intends to use it. Spielberg casts the dirty tricks as comic relief within the darkness of the time, but it was more nauseating than funny.

Do the Ends Justify the Means?

I know of no credible ethical system which suggests that the ends justify the means.  Eventually one goes too far, falling into the delusion that one is beyond the law, beyond the normal rules of ethics. In our time, any politician caught doing what Lincoln did would not only get kicked out of office, he or she would rightly spend time behind bars. Yet, the hard truth is that Lincoln was right. History opened one small window of opportunity in which to pass the amendment prior to the war’s end. If he hadn’t employed sleazeball tactics, he never would have passed the amendment. All subsequent efforts for civil rights and equality rest on the foundation of the amendment to free the slaves. I cannot imagine how worse our history would be without passage of that amendment.    

Maybe the point of the movie is to say: grow up. This happens all the time, it’s how legislation always gets passed. Even the most noble legislation that we’ve ever passed only occurred because our most revered president got down in the mud and played to the worst elements of human nature.  If the old School House Rock commercial showed how a bill really becomes a law, it would have been banned from children’s programming. Yet we have this ideal, this notion that it could be better, it should be better and we should always strive to “perfect our union.”

The Moral Arc of the Universe

Martin Luther King Jr. said that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Over time, change gets made and we improve--justice works its way into our lives. It’s the grand hope that we must have to affect change. Sometimes we fail to act because we know our actions are flawed; our intentions aren’t perfect, we benefit from the labors of someone else, we “reap where we did not sow.”  Lincoln and King are woven together because of Lincoln’s choice to use his political schemes--they bent the arc. The real question that comes to us when we see our reflections in that arc is: what will we do? Will we have the courage to act?


Lincoln’s Warts

The essence of the entire movie is spoken by Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) when he says that the most liberating constitutional amendment in history had been “passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.”  After watching his methods for 2 and 1/2 hours, “pure” isn’t the first word that comes to mind. His purity wasn’t a moral purity; it was more about his intention to do what he felt was right for the country--no matter what it cost.

As a society, we keep putting people on pedestals where they cannot possibly remain. No one is that good, not even Lincoln. Yes, he accomplished one of the most important triumphs in for the history of humanity, but he also employed morally repugnant means to accomplish this feat. We know there are no perfect people; so why does it hurt so much when we take a peek behind the curtain and see our idols as they really are?

In the movie, Lincoln wishes he could travel to the holy land to walk where David and Solomon walked. It was an interesting twist to remind us of these two biblical heroes who were fundamentally flawed. As my seminary professor said the Bible shows us these men “warts and all.” Scripture doesn’t shy away from revealing that David committed adultery and murder and Solomon subjugated his own people into slavery. Similarly, our history does not need to deify Lincoln, pretending his only wart was on his upper lip. We can walk away from more honest presentations of him still feeling inspired to do what we can to bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice.

Mike Huckabee Picking and Choosing for Political Gain

A telling moment occurred when Jon Stewart interviewed Gov. Mike Huckabee regarding a political television commercial that Huckabee narrated. A tight smile stretched across Gov. Mike Huckabee’s face when Jon Stewart asked him if gay marriage and abortion are the only things that God cares about in American politics. What about poverty and politicians who’d cut programs for the poor? Huckabee tried swat away the pesky question by saying it was only a sixty second commercial and “you have to pick and choose.”  Interview

Why is it that the religious right never chooses to pick out the scripture passages regarding the poor, the vulnerable, the immigrants in our land, those who suffer under oppressive working conditions? The number of times these themes arise in scripture are like a mountain compared to the molehill of verses that link (indirectly at best) to gay marriage or abortion. Gov. Huckabee’s smile conceals the fact that he is well aware of this fact. Instead of following scripture’s lead, he uses hot-button issues in a commercial that is designed to drive Christians to the polls to get them to vote the way that Huckabee wants them to vote.

What does it say about evangelicalism when they never to pick and choose to be on the side of the poor and disenfranchised? Why are they always more motivated by imposing their views of morality instead of living out their own morality in such an attractive way that others will want to become part of it, too?

The evangelical ads could not be more manipulative and I believe should be classified as a case of invoking God’s name to advance a narrow political agenda. Such vacuous uses of God’s name are what is at the heart of the Fourth Commandment in which the Israelites are told not to take the Lord’s name in vain (literally “vaporous manner”). Perhaps those who produced the ad should be more concerned about their own violations of God’s commands than they are about what other people do.

