Joe Eszterhas and amazing grace

Walden Films, get in touch with Eszterhas NOW!

Sometimes you make me want to scream, and then you post something like this that lifts my whole day.

Thanks be to God, indeed!

Lucky guy, I wish God would send me unmistakable proof of His existence.

Why the snark, Matt? The article is about conversion. You know, that strange spiritual/psychological phenomenon that makes people see the world differently from the way they previously did? Oscar Wilde said it best: "Cynics know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Posted by: Scott Walker | August 26, 2008 4:45 PM

Why the snark? Because it's Hollywood, baby! This story is a dime-a-dozen. If it isn't some death-row inmate dropping his blood-lust for the Bible, it's some washed up Hollywood hack dropping the needle for the communion wafer. It's all skin deep.

Karth,

I thought the story said his experience took place in 2001 (but maybe I misread). That's quite a few years now. Speaks a bit more to the sincerity.

To the naysayers here, let's celebrate this, not nitpick it. The journey of faith is a long one, and spiritual formation and the process of sanctification will last the rest of his mortal life.

I know the angels are celebrating, so why aren't you?!? I'm not Catholic, and I'm just overjoyed that this man has come to Christ.

Let's pray he remains in the faith, and let's pray that the community of faithful around him will encourage him. I for one, am deeply encouraged. And I am deeply thankful to know that his family will be sheltered in the faith, and that his sons have witnessed this powerful transformation in their father.

This is powerful evidence of the Holy Spirit's movement among us, and I welcome Eszterhas as a new brother in Christ. With high-profile conversions like his and that of Anne Rice, it's a wonder there's not a new awakening going on in our country (and perhaps there is).

John E. - I have said in the past I see you as a seeker of truth. Your comment seems to have a heartfelt wistfulness about it. I respectfully suggest that one thing you could do is to pray and ask God to help you with unbelief - just as the father cries out to Jesus in Mark 9:24 (the father both hopes and doubts, and these conflicting emotions are honestly reflected in the gospel account).

But God will not overpower you and give you no choice in the matter. He wants it to be your choice. Ezsterhas still had a choice to make. He could have chalked it up to hysteria, or fear of mortality. Instead -- like the good thief being crucified next to Yeshua -- he turned to God.

Well Houghton, I hope you are right.

Sigilaris: ha!

Yes, this story is old. I've read about hard-living, one-time Rolling Stone writer Eszterhas's transformation several times. I'm also glad he's made a complete recovery from his illness. One wonders whether he has also refused to accept the royalties from the many works he created with which he is no longer satisfied.

A cure and a vision? What a charism! And to a writer with a book to sell! Praise the Lawd!

But Joe missed the boat. If his orison of desperation had been "Mother Theresa, help me!" he could have got himself invited to the Vatican for her canonization.

Let's just hope that Joe's boys don't get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan and get a limb blown off by an IED. It'll take more than a curbside prayer to sprout a new arm.

Sancta Virgo Maria, Nostra Domina Lurdensis, libera nos ab omnibus dissimulatoribus libros semper venditantibus nosque ludificantibus. Per Christum, Filium Tuum, Dominum Nostrum. Amen.

Sigaliris: I have watched several loving, wonderful mothers who never hurt a soul in their lives die horribly of cancer ...

Sig, you said it better than I did above. "The Miracle Train". I love it.

You'd make a superb Devil's Advocate.

I don't have a problem with the idea that people can change, sometimes as if by magic. Me, for instance--I lost all faith in patriarchal religion! I de-converted! Praise Her! It's a miracle! ; )

I also believe that sometimes sick people get wondrously better. And I'm also quite willing to entertain the notion that our finite minds don't grasp everything about other people's once and future destiny. For this very reason, I recommend a healthy skepticism toward assumptions that a divine power has instigated particular events that may well turn out to have had other, more mundane causes.

