The Way
James meets her at 7-Eleven. Jenny has decided that, winter notwithstanding, she cannot leave this plane of existence without tasting ice cream one last time. She waits outside, nose running, one Good Humor sandwich in each gloved hand. She waves one in greeting as the War Wagon's headlights approach. Jenny jumps into the passenger seat before the van has even stopped moving.
“Really?” James says as Jenny hands him an ice cream. “Points for novelty, I guess.”
“Let's drive,” she replies. The weather is miserable, and the curmudgeonly owner will arrive to evict them sooner or later if they loiter around the store.
“How are you holding up?”
“It wasn’t even so much the dying part,” she blurts. “I mean, it sucks that he had that heart attack and all, but we weren’t really that close. It’s more the things the pastor was saying, about being certain Bill was in heaven and everything. I was raised going to church, but you actually believe all that stuff. I mean, you really believe it. And the more I think about it the less I believe, so I guess I was just sort of wondering how you do.”
James is a collection of paradoxes, the lovelorn Irish Protestant in a hardcore band, and sometimes Jennie can see only one trait to the exclusion of all others. Even as she speaks, she watches the evangelist emerge. When she is finished, he says, “What do you have trouble believing, exactly?”
“I guess the whole thing. Even beyond the weird Bible stuff, but recently I’ve been struggling with the basics. The idea that you and Mom and Pastor Varkey are all so sure that your faith will get you into heaven. And... and that if you don’t have that faith, if you’re raised Buddhist or Deadhead or something, God tosses you into a flaming pit for the rest of forever. That’s become a bit of a sticking point for me.”
“That’s always been one of the biggest sticking points people have with the Christian message,” James replies, “and it stems from a misconception. The problem people have, and rightly so, is with the idea that God sends people to hell. But God doesn’t choose hell for Man; Man chooses it for himself in his rebellion against God’s plan. Peter wrote that ‘God wills that none should perish,’ and that’s why salvation is a free gift. But it’s like a life raft. God can only throw it to you; you have to choose to take hold of it. The Good News of the gospel is that Jesus has already done the work to get you into heaven—all you have to do is accept it.”
“I just don’t see anymore how that’s good news. God creates a whole race of people who are sinful, or allows sin to enter his perfect creation, however you want to phrase it. After making people this way, he judges them by a standard that nobody can meet. To believe that salvation is really a gift, first you have to believe that every single person who ever lived is evil enough to deserve an eternity of unimaginable pain in the first place. It doesn’t seem like the Good News to me. It seems like the Really Really Bad News with the Good Addendum.”
James purses his lips as if to prevent his first response from escaping them. He thinks for a moment before proffering a second. “I don’t really think it’s news at all that people are lost. I feel we can discern that just by looking at the state of things.”
Jennie presses the attack. “Why is infinite torture the penalty for being lost? And the word ‘lost’ raises some questions for me. How did we get lost? Did we lose ourselves, or did someone else lose us? It’s pretty curious that an ultra-strong Being who can see everything can manage to lose all the people he made. The whole thing seems to get choice and nature pretty tangled up. Is sin an active choice or just an inescapable part of us, and if it’s the first one, why does every single person make the wrong choice, and if it’s the second one, how can you punish someone for their nature? Wouldn’t that make God like a professor who writes a test he knows not a single student can pass, and then burning the school down around them when they don’t? Seems more like an issue of quality control in the creation process. There should be some higher authority we can report God to for failing to prepare us for the world he made.”
James says, “God is the highest authority.”
Jennie says, “Kind of unlucky for us, then, isn’t it?”
For a long moment, neither speaks.
“Maybe the problem is that you’re framing hell as a state of punishment God bestows upon man. It is a punishing state, but not one God inflicts. Man is made for the presence of God, and hell is the only thing that exists in the absence of that. If we choose to destiny apart from God, we are fundamentally choosing hell. God loves us and wants us to choose him, but if we don’t, our fate is hell because that’s the only alternative to God.”
“Semantics,” Rupert replies. “Compulsion is a non-factor for an almighty being. If such one exists, he or she or it sets the conditions of the universe, and his or her or its will cannot be controverted.”
Jennie gapes long enough for James to notice that she is gaping at the apparently empty seat behind her in the van. She recovers before this prompts question and quietly asks: Since when are you weighing in on any of this?
“I was simply pointing out the illogic in your friend’s argument, which was apparent. I am not at liberty to comment on the truth or falsity of his theology at large; in fact, I cannot say that he is not entirely correct on the major points. I simply felt compelled to weigh in on his presentation.” The heavenly being offers an ingratiating tilt of the head.
“Jennie?” James is saying.
“Yes,” she replies.
“It just seemed like I lost you for a minute there.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s safe to say I was lost before you had anything to do with it.” For all his well-meaning input, however, she feels no more found. “Thanks for coming out in the freezing cold to get ice cream and keep me company.”
He nods. The nod is humble and yet manages to offend. This flavor of humility carries a sickly sweet aftertaste of artifice, like Splenda. It is the humility of one who humbly asks that God will change the listener through his words, but who never thinks of being changed by the listener’s words, or asks any hence-unasked questions about his God. He catches her arm as she reaches for the van door. “I’ll be praying for you.”
“Thanks, James.” Somehow, though the former is metaphorical and the latter literal, the saccharine taste overpowers the last lingering notes of vanilla bean.