True Greatness

Many historians consider Abraham Lincoln the greatest president the American nation has ever known. In rankings of American presidents he consistently ranks as either the first or second best president ever in the United States. Several things make this even more staggering: for one, America has had no shortage of great leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Reagan, and secondly, America is certainly one of the greatest civilizations that has ever existed. 

If you met Lincoln along various points of his life’s journey, it wouldn’t have been until about a year before he was elected president that you’d have thought much of him.  He was simple, poor and incredibly awkward, but this was actually an improvement on where he used to be in life.  At first he was poor AND uneducated, unable to even read.  His stepmother helped him to get a decent education though, and over the years Lincoln borrowed a lot of good books and read the Bible a lot.  In his teenage years he worked hard on the farm, and read in his spare time, still incredibly poor.  In his 20’s and halfway through his 30’s he was hugely in debt and barely able to keep a roof over his head.  Throughout this time however, he was hardworking, honest (he paid back all his debts instead of skipping town like a lot of people did in those days), and kept learning and growing as a person. 

Lincoln also suffered numerous failures… not just little failures either.  His failures were serious setbacks in life, the kind that take the wind out of most people’s souls.  In 1848, at the age of 40 he ran for reelection to Congress and lost.  (This was at a time when 40 years old was close to the average life expectancy!)  Having lost, Lincoln somewhat disappeared from politics for the next 5 years.  Was he just wasting time?  —Absolutely not! Lincoln intentionally worked on improving his mind, studying Shakespeare, Geometry and even working through his own ideas until he had all of them thoroughly thought through.  All of this hard work eventually paid off as Lincoln entered onto the national scene as president and won the Civil War—possibly the greatest challenge our nation has ever faced. 

There’s quite a few things here to ponder.  For starters, it seems that there was a long season of preparation in Lincoln’s life.  The world wasn’t ready for his internal greatness to be manifested outwardly until the final few chapters of his life.  But I believe it was this inward greatness that enabled him to be part of something that changed the world.  He was among the first of the then revolutionary Republican party.  At the time, they were the only major party willing to stand up to slavery.  (The Democrats wanted to keep slavery going, and the now defunct Whig Party refused to take a stand on the issue).  Likewise, he doggedly slogged his way to victory in the American Civil War, fighting popular opinion, Congressional disagreements, political rivals and incompetent generals. 

And I don’t really think you can say he got the job done (the job in this case, being a life of greatness) with much panache.   It was a little bit sloppy, but he kept improving his whole life through, refused to quit on himself or his beliefs, and remained faithful to what he was called to do. His reward for all his work, of course, was not stored up for him in this life. He only enjoyed a few days of peace after the South had surrendered before he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in the Ford Theatre.  It’s astonishing to think of the price he paid, and to realize that what he did is something a selfish person could never, ever accomplish.

But Heaven has rewards for those who miss out in this life, and the history books remember him, as so does the grateful nation he left behind.

Place Vendome

Note the hand tucked into the shirt as a nod to Napoleon.

So... I was in Paris, and this was something I had to stop by to see (and that my wife graciously agreed to go see with me).  To the ordinary observer, this was a mere column, lost in a sea of other monuments of any great city.  Not so for students of military history; it's a landmark that shouldn't be missed just because it's probably the most audaciously arrogant, trash talking "boo-yah" monument ever erected.

Brief history as to why: Multiple countries of Europe wanted to see Napoleon punished for basically being a jerk on an international level.  So they raised up armies together and sent them out to fight the lil' Emperor of the French.  Naturally.  

In 1805 a combined Russian and Austrian force, outnumbering Napoleon's, met up with him at a place called Austerlitz.  For his part, Napoleon pretended to be afraid in order to get the Russians and Austrians to fight him on the battleground of his choosing.  They did not know that he had already commanded his generals to scope out the battlefield because he promised them a battle there.  

Base of the column.

Long story short, in what was probably his finest battle, Napoleon made a laughingstock of the Russians and Austrians.  To add insult to injury though, he took their cannons, melted them down and viola! made a column of them, with a statue of his handsome self on top.  Naturally.  

