Tarnished White

They're so peculiar. The Christians, I mean. Far from being an insult, it merely is meant to demonstrate my absolute perplexion with them and their doctrines. In fact, the more pious amongst them would consider it an honor to be called peculiar. That is, after all, what God intends for them to be. Of course, this isn't to assume that they are peculiar to Him. He understands them; He understands all things, so I'm told. But for heathens like myself, they are indeed just that; for I am only just beginning to grasp what it means to follow Christ, and the mechanics of discipleship still confuse me at best, if they don't madden me entirely.

That isn't to say that I haven't tried to understand them. I've been a diligent student of their practices, immersed myself in their culture, used their jargon, hailed their Marys, lit their candles, attended their liturgies, prayed to their God, sung their hymns, lived with their tenants, and graduated from their seminaries. Hell, I went so far as to be baptized. And I must admit that I even found myself believing in it all, too. Genuine, pure, heartfelt belief. The kind without guile; the sort of faith that moves people to do insensible, impossible, and otherwise unbelievable acts. I might have even accomplished a thing or two of that sort.

Yes, I've been a believer. Perhaps I still am. But a Christian? I'm not sure I've ever been anything like that. It might strike you as odd that someone who spent every Sunday of their life in church would hesitate to call themselves a Christian, especially if they have every intention of going next week as well. I admit it is a rather unorthodox position to take, but I would remind the reader that the history of this religion has left us with a million other confusing articles to keep us company. There have always been questions, and most of the time there have been answers. But whereas questions and answers are a matter of what one DOES or DOES NOT understand, a paradox is a matter of what one CANNOT understand. Christendom has no shortage of these, either; something one could only expect when finite beings attempt to understand the infinite revelations of an equally infinite god.

Years ago, while engaged in the process of unpacking a dusty army of cardboard boxes in my family’s new home, I came across a worn and sturdy book. Its cover was of a faded burgundy leather, and its weight felt comfortable in my hand. The pages, though a tad discolored and perhaps worn on the edges, contained the handwriting of my mother, which I had come to recognize as surely as I had learned the sound of her heartbeat as a child. Knowing that I shouldn’t, but being equally convinced that I had no choice, my curiosity dragged me into its pages. Initially, I had only intended to take a quick glance or a harmless peek, but decoding the cursive hieroglyphics of my parents’ generation required a more thorough approach. Letter by letter, I wove her words into something I could make sense of, sometimes having to re-read a passage or two that I couldn’t quite grasp; the same way an exhausted seminary student might read a chapter of Isaiah.

My mother is a quiet woman. She was never one to boast, or mock, or jeer, or make a fuss, or even sin, as far as I was concerned. I’d never known her to have many friends, but the high road is a lonely one, is it not? She has the sort of gentle and unassuming face that could only be cast as a protagonist; but seeing as she would die before asserting herself before an audience, odds are she would end up as an extra, if she ended up being cast at all. Her television debut would be as a faceless, drifting head of auburn hair walking away from the camera in a crowd of people. She would be wearing a dull green sweater with a dim brown skirt, the color of tree bark. She would exercise caution in her pace, so as not to walk any faster or slower than the herd of people around her, and in her hands might rest a textbook, or perhaps the case of her viola. For the moment or two that she would be visible, she would be virtually indistinguishable from the human wave she was a part of. And yet, if you could follow her home, you would never see her slouch, she wouldn’t dare break curfew, and she’d never speak out of turn. That is, if she ever spoke at all.

Given her modest disposition, it’s little wonder that I’d never heard her story. I felt a sort of shame when I considered how much (or more appropriately, how little) I knew about the woman who had given me all she ever had. I considered this a chance to change that. I poured over those pages, cradling her journal in my hands the way she used to rock me to sleep. One of her entries consisted of a poem that she had written about me, her firstborn son. After chronicling some events of my youth, she ended the stanza with the phrase,

"Dear world. Please. Please be kind to my boy."

As any anxiously engaged mother or deity could bear witness, humans are a high maintenance affair, even more so when they are young. The crushing burden of caring for myself and my younger siblings came at a cost, the lack of spare time being included in the price. At one point, the entries became few and far between. Some days there was nothing to read but a couple of words, and occasionally those words ended abruptly in the middle of a sentence, marking where my poor mother had fallen asleep in the process of writing. The gap between several of the entries was a matter of years; years which were lost to the historical record, but which were not lost to me. On the last page of that same journal, the final entry said:

"Oh my boy. Please. Please be kind to the world."

I’ve thought about that for years now.

She remains with us still; my mother, I mean. But I swear (even though it is expressly forbidden by the God of Christendom) that even her final words in her dying gasp will not haunt me the way those words did, and have, for years now. For all intents and purposes, they might as well have been her last words to me, for I know that her final wish would be nothing different.

At the time that I originally read my mother’s wish, I lacked the experience to truly understand its significance, along with its beautiful and preposterous ideological underpinnings. She came from a godly line of devout Danish stock who had spent the past 12 centuries proving their Christian identity. Echoed in their comfortably destitute wooden homes was the commandment to

"...resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."

