Channa smiled the smile that lights her face. “I know what you’re saying.” Then she settled her glasses back on her nose and picked up her book. “For you, I think it’s becoming real. It’s not real for me.”
“Do you want it to be?”
“I’m just reading here, Dikkon. I’m just having a good time.”
She paused, took another sip of wine, and tilted her head just so.
“But everything I read makes so much sense!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“But Dad, how can you believe in a religion that condemns me to hell?”
Lena and I were on the beach, way down where the river meanders in. It was late fall. A cold wind blew off the ocean and stiffened our faces. For an hour we had discussed the gestation of her mother’s and my magnetic attraction to Christianity, while we strode vigorously along. Now she stopped, turned to me, and grabbed my attention. Hers, now, was the question that stung.
“But how can you?”
“This is the hardest part for me, Lena, the eternal life part: how some people are saved by their acceptance of God’s grace and others are lost because of their knowing rejection of it. I don’t understand it myself.”
Eyes glittering with anger: “You’re ducking the question.”
“Yes, I am. But I’m also telling the truth. I’m new to this. I don’t understand all of it. I’m taking it on piece by piece.”
“Not good enough, Dad.”
“Listen. This is a process of understanding, and I’m at its beginning.”
“So—” her feet planted—“while you’re still figuring it out, I go to hell.”
“Pastor Dan’s point is that either the Bible is all true, or it’s nothing. You read the end of the Bible—Revelation—and it tells what’s going to happen at the end of time, and throughout the New Testament there’s a clear awareness of the distinction between heaven and hell, and there’s a growing sense in your mother and me that life is either about the truth or it’s about a lie, and . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well . . .” I took a deep breath. “And that those who live in the lie are bound for hell.” I shrugged. “Or so the Bible says.”
“That’s me, Dad.”
“Lena, I don’t know! It anguishes me not to know.”
She snorted. “That’s a comfort.”
She turned into the wind, pushed her swirling brown hair away from her face, and pulled her parka more tightly closed at her neck. She’s an intense woman with an open, oval, pretty face; snapping eyes; and a quick, sharp mind—our first child, a jewel.
“Lena, be patient. I’m trying to understand something that has been there always, or for thousands of years.”
I stared at her, and she stared back.
I continued, “I’m thinking that maybe Christ really existed. If he did, then I can’t just say, ‘Oh, well, what’s for dinner?’ I have to say, ‘What does that mean?’”
“It means I go to hell.”
We walked in silence for a while. Eventually, Lena said, “This really troubles me.”
“I know it does. I’m sorry. It does me, too.”
She let out a heavy breath, took my arm, and for a moment, leaned her head against my shoulder, but that was awkward, walking.
“I love you,” I said.
She gave me a soft punch on the shoulder.
I said, “Maybe there’s a different way to think about all this.”
“Maybe not.”
“I’ve got a lot more to learn.”
“Well then, Dad,” she said, tabling the discussion with exasperation, “tell me all about it when you know.”
But when we reached the car, I said, “Hell is death, absence from God, that’s all. Heaven is eternal life, being present with God. If you’re a believer, you’d prefer the latter. And if you’re a believer, you’d prefer the latter for anyone you love, too. But if the person’s life has been absent from God all along, then death absent from God—”
“I’m not absent from God.”
“I know, Lena. I know. But my point is that death absent from God—even if it is eternal—can’t be all that different from what’s been experienced all along anyway.”
“That’s sophistry. You’re still condemning me to hell.”
“I’m not.”
“Your religion is, Dad. And I resent it, big time.”
Lena wasn’t the only child to struggle with Channa’s and my newfound attraction to Christianity. James also had issues with it. In keeping with his personality, James expressed his concerns on a more philosophical plane. He and I had debates on many topics but especially on the question of predestination (the idea that God controls everything that happens to us) versus free will (the idea that we have a choice).
That’s a very difficult conundrum for any intellectual thinker, at that time myself included.
James would ask, “But how does it work?”
I would answer using words from books or from Pastor Dan, which were not yet words from my own heart.
Then I might say, “There are lots of things about God that we can’t understand. That’s because He’s God and we’re not. It’s not our place to understand them. So that’s where faith comes in.”
“How can you have faith in something you don’t understand?”
“I have faith in the fact that your mother and I love each other, but I don’t understand why it occurred in the first place.”
James might laugh and say, “That’s different. That should be different.”
And so our conversations continued.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“You must find what’s true, Dikkon. If one thing is true then the opposite can’t be true. Two opposite things can’t be true at the same time.” This is one of Channa’s most central tenets.
However, for me, the son of a poet, this tenet is a marriage-long conundrum.
“I love the strength of your logic,” I offered.
“There’s nothing about strength in this. It’s just the way things are.”
We were in the kitchen. Channa was wiping down the counters after dinner. I was trying to stay out of her way but be close. I had been away on a sales trip for three nights, and I especially liked to be close.
