Fable fashioner found

Writing the Nurturing Faith Bible study curriculum is one of my most challenging opportunities, and I'm always looking for ways to help teachers make their lessons engaging as well as informative.

In the online commentary and resources for the March 10 lesson, based on the familiar story from Luke 15 commonly known as "the prodigal son," I cited a light-hearted retelling of the story that I've known since the 1970s, but I didn't know the author.

The recounting, which I called "A Parable in the Key of F," recounts the forays of the prodigal son, with the vast majority of the words beginning with the letter "F."

After the lesson appeared, I heard from Mike Taylor, an attorney friend from Chapel Hill, and it turns out that his grandfather, Rev. W. O. Taylor, was the mystery author. Taylor, a man of considerable accomplishment, was a Baptist pastor in Arkansas who was born in 1890, graduated from Southwestern Seminary in 1924, and served for many years as both a pastor and associational missionary.

In a brief biography of his grandfater, Mike Taylor wrote of Rev. W.O.'s loyalty to the Southern Baptist Convention:

Upon learning in 1925 about the Cooperative Program (the brand new South-wide program of raising denominational money), Dad Taylor led the Wilmot Baptist Church to become the first church in the entire Southern Baptist Convention to adopt the Cooperative Program. Grandfather helped organize and or revive more than a dozen churches and in his years as a missionary was active in the actual construction of many rural church buildings, sometimes raising money for construction by issuing a challenge for a cotton picking contest in which he offered to beat any one adult man or any two junior boys.

Taylor also helped found Williams Baptist College of Walnut Ridge and three Baptist camps, and was involved in many mission projects. He attended his first Southern Baptist Convention meeting in 1918 and continued to attend as a messenger until a couple of years before his death. In the early 1980's, at the age of 91, Taylor recited what he called "The Final Fixing of the Foolish Fugitive Found in the Fifteenth Chapter of the Gospel of Luke" at a breakfast for retired pastors at the SBC meeting. 

In his eighties, Taylor wrote a two-volume autobiography, The Old Timers Did It This Way and Seventy Years in the Ministry, along with other works on genealogy.  His 100^th birthday was celebrated statewide in Arkansas, and in that year he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Divinity by his alma mater, Ouachita Baptist University.

As an active member of First Baptist Church in Melbourne, Arkansas, Rev. Taylor celebrated his birthday each year by preaching the Sunday morning sermon there -- the last one at the age of 105, just a few months before his death.

Mike Taylor can remember his grandfather reciting his version of the "prodigal son" as early as 1976, and how the aged preacher traveled by Greyhound Bus from Arkansas to visit North Carolina relatives at the age of 93, and again at 96.

For the record, here is Rev. Taylor's version of the "Final Fixing of the Foolish Fugitive," which can also be found here:

Feeling footloose, fancy-free and frisky, this feather-brained fellow finagled his fond father into forking over his fortune.  Forthwith, he fled for foreign fields and frittered his farthings feasting fabulously with fair-weather friends. Finally, fleeced by those folly filled fellows and facing famine, he found himself a feed flinger in a filthy farm lot.  He fain would have filled his frame with foraged food from fodder fragments.

"Fooey!  My father's flunkies fare far fancier," the frazzled fugitive fumed feverishly, frankly facing fact.

Frustrated from failure and filled with forebodings, he fled for his family.  Falling at his father's feet, he floundered forlornly. "Father, I have flunked and fruitlessly forfeited further family favors . . ."

But the faithful father, forestalling further flinching, frantically flagged his flunkies to fetch forth the finest fatling and fix a feast.

But the fugitive's fault finding frater, faithfully farming his father's fields for free, frowned at this fickle forgiveness of former falderal. His fury flashed, but fussing was futile.

His foresighted father figured, "Such filial fidelity is fine, but what forbids fervent festivities?  The fugitive is found!  Unfurl the flags!  With fanfare flaring, let fun, frolic and frivolity flow freely, former failures forgotten and folly forsaken.  Forgiveness forms a firm foundation for future fortitude." 

Thanks to Mike Taylor for helping me give credit where credit is due, but even more for sharing the memories of his grandfather -- whose legacy is clearly still very much alive.

[Image from Ophelia's Art at zazzle.com]

Unleash your inner priest

Yes, friends, just in time to train up your children for Passover and other priestly days, it's "Leviticus! The Game."

Available as a free iPhone app from the Apple store, "Leviticus! The Game" teaches rules about purity, kosher food, and sacrifices in an environment designed to be far more entertaining than wading through the stodgy rules of Leviticus.

It's highly simplistic, of course, but also fast-paced and a bit addictive for people who like games like Fruit Ninja -- so long as you don't mind beheading a lot of really cute cows, sheep, goats, and doves -- while avoiding the sick ones, along with non-kosher pigs and lobsters.

