Guest Essay: Be Fruitful and Multiply

14 June 2025

Today I’m pleased to present a guest essay by a young friend, considering the practicality of applying the creation mandate in today’s world. I think you’ll find it helpful.

Be Fruitful and Multiply: Genesis 1:28 in the 21st Century

by Jael Anderson

              “South Korea has a fertility rate of 0.7” (Lewis-Kraus). This means that every person is being replaced by one third of a person, or for every three people in this generation there is one in the next generation. “This is the lowest rate of any nation in the world. It may be the lowest in recorded history… The country is an outlier, but it may not be one for long” (Lewis-Kraus). A school in South Korea that once had over a thousand students now only has five. They know no other children except those in their school. What will this do to our world? Will things actually be easier and better with fewer people?

              When God created Adam and Eve, he told them to “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1.28), which obviously means to have children. During their 800-some-year-lives, Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters. The next part of God’s command to them was, “Fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1.28). One meaning of subdue is, “To bring (land) under cultivation” (Merriam-Webster’s 1242). It can also mean to bring under dominion, and God told Adam and Eve, “Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1.28). Adam and Eve’s mission was to subdue the earth and bring its animals under dominion.

              Dominion over the world is not the only reason to have children; they are also a blessing. As Psalm 127 says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them” (Ps. 127.3-5) Solomon wrote this psalm, and his quiver was most certainly full of children. Psalm 128 lists the blessings of those who fear the LORD, and a large portion of the psalm talks about children: “Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your children like olive plants around your table… Yes, may you see your children’s children” (Ps. 128.3,6). David wrote Psalm 144 as a song to God who blesses his people, and one thing he mentions is, “Our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth… our daughters may be as pillars sculpted in palace style” (Ps, 144.12). These psalms depict children as one of God’s main blessings to his people.

              Why are children depicted as a blessing? First of all, “Children are a heritage from the LORD” (Ps. 127.3). Children are an inheritance – a good thing to have. Little kids give purpose and joy to their parents. Older children also help their parents with many other things, such as in business and managing the home. Children are also a legacy, a meaningful and lasting gift to their parents and the world. Children who obey the sixth commandment – “Honor your father and your mother” (Deut. 5.16) – are definitely a blessing to their parents. Kids give joy to their parents because they are cute and fun; raising godly children is a high calling that gives purpose to their parents. Having children can “carry on the family legacy” (Stone), which is a reason many people have children.

              Siblings are a blessing to each other when they are young and when they are adults. When asked why someone should have children, an eight-year-old “stopped punching his little brother long enough to say, ‘We’re excellent company’” (Lewis-Kraus). When children are not able to spend time with friends outside of their family, they can play with each other and learn and grow together.[3]  As adults, their siblings can become intimate friends to turn to in a time of trouble. As Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes,“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor… Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” (Eccles. 4.9,12) For example, it was easier for my grandma to care for her father in his old age with her three siblings than if she had been an only child.

              Although many may think the main reason people don’t have kids is simply because they don’t want to, one of the main objections to raising children is that it is too expensive. If someone says, “having a child in the US is notably not cheap” (Valko), they think they need to spend a lot more on their kids than they actually do. For example, each child does not need to have his or her own room. In fact, it can be a lot more fun to share a room with four siblings than to sleep alone. Other things people spend too much money on for their children are phones and sports. America is currently the richest country in the world, possibly the richest in history. This does make it more expensive to live here, but it also gives us modern conveniences (which can make child-raising easier) including electric services, heating and cooling, and transportation. People have been raising children forever, even during the Great Depression, which was one of the poorest times in America’s history. We are rich and not having children, but when we were poor we had lots. Raising children is not as much of a financial problem as people think.

