The Greatest One-Term President

When Jimmy Carter died December 29, 2024, and as Joe Biden ended his term, my daughter asked me, “Who do you think was the greatest one-term president.”  

A number of candidates came to my mind. William Howard Taft and Gerald Ford were two. But I think the best answer is George Bush Sr.

The title of Jon Meacham’s book on Bush, Destiny and Power, certainly sounds like a presidential biography. But I think a better title would have been The Good President. George H. W. Bush was not only extremely effective in foreign policy and reasonably effective domestically, he was one of the truly honorable men to hold the highest office in the country.

Jon Meacham consistently emphasizes how the values Bush learned from his parents shaped his life personally and publicly—work hard, do your best, compete to win, serve others. Yes, he came from a well-to-do background that gave him many opportunities others didn’t have, but he also knew he was expected to excel on his own.

Bush volunteered to fight in World War II and flew many combat missions, including one in which he was shot down. He left the family cocoon in Connecticut to start his own business in oil. His 1964 U.S. Senate bid in Texas was overwhelmed by the Johnson landslide. But two years later he won a Congressional seat. Then came a series of challenging assignments—ambassador to the U.N., chairman of the Republican National Committee, envoy to China, director of the CIA.

He lost the Republican nomination to Ronald Reagan but won on the ticket as Vice President in 1980 and then 1984. He showed his calm, sure-handed demeanor during the critical hours after the assassination attempt on Reagan. But his sense of loyalty got the better of him in not more strongly opposing the Iran-Contra deal.

Meacham, while clearly admiring Bush, is not afraid to mention other mistakes. Promising no new taxes in his 1988 presidential run was doctrinaire but didn’t fit the pragmatic Bush. He was then severely criticized when he worked with a Democratic congress to bring down the deficit by cutting expenses and raising revenues.

Yet he also championed the bipartisan Americans with Disabilities Act. Though politics has always been rough and tumble, hearing how Bush worked with both parties for the common good made me almost nostalgic.

His foreign policy expertise shone in his deft and understated response to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 as well as in putting together a large coalition of nations against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990-91. Again, when a coup attempted to unseat Gorbachev, he skillfully played but did not overplay U.S. support of the Soviet leader.

George H. W. Bush may not have had the communication skills of Reagan or the charisma of Clinton or the intelligence of Obama, but he may have been our best president of the last fifty years.

Growing Creative

Leonardo da Vinci is best known for the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Yet it’s possible his achievements in science even outstripped those monumental paintings. A hundred years before Francis Bacon (the “father” of the scientific method), da Vinci pioneered key concepts in anatomy, geology, and fluid dynamics by the uncommon means of observation and experiment.

Perhaps the most extraordinary of all these was his investigation into how the human heart functioned. Remarkably, he made a glass model of a heart so he could better see how blood flowed. Some of his findings were not proven until five hundred years later. Even as late as 1960 scientists misunderstood some aspects. Only in 2014 was da Vinci conclusively shown to be correct.  

How did da Vinci manage to be hundreds of years ahead of his time in so many different areas of science? That is the story Walter Isaacson tells in his fascinating biography, Leonardo da Vinci. Isaacson’s other biographies also focus on some of the most creative minds in history—Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs—because Isaacson wants to know where inventiveness comes from and how to nurture it.

In his last chapter Isaacson offers a list of how we can all learn from Leonardo to be more creative. One is being collaborative. Da Vinci readily consulted with those who had expertise that he lacked, such as in anatomy and mathematics. He also cooperated, for example,  with several colleagues in developing his Vitruvian Man which famously shows the proportions of a human figure inscribed in a circle and a square.

What Isaacson does not point out is that being in an urban setting enhances the possibilities of multiple connections which is the essence of creativity. Many recent studies have shown how social proximity, networking, and openness in cities can result in expanded creativity. The more people you can interact with, the more your own mind is stimulated. Da Vinci worked almost his entire adult life in the thriving centers of Florence, Milan, and Rome.

