Begin at the Very Beginning

I went to William Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi hoping to find his ghost there. Through many years and many writers, Faulkner is the one who haunts me the most, shows up uninvited and stays way too long. His characters, images, violence, and long twisting prose are intrusive and frustrating like a watermark on old wooden table.  Part of this is my fault of course.  I didn’t need to keep reading his stories, certainly didn’t need to reread them.  But I did.

              In my mind I imagined Faulkner’s house in Oxford as a closet where he kept the skeletons of southern disappointment.  His generation was filled with writers and compatriots who needed to let ghosts of regret be conjured, let them speak their peace, or say what needed to be said one more time.  He was, except perhaps for Shelby Foote, the greatest necromancer of the south, each story is a kind of séance airing what was lost and hoping to exorcise demons.

              The other reason I went to Faulkner’s house in Mississippi was to see the environs, the land around the town.  Nearly all of Faulkner’s novels are set, written in, the little farming towns just beyond Oxford, or in Oxford itself, or on a train to Memphis from Oxford.  I always wanted to see paths and fields, creeks and homes engulfed in gardens let loose, the topography comprising the land just east of the Delta. 

              This desire became a demand, though, after I discovered my ancestry.  As luck, fate, fortune or destiny would have it, a good portion of my “blood” comes from a few miles east of Oxford, and one of his most famous novels is set in the farming community where my ancestors came to reside just after the Civil War and still do reside that is. 

              Rereading As I Lay Dying took on a whole new meaning when I realized that Faulkner may have spoken to a great-great grandfather to complete his novel.  What were names on a family tree, all of sudden, were speaking and arguing, scheming and trying to overcome the weight of rural poverty in Mississippi in the 1920s.  He conjured my people.

              Driving through the farm fields and woods and rolling hills outside of Oxford my curiosity was in equal measure to my sense of intrusion.  No one invited me here.  Yes, I am a genetic member of the family, but there was no one to know that or care for that. Like so many family stories and tales of this part of the country, I am just one more piece of a less than glamorous account with just a bit of scandal.  That my people were in a Faulkner novel doesn’t lead to a homecoming parade or key to any city.

              At last count almost 40 million people have used Ancestry.com and Twenty-three and Me.  Not quite the population of the world, but a fair amount.  A number of people have sought to find out where they came from, what is their blood, lineage, ancestors. 

After being cajoled by our eldest son for a few years I consented to the test, to the tube, to be genetically accounted for.  It didn't hurt at all at first, the cost was modest in the beginning.

There were two surprises for me in what came of the test.  The first was losing my California sensibility.  If you grow up in California you grow up in a culture trying to make history, not trying to live in it, let alone interpret history.  Being an historian, the pursuit of the past was always done with a sense of objectivity, a distance from the subject matter.  Yet, when the results came back, I was no longer looking at history so much as I was in it, a part of it, intwined with generations. I had to leave the audience and become part of the cast.

The second surprise was more poignant.  Not knowing where you come from, not knowing the generations giving rise to you affords a level of bliss, the bliss of ignorance.  With the test results came countries of origin, which held no surprises.   My daughter Laura said, “so you’re white, shocking.” But it was shocking when I found ancestors who were slave holders. Reading census data from the 1850s and the population data accounted in an ancestor’s house, after husband wife and children, it reads “slaves 4.”

And there were more.  It was surprising to see generations of ancestors being those who drove indigenous people to near extinction in South Dakota.  Even more perhaps was how most of my people came here as colonists, not immigrants, colonists.  Having spent a fair amount of time in former British colonies in Africa, and seeing the impact of the colonizers, I had to pause.  Yes, it is eleven and twelve generations prior and almost 400 years ago, but there they were, or better put, there I am.

I am not sure what to make of the perils of genealogy.  Laura Draper warns people before they seek to fill in a family tree: there might be things you would rather not know.  There is a bliss of ignorance. I don’t want to become a character in a Faulkner novel who lives in an old house in the shadow of regret, haunted by history.  I’ll be very transparent here, I felt a different degree of complicity, didn’t like all the skeletons in the genetic closet.

Matthew and Luke both provide a genealogy of Jesus.  Matthew traces the family tree of Jesus to Abraham.  This is a kind of pedigree, a bloodline of royalty and messianic promise.  Jesus is the physical fulfillment of a divine covenant.  Luke heads down a different path.  He takes the genealogy even further; he ends at the very beginning, son of Adam.