Re the juicy slice of canned ham Houghton served up about John Newton . . . . Forgive me the snark, but I've heard far too many testimonials and edifying stories that turned out not to be entirely true. Even Wikipedia points out that Newton underwent several conversions. After the first two, he kept right on merrily working in the slave trade. In the movie, "Amazing Grace," Albert Finney does a very affecting dramatic version of Newton as an old man overcome with penitence and haunted to the point of madness by the ghosts of his victims. But there's no reason to think that really happened. Newton took holy orders, found patrons, and as far as I can tell, lived pretty comfortably to the end of his days. Not so the many slaves he helped to sell into abject misery. Sorry, not impressed.

I do have to thank you, however, for sending me on a wild goose chase to see what, if anything, Newton did to make reparations for his career. I did not find any evidence of that, but I did find the following curious reference to another character: "I thank you for your notes of Colonel Blackader. [sic] . . . The memory of such a man, in such a situation, should be preserved, and his example held up for the education of our modern warriors." Blackadder as Christian exemplar! Who knew! It's even more miraculous than the conversion of Joe Eszterhas!

Rod, who like most of us here sometimes revels in the scandals and sins of others, offers a post demonstrating the hope of mercy and the hope IN mercy. Who should judge the repentance of anyone, much less put time-lines on whn a repentance may be judged (by us!) as lasting and worthy. Thanks, Rod, for saying again that we never know what God will do with anyone. That keeps me hangin'on.

Fun fact - if you quicken the tempo, you can sing the lyrics of "Amazing Grace" to the "Gilligan's Island" theme music.

We used to sing it to "Peaceful Easy Feeling" and "House of the Rising Son" as well: ;-)

A lot of anger here. The anger is understandable. I don't discount it. Being human is a tremendously difficult thing, and easily makes one angry. We have about 80 to 100 years to figure things out, and that ticking clock has a tendency to tick us off.

Regardless, I'll be offering up prayers to the Extraordinary One, John, for you, for sig, and for Joe Esztherhas. Sig, incidentally, I was well aware of Newton's gradual conversion. It's actually very common for people to convert gradually without the experience Esztherhas had.

I suppose I'm not attuned to the hamminess of Newton's story, given that it actually happened. I find the trajectory of a man or woman's life, their willingness to embrace truth, their willingness to ponder and contemplate things in their hearts, and their gradual transformation just as compelling as the more instantaneous transformation we've heard about it here. It also happens, however, that individuals like Eszterhas come to God in precisely the way he described - though, truth be told, there was much journeying up to that point and we're only getting part of the narrative here.

As C.S. Lewis said, "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

That, to me, is the power behind stories like Newton's or Eszterhas'.

Eszterhas has been a self-admitted fool and has been very weak in his life. And so he qualifies well for what Paul described in 1 Corinthians that God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

It is indeed scandalous grace.

Extraordinary claims don't need extraordinary proof. They just need proof.
Posted by: Eric W | August 26, 2008 11:49 PM

Well, that would be good too.

Regardless, I'll be offering up prayers to the Extraordinary One, John, for you, for sig, and for Joe Esztherhas.

Thanks, Houghton

John E. you're always getting there first with the thoughts I was thinking and saying them better that I would.
Posted by: MH | August 27, 2008 12:04 AM

Aw, shucks! (blushes)

Great website Rod. Really Glad to find it. It's late and I have nothing to say but what a true blessing it's been for me to read about Joe E. today. God loves us to the end and then some, does'nt he?

I think the story is fine whether the cancer was miraculously cured or just was cured in one of those rare, but thoroughly explicable, cases.

The story itself does not require you believe he was miraculously cured of cancer. In it he says that "cured" is a "word that oncologists generally don't use", but he does not say they never use it. He decided to believe it's a miracle. I suppose you could argue that means his faith is weak because he needs a miracle, but somehow that seems potentially uncharitable or kind of splitting hairs. If he believes it's a miracle I don't see any obvious harm.

Some comments here seem to argue against anyone ever being miraculously healed by cancer. My personal view tends to be that miracles are fairly rare things done for a greater purpose than saving one individual. And as hurtful as this might sound I think miraculously healing a sinful film director could fit that "greater purpose" more than healing a kindly grandmother.

TR--yep, you are correct. That is a hurtful comment. And if you're right, and God only helps people when it will make His point--as I said, maybe He's not a very nice person.