Isaacson also highlights the role of being interdisciplinary. Da Vinci was fascinated by almost everything—optics, neuroscience, aerodynamics, paleontology, and more. Like being collaborative, having many interests (and reading widely) makes possible many more fresh connections, stimulating new insights, and unexpected questions which, again, is at the heart of creativity.

These first two, being collaborative and interdisciplinary, allowed him to develop a habit of using analogy to understand what he observed. He saw eddies in water and by analogy correctly assumed there must be similar eddies in air movement. He even went further to suppose that curling locks of hair followed some of these same patterns. He also deduced from autopsies and other observations that eddies must occur within the bloodstream as blood circulates, even though the medical assumption of his day was that blood didn’t circulate but went back and forth.

Likewise he wondered if the principles by which trees branched was analogous to that of rivers and then to how blood vessels branch in a body. He was right about it all.

And if anyone is going to remember your work, writing everything down on paper is essential. No one is going to have your Facebook posts in fifty years. Da Vinci probably filled 35,000 pages of books with his notes, doodles, observations, sketches, and lists. While only about a fifth of these survive, if he hadn’t put things down on paper, we’d have none of his insights.

Not all his ideas were brilliant. Some were dead ends. But by being immensely productive, we increase the chances that something remarkable will emerge.

Sadly, his genius was hidden in those notebooks for centuries. Why? He never published and rarely finished paintings.* Therefore, only hundreds of years later did others unknowingly perform experiments and make discoveries that ended up replicating what he had done much earlier.

Why did he release so little to the public? He was a perfectionist and possibly ADHD, haphazardly following every shiny idea that flitted across his mind. He was too distracted to finish much and didn’t seem to care about sharing knowledge.

Ironically, the hyper-charged mind that so sidetracked him also made him incessantly curious about everything—which may have been his greatest strength. Did birds flap their wings faster on the downswing or the upswing? Why were fossils on top of mountains?  Why do we see objects with slightly blurred edges instead of in sharp outline?

No, we can’t all be Leonardos. But we can be more creative at home, at work, in relationships, in gardening, in cooking, in writing by making one or two of his natural impulses into our habits.

_____

*Da Vinci even kept the Mona Lisa till his death, never turning the painting over to the patron who commissioned it (and was thus never paid) because he was forever tinkering with it.

The Rarest of Leaders

When John Kennedy ran for president, I was excited. He was young, charming, and witty. And as an eight-year-old Catholic, I thought it was cool that he might become the first Catholic president. My enchantment with JFK continued into my early teen years when I read his book Profiles in Courage.

Given our day of politicians being hyper-pressurized to conform to their party (Republican or Democratic), I decided to revisit this book about eight U. S. senators from over a span of two centuries. I remembered little of it but wondered what the stories might teach about a willingness to sacrifice one’s political career for principle and the common good. And I found some of what I expected.

When Senator John Quincy Adams supported the contested trade policy of the other party’s president (that is, of Jefferson who had defeated Adams’ own father!), “Simply because he had placed national interest before party and section, the Federalists had deserted him. Yes, he thought, I did not desert them, as they charge— it is they who have deserted me” (p. 30).

But then I also found sentences I tripped over. Kennedy wrote that radical, abolitionist Republicans made Reconstruction “a black nightmare the South never could forget.” (p. 139) Well, yes, the dozen years after the Civil War were a nightmare for most whites when northern troops enforced the Fifteenth Amendment so blacks could vote as full citizens. But was Kennedy really accepting a racist white viewpoint that this period was a disaster?

Apparently so. I was then bewildered to read, “No state suffered more from carpetbag rule than Mississippi.” Kennedy said that corruption was rampant and that taxes rose by a factor of fourteen under the state government elected in Reconstruction. “Vast areas of northern Mississippi lay in ruins” (p. 147).

Yet as historian Nicholas Lemann writes, “None of this is true.”

Only in recent decades has the fuller, more accurate story become better known of the systematic campaign to deny blacks the vote in the South after Reconstruction from 1877 to the mid-twentieth century. (See, for example, of Ken Wytsma’s The Myth of Equality, pp. 55-57.) Layer upon layer of requirements were (unequally) enforced to limit who could vote, limits “not based on race” which nonetheless somehow(!) dramatically reduced black but not white voting.