When acceptable offerings float by, a swipe of the finger decapitates the animals, slices the fruit (apples and olives), or explodes the bag of flour and jug of oil -- which, like the doves, must be sacrificed together. Blood gushes and heads fly when you swipe the acceptable animals: succeed long enough, and you gain the honor of sprinkling blood on the altar.

Touch a pig or lobster, however, and you're dead. Poof! Out of the community. Game over.

That seems to be the point of the game: explaining that there may be no human logic to why Jews are to avoid pigs, lobsters, and other non-kosher animals -- but it's the rule, and to be part of the community, you follow the rules.

The game was created by a Jewish woman, Sarah Lefton, who heads up a company called "G-dcast," a non-profit that makes makes animated shorts on biblical themes for educational purposes (observant Jews intentionally avoid spelling "God" as a sign of respect). According to Liel Liebovitzl, writing in The Tablet, Lefton was inspired while reading Leviticus during synagogue services, and realized that the book is basically about rules.

“It’s all about how the priest should do this but shouldn’t do that, and if he did something a certain way, something will happen, and if he didn’t, it won’t," she said. "It’s just a bunch of rules with rewards and punishment, and that’s what games are.”

With a small grant from the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. an illustrator, and a small team of coders who had to be taught the rules of purity, "Leviticus!" was soon helping gamers "make your way through the priestly day." Play it well enough, and you make it all the way to the Sabbath.

Unless your finger-eye coordination is much better than mine, expect to be excluded on a regular basis.

The nice thing about the game, though -- and the Bible story -- is that even when it's "Game Over," you can always begin again.

Trust me. Or not ...

Flipping through the March 2013 AARP Bulletin, I was struck by a sidebar entitled "Whom Do You Trust?" That led me to the check out a more detailed survey on the group's website.

From AARP.org. Click to enlargeThe national poll, done in conjunction with the research firm SSRS, asked persons younger than 50 and 50-plus whether they could trust a variety of potential people "a great deal."

One thing the survey revealed is that older Americans tend to be more trusting than younger Americans.

Another thing is that hardly anyone trusts strangers, used car salesmen, or corporate CEOs, all of whom were in the 2-3 percent range. Politicians fared a little better, though only 11 percent  of younger adults and 12 percent of older adults trust members of congress. Mayors fared slightly better (13 and 21 percent), while 31 percent of sub-50's and 34 percent of 50+ adults said they trusted the president.

Religious leaders (49 and 57 percent) were higher on the scale, but still at a disappointing level. Doctors gained a little more trust, at 56 and 68 percent for younger and older adults.

Who was considered most trustworthy? The highest trust levels -- thankfully -- were for one's spouse (89 and 92 percent), followed by one's best friend (79 and 81 percent). That's encouraging, though one has to worry about the roughly 10 percent of marriages in which people can't trust their partners.

I found it particularly discouraging (since I do some reporting) that trust levels for newspaper reporters were near the bottom (6 and 7 percent). Local TV reporters, perhaps because viewers connect more with them, scored slightly better, at 9 and 12 percent. This is disturbing to me because I know legitimate news organizations work very hard to report the truth and get their facts straight. I suspect the results are colored in part by the many faux "news" sources that have social or political agendas and actively sow distrust of the mainstream media.

Age played an interesting role in a couple of areas. Younger adults trust their in-laws more than older adults: 76 percent vs. 58 percent, but older adults trust their neighbors more, at 50 percent vs. 27 percent. I guess familiarity can work both ways.

In general, we're not a very trusting bunch. Neither lawyers (31 and 38 percent), judges (22 and 20 percent), or police officers (40 and 48 percent) get the level of trust one would consider ideal. Even school teachers garnered only a 37 and 35 percent rating. What's up with that?

All of this left me wondering why our nation is so distrusting. Have we been betrayed so often, by so many categories of people, that we're no longer willing to trust anyone outside of our closest circle of companions -- and not always them?

The bigger question, though, may not be about whom we can trust -- but whether we ourselves are trustworthy. If someone did a survey of people who either know us or know about us, how would we rank?

Political football worth watching

In an age when "going on tour" commonly refers to musical shows, relics of an 2600-year-old royal rock star have begun a seven-city tour of the U.S., and it's well worth making the effort to see.

The Cyrus Cylinder, one of the ancient world's most iconic objects, went on display March 9 at the Smithsonian Institution's Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., where it sits at the heart of a small but priceless exhibition on loan from the British Museum. Entitled "The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia: A New Beginning," it seeks to inspire people to learn from the past for the sake of a better future.