Houghton, the "hamminess" was not in the true story of John Newton, but in your method of presentation. You say: I find the trajectory of a man or woman's life, their willingness to embrace truth, their willingness to ponder and contemplate things in their hearts, and their gradual transformation just as compelling as the more instantaneous transformation we've heard about it here. I agree with you. Why, then, do Christians so often airbrush over all those complexities to make a human life look tidier and shinier than it could ever really be? A photo, warts and all, is changed to a gilded holy card and held up to compel belief. I'm not inclined to fall on my knees before such a false image. I respect the life stories people choose to tell. But I don't respect propaganda, and when the story of a life is turned into propaganda, I will critique it as such.

Why must John McCain pretty up his adoption story by plugging Mother Teresa into it? Why the struggle to airbrush C.S. Lewis into an unlikely plaster saint? Why the bitter hostility, noted in past entries here, to Francis Schaeffer's son revealing what daily life with his famous parents was really like? The truth is good enough for me, when I can get it. Why isn't it good enough for Christian testimonials? Why isn't the truth good enough for God?

But the whole point of your God-thing is that we're imbued with free will, to sin or not to sin. Adam and Eve and all that. So God doesn't "do" anything with us. He deserves no credit when we do good, or blame when we do bad.

I mean, don't get me wrong, there's no God, but it seems like if you're going to play the game you should stick by the rules, like in D&D.

"Amazing Grace" also can be sung to the tune of "Stairway To Heaven". But the Gilligan's Island theme works better with Stairway, IMHO.
"Ahh, music!" said Dumbledore. "A greater magic than anything we do here."

Joe discussed his conversion and book with me last Saturday on "Catholic Radio 2.0!". Hear here.

It doesn't hurt my feelings, TR. It's just that I've seen the looks on the faces of people who were told things like "It's only logical that God killed your little girl, since she was going to heaven anyway." They obviously found it hurtful. Such logic just isn't going to win you a lot of converts.

In any case, if power is God's defining feature, then your logic is as much beside the point as my ethical questions. God can do what He wants to us, and we have to call it good, no matter how much it hurts, or how little sense it makes to us, because He's the boss. The trouble is, that sounds like the model of a cruel, abusive father, not the loving, compassionate one who's featured in religious advertising.

I understand your difficulties in explaining God's apparent inconsistencies. I can't figure it out either, so I don't expect you to come up with a perfect solution. I like your puppy idea, though. If God sends me a cute puppy, I promise to be a lot less skeptical about His good intentions in future! ; )

Oh dear. There's nothing I hate more than having to come back and explain myself repeatedly. It indicates poor choice of words on my part in the first place. But I don't want to kick your puppy, either, TR, so let me explain that I didn't mean to imply that you'd ever say such a thing to grieving parents. When people who have lost a loved one hear rationalizations that God helped someone else "because they really needed it," but didn't help their child because the child is now in a better place, didn't need it as much, or whatever, they hear something very much like what I wrote, even if it wasn't intended that way. I don't believe you are a heartless person, nor am I necessarily in a nicer place than you! I'm perplexed and often sarcastic, as you can see.

sigaliris: "The trouble is, that sounds like the model of a cruel, abusive father, not the loving, compassionate one who's featured in religious advertising."

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that God is portrayed as a loving compassionate figure in religious advertising. While there is certainly an element of that, God is also portrayed as angry at humanity for our inability to live up to the moral standards set. There's a fair bit of smiting and eternal damnation for those that don't play by the rules. In the case of Job even someone who did play by the rules was handed a pretty raw deal.

If you read the Reformed Chicks Blabbing blog the sovereignty of God will come up from time to time. Michele will mention that from God's point of view any human deserves death because we're in rebellion against God. Pretty strong stuff when you read it.

At this point I should again point out that I'm not religious so my impression could be way off base.

I just finished Joe Ezterhas's memoir, "Hollywood Animal," over Labor Day Weekend. It is long (700+ pages) but well worth it.

This is a very interesting man, who has a fascinating background, and he is actually a very good writer, even if some of his screenplays may be stinkers. (One of his novels was nominated for a National Book Award.)