Kennedy also writes positively about even the staunchest and best-known pro-slavery Senator in U.S. history—John C. Calhoun—who, Kennedy tells us, nearly made the cut in his book as one of the Senate’s most courageous.

Given that Civil Rights is one of the chief pillars of Kennedy’s presidential legacy, what is going on? Several answers are possible.

One is that Kennedy was simply a man of his time, influenced by the northern and southern white desire to not rock the boat by dredging up all the unpleasantness of the past. Another (less courageous and more cynical) answer is that this book, published in 1956, was intended to broaden southern support for the presidential candidacy of a senator from Massachusetts in 1960.  

Kennedy was a complex person, and we should not judge him one dimensionally. We should also be generous enough to recognize that people can grow and change. Profiles in Courage likewise needs to be read more than one dimensionally.

One thing we can take away is this: we still need those most rare of political leaders—those courageous enough to stand against their party and even their own constituents in order to stand for the value of every human, the common good, and doing what is moral.

How to be Well Versed

For Bible lovers, our hearts are warmed to be reminded to “Be still and know that I am God” or that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13 NKJV).

But sometimes taking a verse out of context can put us in a bit of a pickle. Does “all things” include me being an NBA All-Star even though I am vertically, age, and athletically challenged? The context of Philippians 4 (rejoicing, unity in Christ, being gentle, not worrying, being content in Christ) matters. Those are all the kinds of things Paul has in mind that Christ can strengthen him to do–not finding athletic, financial, relational, or artistic success.

The biblical authors didn’t write expecting that their sentences would be taken in isolation. They intended readers to understand how each part fit in the whole. But we often take verses out of context—sometimes to prove a point, sometimes for comfort or reassurance. Why do we do this?

One reason might be the introduction of verse divisions about 500 years ago. This made it easier for those writing or speaking about the Bible to be precise about where to find a particular quotation. A good thing. But over the centuries it has given the impression that each verse stands alone from its context. This can make it look like each verse is its own bullet point.

In fact, when the King James Version was originally typeset and published, each verse began its own paragraph. And that is still the way it is printed!

Verse divisions were not part of the original manuscripts of the Bible books. And certainly each verse was not its own paragraph. Paul’s letters, for example, were written in ancient Greek without paragraphs or any punctuation—not even with spaces between words!

Punctuation in Greek and other languages slowly developed over the next thousand years to make reading easier and the text clearer. And punctuation is still changing.

Is it okay to hang “The Lord is my shepherd” on my wall. Of course. But let it be a reminder of the whole of Psalm 23, and how it fits in the middle of Book 1 of the Psalms (1-41), and of the whole book of Psalms in which we find it, and how the Psalms fits in the Bible.

Ink-Stained Dreamers

As a lover of books and a lover of history, I found Adam Smyth’s The Book-Makers a delight. By zeroing in on a dozen and a half practitioners of the trade, Smyth gives us both a happy overview and fascinating stories of these often quirky individuals. My full review appears in the January-February 2025 edition of Christianity Today, which can also be found online. Here are a couple parts of the review that the editors left on the cutting room floor.

The chapter on an early bookbinder, William Wildgoose (yes, that really was his name) begins and ends with the tale of a wayward volume that was first housed in the famous Bodleian Library in Oxford, only to return unexpectedly three centuries later. In 1905 a young man comes in wanting advice on rebinding his ancient book. When the sub-librarian and assistant librarian inspect it closely—and then more closely!—they discover that this was once in the Bodleian’s collection, sold off as new printings became available. The book has been remarkably preserved through generations. And like someone who found a priceless pearl in a field, the Bodleian raises an enormous sum now equivalent to $300,000 to buy it back. The volume? Shakespeare’s First Folio, bound by William Wildgoose in 1623.

While zines go back a hundred years, Smyth features examples of the last few decades. The creators of these periodicals intentionally positioned them outside mainstream publishing in content and production values, often being photocopied and stapled. They knew that online existed, but they were committed to the tangibility, the physicality of their publications. They believed it provided a more multi-sensual experience that is not diluted by the digital.

