|
I had come home for a visit, and we were talking about this and that. We got to talking about religion which we could do most of the time because she wasn't a Bible beater. She went to church and taught Sunday School, but she had no time for the hypocrites and haters. When some wingnut would make some religious based pronouncement, I could always rely on her to put it in a proper perspective. She'd shake her head and say,"They need to be shot with shit, and killed for stinking."
Anyway... As we were sitting there, I made the pronouncement that I didn't believe you needed to believe in Jesus to go to heaven. Then before I even looked up, I thought, "Uh oh." I had just said I didn't believe in the whole foundation of Christianity to my Mama. I should have told her I was gay instead.
When I looked up, she was frozen in place with this indecipherable look on her face. It wasn't anger or surprise, and I couldn't quite place it. She didn't say anything or move a muscle. She was catatonic for Christ or something. I waved my hand in front of her face. Nothing. I turned my head sideways, and asked her if she was a pillar of salt. Not a word. I asked her if I needed to leave and come back with a fatted calf or something. Silence.
I decided I might as well try to explain. In for a penny, you keep the change. I told her that I had had arguments since I was old enough to remember about this idea. I had argued when I was a teenager that if someone acted as Jesus would want but they never knew about him, why would they go to Hell. I was always assured that it didn't matter how good they were, they had to come to Jesus. I asked about babies who were too young to know anything. I was told that if they hadn't been baptized then they weren't bound for glory.
I said if that was the case, then Jesus had been reduced to a magic word like Abracadabra or Shazam. You could be meaner than a rattlesnake, and still ask Jesus for forgiveness and you were home free. However, if you did the work of Mother Teresa, but you didn't know the magic formula, you were bound for hell. I told her I never would believe that.
She limbered up a bit then, and finally said that she didn't think it was that cut and dried. She went and took a nap. I never brought it up again, but I found out she used the story for a basis of a lesson in Sunday School. I'm not sure if I was the good guy or the bad guy. Mama was always using my brother and I along with several cousins as a basis for her lessons.
I decided I wouldn't tell her that my brother had told me he was a Druid.
|