ain’t it, said Heber. He leaned forward, close to Seth. Do you realize the damage that is done, the rending, the tumult, the casualty of soul in hoping for obedience or progress, knowing a thing is required of you and knowing at the same time that you cannot do it?
These words were low and passionate and he leaned back against the tree.
—The atonement is rhetorical labyrinth and riddlecraft. Why must we be ritually cleansed of the natures God gave us? Do you beat a dog for being a dog? It’s a fable designed to create guilt and the power that relies on it. Church government. Moral authority. Hierarchies of power. We are commanded to be good, yet destined to fail. We are told that we have sufficient within us to withstand evil, but we do not withstand evil. By some inexplicable justice we are held accountable for a fall we had no part in. And we seem to believe there is a line beyond which grace can come no farther. What is grace then? What of all the counsel and the guilt? Sermon and scripture alike bring it on like a shitstorm. We are made to feel interminably guilty when we can’t leave natural behavior behind, something God put in us like a vital organ and asked us to wrench free and discard. What man seeking the joy he is meant for can break the restraint of everlasting guilt? This man, he said, thrusting both thumbs into his chest. We are creatures subject to our natures, like all creatures. This is what God and the world show us. We possess reason and conscience, which should give us an adequate measure of restraint, but when we spend our control on petty fabrications that confuse and supplant the conscience, which fabrications are beyond the basics of conscience and reason, we build ourselves a cage of falsehood, within which we reside like dreaming halfwits. This false construct creates its own brand of fear, anxiety, behavior, work, and counterfeit guilt.
—A lot of people seem happy in it though, said Seth. It ain’t for me, but why tell another man how to live?
—If I tell you something that isn’t true, said Heber, and this false knowledge brings you joy, the joy you feel is true. And if you never discover the deceit, the true joy remains, and so does the deceit. Whatever joy is created is true whether the thing that created it is true or not. This is the system, and the system is flawed, unnecessary, and not of God. If a man can be as good a man without the belief system, of what necessity is the system, and of what necessity is belief? If you can answer that question satisfactorily, I’ll step down. There are two alternate scenarios, then. There is the man who has learned to be good without a church, and there is the man whom religion has shaped into being good, and believing in this goodness per se, he no longer needs his religion. This is common sense, though mostly we fail to see it. We somehow blind ourselves to sense in favor of its opposite, and when having faith in something ceases to be reasonable, which does a rational being abandon, faith or reason? What would a rational god expect his subjects to choose? The god we claim to know is a god who would be obeyed, with those who will not obey cast off. The problem is, no one can be certain of the rules. Where is he now? He’s distant from us. Any town that’s not on fire looks peaceful from a distance. But walk the streets, know the people, listen to the talk, read the local paper, and you’ll see the poverty of soul, the disorder, the horror. Our god will let things get worse as we move toward the end, withholding his intervention, although you can be sure the chaos and destruction are indeed his doing, his passive vengeance—guilty by way of indifference. Where are the miracles, the intercession? Where is the peace from the Prince himself? They are withheld, and for good reason. The more degenerate the world, the more welcome the salvation and the more heroic the carrier. The stage must be set in the end for high drama. Bedlam. Carnage. Depravity. The devil’s reign of blood and horror at its zenith. And then, in the middle of it all, who is that coming from the clouds, heralded by trumpets and carried on a sunbeam, coming to us across the bloodsoaked sand of the desert? And does he carry in his hand salvation or doom?
—Evil, said Heber. It makes us gladder for his arrival. There is a plan, no doubt, but does this plan win your approval? And yet God keeps sending them down where they struggle and moan and gnash their teeth and fester toward their horrific end. That he may do his work, his strange work. Everything is part of the plan simply by virtue of the existence of God. It’s just a poor plan. Perhaps God is subject to some higher, natural law and is merely waiting for the terrible day of accounting over which he must preside. People pretend that such a god would not be worthy of worship, but God is God, and we have no other option. We’ll take what we can get, I suppose, in the end. He may be a god of order, but the world he’s created is not in order. He has set things in motion and has let them go on to what pandemonium must follow such a sophisticated and dangerous thing left to itself, and perhaps this is the way it must be. Perhaps he can only watch with great futility and some regret what we will do with ourselves. What we have done.
Heber paused to shake a cigarette out of the pack and put it in his lips. He lit the cigarette and inhaled and let smoke trail slowly from his nostrils.
—Jack knows, he said. He knows it’s best to keep away from the fire that would purify us as gold. We don’t need to be reminded. I give my demons rein. I give them rein. Most say too much rein, but if they only knew how I pull back. If I could change one thing about my life it would be to unshoulder this burden of truth. I weep sometimes when I’m alone and get to thinking about it. It’s when I can no longer believe that I need belief the most, but I cannot undo my unbelief, and I did not seek it out. And for this we pretend to want truth, but when truth comes to us we would murder it, would crush its terrible beauty under our heel like a purple flowered thistle. Truth kills mystery and requires action—two things that don’t agree with us. We want mystery, and we don’t want to be required to act, to change. When truth is realized it leads a man either to his salvation or his damnation, both terrifying prospects. We’ve all got demons, and it takes something marvelous to tame them, if they’re ever to be tamed at all. Jack may have found his remedy. The god he has shunned has not shunned him. You’ve got something special there and I hope you get what might as well be yours. It’s not good for man to be alone. What are you without a woman? I wash my sheets. Do you wash your sheets?
Jack thought of his holey gray sheets that used to be white and realized that he had not once washed them. It struck him like an idea newly given to humankind. His bedding was a set of torn, stained, fetid, ragged, grease-shined pieces of a fabric. He had bought sheets some years back in a weird splurge at Kmart and it was probably time for another set now.
—I wash my sheets, Heber went on. It’s proof of a civilized nature, of at least occasional female company through my days and nights. What would you be if you were alone in a house, either one of you? You’d get crazy. You’d wonder what you could get away with in whatever crude dwelling you called home. Your meager collection of dishes would clog the kitchen sink and counters because it could, and you’d half-assedly wash one at a time as you needed it, only to deposit it back in the sink dirty. The bathroom would fill with whiskers, nail clippings, little tumbleweeds of pubic hair. You’d start smelling the crotch of your pants crumpled in the corner to see if they were clean enough to wear. What couldn’t you do alone in that place? Satisfy any perverse craving, entertain any bizarre impulse. You might have something, John. How lucky you’d be to have something to lift you up. At the funeral we were waiting for you in my truck when she came up to you, and we watched while you both walked away. She took you to the wild grass and that was a beginning. But you shouldn’t talk to her about your feelings, if that’s what you’re thinking.
—I’m not thinking that.
—There was a serenity about her at the funeral that would lure a wretched man like you to spill everything, but it’s only rocks there and if you go in she will break you.
—How often do you see her? said Seth.
—She comes to get milk sometimes.
—I’ll bet she’s got some good milk, said Heber.
—Think she’s a virgin? said Seth.
—A question