              Another objection to children is that “Giving birth takes a huge toll on your body” (Valko). Upon interviewing mothers of five and six children, I found that many women say that the toll on your body is worth it. Kids are just so fun that people want more. “The last will be first and the first last” (Matt. 20.16). Giving your life for your child is a way of putting yourself last, and ultimately, this sacrifice is rewarded. People also say that they want to do what they like with their life, and say, “Children aren’t a necessary part of the good life” (Lewis-Kraus). Traveling is hard with children. It is harder to have time for hobbies with children. Having a dog or cat is much easier than children. However, these do not give lasting satisfaction, and the people who pursue these things often later regret not having children. Psychotherapist Dr. Barton Goldsmith says, “Deciding not to have children was the biggest mistake I ever made…I believe the effort, the pain and tears, the fear and the financial burden, all the difficult parts that I missed out on—along with the many joys of parenthood—would have been worth it… A trip around the world, or any great experience, cannot match the love of your child” (Goldsmith).

              The first command God gave to Adam and Eve was to have children, and “for most of human history, having children was something the majority of people simply did without thinking too much about it. Now it is one competing alternative among many” (Lewis-Kraus). People are worried that there will not be enough food in the world, and that animals will go extinct. (They don’t seem to be worried that humans will go extinct.) People also say that with fewer people, there will be “a society with less competition – a smaller, gentler world with a greater share of resources for all” (Lewis-Kraus). But this really isn’t true. With fewer people, there will be less of a labor force to “produce and distribute basic goods” (Lewis-Kraus). This labor force may be an even smaller percentage than it is now, so instead of there being “a greater share of resources” to go around, the “inequality will increase” (Lewis-Kraus).

              Another thing people say is that “not having children is the single most impactful decision that a person can make to reverse the climate change” (Lewis-Kraus). Why do they think children make the world warmer? Today is not the first time the world has experienced global warming. Temperatures during the medieval warm period were higher than they are now, and this was not because a bunch of Vikings were driving race cars. The earth is pretty full, but we need to continue to obey God’s command. Has the world been subdued? No. We most certainly do not have dominion over all the animals. We know very little about the creatures that inhabit the ocean’s floor. There are thick jungles full of undiscovered animals. The world is not subdued. The world is in need of more humans to fulfill God’s command of dominion.

              Children are a blessing to their family and the world. It is good and fun to have many children. “People who do not believe in a good human future and a deep sense of purpose for the future will not have children” (Yenor). We Christians do have a good hope for the future. Many objections to children are based on fear, but as Christians, we can trust God to provide for our needs. To obey God’s command we need to “Be fruitful and multiply.”

Works Cited

Douthat, Ross. “The Case for One More Child: Why Large Families Will Save Humanity.” Plough.com, Plough Publishing House, 18 Nov. 2020,   http://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/parenting/the-case-for-one-more-child.

Goldsmith, Barton. “Why I Regret Not Having Children: Deciding not to have children was the          biggest mistake I ever made.” Psychologytoday.com, Psychology Today, 28 July 2021,               http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-fitness/202107/why-i-regret-not-        having- children.

Lewis-Kraus, Gideon. “The End of Children.” Newyorker.com, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2025,               http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/03/the-population-implosion.

Stone, Lyman. “A Family-Friendly Pronatalism.” Ifstudies.com, Institute for Family Studies, 20 June 2024, ifstudies.org/blog/a-family-friendly-pronatalism.

Valko, Alana. “A 29-Year-Old Just Gave The Best Explanation As To Why Millennials Aren’t Having             Kids.” Buzzfeed.com, BuzzFeed, 15 Aug. 2024, http://www.buzzfeed.com/alanavalko/why- millennials-              dont-have-kids.

Yenor, Scott. “Fertility Shows Why Christians Must Be Concerned About Political Greatness.” americanreformer.org, American Reformer, 27 Nov. 2024, americanreformer.org/2024/11/fertility-shows-why-christians-must-be-concerned-about-political-greatness/.

“Subdue.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, edited by Fredrick C. Mish, Eleventh edition,     Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2014, p. 1242.

Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Guest Essay: School of Play

7 June 2025

The essay below is a guest post by a young friend of mine. In our reflections on Christian physicality, we frequently forget to think specifically about the implications of the fact that schoolchildren have bodies. Owen weighs in with a message we’d do well to reflect on.