Perhaps the author chose to highlight them for this very reason, as Smyth’s volume is in many ways a celebration of the physical book in all its dimensions.

A Beautiful, Heartbreaking Book

In A Matter of Death and Life, Irv and Marilyn Yolam offer a beautiful, heartbreaking book. In alternating chapters this husband and wife of 65 years write about Marilyn’s final months of fighting cancer. In the last half Irv alone tells his story.

Because this is very much a memoir, they give little advice on how to cope with death and sorrow. They simply relate their own experiences and reflections. For that reason, I find this much easier to read than many books on the topic. I can enter into their story, remembering my own, and grieve with them. 

Irv, being a career therapist, brings a unique double perspective as both one who suffers and one who walks alongside others. Not surprisingly, he honestly tells how hard it is sometimes to follow his own counsel. His reflections on sex, memory and its loss, and facing our own death during grief are also worthwhile.

During the course of all this, he reads some of the books he has published and finds his own past case studies illuminating. I was especially struck by “Irene” who refused to accept counsel from someone like him who had not (at that time) suffered loss. Though the two continue to meet, they hit something of a stalemate. In retrospect Irv now believes his own grieving would make him a better therapist with her even if his counsel wouldn’t change.

Though I give the book a warm recommendation, I did find two things a bit concerning. First, a couple times Irv says most of his clients moved to a healthier place after a year, maybe two. Second, he comments that those who had a good marriage are often able to move forward more quickly than those who have not. I just hope that readers who don’t fit these patterns will realize they are his generalizations. Not everyone experiences grief in these ways. And there may be nothing wrong with those who don’t.

This warm, honest, insightful book movingly intertwines two stories of facing our own death and grieving the death of a loved one.

Your Super Strange Bible

Of all the odd things in the Bible, Numbers 5 has got to rank way up there near the top. Do you remember reading about a strange test for deciding if your wife is unfaithful? I didn’t until my son asked me about it after hearing a podcast.

In verse 11-31 we are told that if a man is jealous and angry because he suspects his wife has been unfaithful, he’s supposed to go to the priest who will give his wife water mixed with dust from the floor of the tabernacle. If she gets sick from drinking it, she’s guilty. If she doesn’t, she’s innocent.

Wait? What? Seriously? This sounds like Salem Witch Trial stuff to determine if someone is in league with the devil. “Did you feel a chill when their shadow crossed you?” I mean, really?

OK. Super strange . . . but I think there is a way to understand it that makes at least a little sense.

First, in other Ancient Middle Eastern cultures (and possibly Israel too before Moses), the husband would have had the right to immediately divorce his wife, kill her, or have her killed just on the basis of his feelings that she was unfaithful—with absolutely no evidence or testimony required. He didn’t have to consult anyone. Sadly we sometimes still hear of such honor killings in the Middle East. Remarkably, this whole Numbers 5 procedure hits the pause button on those unchecked impulses and takes it out of the husband’s hands.

Second, as Wendy Alsup reminds us, with “trials by ordeal” in other cultures, the accused person is usually found guilty and dies. In the case of Numbers 5, just putting dust from the floor in drinking water is not likely to make anyone die or even get sick. After all, especially in that peasant culture, they’ve been eating and breathing dust their whole lives.

So yes, it is odd to us, and while it seems (is?) very patriarchal (e.g., why isn’t another man accused of adultery along with the wife?), on the whole it protects a woman from rash, unjust, and violent actions by her husband. So while this isn’t anything we’d do today, it shows the direction of how God wants us to deal with each other (by moving from the reckless and harsh customs of surrounding cultures to being merciful and protective). And this trajectory finds its fulfillment in Christ.

Again, it’s so odd that you may not find this totally satisfying. Yet we see how God’s redemptive direction (pointing away from the values of culture, then to Old Testament principles, and then to Christ) plays out similarly when it comes to slavery and women. That is, even though what the Old Testament says about slavery and women is troubling to us, it moderates the severe practices common in that day.* This ethos is then more completely realized in Christ and in the New Testament, showing us the direction we should be headed today.