On March 7 I attended a preview and press conference hosted by the Smithsonian and featuring officials from both the Smithsonian Institute and the British Museum. Julian Raby, director of the Sackler and Freer Galleries at the Smithsonian, noted that the cylinder -- the size and shape of a rather blunt football -- had become quite a political football as various regimes had sought to impose their own meanings on it.

But why, many readers may be asking, should I care about that sort of game -- especially when I don't even know what the Cyrus Cylinder is?

To answer that question, we begin with a brief review. The barrel-shaped object in question, made of clay that was incised with 45 lines of neat cuneiform wedges before being baked, was commissioned shortly after 539 BCE by a ruler known as "Cyrus the Great" who could lay claim to having been the first "king of the world."

Cyrus began his political career as the hereditary king of Persia (roughly equivalent to modern Iran), the son of Cambyses I and his wife Mandane, who was the daughter of Astyages, the king of the Medes. As an ambitious young king, Cyrus sought to expand his influence, defeating his own grandfather in battle in 550 BCE, thus uniting the Medes and the Persians into a single kingdom and beginning what is called the Achaemenid period (both the Medes and the Persians claimed to be descended from an earlier king named Achaemenes).

Moving westward, Cyrus went on in 547 or 546 to defeat king Croesus of Lydia, whose wealth was so legendary that "as rich as Croesus" became a byword that is used to this day. He then turned south to Babylon, which he conquered in 539 BCE, routing the absentee king Nabonidus and his son Belshazzar, famously known from Daniel 5 as the potted potentate who desecrated the temple vessels from Jerusalem before seeing the portentous "handwriting on the wall."

Eventually, Cyrus ruled an empire stretching from the Indus Valley in the east to the Mediterranian Sea in the west, as far south as Egypt and north to the Hellespont in northwestern Turkey. He built an impressive capital in Pasagardae, in what is now the Fars province of southwestern Iran.

Neil MacGregor, director of the British MuseumNeil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, noted that previous empire-builders had ruled "river kingdoms" that spoke predominantly one language and had one generic faith, even if it had to be imposed over indigenous gods. Cyrus brought about an entirely different situation, said MacGregor, as he ruled an empire that was thousands of miles across. It was the first "road empire," MacGregor said: the first truly multicultural and multi-faith empire.

Cyrus' fame results from his strategy of allowing the various peoples under his sway to live in their own lands and worship their own gods, so long as they paid regular tribute and asked their gods to bless the one king, namely Cyrus. Previous empire-builders, such as the Babylonians and Assyrians, had favored a strategy of deporting conquered peoples and depriving them of avenues to worship their gods.

This is where the story impacts those for whom the Bible is important. Though written about 200 years after Cyrus' time, 2 Chronicles 36 and Ezra 1 and 5 cited royal decrees in which Cyrus had proclaimed liberty to the captives and allowed Hebrews who had been deported by Nebuchadnezzar to return to Jerusalem and the surrounding lands, repatriating the implements and vessels that had been taken from Solomon's temple.

A cylinder seal belonging to Darius the Great, who succeeded Cyrus' son Cambyses IIThe book of Isaiah, in words portrayed as a prophecy, referred to Cyrus as one whom Yahweh had spoken as "my shepherd" who would "carry out my purpose" and rebuild the temple (Isa. 44:28); as God's anointed, "whose right hand I have grasped to subue nations before him" (Isa. 45:1); and as one whom Yahweh had raised in righteousness "to build my city and set my exiles free" (Isa. 45:13).

There was no contemporary extrabiblical evidence of Cyrus' magnanimity, though -- until 1879, when an expedition from the British Museum discovered the Cyrus Cylinder in the ruins of a wall while excavating in the city of Babylon. It was customary for Babylonian kings to have their deeds recorded on clay tablets, cylinders, or cones that would be embedded in the foundations of their building projects, and Cyrus apparently adopted the tradition when he rebuilt the wall.

The Cyrus Cylinder does not mention the Hebrews (a common misconception), but it does name a variety of peoples from the southern part of Babylon who would be allowed to return to their homes and take the images of their gods, which Nabonidus had apparently consolidated in Babylon, back to their cities.

Lines 32b-34a of the inscription claims:

I collected together all of their people and returned them to their settlements, and the gods of the land of Sumer and Akkad which Nabonidus—to the fury of the lord of the gods—had brought into Shuanna, at the command of Marduk, the great lord, I returned them unharmed to their cells, in the sanctuaries that make them happy. (Shu-anna was a section of the city of Babylon where temples were concentrated).

Cyrus declared his hope that all the gods would show their gratitude toward him. In lines 34b-36, we read:

May all the gods that I returned to their sanctuaries, every day before Bel and Nabu, ask for a long life for me, and mention my good deeds, and say to Marduk, my lord, this: "Cyrus, the king who fears you, and Cambyses his son, may they be the provisioners of our shrines until distant (?) days, and the population of Babylon call blessings on my kingship. I have enabled all the lands to live in peace."

