“We need some time to discuss this … maybe to sound out the parents and others who would be affected,” Principal Bradley said. “I'm wondering if we should consult the school's attorney.”
“Consult whoever you like. You will learn two things: One: There is no scary government plan to burn your Bibles. Two: No one forced you into this program, but you did sign a contract to which you are legally bound. I suppose we can give you until a week from Monday.” Doctor Williams stood up. “I’ll return at ten AM on that date, bring the scanning equipment, and hear your decision. If you withdraw from the program, the funds will need to be returned within ten days.” She snapped her briefcase shut and marched out of the room.
“But Keith, Mr. Bradley,” Talia protested, “she promised they would scan everything right here and then give it all back. Nobody’s confiscating anything, are they? We just bring them to the school, and while the scanning’s being done, we watch them like hawks. It’ll be fine.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Mr. Bradley locked eyes with his son. “Do we have a choice? Luckily it’s only the families of the students in your class and maybe a couple of pastors. Shouldn't be too much to collect, right?”
“I would have agreed when we started the class,” Keith said. He couldn't believe what he was about to say scared and depressed him. “But Dad, you already know kids have gotten saved in the class. They’ve taken their studies home and witnessed to their parents – their brothers and sisters.”
“It’s been like a mini-revival, or Great Awakening.” Talia nodded. “We have people dusting off Bibles they haven’t touched since they got out of the military, that they got as high school graduation presents – We never figured on this being such a fruitful outreach.”
“You’re saying we’d have to collect a lot of Bibles and a lot of notes,” Principal Bradley sighed. “And I’d have to face my own mother and ask her to give up her Bible. She’s still got my father’s, too.”
“Grandma?” Keith said. “No way. I can imagine what she’ll say about all this.”
“Are you crazy?” Talia cried. “This is not that big of a deal. No one’s giving up anything.”
“Today is Friday,” Mr. Bradley sighed. “I’ll send out letters with the students today, and explain that this is very time sensitive. Realistically I don’t know if we can make this happen by a week from Monday morning. And I’ll talk to your grandmother, Keith. Maybe it would be good if you talked to her too.”
Keith and Talia stood together at the buses, handing out the hastily-produced information sheets about the Bible Conversion Project. They had crammed from the website where they had been uploading the Bible as Literature classwork, and had found descriptions of the wireless devices that would connect to the site and access all the materials. They had made sure to include that in the information sheet. The kids seemed positively giddy about the news.
“Ms. Ramin, we should totally do this.” Jayna came up behind them. She blew on her hands as they watched the kids file into the buses.
“But Jayna, remember how we talked about times when the governments took people’s Bibles away?” Keith argued. “All over the world people’s Bibles have been collected by governments and burned.”
“This isn’t the same thing,” Tom insisted. “They’re giving us a way to share what we’ve learned with everybody. Everybody in the whole world. It’s a good thing. I know it is.”
“So you both will give up your Bibles? You’ll ask your families to do it too?” Keith could see the relief on Talia's face.
“I totally will,” Jayna said. “I peeked at the website you linked to in the letter. They’re saying the stuff I underline and my notes are just as important as fancy commentaries and famous preachers. They want everybody’s ideas and thoughts that they write in their Bibles. Won’t it be cool? I could help some sister a thousand years from now understand the Bible better!”
“Besides, what’s the big deal about the paper Bibles?” Tom asked. “Every kind of Bible’s online, right? And everything we did with ours will be right there online too. Plus we get those cool tablets.”
Talia looked up at Keith. Everyone shivered as another icy blast blew through the bus parking lot.
“Mr. Bradley, are you going to ask your grandmother about letting them scan her Bible?” Jayna demanded. “What do you think she’ll say?”
“I … I’m going over after school to ask her.” Keith looked across the street. “I’m not sure yet what she’s gonna say, though.”
“Jayna, go get on the bus. I can’t drive you home again,” Talia ordered.
