Original or Backwards
For a brief time in my early Sunday School life, I had a teacher who understood the Bible the same way Brett Kavanuagh understands the constitution. She stuck close to the original language and intention. She liked the literal truth of it — like how Lot’s wife (a.k.a. not worthy of a name) got turned into a pillar of salt (for years, given southern pronunciation, I thought they meant pillow), and how Abraham’s wife, Sarah, at age ninety and with no reference to menopause or bone degeneration, gave birth to her baby boy, Isaac. The “teacher” spoke of Abraham’s wisdom as if he might appear there in Lumberton, North Carolina at any minute and explain something like relativity or perhaps what mind-bending mental illness he might’ve been experiencing when threatening to murder his son in the name of God. She seemed to relish the smiting and smoting a vengeful God might unleash on those he decided (and thus her by proxy) were not behaving properly. God, as malevolent tantrum-throwing king. And we as children were supposed to believe all she said and act accordingly.
Behaving properly. She had a lot of ideas about proper behavior, which made me miss my sweet teacher from the year before, the one who spoke in a low gentle monotone and didn’t mind if we put our heads on the table and dozed while she read the lesson, and who let us dress up and spend the day at her pond pretending to rescue baby Moses (Betsy Wetsy swaddled in a purple towel). Or the teacher before her who spent much of the hour letting us try on her jewelry and mink coat there on a mild Sunday morning while telling us the funny escapades of her poodle, our unbridled laughter sometimes bringing another teacher to our classroom door with a stern shake of her head and a shush. Those earlier teachers had been very good at taking something from the “olden days” and giving it a fresh spin, not to mention that they actually seemed to like children. They focused on things like “love thy neighbor” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” They offered suggestions about things we might do during the week to help others — ask our parents how we might help, visit the sick or elderly, try to pay attention to who is left out or mistreated at school, tell the truth – emphasis on what we could do to make things better, as opposed to what we should never ever do or else risk severe punishment and eternal enslavement to Satan in hell. Or so would have said the “teacher” in question.
The day that stands out in my memory is the one when she said that when a child is born with a physical or mental problem, that’s God’s way of punishing the parents and letting them know that they did something bad. What?? One of my very favorite people in the whole world was my uncle, who had been born with a lot of problems and spent years in the state mental hospital; one doctor had given a diagnosis of meanness. The man I knew was a lamb — a great big man with a great big heart who had struggled through his whole life with what was probably schizophrenia, but (oops) that diagnosis was not really within the realm of knowledge of those who were attending to him, so for this teacher’s originalist understanding he was just mean, and my grandparents clearly were not good people or they wouldn’t have been given such a child. My grandfather, a barber by trade, died before I was born, so my interpretation of who he was is reliant on those I trust who did know him. Like all of us, I’m sure he was a flawed human, but it sounds like the good outweighed the bad, especially for someone who only went through third-grade before having to help his family. My grandmother loved him, and I loved and trusted her. No, my grandmother did not attend church, but that didn’t mean she was not a good woman. What I later learned was that there was a time when she had attended, but she stopped during those difficult years. She had three other children and a baby who needed extra care. My uncle had scarlet fever as an infant; he had an eye that was crossed and needed surgery. He stuttered and had trouble doing his schoolwork. There were stories of people asking my grandmother, “where did he come from?” The kind of cruel, harsh judgments that, no doubt, might drive someone to the safety of her home, rather than risk further public scrutiny.
It was her belief and commitment to the idea that her youngest child was not mean and deserved her devotion and help which eventually led to a legitimate diagnosis but also medical prescriptions that allowed him to come home and be an important part of our lives for many years; my own children responded to his open arms and kind heart without a moment of fear, scrutiny, or judgment. For me, THAT is benevolence — THAT kind of love, compassion, faith, and acceptance is what I believe should be at the heart of religion. But, on the day in question, I was seated in a basement room that I associated with something I had never liked and begged not to attend called “Snack and Yack” (or Stuck and Yuck) which featured stale sandwiches and Bible drills, and the “teacher” said: A child who is born with problems is a punishment to the parents. It is God telling them that they have done something wrong. I’m not sure what seized me in that moment, because I had been taught (up until then) to respect my elders, that I should be seen and not heard, spoken if only spoken to, and all the other adages prescriptive of what a child should do and what they might do wrong that would justify hitting them. Spare the rod and spoil the child; according to some sources, the saying evolved from the language of shepherds and their need to use a rod to guide their sheep forward — not beat them. (This hurts me more than it hurts you is pure propaganda).
I said, that’s not true, and I’m sure my voice shook, and I am sure that whatever uncomfortable patent leather shoes I’d been forced to wear were tapping at a speed that outdid Gene Kelly. She turned, hands on hips and hair teased high and sprayed — her choice — even if that was not in keeping with what the Bible originally would have intended. In 1st Corinthians (not to be confused with the books One or Two Corinthians) we are told that a woman’s long hair is her glory. And why? Because it can be used to hide her body which clearly (original intention would suggest) she should feel ashamed of.
It IS true, she — self-proclaimed mouthpiece of God — said. It’s God’s will.
It is not! I said. It’s not true. My grandmother was a good woman and there was nothing anyone could say to change my opinion. This woman knew nothing of my grandmother and the life she lived. That she worked from sunrise to sunset, gardening, cooking, sewing, all the while humming old hymns. That she was kind and generous with her neighbors, and that her idea of a bedtime prayer was lying there in the dark and listing what we were thankful for and the people we loved. Her church, her life, her choice.