School of Play

by Owen Coffman

Angela Browning, founder of Recess for All Florida Students, said her kids started coming home from school in tears a few years ago, complaining that the day had been too long and that they’d had no time to play with friends. At the time, they were getting 10 minutes of recess twice a week, she said. This year, with 20 minutes of recess each day, their response has been different. Health organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that children should be given at least 60 minutes of recess per day. Why do kids get such a minimal amount of time to do what they want? Nobody questions the fact that adults need breaks during a work day. Kids have far more energy, less developed brains, and haven’t yet built the social skills they will need to thrive as adults. It is intuitive that they would need free time to move, think, play, and interact with their peers. School is very structured. Kids have to sit quietly, take notes, and keep their bodies still. In most classes, they are spending their time listening, not contributing. Interacting with friends is discouraged. Obviously these rules are in place for a reason, intending to help students learn. Teachers are urged to give their students all the information needed to pass their standardized tests, keep their schools open, and measure up to students in other countries academically. This in turn puts pressure on students to keep their grades up, remember everything, and ultimately succeed. However, kids are only able to keep these difficult behaviors up for a time before they need a break to move their bodies, interact with friends, or even just sit alone and think. Many school officials and administrators downplay the importance of recess for kids because they assume it is a waste of time and kids would be better employed studying. They often feel that a few extra minutes spent teaching a subject will improve academic outcomes more than the same amount of time spent in unstructured play. However, this is not actually what the research has shown. Children get higher grades, solve personal problems better, improve their fitness, and develop confidence and independence, all as direct benefits of longer recess.   

Maybe the most obvious to spot are the physical benefits of recess. According to US News and World Report, “The average (American) child sits for 8.5 hours a day. Combine that with high-calorie foods, and weight gain is inevitable, researchers say. But studies show that at least 20 minutes of recess daily, along with 150 minutes of physical education a week, make a measurable difference in children’s weight.” In a country where children’s obesity rates are growing, implementing recess could have a big impact. In the same article, author Kate Rix points out “Letting kids run fast will help them develop coordination. Running up the slide may not be as unsafe as it looks. And even falling… is something kids need to practice to avoid getting badly hurt.” Challenging their physical abilities makes kids stronger, faster, more coordinated, and improves stamina. Recess isn’t the only way to reap all of these benefits, but it is a good place to start. Students will feel motivated to improve in an environment with friends. Most boys and many girls are naturally competitive with each other and physical activities are a better place for kids to compete than on video game scores, social media followers, or test results. Pull up competitions, jump rope high score, or a game of capture the flag are all appropriate outlets for competitive spirit. Aside from being a channel for kids to burn energy and compete, games at recess are an opportunity to try out new things. Children often lack space, time, or friends after school which leaves  recess as their only time to be introduced to new things and expand what they are able to do. A child who throws a frisbee with a friend for 20 minutes will find he can throw more accurately and catch more consistently than when he began. A kid who sets herself a goal of getting across the monkey bars without dropping will get stronger arms and be able to complete the monkey bars, climb a rope swing, or in my brother’s case, climb up the underside of the stairs using only his arms. When kids get home from school, without motivation, they may just pick up a screen. Many parents don’t require or encourage their children to be active when they get home from school, which means it is often up to schools to provide them with a place to be active and grow in physical ability.  

“Quality physical education along with daily recess are necessary components of the school curriculum that enable students to develop physical competence, health-related fitness, self responsibility, and enjoyment of physical activity so that they can be physically active for a lifetime,” the groups wrote in a position paper about elementary school recess in 2001.(Time Magazine) Not only do schools enforce activity in PE class, they can be the place where kids find movement fun during recess. There is something inherently more exciting about playing and competing with people your age. Classmates can build each other up, have friendly competition, and enable games that can’t be played at home due to lack of space, equipment, or teammates. 

Learning a skill at a young age and enjoying it will build a foundation for wanting to do it for the rest of life. A young kid whose dad takes him golfing will be more likely to golf as an older adult to stay in shape and have fun. Kids who play tennis in middle school might as a fifty year old pick up pickleball. 