Their tradition included other odd philanthropic endeavors that would make soldiers squirm, and judges cock their head at an angle in bewilderment, the same way a dog tilts its head when its master utters a command that the mongrel does not recognize. Puzzling things, like abandoning their homes, or refusing to engage in any business on the Sabbath. Revolutionary things, like loving their enemies, and forgiving their persecutors. Ridiculous things which I daresay we understand just as little now as their more reasonable counterparts did then.

Once, while engaged in some sort of pilgrimage, if you will allow me to dub it as such, I found myself at the entrance of the Great Meteoron Monastery in Kalambaka, Greece. The fortification, which has been inhabited by a handful of monks since the 14th century, was built on a most precipitous and incredibly dramatic rock which boasts a height of over one-thousand three-hundred feet. One might consider such a location impractical and in flagrant violation of accessibility laws, among other things. At this, the founding monks would crack a smile (or perhaps only blink their eyes to express their humor, as frivolity is discouraged), as it was precisely their intention to make the monastery as isolated as humanly possible. A trip to the inner sanctum would demonstrate most vividly why visitors were discouraged. In the dim room lit only by candlelight, iconography of persecuted saints plastered the walls. Sobering depictions of their somber fate danced with the flickering shadows of the candles. Driven, beaten, scorned, humiliated, stripped, tarred, feathered, tortured, cut, bruised, beheaded, strangled, clubbed, stoned, skinned alive, crucified, poisoned, stabbed, burned, sacrificed, broken, thrown, skewered, boiled, ripped apart by beasts, hung from the neck, starved, depraved, exiled, massacred, butchered, and imprisoned. As harrowing as the images were, one must admit: Christians sure deserve credit for their imagination.

The twisted, contorted, and contrite faces of the victims grabbed hold of my uncircumcised heart. They were martyrs. Disciples. Saints. Apparitions and types of the Only Begotten.

They were the Christians.

Behind the carcasses of the righteous and avoiding the gaze of the executioners was another class of characters. They were what the Apostle Paul referred to as “god fearers.” These were the gentiles who were sympathetic to the cause of Judaism and early Christianity, and who participated in many of the rites and rituals of both religions. They were honest in their faith, however infantile. They were accepted by their more steadfast counterparts, and are considered by scholars today to be apologists to primitive Christianity. And yet, while their belief in Christ might have been enough to earn them the honorary title of peculiar, it was not enough to earn them the title of Christian.

Because while they were sympathetic to the teachings of Christ, they did not follow Him. And who could blame them, considering His lot. And thus, they are consigned to the awful hell of living; of mourning the loss of their brethren, the wickedness of their generation, and their own cowardice. Such is the fate of double minded men. Men like me.

It was easier to love my enemies as a child, when I had none. To give was a hollow matter when I had everything. I can love my neighbor, so long as he reciprocates my love, and I can walk a mile or two with whoever requires it, so long as I’m already headed in the same direction. I will happily impart my substance to he who is in need, and in fact, I should feel all the better because of it. But only so long as I judge him to deserve my charity more than myself. As for my coat, well, I suppose I can manage without it, but how am I expected to survive without my cloak as well?

Perhaps I won’t. And perhaps, that’s the point. After all, being a Christian was never a comfortable or convenient affair. The holy scriptures, fresco paintings, and my mother’s diary were clear. I understand as much. And yet, I find myself wrestling with God as the patriarch Jacob once did. To carry a cross is one thing. Even greater then, is to offer oneself as a sacrifice upon that cross. But to withhold any hatred, bitterness, contempt, ill-will, or malice from those who crucify you? To bend on crooked knees before your executioner, and offer up your own sword as well as your life? To drink from the bitter cup without becoming bitter? Not only to swim upstream, but to reverse the flow of water altogether? To wrestle with pigs and remain a spotless white? To be drowned in the ocean abyss without getting wet?

This is what I do not understand.

My mother might have been a stranger to the silver screen, but she was no stranger to death. Like the Son of Man, she too was one of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. In the years that have passed since I discovered her journal, I too, have been introduced to the world and am no stranger to its bullies, snares, bandits, shadows, heart wrenching disasters and crushing injustices. Let there be no doubt, I am a god fearing man. A bitter, corrupted, frostbitten and wounded believer, who shivers in the cold and curses the day that he gave away his cloak. Indeed, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

And yet, even in my most enlightened and cynical of humanistic moods, and after having declared myself too tired, or too human, or too haughty to be engaged in this uphill struggle at all, I can still hear His voice. He was despised and rejected by men, and His auburn hair was nothing sensational. I imagine Him now, wearing a dull green sweater and a dim brown skirt the color of tree bark. He grew as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. I picture him emerging from the faceless crowd, absolutely defiant of the director, and seemingly oblivious to the script. He marches towards me, the handle of a secondhand viola case resting comfortably in His gentle hands.

It is at this point that I imagine His voice. Have you ever pondered on the voice of the divine? Perhaps it’s never even occurred to you that there is such a thing, but as someone who has ignored this voice on many occasions, let me tell you that it sounds almost identical to that of my mother. He pleads with me to honor her last wish. I choke on my words, far too afraid and ashamed to utter them out loud. But there is no need. He understands my concern, and she does, too. In His outstretched hands and in her writing, I see the evidence of the world’s cruelty, and in one voice, they plead with me still;

"Oh my boy. Please. Please be kind to the world."