The Cyrus Cylinder, then, confirmed that Cyrus did in fact have a policy of allowing conquered peoples to return to their homes and rebuild their temples. Although a specific decree relative to the Hebrews' return has yet to be found, we may assume that one existed.

Take note of this: lines 12-13 of the Cyrus Cylinder, written in Babylonian, indicate that the god Marduk searched for and called out Cyrus as an "upright king," that he "took the hand of Cyrus" and "called him by his name," proclaiming his "kingship over all of everything," after which Cyrus "shepherded in justice and righteousness the black-headed people." ("Black-headed people" was a term the Babylonians used to describe themselves.)

Recall that Isaiah (cited above) claimed that Yahweh called out Cyrus as one who was righteous, that he called him by name, took him by the right hand, and established him as king so that he might shepherd the people. The similarity of language in Isaiah and the Cyrus Cylinder can hardly be a coincidence.

Alex Nagel, assistant curator for the ancient Near East at the Smithsonian, speaks with a member of the press. So again -- beyond its impressive confirmation of a biblical story, why should I care about the Cyrus Cylinder? Some -- most notably Iranian leaders wanting to claim Cyrus' heritage and portray themselves as righteous and tolerant rulers -- have spoken of it as the world's first Bill of Rights.

Forgive them the hyperbole: they are politicians. For all of his fame as a benevolent leader, we must keep in mind that Cyrus built his empire through war, conquering other kingdoms (including his grandfather's) by bloody force of arms. Even though he allowed subjugated peoples freedom of religion and some measure of home rule, he still required of them heavy tribute: lines 29-30 of the cylinder speak of how kings from every quarter "brought their weighty tribute into Shuanna and kissed my feet."

The cylinder is hardly a Bill of Rights, for the concept of individual "human rights" as we know it was largely unknown in the ancient world. Cyrus' granting of some community rights was a step forward, but did not make him a great humanitarian.

Even so, the Cyrus Cylinder stands as an emblem of an innovative king who managed to build a relatively unified empire of disparate peoples by allowing some measure of national and religious freedom beneath the banner of a single ruler. Cyrus' governing principles and allowance of religious freedom enabled the Persian Empire to last for 200 years, and was so enduring that Thomas Jefferson was a great admirer. He owned two copies of the Greek historian Xenophon's biography of Cyrus, the Cyropaedia, and recommended it to other potential leaders.

Can contemporary societies learn something from Cyrus? Can we as a world, as a nation -- or even as Baptists -- learn to find greater unity through greater apprecation for each other despite our differences? Can we forgo the desire to make others over in our image and live together beneath a banner of peace?

Cyrus didn't go as far as we might like in the arena of human rights, but he pointed us in the right direction. How far can we advance the ball?

[All translations from the Cyrus Cylinder are by Irving Finkel, who is assistant keeper for the Middle East at the British Museum. A "TED Talks" presentation by Neil MacGregor on the Cyrus Cylinder can be found at this link: http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_macgregor_2600_years_of_history_in_one_object.html]

The Cyrus Cylinder exhibition will make several stops in the U.S.:

• Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.,
  9 March – 28 April 2013
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
  3 May – 14 June 2013
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  20 June – 4 August 2013
• Asian Art Museum, San Francisco,
  9 August – 22 September 2013

J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa, Los Angeles,
2 October – 2 December 2013

Apologizing to Rosa ...

In Washington D.C. for a meeting of the Baptist World Alliance's executive committee, I made a brief pilgrimage to the U.S. Capitol -- not to convince Congress to act like adults and compromise for the good of the country -- but to apologize to Rosa Parks.

A nine-foot bronze statue (counting the pedestal) of Parks was unveiled in Statuary Hall February 27, the first full-size statue commissioned by Congress since 1873.

I wanted to apologize because, when I was a boy, I thought she was uppity. I grew up among a prejudiced people and didn't know any other way to be. Neither school nor church encouraged me to think otherwise. A small handful of black students were first allowed to attend the school I attended with all the other white kids when I entered the ninth grade, and we were not kind to them. That's actually quite an understatement.

Ten years later, at my class's 10-year reunion, I apologized to those brave souls -- but didn't see any of my other white classmates speak to them all evening. They haven't been back to any of the other reunions.

The same residual guilt that had me apologizing to my courageous, pioneering classmates drew me to the Capitol so I could stand before the statue of a daring, trailblazing lady who had the courage to stand for what is right, even if she had to sit down to do it.

Rosa Parks is just one of so many people whose vision, whose sense of justice, and whose fiery valor make them heroes not just to the people they fought for, but also for those of us who needed a grown-up wake-up in order to appreciate them.

Well done, Rosa.