It points toward mercy. It points toward grace. It points toward compassion.

—

Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay

*See William Webb, Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001).

Why the Christmas Story Bothered Me

The following is adapted from a December 2014 post in AndyUnedited.

The Christmas story always bothered me.

It never made sense. No, I’m not talking about the virgin birth. Not the angels singing to shepherds. Not the star in the sky. Not the wise men.

No, it was the part about there being no room in the inn. It never made sense. Middle Eastern hospitality is legendary. Strangers, travelers, those in need—you can count on the deeply ingrained culture of showing generosity and graciousness to those who need a meal or a warm bed.

They would never, ever turn away a pregnant woman—especially a woman who was a relative visiting her ancestral home in Bethlehem. Many close and distant relatives would have been living or visiting nearby to care for her. Turn her away? Send her to a barn? Never. It wouldn’t happen.

Then what did happen? In Luke 2:7, the Greek word traditionally translated as “inn” is better rendered as “guest room,” which is how the NIV puts it. Middle Eastern peasant homes were one large room though sometimes a guest room or “mother-in-law room” was attached. But since the guest room was already occupied, the owners of the house did the only sensible thing—they vacated the main house and gave it over to Mary and Joseph’s use.

The couple would not be alone either. When it came time for the baby to be born, Joseph would wait outside while women in the community would come and assist Mary. Luke didn’t mention the community because his readers would have known that without having to be told.

Then what in the world was a manger (a feed box for animals that Luke mentions) doing inside the house?

The single, main room of such a house typically had two parts: a smaller ground floor level and a larger level raised a couple feet for cooking, eating, and sleeping. Peasants would bring their animals into the lower level of the house at night for two reasons—to keep the animals safe from thieves and to provide warmth for the family sleeping on the upper level when it was cold.

Cut into the floor of the upper level where it meets the lower level was (wait for it) a manger. A place for hay to feed the animals.*

Some years ago I was describing this to a friend, and her eyes got huge. “That’s the kind of house I grew up in!” Her family had been missionaries among peasants in Syria. You can still find such homes there today.

Yes, Jesus was not born in a palace, but neither was he born alone in a barn. He was born in a common home of the people, a home that was opened up to him through a delightful demonstration of hospitality. When we welcome into our lives both family and strangers, the needy and the self-assured, we are living the Christmas story.

For the Christmas story is not one of “no room in the inn.” Rather it is one of wondrous welcome and generosity.

—

Image credit: Ambroz from Pixabay.

*See Kenneth E. Bailey, “The Story of Jesus Birth: Luke 2:1-20” in Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), pp. 25-37.

The True Meaning of the Christmas Tree

As a child I loved everything about our Christmas tree. I loved picking it out with my father on a cold winter day. I loved bringing it into the home a few days before Christmas to let it warm up so the branches could thaw out. I loved the smell. I loved helping with the lights and then adding ornaments and perhaps tinsel and strings of popcorn.

You can imagine my disappointment when I was told that Christmas trees were an adaptation of a pagan custom. Likewise, you can imagine my delight when I read recently that the “pagan custom” story was in fact a myth. As Emily McGowan writes:

Though many in the modern period have sought to trace the Christmas tree back to pre-Christian paganism, historians now acknowledge this is a myth. Others have attempted to link it to legends about Saint Boniface or Martin Luther, but these stories have no basis in history either. Our best historians think the Christmas tree tradition developed in the medieval period. During that time most people couldn’t read or write, so plays were put on to teach biblical stories. One feature of such plays was a paradise tree representing the tree of knowledge (Genesis 2:9 ). In the play, the tree symbolized both the fallenness of humankind and the cross, the “tree” that brought us salvation. They decorated the paradise tree with apples for the fall and round pastry wafers for the Eucharist—the body of Christ that saves us. Interestingly, the Feast of Adam and Eve fell on December 24, so the public display of the paradise tree coincided with the day before the start of Christmas.*

The Bible Project podcast on trees confirms this. Trees in Scripture are not just interesting botanically as we encounter oak, cedar, juniper, and many other kinds. They are important as symbols of humanity and of our relationship with God.

