Jack shrugged. “I was.”
Now, that got to me a little. I don’t know why Boughton would have led him on like that. Cagey at checkers, maybe. I said, “I’m just trying to find a slightly useful way of saying there are things I don’t understand. I’m not going to force some theory on a mystery and make foolishness of it, just because that is what people who talk about it normally do.”
Your mother looked at me, so I knew I must have sounded upset. I was upset. Nine-tenths of the time when some smart aleck starts in on theological questions he’s only trying to put me in a false position, and I’m just too old to see the joke in it anymore. Then Glory came to the door and said, “Your five minutes aren’t up yet,” as if anyone needed to underscore the futility.
But your mother spoke up, which surprised us all. She said, “What about being saved?” She said, “If you can’t change, there don’t seem much purpose in it.” She blushed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“You’ve made an excellent point, dear,” Boughton said. “I worried a long time about how the mystery of predestination could be reconciled with the mystery of salvation. I remember thinking about that a great deal.”
“No conclusions?” Jack asked.
“None that I can remember.” Then he said, “To conclude is not in the nature of the enterprise.”
Jack smiled at your mother as if he was looking for an ally, someone to share his frustration, but she just sat very still and studied her hands.
“I should think,” he said, “that the question Mrs. Ames has raised is one you gentlemen would approach with great seriousness. I know you have attended tent meetings only as interested observers, but — Excuse me. I don’t believe anyone else wants to pursue this, so I’ll let it go.” Your mother said, “I’m interested.”
Old Boughton, who was getting a little ruffled, said, “I hope the Presbyterian Church is as good a place as any to learn the blessed truths of the faith, including redemption and salvation first of all. The Lord knows I have labored to make it so.”
“Pardon me, Father,” Jack said. “I’ll go find Glory. She’ll tell me how to make myself useful. You always said that was the best way to keep out of trouble.”
“No, stay,” your mother said. And he did.
There was an uneasy silence, so I remarked that he might find Karl Barth a help, just for the sake of conversation. He said, “Is that what you do when some tormented soul arrives on your doorstep at midnight? Recommend Karl Barth?”
I said, “It depends on the case,” which it does. I have found Barth’s work to be full of comfort, as I believe I have told you elsewhere. But in fact, I don’t recall ever recommending him to any tormented soul except my own. That is what I mean about being put in a false position.
Your mother said, “A person can change. Everything can change.” Still never looking at him.
He said, “Thanks. That’s all I wanted to know.”
So that was the end of the conversation. We went home to supper.
I was left wondering what he was referring to when he mentioned tent meetings. And I have thought a lot about that word “cagey.” I have always dreaded having to talk theology with people who have no sympathy for it. I’ve been evasive from time to time, that’s true. I see the error of assuming a person is not speaking with you in good faith. It’s not respectful, I know that, and I don’t do it often. Nor do I have much occasion to around here, where it seems as if I’ve baptized half the people I pass on the street and taught them all the theology they will ever know.
But it is hard for me to see good faith in John Ames Boughton, and that’s a terrible problem. As we were walking home, your mother said, “He was only asking a question,” which was almost a rebuke, coming from her. Then, after we’d walked a little farther, she said, “Maybe some people aren’t so comfortable with themselves.” Now, that was a rebuke. And she was quite right. What need had an old soldier like me to defend himself even from mockery, if that was what he was up to? There was no question of need, there was only habit.
I believe I have tried never to say anything Edward would have found callow or naive. That constraint has been useful to me, in my opinion. It may be a form of defensiveness, but I hope it has at least been useful on balance. There is a tendency among some religious people even to invite ridicule and to bring down on themselves an intellectual contempt which seems to me in some cases justified. Nevertheless, I would advise you against defensiveness on principle. It precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level, it expresses a lack of faith. As I have said, the worst eventualities can have great value as experience. And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer. I know this, I have seen the truth of it with my own eyes, though I have not myself always managed to live by it, the Good Lord knows. I truly doubt I would know how to live by it for even a day, or an hour. That is a remarkable thing to consider.
I believe it will put my mind at ease to tell you straightforwardly what is at issue here. Sleep has become a great problem, elusive, and then pretty grueling when it comes. Prayer has not been equal to quieting these perturbations. If I feel that what I tell you is untrue in some way, or that I simply ought not to tell it, I can just destroy these pages. They certainly won’t be the first I’ve destroyed. Back when I had a woodstove, it was a satisfyingly easy thing to do. There was a tightness to seeing nonsense and frustration fall into the flames. I’m thinking we should have somebody build us a barbecue, like the Muellers did.
***
Let me say first of all that the grace of God is sufficient to any transgression, and that to judge is wrong, the origin and essence of much error and cruelty. I am aware of these things, as I hope you are also.
Let me say, too, that there are bonds which oblige me to special tolerance and kindness toward this young man, John Ames Boughton. He is the beloved child of my oldest and dearest friend, who gave him to me, so to speak, to compensate for my own childlessness. I baptized him in Boughton’s congregation. I remember the moment very clearly, Boughton and Mrs. Boughton and all the little ones there at the font, watching to see my joyful surprise, which I hope they did see, because my feelings at the time were a little more complex than I’d have wished. I had not been warned.
All this being the case, it offends my conscience to bear witness against him. Nevertheless, there is a very real sense in which people are fairly and appropriately associated with their histories, for human purposes. To say a thief is a brother man and beloved of God is true. To say therefore a thief is not a thief is an error. I don’t wish to imply that young Boughton ever, to the best of my knowledge, stole anything of significance in any conventional sense of the word “stole.” It is only to explain why I feel I may speak to you of his past, or at least of what little I know of it and what is to the point.
As I said before, the basic circumstances themselves are so commonplace that they can be dealt with in a very few words. About twenty years ago, while he was still in college at any rate, he became involved with a young girl, and the involvement produced a child. This sort of thing happens, and it is sorted out one way or another, as any clergyman can tell you.
In this instance, however, there were aggravating circumstances. For one thing, the girl was very young. For another, her family situation was desolate, even squalid. In other words, to say the least, she enjoyed none of the protections a young girl needs. How Jack Boughton even found her has never, been clear to me. She and her family lived in an isolated house with a lot of mean dogs under the porch. It was a sad place and she was a sad child. And there he was with his college airs and his letter sweater and that Plymouth convertible he got somewhere for a song, he said, when he was asked about it. (Boughton had so many children to educate, they all had to work, Jack too, and a car was out of the question even for old Boughton. His congregation gave him a used Buick in 1946, because by then it was too hard for him to walk anywhere.) Jack Boughton had no business in the world involving himself with that girl. It was something no honorable man would have done. However I turn it over in my mind that fact remains. And here is a prejudice of mine, confirmed by my lights through many years of observation. Sinners are not all dishonorable people, not by any means. But those who are dishonorable never really repent and never really reform. Now, I may be wrong here. No such distinction occurs in Scripture. And repentance and reformation are matters of the soul which only the Lord can judge. But, in my experience, dishonor is recalcitrant. When I see it, my heart sinks, because I feel I have no help to offer a dishonorable person. I know the deficiency may be my own altogether.