“You tell her it’s a good thing!” Jayna ran a few steps toward her bus but turned back. “This is a good thing, Mr. Bradley. This is gonna make history! You tell her not to be old-fashioned.”
Chapter Nineteen – “You Never Had a Choice”
Keith and his dad invited Talia to accompany them to see the matriarch of the Bradley family. She had to buzz them into her hallway, and when they rounded the corner she stood in her doorway across from the common room, peering at them from over her walker.
“Who is this lovely young lady?” Mrs. Bradley asked. Talia held out her hand but the older woman pulled her into an embrace.
“This is Talia Ramin, Grandma,” Keith said as they followed her past a tiny kitchen into the living room. His grandmother didn’t give any indication of remembering their previous conversation about her.
“How do you do, Mrs. Bradley?” Talia said. “It’s such an honor to meet you.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an honor to meet you!” Talia raised her voice.
“An honor to meet me?” Grandma Bradley picked up the glasses that hung on a chain around her neck as she dropped down into her chair. She peered around at all the nervous faces and zeroed in on her son. “Joshua, what is going on here?”
“Grandma, I told you I help teach that class, The Bible as Literature,” Keith began when his father hesitated.
Her eyes shifted focus to Keith. “Yes, you did, and I told you what I thought of that at the time. Bible as Literature means ‘Bible no different from any other Literature’. I thought you thought the same. I thought you both thought the same.”
“Mom,” Joshua said, “Talia and Keith have been teaching this class in a way that I believe truly honors the Scriptures and the Lord. People are being taught truth, and we are seeing people get saved and start reading their Bibles on their own.”
“Well, that’s a good thing. But on the phone you said you wanted to talk to me about giving you my Bible and your father’s Bible because the school needs money. So what has all this got to do with my Bibles, and the school needing money?”
“We got grants for turning in reports on the class, Mrs. Bradley,” Talia explained. “Mr. Bradley is using the money to fix up the school.”
“That sounds like a good thing, too,” Mrs. Bradley said. “Wait, what kind of reports are we talking about? Are they making you tell them how people are studying the Bible?”
“Well, yes, kind of,” Keith replied.
“What does ‘kind of’ mean?”
“Mom, let me tell you the whole story,” Principal Bradley finally said. He explained about the class records, the new parents, the complaints, the upgrades the school needed, and then the news about the next phase of the project.
“Like a deer stepping into a net,” Mrs. Bradley said softly. She looked around at all three of them. “We give up our Bibles, what do we get in return? Because they must have said we get something in return.”
“We don’t give up our Bibles. We just let them scan them, right at the school, and they give everything back,” Talia insisted. “It becomes an online repository. Everything is there, on the internet, and we can download whatever we want, wherever it comes from.”
“So what they give back is this repository. Everything everyone ever wrote or thought or said about the Bible. We can look at it online anytime. Show me what it looks like,”
Mrs. Bradley ordered.
Talia pulled out her tablet and brought the website up. She swiped through a few screens and Mrs. Bradley nodded.
“I see this has been done in other places. It’s been done with other religions, too. How long has this been going on, Talia?”
“I’m not sure,” Talia admitted. “I heard about it last spring, right before I graduated.”
“Grandma’s right, though, this is an awful lot of material to be collected in such a short time.” Keith frowned.
Principal Bradley said, “Maybe it’s just trickling down to us. People have become so used to the government telling schools what to do, that this voluntary program seemed like restoring our freedom. But I guess it was a Trojan Horse. We let this slip in under the radar.”
“You’ll have to comply,” Mrs. Bradley said. “You don’t have a choice. You never had a choice, once those people were planted here to start complaining.”
“Planted here?” Principal Bradley echoed.
“Of course,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “It’s been coming down the road for years. All this talk about safety. They can’t attack faith directly. The hardcore ones keep trying, but it never works. A few people still truly believe in God. A few more say they do, and a lot more have a warm feeling that they think is belief in God. All those people get a bad feeling when people try to attack believers or the Bible.