The heart of the Stewart interview was the question of whether the ad implied people who voted for Democrats were going to hell. It’s easy to see how one could view it that way, although Huckabee strongly disagreed saying that any biblically literate Christian would understand that the images referred to First Corinthians 10. The Governor couldn’t have been any more smug in the way he said this. What’s hilarious is that Gov. Huckabee got it wrong. There is nothing even remotely close to those images in First Corinthians 10.

Although he invoked First Corinthians 10 many times, what he meant was First Corinthians 3 verses 10 and following. But the former Baptist preacher certainly stretches the text and uses it out of context for the commercial. First Corinthians 3 seems to be about a divided Christian community learning to tolerate differences amongst them and letting God settle it out in the end. The epistle goes on to urge these quarrelsome Christians to start focusing more on love and community than advancing each one’s narrow agenda. That’s the kind of conversation that seems more productive than a conversation about fire. It might even put a nice smile on the Huckabee’s face.

The Walking Dead

Walking Dead

There’s just something about a good zombie show that forces me to think more deeply about culture, life, death and what we will do to survive. I cannot watch one of these shows without thinking of St. Irenaeus of Lyon who taught that a human being “fully alive” is “the glory of God.” Zombies remind me that being fully alive has to mean something more than shuffling through life uncritically, unaffected by what is happening around me, mechanically pursuing my own appetites at the expense of my neighbor. The classic zombie movie, Dawn of the Dead, effectively employed the metaphor of a shopping mall besieged by the undead as a way of reminding us that absorption into a purely consumerist culture is evidence of being something other than fully alive. What we seek for true life cannot be purchased at the mall.

It’s not the gore and violence in the genre that appeals to me—some directors are so over-the-top with grisly special-effects that they obscure the deeper issues at stake. What does it mean to be alive? AMC’s The Walking Dead is a show with excellent storytelling that embraces the requisite gruesomeness without making killing zombies the point of the show.

A recent episode had characters wondering if “an echo” of the person’s memory and identity might be trapped within the mind of a zombie, that he or she still has some consciousness in there somewhere. It set me to thinking about all the people I’ve loved who had Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. Was there something of my grandfather still in that shell of his body when he no longer recognized his own name?

I love the concept of “an echo” because I get the sense that sometimes I hear an echo of who I once was rambling around in my head. The adolescent, inappropriate, silly, insecure self of long ago makes his voice heard in my head and I have to remember that he will always be a part of my life, but he doesn’t get to control my life.
The notion of an echo reminded of the funeral poem Afterglow that makes me wonder how my spirit will echo around for a while after I’m dead.

Afterglow
I’d like the memory of me
to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an afterglow
of smiles when life is done,
I’d like to leave an echo
whispering softly down the ways,
Of happy times and laughing
times and bright and
summer days.
I’d like the tears of those who
grieve, to dry before the sun,
Of happy memories that I leave
When life is done.
~Helen Lowrie Marshall
(From her book of poetry, Close to the Heart )

Of course the trick is to be fully alive while you are still breathing so that there can be something to echo after your gone. Live well my friends, there is a lot of life to be enjoyed.

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Election Day

Election Day As we head to the polls today I pray that we may find our way forward and discover a unity that leads us to tackle our real problems together. I heard Springsteen talking about how hard it is for folks who are caught in the gap between the American Dream and their own reality. I believe people will need to come together in new ways to fix the gap. Voting is not the sum of our duty as citizens, it's the fundamental first step. It's up to all of us to be the change we want to see.

Spirituality of Terroir

Two years ago three colleagues and I were awarded a grant from the College of Pastoral Leaders to study the spirituality of terrioir. Not terror, terroir. The term comes from a french wine-making concept that means "taste of place." Terroir helps explain how wine produced in one location tastes different than one that comes from a different place. Both wines can come from the exact same type of grape, but they have radical differences in flavor. The type of soil and other environmental factors play a significant role. The concept of terroir is expanding across the foodie movement. Many top chefs try to find local foods and their desire is to let the flavors emerge. Chefs, organic farmers and winemakers are all speaking the same language. They say humbly, "My job is to get out of the way and let food do it's thing."

The problem with most food that is produced today is similar to the problems ruining the church. Today most of our foods are over-processed. The goal is not to let local flavors burst forth from different regions. Rather the goal is to create a substance that can be standardized and easily transportable. One cannot say, "The 2009 Velveeta produced a earthy undertones that we haven't tasted since the 1999 Cheez Whiz." The result of all of this processing is that most of our diets are based on foods cannot nourish or delight us. For example, you've probably noticed that one cannot purchase a decent tomato from a grocery store. In order to ship the fruit, it needs to have a thick skin and the thicker the skin, the less flavorful. In effect, we are over-fed and under-nourished. We crave for more than our food is providing so we eat more and are less satisfied.

