Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

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 to get rich.
It was a complete fluke that I had any clue at all about Talents. Last year my son, Joe,
had been assigned some New Testament readings in his mostly Jewish private high school
and had to write a short paper on, yep, Talents. He couldn't understand it and came to me. I