The physical benefits of recess are all pretty obvious, but what about the social upshots of a longer unstructured time for children during a normal school day? Everything about school is precisely structured. Kids aren’t able to interact with each other except for during recess. Children will grow in independence and toughness, learn how to regulate themselves emotionally, solve conflicts with peers, socialize, and develop teamwork skills during recess. Knowing how to socialize is important for all kids and it is impossible to learn in a class.  

Recess helps kids develop independence and toughness. Inevitably, kids get minor injuries like scrapes and bruises playing outside during recess and have to learn how to get back up. Kids don’t want to miss recess and most will want to keep playing even if they are in pain, so they have an incentive to get back up and keep playing. Kids often encourage each other to push through minor pain so they can finish a game. During recess, children are supervised but less closely than indoors. They usually get to make choices about what to play and are allowed to devise their own rules for a game. This might be the only time in a weekday that kids get to choose what they want to do, and practicing these skills at recess leads to greater confidence and independence. Kids will also gain confidence when they discover that they are growing in a particular skill. A kid who doubled the length of his frisbee throw can feel elated and proud of his accomplishment. The girl who jumps ropes at recess and learns how to touch the ground between jumps and retain her balance will feel more confident to try other tricks with her rope. 

Independence and toughness are not the only social benefits of longer recess. Students also learn how to interact with their peers, practice getting along, and regulate their own emotions during recess. This is the time that kids are free to choose something they want to do in their time. Without a teacher hovering over them to make sure everyone follows the rules, they have the chance to learn to cooperate and compromise. There is an incentive to do so because very few kids would have fun spending time sitting alone. When you want someone to play with you or do something with you, you normally try to find common ground that suits both. Kids might try to be nice to someone to encourage them to play. For all these same reasons, kids have a motivation to learn to control their temper. It’s not fun to play with someone who will blow up at the slightest problem. Kids instinctively understand that and will try to maintain calm in order to have fun with their classmates or finish a game. 

“Asking other kids to play, explaining the rules of a complex game and hashing out disputes are all important life lessons that kids can only learn if they’re given time to play. Recess also offers the chance for children to strengthen their leadership and negotiation skills, and it can prevent bullying. Kids love playing—and when a conflict arises, it pushes children to practice these vital social skills so they can get back to having fun.” (Rasmussen University) Teamwork is a vital part of adult life and it is a skill best learned at a young age. According to Robert Murray, the former chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health “Recess is the only place in school, maybe the only place in their social life, where kids have the opportunity to develop social skills with their peers,” These social skills are of utmost importance at every stage of life from getting along at work, making new friends, and being part of a community. “When you think about adults, we value and treasure those social skills in our coworkers – things like negotiation and the ability to communicate and have peer-to-peer interaction as a team member,” he also said. “All of those things are really worked out on the playground peer-to-peer, not teacher-to-child, not parent-to-child, but child-to-child.” Loosely supervised play time might be the only time for kids to develop lifelong skills relevant throughout their entire adult lives. In other words, you hope your coworkers had recess growing up. 

When kids get to move their bodies, another result is better attention in the classroom. “After recess for children, or after a corresponding break time for adolescents, students are more attentive and better able to perform cognitively,” says the American Academy of Pediatrics. When students get a break from staring at a textbook or listening to a teacher, they will come back to the subject with improved attention. This actually allows them to accomplish more than if they had studied the whole time. The AAP policy statement goes on to state “The science shows pretty clearly that taking those breaks in the day makes students better able to encode memory and learn and perform academically.” Students will not only be able to focus better in the classroom, but will be able to remember and recall what they have learned. If encoding memory, learning, and academic performance are the fundamental goals of education in America, recess is a critical tool to help educators achieve their purpose. The strange thing is, one of the reasons recess is getting cut from many schools across America is because of government regulations. Recess times across the country began to decline rapidly after the No Child Left Behind Act, which was designed to help American kids keep up academically with those of other nations. In this policy, the government installed achievement goals in standardized tests. If a school’s test scores were poor, they would be subject to a series of penalties, including loss of funding. It is no wonder that schools began to question whether recess was a waste of time. Yet, research shows that kids who get more recess perform at a higher level in school. Statistics aside, be honest, would you feel mentally refreshed if you spent hours sitting in a classroom without a break? American kids simply do not get enough time for recess, which is critical for their  improvement in fitness and coordination, development of social skills, and success in school. The physical benefits of recess are immense. Kids will gain endurance, strength, and coordination while learning to enjoy new activities. While socializing and developing teamwork, they will build independence and toughness. Kids need a mental break, and when they don’t get it, they lose their attention span, forget their lessons, have difficulty concentrating resulting in lower grades. By giving students the opportunity to use their bodies and change their focus, teachers actually improve memory, recall, and attention in the classroom. Following the recommendations for recess will improve student outcomes and allow schools to meet the standards necessary to succeed. Perhaps most importantly, recess is vital for kids because they will learn skills that they are not learning anywhere else. In short, recess is the necessary preparation for successful life as an adult. It helps people grow into all the skills needed to live a productive, happy life later on. Teamwork, cooperation, and compromise are necessary skills for working with others. Enjoyment of a variety of physical activities will develop hobbies and fitness for later in life. And intellectual achievement will lay the groundwork for success in college, on-the-job training, and the continued education needed to make an enjoyable career. So come on you all, give ‘em some RECESS. 