She said, “I’ve got a whole list of things to check off, to find out if they’re true, and I’m checking them.”
I laughed. “And once you get something checked, it stays checked.”
“You’re darned right.”
“Not with me. Once I check something off, the next day I go back and erase the check mark and need to start thinking it through all over again.”
She smiled at me. “Waste of time.”
“Come here,” I said. I took her arm and pulled her close. “Yes, but it’s why I can enjoy to keep doing the same thing over and over, every day—selling, selling, selling. And we benefit from that. So kiss me.” She did, and that was fun. I murmured into her ear, “But I admire your tenacity for the truth.”
“Do you?” she asked, vulnerably, pulling back a little and watching my eyes.
I paused. Then I said, “Yes, certainly.” I smiled. “Not when it’s directed at me, when you’re mad. But yes. Yes, I do.”
“I only get mad when I can’t get a straight answer.”
I nodded. “One thing this Christianity business is doing is it’s helping with straight answers. Or straighter, at least.”
“That’s because it’s true.”
“It shows me what’s true, anyway, and therefore gives an example of truth—in action, so to speak—and that teaches me how better to speak it.”
Now Channa leaned her body more solidly on me, sighed. “Yes. I’ve noticed.”
We kissed again.
When we broke apart, Channa went back to cleaning. I sat on one of the stools across the counter from her. “You know, I’m finding the Bible truer every day.”
She nodded. “There’s so much humanity in it. Those who just laugh at the Bible don
’t understand the value of so much humanity.”
“Or they don’t understand that we are all just needy humans after all; we can’t help it. And that we need to be filled with God, and that we can’t fill ourselves by ourselves—even though we have tried so very hard and would really rather do it by ourselves, so we won’t need to give up our stubborn desire to admire our own choice making . . . even when we so often get it wrong.” My voice trailed off. “Complicated sentence,” I said.
“Make it simpler, Dikkon.”
“Simpler? Okay.” I began ticking my fingers. “We need God. God is available to us, but only if we choose Him. To help us, He sent us His law. We grappled with His law as Jews for 1,200 years . . . and we got it almost right . . . almost. Turned out, though, we needed more help. We needed a demonstration that was above the law, even above the laws of nature. So what did He do? He sent us Himself—as one of us—which even we could see would be impossible to do unless He actually did it.”
I paused, thought a bit, and then summed it up. “And when He came to us as one of us, He knew He would need to do the one single thing—the one absolutely impossible thing—that we can’t do for ourselves.”
“What’s that?”
I looked at Channa. “There’s only one absolutely impossible thing. Dad used to walk his way around it. He’d say that after fifty years of marriage, every question between him and Mom had been answered. But there was still one unanswered question: which of them would die first. Well, the one impossible thing that we humans can’t do for ourselves is to live forever.”
Channa turned from me, squeezed her sponge into the sink, and turned back. She was still, watching me. She could tell there was more, and so she waited.
“If I become a Christian—”
“You think you will?”
“I don’t know.” I walked around the counter and took her hands. “I’m beginning to see how it works, is all.”
Still she was watching me. I said, “I’m finding the Bible truer all the time. And Pastor Dan’s explanations about how it works. But all true? If it is all true, what choice do I have? But that’s just such a big leap to make.”
The kitchen was tidy. Channa and I walked to the living room and settled on the couch. We smiled at each other. Something big still hovered around us, but I had run out of words to say about the big thing, and Channa saw that, so after a bit she opened her book.
I shifted around so I lay on the couch with the top of my head pressed against the side of her thigh. Minutes passed. The big something stayed where it was, patiently, waiting for me to come back to it. Instead, I dozed; it had been a long and frustrating sales trip. Though mine was probably the best job in the world, there were times when, distinctly, it was no fun.
Later, Channa took a deep breath and let it out. She closed her book. “Dikkon,” she said, “that’s enough reading for tonight. I’m done.”
“I might, you know.”
“You might?”
“I don’t know how to say this, but, yes, I might.”
“The thing you and I are trying to find is the true answer. It must be a true answer—that is validated by faith, and by faith alone. And by fifty years of experience.”
“Yes,” I said, “maybe this is the true answer—but what about the children?”
“Dikkon, we’re thinking about this. That’s all.”
“But . . .”
“We just do the best we can,” Channa said. “And the rest is the business of God.”
“Well, thank God for that.”
PART FIVE
“Dikkon, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe that He died for you to pay the penalty for your sin?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe that God will forgive you and accept Christ’s death as payment for your sin?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”
“I do.”
Oh, my God!
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Having been a teenage boy, I can attest that I know how to make a car skid. I learned how to make a car skid so that I would be able to make a car stop skidding, if ever I needed to. But, as I will now confess, it’s much more fun to create a skid than it is to stop a skid.