“That’s good, in a way, because they’ll try to defend our rights and protect real believers in a stumbling sort of misguided way. But in the end, everything crumbles when anybody mentions safety. Tell them, Keith. Explain why you became ‘Mr. Safety’.”
Keith flushed. “Grandma … What does this have to do with our problem?”
“Humor me,” his grandmother replied.
“Well, okay. I felt like I could help kids be safe if I was there ... In the bus parking lot, walking around the halls, showing up in the bathroom. It’s not only about keeping kids from running in front of a bus. It’s grabbing that locker door when the bullies try to shove a smaller kid in. It’s throwing a cigarette or a reefer in the toilet. It’s hollering out, ‘Hey! Stop that!’ when something’s going on that’s wrong. It’s never, ever standing by and doing nothing.”
“There you are. That’s good, Keith, and that’s Christian. But there are other people who have a different definition of what’s safe and right and what’s unsafe and wrong.”
“Doctors are supposed to ask questions about whether we have guns in our houses and how they’re stored,” Principal Bradley muttered. “They demand more information, more paperwork, more control, because people get killed with guns. Guns are unsafe.”
His mother nodded. “Keep going.”
Talia said in a low voice, “They say, stay safe. Carry a condom, get a morning after pill, or kill those cells that aren’t a baby if you make a mistake. It’s just being safe, and protecting yourself.”
Mrs. Bradley patted Talia’s shoulder. “Now you’re starting to understand.”
“Safety means we have to accept ‘alternate lifestyles’, and not just accept them, but promote them,” Keith continued. “We have to teach about them in school and not even bring up normal husband and wife, father and mother. We might even make people feel unsafe, if their families are not like that. Homophobic is the same as racist.”
“And now they’re telling you they’re going to keep our Bibles safe, and all of our studies about them,” Mrs. Bradley said. “Even the people who might not use the internet – they’re being invited and included. Everything will be free to view on the internet, anytime people want to pick up that tablet. It’ll be right at the tips of everyone’s fingers. Nothing will be lost. Nothing will be in danger of loss. It’ll always be right there. You say that no one has censored what you can teach about the Bible in this class of yours?”
“Exactly, Grandma,” Keith answered. “We are freely preaching The Word. Kids are getting saved, and so are their family members. They are earning their own money to get their own Bibles. You should hear Talia knock down their opinions and backwards ideas. She’s amazing.”
“I believe she is.” Mrs. Bradley looked from Keith to Talia. Both of them blushed. “Well, for now, the Word is being preached freely, souls are being saved, the saints are being edified, and you are being obedient to the government and the Lord. These things are in His hands.” She shuffled away into her bedroom and came back with two worn old Bibles in the basket on her walker, along with several thick notebooks.
“Oh … ” Talia touched the objects with great reverence. “These are treasures.” Mrs. Bradley stroked them lovingly.
“They are, but I know I can trust you children with them.” Keith and Talia gathered them up.
“So that’s it?’ Joshua Bradley said incredulously. “You believe this is a good thing?”
“I believe …” Mrs. Bradley sank back down in her chair. “I believe that God protects His Word, Joshua, and He spreads it around, and makes it take root in people’s hearts. He always has, and He always will. He can do that, even if all that’s left, to our eyes, is just a little mustard seed’s worth.”
They left Grandma Bradley’s apartment, after she had taken special care to hold out her arms for a hug from Talia. Keith could see her breathing Grandma in.
Chapter Twenty– Surprise Visit
After locking Grandma Bradley’s offering in the principal’s office, Keith and his dad headed up to the parking lot with Talia. Talia stopped dead at the sight of the odd couple waiting by her car. “Amu! Zanamu! What are you doing here?”
Talia flew into their arms, trying to hug and be hugged all at once. “Oh, these are my aunt and uncle. They are both Doctors Ramin, Naddy and Sophie. This is Mr. Joshua Bradley, the principal, and that’s Mr. Keith Bradley, the science teacher.”
“Ah,” was all Naddy said, and stood looking Keith up and down until he didn’t know what to do.
