Picking up where I left off Friday.
Old Abe’s Acceptance
Unlike Captain Mal’s story, Abraham’s tale doesn’t present a new, horrific threat to mankind. But in context, the book of Genesis to this point has spread a canvas of a ‘verse where people screw up. From the start, they rebel against their creator, and then it’s off to the killing fields, human against human, of antiquity.
The thing God asks Abraham to believe, I have come to think, initiates an overarching narrative (maybe the narrative) in the biblical texts. Abraham accepts the idea that, even though he’s old as dirt, he will have a son. This is a big deal where he lives. He’s motivated enough, perhaps, to step out blindly, trusting because it serves his heart’s longing for an heir. But his “seed” becoming a blessing to all peoples of the earth is a big deal to Abraham, too, according to the writings. The details of what that blessing means sound obscure, if poetic. There’s a bit about his descendants being as numerous as stars in the sky. What seems to count and gets mentioned even in the New Testament, is that Abraham believes God. He hasn’t yet been circumsized, he isn’t part of any known religious tradition. He’s just a guy, saying, “Okay, I’ll take your word for it.”
Abraham’s belief doesn’t get tested for a long, long time.
Captain Mal’s Decision
Serenity crew and big decisions
He believes there’s a reason to try and make a difference, to get the truth out to the ‘verse. He will be satisfied if he loses everything in service to this cause, because, perhaps, that will be a blessing to the rest of humanity.
Results in Two ‘Verses
For Abraham over time, things go up and down. Cities explode, powerful kings threaten all his possessions, his wife is infertile, a plan involving getting his slave, Hagar, pregnant brings a son but also bad consequences. From a holy man he runs into–Melchizedek, King of Salem–he learns more about this god, this promiser, who has spoken to him. Melchizedek calls this deity God Most High and has apparently been sacrificing to him for ages. Another person besides Abraham has decided being involved with God is the right thing.
And then God predicts a son for barren, ninety-year-old Sarah, and the baby is conceived and born on schedule. Isaac (meaning “laughter”) is the promised, joyful heir to both of them. Yet he’s also the son God asks Abraham to sacrifice, high on a cold mountain.
Abraham, the guy who’s been through so much with God Most High, sets out to obey. Not blithely, I’m sure, but with confidence, perhaps, born of all the years where his “ship”–his life and security–have been repeatedly shown to be about something that will make a positive difference. Reasoning that his God can raise the dead, he figures God is capable of bringing Isaac back to life. God has to, or nothing to this point in Abraham’s life will have made sense.
Abraham decides, for the umpteenth time, that following God is right. He could be wrong, but based on experience he believes he is correct about the state of things. So he raises the knife over Isaac to kill him. And that is all God wants Abraham and the rest of history to see. Things turn out better than Abraham expected them to. God says, “Whoa. That’s good. Go sacrifice that ram over there, instead.”
At the end of Mal’s story, things also turn out better than they could have. His mission accomplished, he chooses to continue journeying on in his spaceship, even though an “albatross” remains with him. He has been tested by circumstances and has seen he was right to think he could be a blessing to others in the scheme of things. Whether spelled out or not, Mal will continue to believe his belief.
Maybe that’s what Shepherd Book urged for him to do, knowing that, whatever Mal called it, Mal got the believing thing right way back when. His test proved what was already real.
This doesn’t relate to your post, exactly, but I just wanted to say how much I like this full-screen style format, the colors, the whole thing. You’ve been tweaking again! This is really a keeper.
Thanks, Beth. It’s good to know a lot of tweaking has done the trick. Not that I won’t do more…
Well, this is interesting. I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t go with the equation of Abe & Mal.
Each to her own, of course–you interpret the Abraham story differently than I do.
So I don’t know if my match will work for you, Deanna,
but the person of faith who most reminds me of Mal is Moses.
How I see it is, being willing to kill your children in faith that you are creating “a better world” is the sort of thinking the Operative employs in “Serenity,” not Mal.
In fact, that kind of “the end justifies the means” thinking is what Mal fights against–the impulse to use coercive means for good ends.
I suggest that Mal is more like Moses—a kind of reluctant prophet (one who speaks the truth).
They both lead a scruffy group of people out of a corporate, power-hungry culture (the Federation = Egypt) into the lawless wilderness (the desert = the outer planets).
Both stories are rather like Westerns that way.
Crucially, unlike Isaac and Ishmael, the Serenity crew risks their lives by their own consent, they are not children led to the slaughter or sent into the wilderness to die.
Mal is not a patriarch who rules by hierarchical power—his power is tenuous and only lasts so long as his crew choose to follow him of their *own *free *will.
Moses too leads people who chose to come with him, even if they grumble against him later. Freedom is a hard path to walk, and sometimes people prefer confines.
Both men have leadership thrust upon them in a time of darkness (one of my favorite bits of the Bible is Moses arguing with God, “Send someone else!”). Both have to fly by the seat of their pants with a cantakerous crew, wandering in the wilderness.
Both have a rather rough and ready code–basically consisting of the key behaviors a group needs to trust each other enough to hold together:
Don’t kill each other, don’t sell each other out, don’t leave anyone behind, don’t sleep with the wrong people.
Some of each group do break those codes, of course, being human.