Growing up in northern New Hampshire, we fellows made good use of iced-over ponds. For the sake of the spirit of my mother—who may indeed be reading over my shoulder—I can honestly say that I was one of the cautious ones who waited until the ice was eighteen inches thick before joining my pals as they edged someone’s father’s car out onto the pond’s surface—and then gloriously made it skid.
That caution differed from my earlier insouciance when it came to ice travel. There is a story, famous in my family, of the time my mother drove past a local pond early in the winter and saw her ten-year-old son and his dog edging their way out onto the black surface of the new ice, on their bellies, inch by inch, with me holding the barrel of my cap pistol and cautiously tapping ahead of myself with its grip.
I remember my logic. Of course, I knew that it is possible to break through thin ice. Everyone said so. I understood that breaking through thin ice would be a bad idea. No good would come of it. For example, my mother would be mad at me, and, even worse, my father.
However, I had my dog, Rock, with me, who would go and bring help if needed, and I had my gun. Guns have two very good qualities. First of all, they’re guns—enough said. Second of all, they make useful ice tappers.
Mom screeched to a stop, erupted from the car, and creased the very heavens with her fury. I was to come back on shore this instant and not one instant later!
With the illogic that I have since discovered is part of the makeup of mothers, Mom failed to accept my explanation. Not only did Mom fail to accept my explanation, she revealed her failure during her subsequent remarks. Her remarks were unnecessarily loud, and more to the point, they failed to display even a hint of thoughtful nuance.
In short, by banishing me from the ice that day, Mom ruined my science experiment.
Knowledge, as I had learned in school, and as I did my best to remind my mother at the time, is always a benefit. My experiment was designed to increase both my own knowledge and—as an added gift to the world—the knowledge of others as well. Just how far can a ten-year-old boy and a dog creep out onto a pond only partially covered with ice in early December in northern New England? Many people would like to know.
Now, thinking back on my experiment, I am not certain that once I had discovered just how far I could go, I would, in fact, have published my new knowledge to the world at large. It’s even possible that I might not have shared my finding with my parents. You can never quite tell with parents.
That same not-wanting-to-share is the way I felt one day in another December—many long years after my famous creep across the ice—in Pastor Dan’s office. I had just answered yes to four questions he asked me and burst into tears.
He had burst into tears as well. We had jumped up and embraced each other and thumped each other on the back. Bawling, we had cried out a happy prayer.
What a sorry sight we were: a brave paratrooper and an ice creeper, sobbing!
I was shy, but I was glad. I was deeply, deeply glad. Suddenly, after months and years, I got it! I wanted to tell Channa, “I get it!”
But I wanted the fact otherwise to remain a secret.
You see, I’d just reached the very thinnest edge of the ice that I’d been creeping across for nine months, and I’d tapped one final time, and the ice had shattered, and I’d plunged.
Thirty-two and three-quarters years before that moment in Pastor Dan’s office, Channa had asked me a question almost as ultimate as were the four questions of Pastor Dan. I was a coward back then. You know all about this. I had said to Channa, “What if I say I want to marry you?”
Her question, her earth-shaking question: “Do you?�
��
I was terrified to ask, “Will you?”
Suppose she said no. Suppose she said yes. I couldn’t bear to have either answer out there, hanging on the wind.
My admiration of Channa was boundless. The strength of her character was profound. Her physical beauty was only part of her magnetism, as was her joy at life. With her help, I might have the strength to free myself of sinful passivity and fear, albeit masked, as I hoped it was, by charm.
When I left off being an academic and became a salesman, some friends and family were mystified. While there are many advantages in sales—freedom, being one—sales’ biggest advantage for me was that every single day I was forced to stand up straight, to face the prospect squarely, to control my fear, and to ask for the order.
After Channa’s question aboard our pretty ketch in Southwest Harbor, it took me three more months before I acquired the inner fortitude to bring out the contract, so to speak—to put the pen in Channa’s hand, and to ask her to sign.
Thirty-two years passed. Then Pastor Dan asked me four qualifying questions. This time, I had no hesitation. With a flourish of my pen, eagerly, I said yes four times and signed over my soul to Jesus Christ.
But I didn’t want to tell anyone. I wanted to keep this shining amulet in my pocket, like my very special chestnut, just for a while.
I was—saved.
I was—born again.
These words—which I had heard and read frequently during months of study and debate and trial—were . . .
Well, they were odd.
How does one say them in regard to oneself and not have them turn to sand in a dry throat?
I drifted out of Pastor Dan’s office and gave his secretary, Ruth, what must have been a crazy grin and floated through the outer doorway and into the parking area and into the car and down the road and turned at our drive and made my way between the snowdrifts to the door and into the house and wished Channa were there. She wasn’t. She was in New York, at a conference center, keeping her credentials up to date by taking a series of professional appraiser education courses.
The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told Page 21