Psalm 1 famously compares a righteous, flourishing human to a tree by water that abounds in fruit. The wood from trees elsewhere plays important roles in salvation. The ark that saved Noah and his family was made of wood. Sacrifices were often burned with wood.

So to bring a tree into our homes and celebrate it is no pagan holdover but a reminder of our salvation.

For as Emily McGowin reminds us, while humanity was banished from the garden so that we would be cut off from the tree of life, because of Christ we now have full and free access to the new tree of life—the cross.

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*Emily Hunter McGowin, Christmas (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2023), p. 74.

Image by 🌸♡💙♡🌸 Julita 🌸♡💙♡🌸 from Pixabay

The Other Christmas Story

We all love the Christmas story in Matthew’s gospel. Mary and Joseph are pledged to be married. An angel appears to her. When Joseph finds out she’s already pregnant, he decides to divorce her quietly. But an angel tells him no. Her son will be the savior. After Jesus is born in Bethlehem, the Magi bring their gifts. Joseph then takes his family to Egypt to avoid Herod’s threats (Matthew 1:18 –2:18).

What we seldom notice, however, is that there is another Christmas story in Matthew, another version of how Jesus was born to Mary and Joseph. This overlooked account is squeezed between a list of Jesus’ ancestors and the familiar story. Here it is:

And Jacob [was] the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah. (Matthew 1:16)

The first seventeen verse of Matthew contain a genealogy of Jesus, tracing his roots from Abraham to David, then through the exile in Babylon, culminating in Jesus. In verse 17 Matthew emphasizes these four touch points in Israel’s story.*

♦ The promises to Israel of land, of being a great nation, and of blessing all nations (Abraham)
♦ Israel’s royal history (David)
♦ Israel’s failure to keep the covenant (exile in Babylon)
♦ The culmination of Israel’s history (Jesus)

All the promises to Abraham and all the restoration Israel needs for her sins, Matthew is saying, are fulfilled in Jesus, Israel’s royal son of David.

Matthew’s grand, sweeping overview before the intimate portrait of Mary and Joseph is like a movie that begins with the whole universe in view. Then the camera moves faster than the speed of light through billions of galaxies to pause momentarily on the Milky Way before finding our solar system, racing past Saturn and Jupiter to Earth, then the Middle East, and zeroing in on a room in a Palestinian hovel.

Yes, in those first 17 verses Matthew is saying, Jesus came to save us as individuals, but he also came to fulfill God’s entire plan for Israel and all creation through King Jesus.

We should notice at least one other important feature of Matthew’s list. Remarkably for a patriarchal culture, he lists four women—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Mary. Why are they included? What they have in common is a clue.

To begin, the first three are gentiles. God promised to Abraham in Genesis 12 that Israel would be a blessing to all nations, a role it often forgot. Jesus’ own genealogy (yes, his genes) already showed how all those outside Israel were also included in the promise.

Second, while all four women had suspect sexual backgrounds, that is not Matthew’s emphasis. They are all honored for their fidelity to the line of the Messiah. Each of these women played a critical role when the line of promise was threatened.

Tamar rescued Judah’s line from ending (Genesis 38:1-30). Rahab protected Israel’s spies in Jericho, preserving Israel so it could enter the land God promised Abraham (Joshua 2:1-21). Ruth’s deceased husband was from the line of Judah; by her faithful tenacity, she found a new husband from that tribe and became the great grandmother of David (Ruth 1-4, especially 4:16-22). As Chris Bruno and others said,

These three Gentile women are not only the ancestors of the Messiah, but also point forward to him in their work of preserving God’s covenant line and rescuing his people from imminent destruction. In other words, they are themselves saviours of Israel. (p. 21)

The familiar Christmas story offers so much to love. Through Matthew’s other story of Christmas, we have even more.

—

*Chris Bruno, Jared Compton, and Kevin McFadden, Biblical Theology According to the Apostles, NSBT (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020), pp. 11-22.

Nativity image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Galaxy image by ENES KOÇ from Pixabay