“How do you do?” Sophie said, offering a hand to both men and elbowing her husband. “Talia has probably told you we are archaeologists.”
“Yeah, the Indiana Joneses of Bible archaeology, she said,” Keith grinned, glad for a distraction from Uncle Naddy’s scrutiny, which showed no signs of letting up.
“How silly, Talia,” Sophie chided. “We came because we hoped to be able to sit in on your Bible class. We’ve heard so much about how well it’s going.”
“Unfortunately, you just missed one,” Mr. Bradley explained. “We won’t have it again until Monday.”
“Oh, how disappointing.” Naddy finally spoke. “Well, we have no plans at the moment, so perhaps we could take everyone out to dinner. Talia has said we have been making ourselves too mysterious, so it would be good if we could get better acquainted, and you could see that we are simple, ordinary people.”
“I’m sorry to have to refuse such a gracious invitation,” Principal Bradley replied. “I have a daughter who requires constant care. She has caregivers, but there’s a gap between the one who comes in during the day and the one who cares for her in the evening. I need to get home, and I’m a bit late as it is. We have someone waiting for us right now so she can get home to her own family.”
“Ah, yes, Talia told us about this,” Aunt Sophie nodded.
“They could come to the house, couldn’t they, dad, and maybe we could order something in?” Keith suggested. After the visual probing he had gotten from Uncle Naddy, he didn’t know what made him issue that invitation, but everyone brightened.
“Perhaps we could have pizza, Naddy,” Aunt Sophie suggested timidly.
“I have not tasted pizza in twenty years,” Uncle Naddy mused. “It’s settled, then. Thank you for your kind offer. We shall meet your angelic daughter, of whom Talia speaks such praises, and we shall eat pizza!”
“It is incredible,” Naddy exclaimed when the order arrived. Keith’s dad had tried to coach him to moderation, but they had ended up with a massive family variety box order, twisted cheesy breadsticks, spicy and mild wings, two dif
ferent kinds of pizza, and regular breadsticks and marinara sauce as well. “All this variety. Once, it was just pizza. I love America!”
Keith warmed to Naddy a little more when he saw how Joana seemed to enjoy watching him. Naddy sampled every possibility and it seemed like she had as much fun as if she could eat pizza herself. He even took a turn feeding her and stroked her hair.
“To bless, this is what you are made for, my child,” he murmured. For once, she didn’t have a snappy comeback, or any comeback at all.
They all watched One Night With the King together.
“My Talia, you have told us and told us to watch this, and we never made time for it,” Sophie said, wiping away tears. “Such terror she lived in, and such triumph she experienced.”
“So Mordecai, he stayed in Susa, even when other Jews left to go rebuild,” Naddy said. “Does that not mean that God can use us even if we live in the world, and have to use what the world gives us sometimes?”
“Oh, Uncle Naddy … ” Talia’s eyes seemed to beg her uncle not to continue whatever he had brought up. Keith and his father exchanged puzzled glances.
“God needs His people to be in the world, but not of it,” Joshua responded cautiously. “He doesn’t want us to go hide in seclusion, but he doesn’t want us to get down in the wallow, either.”
“The … wallow?” Uncle Naddy echoed.
“The pig sty, Amu,” Talia said.
“Oh, I hope I didn’t offend you. Are you Jewish?”
“Oh, man, the pizza – it had sausage on it!” Keith spluttered. “We never thought – Talia never said – ”
“We are not Jewish,” Sophie hastily explained. “We are Persian.”
Naddy laughed. “We live and work mostly in areas where we rarely even hear English spoken, so the idioms are not clear sometimes. No, no, there is no offense. This is good fellowship and good food. After all, we are not under the law, but under grace, no?”
“That we are,” Joshua answered. “But, to get back to your question about using what the world gives us – I think that’s the way you put it – it depends, I think, on how it might affect other Christians. All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient. We mustn’t offend brothers who might think it’s wrong to do what we believe is harmless.”
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