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strength most perfect: 2 Corinthians 12

September 21, 2007 by David Baer

Anyone inclined to doubt that the apostle Paul was a complex man who enmeshed himself in the most complicated relational webs need only peruse 2 Corinthians 12 to be set right. In a discourse impregnanted with the most dazzling emotional transparency, Paul struggles to articulate the relationship that makes restoration of equilibrium between him and the Corinthians a non-negotiable objective. Continue Reading »

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a gripping look at racism’s multiple victims: Athol Fugard, ‘Master Harold’ … and the boys.

September 21, 2007 by David Baer

Hally does not know who he is. The single white character on stage in South African-born playright Athol Fugard’s one-scene work is the friend of his mother’s two black employees when they tend to St George’s Park Tearoom in her absence. But he is also their ‘Master Harold’-reluctantly but inevitably-when the stress of his crippled, alcoholic father’s homecoming impels him into an emotional space that one simply does not share with black folks. Perhaps is it the burden of dealing with human beings on the multiple levels that racism forces upon those who resent but ultimately accede to their required roles that embitters Hally beyond redemption. Continue Reading »

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a wake-up call: Howard Dayton, Your Money Counts. The Biblical Guide to Earning, Spending, Saving, Investing, Giving, and Getting Out of Debt

September 21, 2007 by David Baer

Two parts warning about the corrosive effect of debt, one part encouragement that such slavery can be overcome, Howard Dayton’s manual to a better way of living is an almost constitutional document in the Christian financial ministry movement. Dayton is the founder of Crown Financial Ministries, the benchmark institution in what has become an effort to counteract the personal indebtedness that increasingly pervades Western economies. Continue Reading »

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buy ten copies and give them to your friends: Thomas L. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem

September 21, 2007 by David Baer

Friedman wraps up his book by talking about four dead men and what they must do if peace is to come to the troubled slice of land still fought over by Israelis and Palestinians. Yitzhak Rabin, Yasir Arafat, Hafez Assad, and Jordan’s King Hussein were very much alive a decade ago when Friedman wrote an appendix to this still-riveting work, though the shadow of Rabin’s assasin was almost upon him. This casts an eery veneer over Friedman’s sensible thoughts on shifting power and the need for all partners to ‘buy a ticket’ if peace has any hope of overcoming the region’s deeply etched pessimisms, even if one now needs to shift the burden of choice to the successors of these four men, only three of whom had the good fortune to die in their own beds. Continue Reading »

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a holy eroticism: Song of Solomon 1-3

September 21, 2007 by David Baer

It must be asked what a work like this Song says of the community that embraces it and of that people’s God. A splendid eroticism pervades its lines, eroding the conventions of pious discourse in its exuberant longing for intercourse. There is no voyeurism here, it is true. But the appreciation of a splendid and holy eroticism is blushworthy for readers who have been patiently weaned from such desire and its out-loud articulation. Continue Reading »

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the music that elevates Cruise’s game: Minority Report (motion picture soundtrack)

September 21, 2007 by David Baer

You only have to listen through John Williams’ intensely spooky score a few times to realize that it is the emotional potency of film music in the Williams style that makes Tom Cruise and his colleagues on this Spielberg sci-fi flick seem as edgy as they do. The acting without the music would be another matter, good but not great, tense but not heartstopping. Continue Reading »

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It’s getting harder to sneer these days: Condé Nast Portfolio

September 21, 2007 by David Baer

Man, this is getting tough. It used to be so easy to pick up a thick glossy weighted down in Bimmer and Movado watch ads and get right down to the business of sneering at the vanity of it all. Continue Reading »

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rumors of demise are overstated: Gramophone

September 21, 2007 by David Baer

Conventional wisdom and damned statistics conspire to persuade that the population of classical music listeners is declining measurably year upon year. You’d never know it from reading GRAMOPHONE. Readers are typically devotees of the musical form and not about to let the rest of the world persuade them that their devotion is misplaced or–horrors–out of date. GRAMOPHONE obliges them with passionate coverage of the artists, the music, and the industry. Continue Reading »

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endearing writing from an accomplished story-teller: Meir Shalev, The Blue Mountain

September 20, 2007 by David Baer

The Eastern European emigrants to Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century assured that what would become known as the ‘Second Aliyah’ would bear a Yiddish accent, a socialist ethic, and a hard-nosed disdain for the religious Zionism of some fellow travelers. Meir Shalev provides us an angle on their experience that makes it difficult to reduce their exploits to those of secular saints and impossible not to love them for their deeply human foibles. Continue Reading »

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thoughtful primer on preaching from a master preacher: Elizabeth Achtemeier, Preaching from the Old Testament

September 20, 2007 by David Baer

The author of these thirty-two short chapters begins and ends with the assumption that problems we experience with the Old Testament are our problem, not the Bible’s. This subordination of the Bible reader to the well-weathered book he holds in his hand opens doors, not to forced harmonizations of problematic passages but to fresh reappraisal of difficult texts on their own terms. Continue Reading »

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