Works Cited

Reilly, Katie “Is Recess Important for Kids or a Waste of Time? Here’s What the  Research Says” Time Magazine  23 October 2017 time.com/4982061/recess-benefits-research-debate Date Accessed 13 April 2025

Rix, Kate. “How Much Recess Should Kids Get?” US News World Report  14 October 2022. www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/how-much-recess-should-kids-get Date Accessed 15 April 2025

“10 Reasons Kids Should Have Longer Recess at School” Recess Guardians 25 March 2022 www.recessguardians.org/post/design-a-stunning-blog Date Accessed 15 April 2025

Potts, Monica “Recess is Good for Kids. Why Don’t More States Require It?” Five Thirty Eight 23 March 2023 fivethirtyeight.com/features/recess-is-good-for-kids-why-dont-more-states-require-it Date Accessed 16 April 2025 

Thompson, Hannah R. and London, Rebecca A. “Not All Fun and Games: Disparities in School Recess Persist, and Must Be Addressed” National Library of Medicine pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10319329 Date Accessed 9 April 2025

Murray, Robert et All. “The Crucial Role of Recess in School” American Academy of Pediatrics Volume 131, Issue 1. 1 January 2013. publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/131/1/183/30893/The-Crucial-Role-of-Recess-in-School? Date Accessed 13 April 2025

Brooks, Ashley. “The Importance of Recess: Why Schools Need More Playtime” Rasmussen University  20 June 2022 www..rasmussen.edu/degrees/education/blog/importance-of-recess Date Accessed 14 April 2025

“Recess Helps Kids Learn Better in School” American Heart Association 29 January 2016 www.heart.org/en/news/2018/05/01/recess-helps-kids-learn-better-in-school Date Accessed 12 April 2025

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Not Dead, Just Relocated

9 April 2024

Some while ago, the New Yorker published a think piece titled “The End of the English Major.” The article chronicles a strong trend away from studying the humanities in universities: “In 2022, only seven per cent of Harvard freshmen planned to major in the humanities, down from twenty per cent in 2012, and nearly thirty per cent during the nineteen-seventies.”

The author seems confused by the trend: “English professors find the turn particularly baffling now: a moment when, by most appearances, the appetite for public contemplation of language, identity, historiography, and other longtime concerns of the seminar table is at a peak.”

It’s not some big mystery. Speaking as a humanities teacher, I find that both students and adults continue to love painting, architecture, music, poetry, essays, novels, etc., when they’re given a chance. That hasn’t changed. But students no longer get that chance.

The richness of the humanities is the possibility of getting out of your own place and century and getting a deeper perspective on life, but exposure alone does not guarantee that perspective. Good habits of engagement are essential to receive the benefits. Good reading habits require a submission to the author and original audience first, and then a step back to exercise sober judgment. Neither submission nor sober judgment come naturally; both are disciplines developed under the tutelage of a skilled teacher who embodies those traits and can call them forth in the student. It’s a beautiful experience, and I was blessed to have two teachers in particular who invested themselves in giving it to me. (Thank you Mrs. Bornarth and Mrs. Brinkley!!!)

