#1 Can't Understand
Episode 1 in “That Other Flock”
I can’t go to church unless I’m a little drunk.
Churches have always had answers. I’m literally a church guy, I’m looking for answers, so I keep going. But with all I’ve done, all that’s happened, I can only sit through a service with the help of 3 big swigs of Captain Morgan on my way in. Sunday church, breakfast rum, and free donuts…that’s how far I’ve fallen.
There were 7 of us were standing around a table in the church kitchen after services. We were chowing down on leftover Dunkin’s Donuts and bitter coffee. A couple of months back, the head usher had offered to let the back-row crowd graze on all-you-can-eat leftover donuts downstairs in the kitchen. Clearly, a church growth consultant had convinced church leadership that free donuts would grow the flock. Can’t argue with the strategy. They fill that big-ole auditorium 3 times on a Sunday morning, balcony included. Rockstar-Prosperity Church Growth for the win.
The moment worship ended, we’d slink down to the kitchen and eat ourselves into sugar comas on the leftovers. Hey, free’s free.
“So, it’s OK that he was gonna kill that kid? That’s messed up. I mean, he really was gonna cut him, right?” I don’t know the name of the guy doing this morning’s sermon rebuttal. I’m not much of a people-person anymore. In fact, I prefer the edges, the back rows, the background where I can listen but not have conversations or introductions. When I don’t overhear someone’s name, I go with a nickname.
I call him ‘Jelly’ because he reminds me of the singer Jelly Roll (without the facial tattoos). He was way over 6 foot tall and somewhere north of 350 pounds. You had to work to not stare at the 3 inches of white belly that escaped from under his faded Lakers’ t-shirt.
“Man, I don’t know. That seems messed up to ask someone to kill their son and messed up in a whole ‘nother way to test someone like that. Don’t seem like God, you know?” This was Ice. He was also struggling with the mind-bending Bible story from this morning’s sermon: God tells Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. When you preach this story there’s a moment where you feel like Abraham and think: “Really? Killing your boy with a sharp knife, that’s on the order of worship?”
Ice was talking around a mouthful of a chocolate frosted. He’s about 25% of Jelly. You could hear some Detroit, maybe Chicago, in his voice. He’s youngish, black, bald and barely 5 foot 3 and not a lot over 100 pounds. If I was guessing, speed was his juice of choice. He was disappearing donuts and talking with twitchy efficiency.
“Shiiiiitttttt,” Jelly agreed with him around a mouthful of donut.
“Hey, language, we’re in church.” Betty was a defender of propriety. Based on her work clothes, dirty hands, and deep farmer’s tan, I bet she’s a laborer, really not your typical church propriety enforcer.
“We’s in the kitchen. It’s not church.” Jelly said, shaking his giant head, “What about his kid? He gets murdered or his daddy sins? That’s totally fuc….”
Betty aimed a quick pointer finger at him (there was a dark crescent of black under the nail…a vote for gardener). Jelly froze mid-syllable and settled for popping the rest of the donut in his mouth.
Red snickered. Red’s about the same size as Ice. A young, slim, Asian girl with bright red lipstick who only understands a little English. She was leaning against the same beat-up green Formica counter top I was.
She pointed at the Captain in my coat pocket with a question on her face and I passed it over. I had to snatch the bottle right back so she wouldn’t drain it. Hated to be rough with the kid, but I needed to make that bottle last and she was chugging it. Plus, she’d left a red smear on the mouth of the bottle… that gave me the icks.
Betty held her hand out for her turn on the bottle.
Before I could say ‘no,’ the Professor jumped in. “No drinking. No. No.” He looked around guiltily for any church people. “You’ll screw this up. We gotta a good deal here. They catch us with that,” he nodded at my pocket bottle. “They’ll kick us out or bring in a chaperone.” He pushed up his glasses back up on his nose with a prissy flair that totally validated my nickname for him. All he needed was a spiral grade book, flip phone and a pocket protector to complete the caricature. An old Boomer who’d fallen on hard times, which didn’t bother me. Boomers pretty much screwed us all.
Anyway.
Then My-Name-Is-Tommy joined the fun. Tommy introduces himself compulsively and constantly. It’s unnerving even when you know it’s coming.
Tommy’s a little on the sketchy side which is saying something considering our little group. Tall, but not as tall as Jelly, and rangy, not fat. While you couldn’t help staring at Jelly’s visible strip of belly, with Tommy, you found yourself staring at his ankle bracelet. It had a blinking red light. Just like a bomb.
“My Name Is Tommy. That Bible story disturbed Kant, too.”
Jelly was lost. “Can’t what?”
“Not ‘can’t,’ Kant. Emmanuel Kant.” Tommy pronounced it with admirable Germanic flair. “He found the Abraham story distressing.” He was talking to his donut like it had asked the question. I was thankful that I had a load of rum on board because this was taking a turn.
“Emmanuel Kant was a philosopher. German, I believe.” The Professor glanced at Red to see if she’d clocked his deep knowledge base. He was probably all that at Trivial Pursuit. Alas for him, Red only had eyes for her Captain, my Captain Morgan.