Is the analogy apt for what is happening in the church? Many churches are losing their local flavor and beginning to look like every other church. Drive around town and you will see churches using the same Vacation Bible School curriculum. The church has simply become a consumer of pre-packaged programs for evangelism, small groups, stewardship, contemporary worship formats, you name it. We are forever looking for a magic bullet. We don't want to spend time creating something ourselves if something already exists and was written by professionals who had more time to devote to the project. With so many pre-packaged programs, are congregations in danger of becoming like local franchises of larger chains? Increasingly, denominational affiliation has less to do with the flavor of a church than the publishing houses of the programs that churches purchase.

Most successful church programs are not successful because they were purchased from somewhere else. They were successful because they grew out of a need in a local setting and lay people in the church decided to act. The really satisfying stuff grows out of local people sensing what is needed in their neighborhoods, their communities, their members. The good stuff has a terroir that cannot be duplicated and mass produced. Wine producers know that each variety of grape grows best in specific kinds of soil and climate conditions. You can't grow a world-class Pinot Noir in Iowa because the climate is too warm and the soil is too rich. But in Oregon the conditions are perfect. On the other hand, there are some varieties you dare not try in Oregon. If an Iowa farmer looked at the Pinot Soil, he'd say it's no good. Corn would never grow in it. However, the poor soil in Oregon makes the vines sink its roots deeper into the bedrock. The result is that the stress on the vine makes it go deep enough to pull out the minerals that give the wine a complex and satisfying taste.

It seems to me that any congregation that wants to produce a high quality ministry should ask terroir kinds of questions. Who is in our neighborhood? What are the cultural conditions around us? What grows well here? What are the gifts of our congregation? When we are stressed by lack of participation, funds, originality or conflict, do we let our roots sink deeper or do we throw up our hands in despair? Most of the answers our churches are seeking come not from a publishing house, but from the neighborhood and congregation itself. Taste and see.

Rev. Tim Diebel and I will lead a workshop on this subject at the School for Congregational Learners at West Des Moines Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) on Saturday, August 27.

Breaking Bad part 2

Breaking Bad

In hit TV series, Breaking Bad, Walter White’s slip into moral morass is a brilliant character study that highlights the human capacity for self-deception. In the beginning, we see Walter making noble sacrifices. He has the talent to make big bucks as a world-class scientist; instead he teaches high school chemistry. In a segment as powerful as any I’ve ever seen on screen, Walter chooses to undergo chemo-therapy that he doesn’t want because he empathizes so thoroughly with his wife’s needs.

His family desires that he extend his life by going through the treatment, but Walter makes a very compelling case that he needs to be thinking about quality of life and how he wants to be remembered. He wants to give all his energy in the time that he has left to those he loves instead of fighting the side-effects of chemo. He doesn’t want to leave his family destitute from uninsured medical bills. It is his decision to make, his body, his life. He announces his decision. In the next scene he wakes up alone in bed. No words are said. He looks at his wife’s night stand and sees the books she has been reading. She is pregnant and reading books about healthy babies. She has a special-needs son and there are books on his needs. On top of the stack is a book about battling cancer through healthy eating. Walter sees a jar of her lotion unscrews the cap and breathes it in. He shuffles silently to the kitchen and gently embraces his wife from behind. She is clearly frustrated, scouring the dishes. He simply whispers, “I’ll do it….I’ll get the treatments.” It is an act of pure love and tremendous self-sacrifice.

However, Walter decides that he will manufacture crystal meth to pay for the treatments. Here begins the tragedy of his moral life. Walter deludes himself into believing that all his actions can be justified because he is doing them for a higher purpose—pure love of his family. At first he is uneasy with the “ends-justifies the means” rationalizations. The decision to cook meth leads him into a violent and shadowy underworld where he is compelled toward deception and violence. In order to keep his newly found secret life a secret and to avoid being killed by drug lords, he keeps making unethical decisions all in the name of his noble effort to go through treatment and provide for his family.

He dare not hold the mirror up to his face to see what he has become. He dare not explore the moral rot too closely. Ever decision has consequences and leads him to more bad choices. We know it cannot end well for him.

I wonder about this ability to deceive ourselves. Walter is not alone. How many people chip away at their integrity every day? They don’t blow the whistle at work so that they can keep their income and provide for their families. They are absent from family functions because they are focused on making money for their family. We tend to think of ourselves as more noble than we ought.