But academic humanities don’t do that anymore. At the university level, humanities faculties quit teaching their actual disciplines a couple generations ago, and the rot continues to spread to ever-lower levels. We’re now to the point where it’s entirely possible not only that your high school aged kid’s English teacher doesn’t know how to read a text; neither did his teacher, nor his teacher!

There’s a wide difference between reading a text for what the author is doing, and reading a text for our particular preoccupations. Say we’re interested in Elizabethan dueling customs. We’d be better off reading George Silver than Shakespeare, but it’s legitimate to read Hamlet and see if we can pick up some tidbits. We might be able to learn something, but only an idiot thinks that’s what Shakespeare is writing for. We’re imposing our own categories and interests on the text — and ditto with a Marxist reading, or a post-structuralist reading, or an intersectional queer Asian feminist reading.

Readings driven by contemporary preoccupations aren’t seeking understanding, still less to get out of their own century; they’re using the text before them as a springboard for their own preferred talking points — which are current, fashionable, and (predictably) boring as hell. Reading a classic text in that way is the very definition of provincialism, and it’s pointless besides. Why read a 400-year-old author to get all the same drivel you can read on Twitter?

Precisely that sort of reading predominates in university humanities departments, and has for at least two generations now. The students have finally noticed, and they’re voting with their feet, in droves. And good for them!

Does this mean that the humanities are dead? Not a bit of it. It means that university humanities departments are dead. The humanities themselves are alive and well. We’ve never been more able to access great art and architecture and music and dance and literature than we are right now. Anywhere with a functioning internet connection puts you in touch with more great works than you could contemplate in a lifetime. You can watch—and read, and listen to, and fall in love with—some of the most beautiful works the human race has ever produced, right on the same device where you’re reading this post right now. And having found something that you love, why would you keep it to yourself? Share with your friends! I introduced my barista to Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia just last week, and she loved it!

We could live in a rich culture of sharing and participating in beauty, and there’s only one thing stopping us: us. We just gotta do it. What are we waiting for?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

An Unexpected Baptism

5 March 2024

The year was 1994. Trent Reznor was 29 years old, and his industrial rock band, Nine Inch Nails, was completing work on its paradoxically-named second studio album, The Downward Spiral. The band had already seen substantial success: their first studio album Pretty Hate Machine (1989) went triple platinum, and their EP Broken (1992) went platinum as well. NIN t-shirts were ubiquitous in high school hallways, as some of us are old enough to remember.

The final cut on The Downward Spiral, “Hurt,” written by Reznor, was released in early 1995 as a promotional single in advance of the full album. The song charted at #8, and judging from the album’s 3.7 million sales, “Hurt” did its job. “Hurt” would also garner Reznor a nomination for best rock song at the 1996 Grammys. (Nor did the song lose its appeal with age; by 2020, NIN had 9 studio albums and 3 EPs out, and Billboard ranked “Hurt” #3 on its list of NIN’s all-time best songs.)

By the numbers, Reznor was on an upward spiral, but the song itself tells a radically different story. Watch the live performance, listen closely to the music, with its intermittent nail-on-the-chalkboard theme, and note the imagery that Reznor chose to show his audience to go along with the lyrics. How does that hit you?

Hold that thought.

Fast-forward to the early 2000s. Producer Rick Rubin is working with an aging Johnny Cash, and–not without some difficulty–convinces Cash to cover “Hurt.” Cash’s cover will come out in 2002, the year before he dies. Watch the music video to see what Cash made of it.

Rubin’s own account of making the song shows that he understands the overwhelming gravitas of Cash singing Reznor’s lyric. It is, as Rubin says, a far more powerful gut-punch coming from an old man than from a guy in his twenties, with decades still ahead of him.

