(It has been hard to get back to blogging this week. I'm feeling fine, have been since Thursday, but I've had no interest in writing. Maybe I just needed something to blog about.)
This has been an interesting week for my husband. He had two things happen to him that rocked him emotionally. The first baby earthquake had to do with one of our neighbors. Back in December of 2003 I wrote about going to this neighbor's Shepherd's Party. Since then the neighbor,"Bea," has lost her husband and seems to have delved deeper into religion as a result of it.
A few weeks ago we were happy to learn that another woman in town would be moving into Bea's house. We were happy to hear this because Bea is an older lady and we worried about her being in that big house of hers all alone. At the time my husband made a stupid joke to Bea's brother about Bea suddenly "going gay" and the joke got back to his sister. It took Bea about a week to get up the courage to drop by our house to tell my husband that she was upset by his joke. She did not want a rumor to get started that she was gay because she definitely wasn't and because, more importantly, homosexuality was a sin against God. My husband apologized and then tried to get her to see it did not matter what other people said. She wasn't gay so why even worry about it? No, no, it did matter Bea said because homosexuality was a sin. My husband apologized once more and promised never to joke about it again.
Last Thursday afternoon Bea stopped by to see my husband. She brought with her a study bible with my husband's name printed on the cover. She also brought a copy of The Case For Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus by Lee Strobel(an atheist turned Christian), and a slip of paper with a list of all the verses in the bible that condemn homosexuality. Bea said she had been worried about my husband and decided to pray to God about him. All these things that she brought were gifts that God told her to bring to him (my husband) because he (God) thought that he (my husband) needed them. As Bea said these things I sat there just stunned, wondering how my husband was going to react to this.
What Bea does not know is my husband rejected any form of organized religion after his sister was murdered by her husband at the age of twenty-eight . Her husband was a religious fanatic who came to believe that his wife was possessed by the devil. He prayed to God about it and later said that God told him it was his duty to destroy Satan in any form he found him. As my husband said when he first told me about his sister's death, "...and that was the end of my sister."
My husband patiently listened to Bea and thanked her for the books. Then with a gentle sweetness and a sense of sadness he told her that he had been raised a Christian. He had turned away from Christianity because the religion teaches that there is a being known as Satan and that it is the duty of all Christians to fight Satan in whatever form he takes. People had died because of this belief. Bea tried to say something in reply but my husband would not listen and repeated softly that people have died because of this.
After she left I asked my husband what he thought was the reason why Bea thought he needed to be saved. He said it was because she knew he was a good person and some people, Bea included, can't understand how someone can be a good person and not be a Christian.
I agree that there are people like that in this world and for some reason that thought depressed me more than anything that had been said all day.
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