During the show, it becomes clear that Walter likes to think he is doing bad things for a higher good. But he’s not. There are always choices for him. All choices have consequences. Walter breaks bad for many reasons. His new life is more exciting—even if it is dangerous. He can feel powerful and commanding instead of feeling like an uninteresting love and boring chemistry teacher. He feels more alive than ever and it covers regrets from other decisions he’s made.

Overall, the show is a summons for each of us to hold the mirror up and ask about our real motivations. What do we get out of the decisions we are making? Is it possible that we are not as noble as we want everyone around us to believe? Walter keeps breaking bad. We look at him so that we can choose to do otherwise and break toward the good. It’s amazing to think that every decision we make has a role in determining what kind of person we will become. Choose well. The Rev. Dave Clark Iowa.

Breaking Bad pt. I

What would you do if you discovered you were dying of lung cancer, had crappy insurance, a mundane marriage and career, a special needs child and another on the way? What if you felt like situations beyond your control (e.g., the economy, needs of your family, etc.) determined the shape of your life more than your own conscious decisions? The clock is ticking toward your end and you’ve never felt fully alive. There’s no money for treatment that may extend your life for a few months. You choose not to go through with the treatment. But your family begs you to change your mind.

AMC’s Breaking Bad shows Walter White’s wrestling with the issues of choice, sacrifice, morality and what it means to be a man. Walt makes a truly noble sacrifice out of love for his family to undergo the treatment. He cannot handle the thought that his death and puny pension will leave his family destitute when he’s gone. But he won’t accept charity—he feels that he must earn whatever he receives.

This is when Walt decides to “break bad.” To break bad is to choose to go to the dark side. He becomes a criminal. This is not your usual anti-hero show. Walt supplements his income as a high school chemistry teacher by cooking meth. Although he had always led an upright life and his brother-in-law is a DEA agent, Walt is lured by the big bucks trading hands every day in the drug culture. He produces meth in order to provide for his family; or so he tells himself.

Breaking Bad shows the moral decay of a decent man. It does not glamorize the drug culture—quite the opposite actually. Once he gets in, forces conspire to keep him involved. The series shows the effects of meth on the mind, body and spirit. It shows children of addicts, the crime, corruption and grisly violence that anchor this shadowy world. The lead character becomes more reprehensible with every episode and his moral decay is creeping in to the lives everyone he touches. It’s amazing that anyone would want to watch a show like this. But I love it!

There is a lot to love. The writing is superb. The acting is amazing. Bryan Cranston (Walt) won best actor Emmy for each of the 3 seasons. The cinematography is amazing, the sets believable and the comedy is spot on. But what I really love is that it makes me think. The show is forever presenting moral issues and the consequences of decisions that are motivated out of fear, regret and greed. The show is not preachy, but I’m a preacher and I want to reflect on some of the lessons we can learn from Walter.

Just to get it out of the way, I will just mention the obvious lessons: “Drugs are bad. Mmmmkay?” So is lying and killing. Once you start a secret life, the lies are unending and will trip you up. There is more to life than money and success. You need to have a moral center. I’m drawn to examining the subtle beliefs that are at the root of Walter’s demise. I’ll explore one now and more in the next post.

Walter believes that the primary responsibility of a man is to provide for the physical needs of his family. Hasn’t this always been the unspoken rule? Hasn’t it been built into our genes from caveman days? Walt knows he cannot provide for his family when he is dead. His treatment on a Chemistry teacher’s salary will leave them burdened with debt. This fact makes him believe that he has failed in his primary responsibility to his family. He cannot bear to let them down; he cannot live with his own sense of failure.

This dynamic rings true. Want to know why a pink slip or a downturn in the economy or an unexpected bill is so devastating to a man? It’s not because there is less money for “toys.” It’s more than that. We feel threatened. We may fail at our primary responsibility to provide safety, food, shelter and basic financial security for our loved ones. To feel like you have failed there, makes one feel like he has failed as a human being. It’s more than toys, men lose themselves at the deepest level. When so threatened, like Walter, we are capable of darker things than we’d ever believed.

“Breaking good” (turning to a good life) means that we have to break the myth of primary responsibility. Sometimes we panic and feel like we can never provide enough for those around us. What if the economy tanks? What if there is an uninsured condition, accident, etc.? Suddenly there is no such thing as “enough.” Walt is asked how much money he needs to provide for his family and he simply answers, “More.” We live in a time when men do not have to feel the burden of being the sole providers.

Too many men have thought that if they provided financial resources that was enough. More important than any amount of money we can provide for our families is our time, our example, our honesty, compassion and love.