But Rubin (at least in that interview) misses the note of redemption Cash brings to the song. By changing a single word in the lyric–Reznor’s “I wear this crown of shit/upon my liar’s chair” becomes “I wear this crown of thorns/upon my liar’s chair”–Cash turns the entire song inside out. The iconography of the video adds to the effect, but it’s already there in that single change in wording. Reznor’s wording is an evocative and powerful image of pointlessness, shame, and waste. He chooses from a wide range of disturbing video imagery to depict a world gone mad, and its none-too-subtle effect is to redirect moral responsibility for his own madness. In such a world, is it any wonder that his life is a complete train wreck?

Cash’s “crown of thorns” wording evokes the crucifixion of Jesus Christ–and the crucifixion is never the end of the story. The iconography of loss, waste, and regret in Cash’s video–unlike Reznor’s, drawn overwhelmingly from his own life–is deeply real. He isn’t pulling any punches here. But if an aging Cash wears his regret like a crown of thorns, reinforced by a few well-chosen video images of Jesus’ crucifixion, then there’s a resurrection coming. As one commentator (I forget who) put it, Reznor wrote a suicide note, and Cash turned it into a hymn.

Reznor’s response? “That song isn’t mine anymore.”

He’s right. Cash didn’t just cover the song; he baptized it, and by the power of Jesus Christ, what was dead is now raised to a new life.

And that’s how “despoiling the Egyptians” is done.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Trying on a Mind

5 December 2023

I was raised to be a student of great thinkers. My parents were modeling and teaching good hermeneutics in family Bible study before I could even read. My whole life, I was taught to do the research and expend the imaginal effort to grasp the situation of the writing: what was happening for the writer? For the readers? What was their culture, language, cause for writing the message? It was understood (long before I ever heard of speech act theory) that writing is hard work, and the writer isn’t just spouting off for self-expression; he’s trying to do something to the readers. What are the readers supposed to see and hear? What are they supposed to do?

All this is just basic to being a good student of the humanities, but being raised on the sacred text, there was also an additional dimension: application. Of course a good teacher can bend your ear at length about the value of, say, Abraham Lincoln’s discourses on slavery or St. Patrick’s Confessio for our present day, but a student can just add them to his fund of knowledge of history with no particular thought to present-day lessons. A faithful Christian student of Leviticus has no such luxury. Our fundamental orientation toward the Scriptures is obedience.

Some Scriptures are written closer to our immediate situation (e.g. Romans), and others (Leviticus) further away, but toward all of them we bring a desire to hear what the Holy Spirit will say “Today, if you will hear His voice….” Failure to bring that desire to the text is a moral failure, as demonstrated in the next breath: “…do not harden your hearts as in the Rebellion.”

Coming into my own as a student of the humanities in high school, I applied all my background to my studies. My biblical lessons gave me a leg up on my classmates in grasping the underlying source material for the (Western) literature we studied. More than that, my reflexive habit of looking for application added dimension and depth to my study and commentary. Which is not to say that I had nothing to learn: I came out of high school with two big additional pieces. First, I fell in love with the beauty of the arts. I didn’t come from a background that appreciated beauty, so waking me up was not a trivial task. I was blessed with teachers that tackled the job with great enthusiasm. (Bornarth, Brinkley, Kuyper, and Virgo: Thank you all!) Second, I learned how to drill down into an author’s biography and body of work, to become a student of that author in particular and begin to see the world as he or she saw it.

My first project of that nature was a months-long team effort with two other students, focused on George Bernard Shaw. It had honestly never occurred to me that one could develop that kind of grasp of a particular person’s work. I was hooked. Since then, I’ve devoted serious attention to authors as diverse as Plato, Euclid, Flannery O’Connor, St. Patrick, Matteo Ricci, Stephen Barnes, Rex Stout, George Leonard, Peter Leithart, Orson Scott Card, Frank Herbert, and N. D. Wilson.

Every human is handcrafted for eternity; there’s not the slightest chance that even a prolific writer will successfully convey all their own depths to even the most apt of readers. Happily, you need not be the most apt of readers to immerse yourself in a particular person’s thought for a time. The strength of this sort of experiment is that you get a chance to try on someone else’s mind, see what they see, think what they think. It’s never a perfect fit. Of course it’s not. The places that fit don’t fit easily are the whole point.

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Posted by Tim Nichols