And that's why I had to go there, off the regular beaten tourist path in Paris, to see the column made up of those cannons from the combined armies that tried to bring Napoleon down on a battleground of his choosing.  

The Death of Battleships.

Yamato under construction.  

I think this is a story worth telling because I often find that people are unaware that battleships are obsolete (meaning they're basically useless for navies around the world in the event of war).  Yep, it's true.  With very few exceptions, they've been obsolete round the world since since World War II.  The reason for this goes back to the story of this bad boy seen in the picture below, Battleship Yamato.  

Whoa, and was it ever a bad boy.  Yamato was the largest battleship ever built, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy.  It was originally designed to be an aircraft carrier and was actually BIGGER than the aircraft carrier in the United States Navy at the time.  To give you a picture of just how big it was... the largest U.S. Battleships ever built displaced 45,000 tons (roughly the size of the Titanic of sinking and Hollywood fame).  The Yamato displaced 73,000 tons.  It's guns were bigger and better than anything else in naval history before or since.  They were 18.1 inches and capable of shooting shells that were the equivalent of explosive Volkswagon Beetles at targets 30 miles away!

Yamato undergoing sea trials.

On top of that, Yamato, at the time of its death, had over 160 anti-aircraft guns.  AA guns (as we shall affectionately call them) were needed on ships in WWII because pesky airplanes were taking off from aircraft carriers and causing all sorts of trouble.  However, there had never really been a battle, a serious battle, to prove whether or not carrier-borne aircraft were indeed superior to battleships or not.  

If any battleship could prove or disprove the superiority of battleships when it came to a fight between battleships and aircraft carriers, it was going to be Yamato.  To begin with, remember that she had 160 guns that were meant to kill planes!  What I didn't yet say was that she also had huge shells that went into her 18.1 inch guns that were the equivalent of BUCKSHOT.  (Such ingenuity was typical of the Imperial Japanese warfare btw).  Yessir, dem big guns would aim upward and farr a sprayd of hellfire at doze incomin' planes - jest lik an ol' fashund turkey shoot!  

Yamato exploding.  Note the size of the ships to the left.

So... the real test for Yamato, and really all battleships, came when 280+ U.S. planes came to attack the biggest, baddest mamma-jamma that ever sailed the seven seas.

 It was basically no contest.  Yamato and her crew fought back valiantly, but she got toasted with loads of torpedos and bombs (at least 15 of them!) 
Losses for the U.S., however, were minimal, and afterwards the battleship was considered obsolete by navies worldwide.    

Change the World Much?

So here's a cool little story from antiquity that's packed with lessons.  

The Death of Socrates

Socrates mentors this guy named Plato in philosophy and really, if we're being honest, teaches him how to think and live.  (Socrates, if you'll recall, had such a strong tie between his thought and his actions that he was willing to die for them).  This had a profound effect on his disciple Plato.

The School of Athens (detail) with the elder Plato on the left and his brilliant disciple Aristotle on the right.

 Plato in turn started a school in Athens for philosophers.  One of his disciples was this brilliant man named Aristotle.  Aristotle was, of course, a great thinker in his own right-even taking issue with some of what his mentor taught him and launching into an entirely new "school of thought" if you will.  

Between the three of these guys, you have the foundations of much of Western thought, and there are many assumptions that all of us hold today simply because of their influence.  

The reason their thought patterns spread so far and wide was because Alexander the Great conquered much of the known Western (and a lot of the Eastern) world at the time.  Throughout his empire, he spread the Greek-thought of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (helped in part by the fact that he established a common "Koine" Greek language to facilitate trade and learning, and because he founded learning centers like the city of Alexandria, famous for its Great Library).  More than a general, Alexander the Great was a phenomenal statesman who understood how to transform the cultures of the societies he conquered.  

The product of over a century of thought-development taking action-Alexander the Great.

