This morning I quietly waded into the deeper end of my thoughts.
Every spring leading up to Easter, I feel abandoned by my faith. I have a sensation of being orphaned from the Christian family.
There is a sharp turn made from the gentleness of Jesus to the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. I fail to negotiate it.
It seems we suddenly go from believing in a savior of love to believing in a surrogate who came to fulfill ancient prophesy, to be the final blood sacrifice for the iniquity of us all.
I don’t understand the transition. Oh, don’t get me wrong–I’ve studied all the doctrines on the propitiation of sin and all the angles of blood atonement.
I just miss my friend, Jesus.
I want to rewrite the ending.
And I certainly can’t believe he was part of some cosmic design by an offended God who required plasma to confirm repentance. Not even God can plan without manipulating.
So I sit quietly.
This is the story I believe:
God loves us.
He yearns to be our Father.
As our Father, He is prepared to instruct us, but is careful to grant us free will.
Feeling He had abandoned us in the trap of our own indecision, He came to Earth to be one of us–to discover the sensations and assist in the confusion.
He took a risk.
For after all, there is a little bit of heaven in us, but also insecurities that can manifest treachery.
For thirty-three years, he learned, grew, analyzed obedience and was tempted as we are.
He taught us that we are brothers and sisters, not alienated by culture, but instead, united by a common creation.
Yet there were things he said we did not like.
We enjoyed conjuring enemies instead of acquiring neighbors.
We loved to assess blame instead of shouldering responsibility.
And we deeply revered the compartment of religion, keeping it separate from our daily decisions.
So we decided to kill off our elder brother, Jesus, in order to silence the incessant reminder of our greater potential.
Fortunately, God evolved with our free will.
What was meant for evil became good–because we are now united under one blood shed for our ignorance.
It was Jesus’ blood … and the blood of the Son makes us one.
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I suppose I could lie and tell you it only happened one time. But there’s really no sense in confessing to error if you’re going to leave out important details.
Actually, it was the fifth time that my wife and I slipped out of the house after we were sure that our four-year-old and three-year-old sons were sound asleep, and drove ten miles to see a movie, and returned to joyously find our young boys still deep in sleeper land.
But on that fifth time, something changed.
Apparently there was a noise that awakened our two little fellas, and they started screaming and hollering for us–so much that the neighbors, who lived just below, called the police. So when we arrived after seeing our movie, we found the house vacant.
There was no note–no explanation. So we weren’t sure if our children had been abducted or vanished in the Rapture.
Being in our early twenties and extremely immature, we went downstairs and pounded on our neighbors’ door to find out what they might know. Without opening up, they explained that the children had been taken away, and that the best thing would be to go to the local police to find out what was going on.
I remember having the audacity to be angry. It didn’t even occur to me that we were the ones in the wrong and that my boys had been taken away for their own protection.
We spent the next four hours searching for anyone who could give us details, only to discover that our guys were in foster homes and there would be a hearing about the case in six weeks.
Six weeks.
We were devastated.
Honestly, it took us about two weeks to settle down and realize that we had made a very bad mistake, and that we were the ones who were in the wrong instead of slighted.
I will never forget those forty-two days without my kids. And going to court was very painful.
The accusations were strong and had it not been for four weeks worth of tears and repentance, we might have recoiled and gotten viciously defensive, ending up losing the opportunity to become Mom and Dad again.
But because the judge found us to be truly sorry, we were given a second chance.
I remember the day we picked up our two boys. They were a little frightened of us, partially because they had acclimated to a new environment and also because they had been told that we had deserted them.
It took a long time to build back trust.
Although this story seems to be an extreme–something some folks would swear they would never do–I must tell you that the inclination to find undesirable paths when each of us feels inconvenienced gnaws at the conscience everyday.
So even though I am ashamed to share this story with you, I use it as a cautionary tale to myself, to remind my ever-present ego that simply because I can get by with something and have a really good plan on pulling it off, does not make it right.
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I suppose I could use the word “rapture” if it weren’t so entwined with the religious phenomenon.
I could use “orgasm” if it wasn’t so linked with what would be misconstrued by prudes.
So I guess the best word would be “carnivale.” Not that I’ve ever been to one–I’m just assuming the wild, abandoned glee over not having any more pressing responsibilities pushing in on you, realizing that there are a full eighty-eight days of summer ahead.
I never liked to be the first one to leave the school on the last day.
I liked to hang around for a few moments to walk the empty halls, with little clumps of dust still tumbling along, and discarded papers left to the discretion of the overworked janitor.
So by the time I headed home, everyone was pretty well gone, and it wasn’t until I got to my front door that I remembered I had forgotten to pick up an English book which my mother had insisted I bring home, because she had paid eleven and ninety-nine to purchase it because I had misplaced the provided copy.
So I had to weigh my options. My mom’s anger, or returning to the school I had just gloriously abandoned.
I walked back.
The door was still open and as I entered, there was an eerie sensation which crept down my spine at being in this empty edifice of learning, now so silent that you could hear the creaking hinges on the door.
I made my way down the hallway to Mr. Marshall’s English class, which also, miraculously, was still unlocked.
I crept through the door and walked to the storeroom where I knew he kept the books. I gently turned the knob, crossing the fingers of my other hand, hoping that it, too would be accessible. It was.
So I flung the door open in glee, only to discover that in the shadowy confines, not yet lit up by the overhead bulb, was Mr. Marshall, shirt unbuttoned, kissing Miss Crowley, the biology teacher, who had her top off, showing her “booba-toobas.”
(I developed the name “booba-toobas” in an attempt to be unique and humorous, and even though it was silly, I persisted in the terminology since a cheerleader once giggled upon hearing it.)
Honestly, in my entire life’s journey, I have never seen three people so frozen in time. Mr. Marshall, Miss Crowley, and dumb me, peering at one another.
No one knew what to do.
Finally, Miss Crowley grabbed her blouse to cover up her left “tooba” and said, “Jonathan, what are you doing here?”
I gasped, “I came to get my book.”
“You want a book?” she inquired.
Apparently my quest for knowledge was more surprising to her than being found in a closet with her paramour.
Mr. Marshall disconnected himself from the human apparatus, put his arm around me and walked from the room out into the hallway. He stood there looking at me for a long time. I wanted to say something but everything that popped to my mind seemed dangerous.
At length he sighed and said, “Well, Jonathan, we have a situation here.”
I nodded.
“Tell you what I’m going to do,” he continued. “I’m going to treat you like an adult. I’m gonna believe that you’re going to walk out of here with your book and never say another word about what you saw.”
Leaning in close to my face, he punctuated, “Because if you did, Miss Crowley and I would probably get in a helluva lot of trouble.”
I knew he meant what he said because no teacher would ever use the word “hell” in front of me unless he felt I was worthy to join him at the local bar for a drink.
All I said to him was, “I won’t.”
With this, I took flight out the door, running as fast as my fat legs would carry me.
I know he must have thought he was sunk, but on the way home I felt so grown-up.
I was trusted.
For the first time in my life, I was to be taken at my word without the threat of punishment.
And you know what?
I never did tell.
Even a month later, when my friends came over to sleep at the house and we watched “Chiller Theater” and everybody was getting real honest, I bit my lip and the side of my cheek, and stuffed a lot of pizza into my mouth to keep from blabbing.
When I returned to school that fall, Miss Crowley was gone and I heard she had gotten married over the summer–but not to Mr. Marshall.
The grown-up world is very confusing.
I never told anyone until this day, even though I have used memories of Miss Crowley’s “booba-toobas” to stimulate a few sessions in youthful lust.
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