Moses and Mal are not patriarchs founding an empire, they are leaders of the lost, but with faith in common decency and the promise of home.
lol, Deanna. You made some serious tweaks. I definitely blinked. I like it, it sets off the colors in your pictures. I’ve always liked the story of Abraham and his leap of faith. And one day–I promise, I’m going to watch Serenity. :)
Jodi, I think you’ll know all the ins and outs of the characterization, when you do. And I think you’ll like Joss Whedon’s writing. His dialogue shines in my book.
Fresca, I thank you so much for your detailed thoughts, and I’ve reread them several times. Moses is a great character; I won’t challenge that idea, or that his story and Mal’s could have many similarities.
We do have two crucial points of difference, and quite likely I need to clarify, first, what I said about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. My interpretation does vary significantly with the general one I think I’ve known, which implies that Abe was willing to give God anything, and that God was feeling particularly bloodthirsty that day he asked for Isaac on a platter. I don’t think that Abraham would have killed his child to create a better world. I think he was only vaguely getting God’s talk about what his descendants being a blessing to the whole earth might look like. Probably, I’m guessing, he looked at it like, “It’s nice God has promised this, because it means I will have an heir.” There is evidence that back then having someone who came from your own body as an inheritor was exceedingly important to people. Abe wasn’t a patriarch yet, and I would argue he never saw himself that way. He was just a guy living in his cultural time.
But the faith (belief) ingredient in the story has to do with God. I hope I don’t sound like I understand completely why God asked Abe to sacrifice Isaac, but along with Abe, I’m looking at a Being I see as real and as good. Those particulars play a huge role when one is facing something God has set in motion. “This is weird” Abraham and I might both say, “But, okay, it’s God. Things will somehow turn out right, and I have to go through this, now that it’s happening. I can’t turn my back on my mission (story), if you will, which is following God. I have decided that going forward is the right thing.”
I think Mal had decided that following life’s leading in the search for what was true in his reality was the right thing. So, for intense reasons, he had to go forward into huge danger and do what became necessary. So did Abe, building on the belief that doing the right thing would make the good happen, or at least it was worth seeing if it did.
Just a side note on Moses: his actions actually caused many sons of Egyptians to die in the last plague from heaven. Abraham was only willing to kill in the firm confidence that Isaac would not stay dead. (This I get from Hebrews 11.) I’d like to look more sometime at death’s role in life and Bible stories (or any story).
The second difference in our views is that I don’t think Isaac was forced to be the sacrifice. This isn’t addressed in the writings, and as with everything I could be wrong, but I see a similarity between his trust of his father and the Serenity’s crew trusting Mal and going with him. Serenity is certainly a more sophisticated tale by our standards, and the characters are shown to be taking on this mission with their free wills. But an interesting question to me is how “free” are our free choices. Mine belong to me, certainly, but when I reach a hugely intense situation, I almost “have” to act the way my character was “written.” Everything in life has led me to this point. If I broke with character now, I’d be stronger than life, or, well, than God. I could go through why I don’t think any of Mal’s crew could really have said no to him, and yet I see them as completely free at the same time. And I think it would be so for Isaac.
Whew! Enough for now. :o)
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Deanna.
I understand what you mean about Abraham.
The key difference in how you and I see the story isn’t in where we end up, but in where we start.
You say, “I’m looking at a Being I see as real and as good.”
This starting point guides your interpretation: it must, at root, be somehow good, because a good god willed it. Further, it really happened, like history.
I would never say you are wrong.
But I don’t look at the scriptures that way.
To me, they are in the same category as, say, Greek myth:
amazing stories humans tell about how we try to make sense of life. So I start with the question, “What does this tale reflect about humans?” not “How is this a story about a good Being?”
The story of Abraham is no different (for me) than the story of Agamemnon, who sacrificed his daughter to the gods for what he thought was necessary and good. Both stories about men of powerful faith.
P.S. RE the slaughter of Egyptian soldiers (not to mention babies).
I didn’t choose Moses as being like Mal because he was nicer or less violent. There’s nothing nonviolent about the Exodus story!
I just think Moses matches Mal better.
Mal is also willing to let people die, as long as he protects his own.
Remember how Zoe calls him on that? after his refusal when they’re robbing the payroll, to save the man in the bar from the Reavers?
And how he says maybe they would have done better in the war if they’d been more hardhearted?
Joss Whedon originally envisioned Mal as much more cold-blooded—the studio made him tone that down.
But still… remember, too, how he kicks a man into the ships churning engines, in the episode when he recruits Jayne?
He’s no Jesus!
Well said, Fresca. I really like how you are able to pinpoint the root of our differing views. And you’re brave to even say you don’t look at the scriptures the same way. Well, honestly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that, but I notice people often seem very worried they will offend someone by stating they see reality differently than the view present in the other’s narrative, or worldview, or whatever you call it, about God or gods and so on. If we can gently, civilly disagree, then we leave the door open on both sides for enlightenment. This I believe. :o)
And though I’m fuzzy on Agamemnon’s tale, I think you’re saying there can be something admirable in the story of one who does a morally reprehensible thing for the cause they see as right and good. If their heart is truly convinced, their deed is an honest mistake, perhaps? It’s plausible that this could be the case with Abraham. I from my view don’t think the story could make sense if Abraham weren’t interacting with a real being. He would have to be delusional, to think a god told him to kill Isaac and then stopped him from doing it. To be rational, his view (coming only from himself) would need to lead him to either do the deed or not do it, would it not? I’ll think on this one more.