The tradition of Luke being a protégé of Paul may have influenced the genealogy.  Paul refers to Jesus as the Last Adam.  Jesus is in a sense the new Adam in Paul's theology.  To Corinth he wrote, all die in Adam, so in Christ all will be made alive.  To the church of Rome, he wrote Adam is a type . . . through him came sin; through Jesus comes abundance of grace, righteousness, dominion of life.

Jesus does not refer to himself as a New Adam or a Last Adam.  He doesn't refer to Adam at all. What is more his teachings do not speculate on the origin of evil or the inheritance of sin.  The closet he comes to this view is when he was asked of the blind man, who sinned this man or his parents.  His response, and I am paraphrasing here, was "that's a dumb question."

More recently this question, how is it we do terrible things, this question has been considered with two categories: nature or nurture.  Is it your nature that you are violent or biased or hateful?  Or is it how and where and with whom you were raised that makes you so dangerous?  A Princeton philosopher Steven Pinker argues it's both.  Nature and nurture each influence our propensity to sin or evil.  Interesting to note Pinker also believes we are getting better, less evil, less violent.  Not hard to find skeptical responses to his belief.

I must confess that when I look over twelve generations of my ancestors I am not inclined to focus on the good.  My mind lingers with the tragic and the tawdry, the violence and the scandal.  I would also have to confess that I tend to be a bit of a cynic where humankind is concerned: nothing much has changed since Cain and Abel.  Go back all the generations you want you will find darkness has prevailed.

Cain and Abel are a bit of a fair warning, a foreshadow of what humankind will be.  It was as if the fall in the garden just kept happening.  Fate.  It is rather telling the first story of humankind after the loss of innocence is fratricide, murder. You read the paper today, you watch the news, and it would appear the story of Cain and Abel is playing in theaters near you.

In the fateful and tragic unfolding of events, though, we can miss what God says to Cain, in fact we might even dismiss it.  If you do well will not be accepted?  And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door.  Its desire is for you, but you must master it.

A profound legacy of Protestantism is our focus on grace as a gift, grace as unearned, salvation is something that Jesus does for us.  Jesus makes amends, atones, for our sin.  He mastered sin, but not us.  We can't; but he can.  This is the notion of the second Adam, the new Adam.  All die in the first Adam, all can be made right in the second Adam.  In this theological claim we recognize our complete depravity, we can do nothing but sin, nothing we do is without the chains of our misdeeds.  Our tradition was built on this notion of genetic sinfulness.  Being a sinner is what it means to be human.

Yet, this is not what God says to Cain.  He says beware; you must master anger and the violence it begets.  Hence it is not his fate; it is a matter of fortune.  The outcome is to be determined.  You can be good, or you can be bad.  It's up to you.  In reformed theology there is no such freedom.  It is as if God said, I can see you're angry, and that is your nature.  Resist the temptation to evil but realize it is what you are.  In other words, it is fate.  I know you want to but try not kill your brother.

I could be wrong in this, but when I look at the generations after Jesus, I don't see a lot of difference compared to generations that came before him.  I don't think Jesus was a new Adam, a second Adam, not even a modified version.  I believe Jesus was Jesus.  Maybe that is what Luke was trying to say.  Jesus is as human as Adam was human. 

What is more, you can't follow Jesus and enjoy the freedom of his teachings and also believe in the destiny of depravity.  It really doesn't work.  If you read what he taught and try to master his teachings, not in terms of what you understand, but how you live, the voice of God, the Holy Spirit will start to sound a lot like what Cain heard.  You can do well.  You can do what is just and experience the freedom of righteousness, not because Jesus atoned for you, or is a New Adam.  You can because you can.  You can do well simply trusting what he said. You have the good in you; it is sin that is lurking at the door.

William Faulkner's home is beautiful, set in a stand of pine and there is plenty of room to roam and ramble.  When we toured the house, it was as if Faulkner was still alive; his boots were by the door, there was a twenty-two for hunting, and his study looked as if he just stepped away for a moment. 

We were being led by a young guide who described not only the writer's life, but also the family he gathered to his home.  This was often a full house.  As we looked into the room of Faulkner's sister the guide pointed out the air-conditioning unit in the window.  She said, Faulkner hated air-conditioners.  Never allowed for them.  So, the day after he died the family put them in.

And with this the spell was broken.  The conjurer of ghosts became very human, the light in the closet was lit and what we thought were skeletons were a broom and a folding chair. The dark veil was lifted, and we headed home.  Amen.