Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [88]
As you probably know, until his fortieth birthday, Bush was a heavy drinker. Or, as we call them at Harvard, a “drunk.” According to many accounts, Bush was also an “obnoxious drunk.” Finally, Laura Bush laid down the law. Threatened with losing sex from his wife, Bush decided to quit drinking and turn to Christ. (That part about sex is not in the Newsweek article.)
It was Evans, a fellow oilman, who coaxed his old friend George into joining a Bible-study group in Midland. According to Newsweek:
It was a scriptural boot camp; an intensive, yearlong study of a single book of the New Testament, each week a new chapter, with detailed reading and discussion in a group of ten men. For two years Bush and Evans and their partners read the clear writings of the Gentile physician Luke—Acts, and then his Gospel.
Now, I’m a Jew. And I grew up knowing zip about the New Testament and still know next to zip. But as it so happened, a few days before the Correspondents Dinner, I ran into economist Paul Solman at the Harvard gym. Paul, who teaches a course in business ethics, is also a Jew, but an educated one. So he knows the Bible. He, too, had read Fineman’s cover story.
He told me he found it ironic that Acts was one of the two books Bush and Evans had studied. Acts, Paul told me, is Luke’s account of the formation of the Church after Jesus’ death. The book is almost a socialist tract, full of admonishment to the rich to share their wealth with the poor. The communist motto, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” is derived from Acts 4:32–35. Here’s the whole passage:
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.
In the Hilton ballroom, after Ray Charles had finished and received a perfunctory ovation, I saw Evans sitting alone at his table. I sidled into the seat next to him. “Mr. Secretary, do you mind if I speak with you?”
“Not at all, Al.” I liked him immediately.
After some niceties, I steered the conversation toward Acts and how its message seemed at odds with the shape of the Bush tax cut. I led into it with “Did you read Howard Fineman’s cover story in Newsweek on Bush and God?”
“Yes,” Evans said.
“Did you like it?”
“Yes.”
“So did I,” I said. “So, you know what Acts is about.”
Evans looked a little uncomfortable. Long pause. Then, “No.”
It was a scriptural boot camp; an intensive, yearlong study of a single book of the New Testament, each week a new chapter, with detailed reading and discussion in a group of ten men. For two years Bush and Evans and their partners read the clear writings of the Gentile physician Luke—Acts, and then his Gospel.
“No?”
No.
Based on what Paul Solman had told me and a subsequent glance at The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Life of Christ, I explained to the scriptural boot camp survivor what I understood Acts to be about. Then I went into my spiel about the unfairness of the tax cut.
“Ah,” Evans smiled. “But Acts also has Jesus’ Parable of the Talents.”
“No,” I said. “That’s in Matthew.”
The Parable of the Talents is a story Jesus told about a master giving three servants each a sum of money. When the master returns, two of the men have used the money to make more money. The other man buried the money in the ground. The master rewards the men who made money from the money and punishes the schmuck who didn’t. Moral: God wants you to use your gifts. Conservatives tend to interpret the parable literally, as an exhortation