It was never my choice to wear those hard patent leather shoes that my mother shined up with Vaseline, or those awful lacey ankle socks. I hated what my cousin and I called “church clothes,” with stiff tags that pinched and rubbed us wrong with every turn. The only thing that agreed with me was my cotton Buster Brown underwear, and even that needed to be crack-freed and adjusted after sitting in the pews for too long. Once home and in clothes that felt good, I told my parents what happened at Sunday School. My mother paused, clearly torn between her devotion to my grandmother and uncle and her fear of how I might have appeared at church, like a child who had not heard those important lessons about respecting my elders and the “ugliness of impudence,” a talk usually given to my older sister who was (and I admired this greatly) much better at it than I was. I could do it just fine inside my head, but getting the words out was not easy. But that day my mother didn’t have to say anything because my dad immediately said: “Well, that’s just stupid and ignorant.” He went on, as he often did, imagining that this woman must have something she felt bad about and was trying to find a way to stick the blame on others. He had also speculated about what those who regularly answered the call to rededicate their lives did on Saturday night that kept bringing them back on Sunday. Stupid. Ignorant. His words were manna from heaven (figurative), and the lesson of considering the source before latching onto a belief, invaluable forever more.
My dad was a kind, good man, with an active imagination and good sense of humor, much of his life hindered by clinical depression and hospitalizations in my early childhood at a time when people really didn’t talk about depression or even acknowledge it. I shudder to think of the judgments and opinions that might have been expressed. I’m sure there were many with goodhearted, sincere prayers. Perhaps some even suggested scriptures they thought might help heal worries or a chemical imbalance. And of course there was always the rigid old school advice to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, implying a weak character or ineptness. (The original intention of that saying was one of sarcasm connected to a physics textbook that posed the absurd question of something meant to be impossible.)
Nowhere in the Bible will you find bootstraps, antidepressants, or a good therapist.
You won’t find plastic surgery, either — no nips and tucks for those who wish to fight time. You won’t find chemotherapy or vaccinations or cell phones or twitter or McDonald’s. No Spanx or golf resorts come to mind. No theme parks or airplanes or elevators. No cars. No guns. If you want to murder a swath of people as quickly as possible while in a fit of rage or inadequacy or white supremacy, you must do it with your sword or by throwing sharp rocks or with the simple jawbone of an ass like Samson used to kill one thousand people. Hmmm. It does, however, seem pretty believable that some of the original intention of those early scribes was about man’s desire to procreate as much as possible, and when one wife was too old he had permission to bring in a younger one or two, some barely at the age of puberty — it seems that didn’t matter back in the day. The women had to camp outside while having their periods, and the men might even kill them if they didn’t produce an heir; some wanted at least a football team with a strong bench if not the desired army they salivated to control and lead. And all in the name of God. Was this what that “teacher” was all about? Or did she pick and choose whatever ancient words served her best on whatever day she happened to want to speak the word of God as it had been translated by her.
In ancient Egypt — as early as 1850 BCE — women had their versions of birth control as well as abortions. Who knows how the properties of crocodile dung would hold up today, and yet the original intention of those women was to exercise choice about whether or not they wanted to get pregnant. What was NOT in existence in ancient Egypt (for those who lean toward the original) were little blue pills for the men. When Daddy was too old to cut the mustard (a saying that has nothing to do with Grey Poupon) — when the old member just couldn’t rise for the occasion — well, tough shit. If I could go back and sit there in those uncomfortable shoes for five minutes, the question I would ask the “teacher” would be if she thought prostate cancer (even though the Bible guys wouldn’t have known what it was or what to call it) was God’s way of letting a man know it was “Game Over,” and then I would begin listing many of the challenges and infirmities that science has been able to explain and address through the years, delivering miraculous changes and choices to humans, many that have made life better, safer. Others might remain in question, but there’s no denying the trials and errors of progress or the importance of correcting errors and using that knowledge to make life better.
I think for me, the best part of those olden days — along with the supreme intelligence of those women of ancient Egypt — would be that there were no semi-automatic weapons for the angry and the impotent to run out and purchase, so he (pronoun is very important here) can murder and murder and murder innocent humans again and again and again. In our churches and our schools, our grocery stores, nightclubs, restaurants, shopping malls, neighborhood corners, our anywheres at any given time.
The Bible doesn’t mention the NRA. Neither does the Constitution. The Bible and the Constitution don’t give us language for how to handle mass murderers with semi-automatic weapons who are enabled and empowered by people in office who accept their blood money and refuse to make changes for the good of society. Those who preach words like “liberty” and “patriotism” to their many followers who — with great what? Belief? Faith? Ignorance? Willful ignorance? — have chosen not to think of the safety and well-being of the people, chosen not to connect the obvious dots between an organization founded at the beginning of Jim Crow and the many mass murders happening so regularly they barely get a blip on the news. And what do they — these leaders designated as the great source of information — do when these murders happen? Why, they pray of course. They conjure God and, In his name, they prey.
Jill McCorkle, a native of North Carolina, is the author of four story collections and seven novels, most recently Hieroglyphics. Her work has been published in many periodicals and included in Best American Short Stories. She is core faculty in the Bennington Writing Seminars and affiliated with the MFA Program at NC State University.