One of the reasons why Alexander was able to accomplish so much was because his mind was so well developed.  He simply outsmarted other generals in battle, and knew what factors most influenced a whole society.  History records how Alexander knew so much by telling us who his mentor was-none other than Aristotle himself!  

So there you have it... an unbroken line of mentors from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle to Alexander the Great.  Socrates died in 399 B.C., long before Alexander was born.  Plato too, was dead before Alexander turned 6.  But Aristotle lived to see his ideas, and the ideas of his forbears, spread further than he could have ever possibly dreamed through the actions of Alexander.  

There are tons of lessons in here (too many for a short post) but I at least want to mention how valuable even one life is... each of these men, by mentoring just one person, ensured that the entire world for thousands of years to come would be changed.  I think it goes to say that we should each live as if countless millions are depending on us to do the best with what we've been given.  It's not a guarantee that we'll have such influence, but without ever knowing (as Socrates and Plato never could have), I'd rather err on the side of going after great influence and change as opposed to passively living and dying without thought of who is to come after me.  

Dore Bible Illustrations

The Dore (pronounced like "door-ay") Bible illustrations are absolutely my favorite when it comes to the Scriptures.  (NOTE: I'm aware that this might make me seem like a nerd to even mention this, but after this blog, I hope to have you saying the same thing!)  I so respect him as an artist because he was willing to do what so few people were willing to do in his time (mid to late 1800's), and are still unwilling to do today.

In the 1800's there were LOTS of people publishing the Bible, and those Bibles often had illustrations included in them, but they were full of hyper-religious cheese ball drivel that thankfully are rarely seen anymore because they stunk.  (Unfortunately, there are still many publishers recreating all new hyper-religious and sterile pictures for Christian bookstores).  But Dore's pictures still speak loudly; he refused to sanguinate the Bible by excluding passages and acts of God that were offensive.  And the characters come to life! There's so much epic drama in each picture you get the sense of what was happening spiritually.  What I mean by that is this: in the natural, these scenes almost assuredly weren't so epic looking-a lot of it might have been very plain.  However, the drama of what God was doing spiritually in the Biblical narrative is every bit as weighty as Dore's illustrations make them out to be!

Besides all that, the man was simply a great illustrator (he did a lot with wood carvings).  During his day he was quite popular, and you can see his influence on a lot of illustrations today.  Worth looking at  for further study are his illustrations of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the Crusades and Dante's Inferno and Paradise.  Once you start to recognize the look of his work, you'll see that he's all over the place in the older stuff.

BONUS: since all his work is so old, it's all public domain and thus can be used royalty free by anyone today.

TIP: click on the images to make them larger.

Ezekiel 37, the Valley of Dry Bones.  Note how totally BOSS Ezekiel appears, with light around him and even a breeze on his cloak-it's a brilliant subtlety.  The narrative mentions the breath of God coming and giving life to the dry bones.  It's a small detail by Dore, but it is creatively faithful to the story.  Likewise, don't miss the character in the front right of the drawing.  It's as if he is rising up to praise God with arms outstretched.  

These are the lions of Samaria.  It's a little known passage out of 2 Kings 7:24-41.  Basically, when Israel was conquered and Assyria sent foreigners to live in the land, God judged them by sending lions to eat them.  A short yet violent blip in the whole of the Bible, but Dore realized it was visual gold.  

I will simply say that I love how people are clamoring to get to Jesus, and that Jesus (denoted by the posture of His hands and leaning of His body) is equally eager to get to the people.  I love it when artists show the heart of God with simple gestures of His hands (probably the best example is the detail of hands in Michaelangelo's Creation of Adam.)

Moses breaking the 10 Commandments after seeing Israel had sinned.  So EPIC!  Note that Dore puts God's stamp of approval on Moses' actions with the thunderbolt behind him.

Tongues of Fire resting on the disciples as they pray for the Holy Spirit to come.  

This is Lazarus coming out of the tomb.  The incredulity of the disciples (hand on top of the head) as Jesus raises the dead.  The use of light in this illustration is brilliant because everything is dark all around except for the center of the action-where God is at work!