“German, yes. Born 1724 and died 1804.” Tommy told the donut in his hand. He broke eye contact with the pastry and looked at each of us…slowly scanning our group. “I like that he said we all have intrinsic value.” He tasted the words, enjoying every syllable, “Intrinsic value.”
“Intrinsic value? Everybody’s got value but that guy’s kid. He was gonna get offed.” Jelly seemed butt hurt by the interruption.
“Intrinsic value as a human sacrifice is not what I’m looking for,” Betty said, looking around for support (I thought she had a point).
“Intrinsic value,” Tommy assured the cream-filled in his hand.
All this eye contact was freaking me out, so I counted donuts in the box rather than do what I really, really, needed to do, which was take another long pull of rum.
37. At this exact moment, there were 37 visible donuts on the table.
“Do you think that old dude was really gonna knife his kid?” Betty asked the group.
“Who? Abraham? Sure, God told him to.” Professor volleyed back.
“Doesn’t this story seem really, really weird the more you think about it? I’m mean…we’re talking human sacrifice here. Hello? He couldn’t mean it, right?” Betty balanced her Styrofoam cup in one hand and fiddled with her long grey ponytail.
“He who? He, God? Or he, Abraham?” The Professor asked.
“Ah…err…he, Abraham. He wasn’t going to kill his son, was he?” Betty answered the Professor but kept an eye on Tommy.
“Yep. Had to obey. That’s the point of being a patriarch.” Professor was back on firm ground with a rather orthodox interpretation. “God told people what to do in those days and they did it.”
Jelly shook his head so wildly that he created the unsettling effect of both jiggling his visible belly roll side-to-side and sending his wispy hair flying around his head. Belly went one way and hair flopped the other. Weirdly impressive.
Professor couldn’t figure out who to answer. “No. Yeah, I think he was going to kill him. Abraham. He was going to kill his son.”
“That’s crazy. It was just a test. The son’s the future, right? He wasn’t going to kill him. He knew God was going to stop it. Abraham knew that, right?” Betty was feeling around for solid theological footing. “God had promised. Right? That’s what Preacher said.”
Jelly was right back in it. “No. Old Abraham was gonna swing that knife and draw blood.” Partially eaten donut in his hand, he demonstrated an Abrahamic killing blow with flair. He paused to smooth his comb-over back in place. He had transferred a dot of powdered sugar to his forehead. “That’s what it says, chapter and verse. It’s Bible. That’s what God commanded him to do.” He hammered ‘commanded’ like a nail.
“My name is Tommy… see, that’s what bothered Mr. Kant so much. He said a moral god wouldn’t ask that…and a moral god couldn’t lie…”
He plowed on with earnest intensity. “Kant thought it might not be God talking to Abraham. A moral god wouldn’t ask you to do something immoral. Sometimes you think God’s telling you to do something violent, cruel, and immoral, but it turns out to not be God at all. Usually, it’s your schizophrenia telling you to hurt them.”
That got everyone’s attention.
I heard the refrigerator cycle on. Betty’s high-top squeaked on the linoleum. Red shifted closer to me. I realized we were all looking at that little red blinking light on Tommy’s ankle.
Tommy was looking down at the light, too. He cleared his throat and looked up. “For clarity, Emmanuel Kant didn’t say that about schizophrenia. That’s what my therapist keeps reminding me. I’m not sure about Abraham.”
All I could think about was he’d said, “usually it’s your schizophrenia.”
I pulled the Captain Morgan out of my pocket, took a long pull and then reluctantly handed the bottle to Red. She drained it and put the empty beside the open leftover donut boxes.
Professor’s face was slack. No facial expression. No one home.
Jelly grabbed another donut. We’re now at 36. “What? So, what’s the answer?” He asked, taking a bite.
I wasn’t sure what the question was anymore.
Betty looked around at us, searching. We must have looked like cows standing at a fence watching a highway. After a minute she said, “It’s faith, man. Sometimes you just gotta have faith that it’s not schizophrenia…right? It’s all faith all the time.”
Ice pulled a beanie from his back pocket and painstakingly put it on. “I got no idea about what you mean by ‘faith.’ I don’t know this, Abraham, but I know Jesus. I don’t care what happened back in those old days. That’s not now. ‘Fam’ I don’t even understand how this Bible stuff works. But I know Jesus and He ain’t never failed me. That I know. Really, that’s all I know.”
With great solemnity, Jelly crossed himself (leaving a smear of powdered sugar on his left shoulder) and said, “Works for me. Amen.”
I don’t know. It was like he thought he was giving the benediction. Good enough for me. I grabbed a couple of donuts for dinner and then we all trooped up the stairs back into the world.
st
Boy, does this resonate with me. I would raise these sorts of questions with pastors and teachers at my Seventh-Day Adventist boarding school, only to be told: “The evidence of God’s existence is all around you, in everything you see” and “You have to have faith in order to believe.” For somebody wired to assess things more empirically, such answers were frustrating and unsatisfying.
Looking forward to future reads!