I read Camus’ The Stranger, The Plague, and The Myth of Sisyphus. I read a play by Sartre called Nausea. I devoured Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund and Siddhartha. I was entranced by Dostoyevski’s Dream of a Ridiculous Man and the novel that had the most impact upon me, The Brothers Karamozov. I had never read anything like these novels. They were full of spite and cynicism, ranting tirades of existential angst. I know now that I wasn’t ready for it. I was overwhelmed and nearly devastated by the revelations these books brought me to. Desperate questions, blasphemies, whose answers only led to more questions. A snowball effect that caused a ricochet in my brain. Questions bouncing back and forth at increasing velocity and force until it felt like my mind would shatter. Why? Why? Why? Why? They turned my whole world upside down.
I read these books feverishly and each one pained me as much as it thrilled me. It was in a chapter of The Brothers Karamozov titled “Rebellion” that I received my most disturbing, and horrifying, enlightening. One of the novel’s main characters, Ivan Karamozov, issued the most powerful indictment of Christianity I had ever heard.
He described in graphic detail the suffering of a little girl who was abused by her parents and forced to sleep in an outhouse and a little boy who was torn apart by hunting dogs and he asked what kind of divine plan could rest on the suffering of little children? Ivan Karamozov wanted no part of such a plan. No eternal harmony was worth the suffering of innocents and any god who would allow such a thing was unjust. It was too high a price. “I prefer to live with my unavenged suffering and my unappeased anger…” he shouted, rather than accept what he deemed to be the “overpriced ticket” to paradise; rather than participate in the cruel plans of an unjust God.
I kept the book in my back pocket and read it over and over again. Not the entire book, just that one chapter, until the pages fell out of it.
I had always believed in the goodness of God even though everything in my experience spoke against it. Every horrible thing I’d witnessed in the hood flew in the face of faith and the idea of a wise and benevolent deity, but still I believed because that’s what I had been taught to do. I hadn’t even been aware that disbelief was an option. But now I knew. There were disbelievers and no lightning bolts had come down from the sky to smite them. I checked. A seed of doubt had been sown and even God’s very existence was now in question. Mrs. Greenblade may not have realized it, but by making me think and question my beliefs, exposing me to those self-tortured European authors and philosophers who seemed to believe in nothing, she might have corrupted me more than anything that had ever happened to me in the streets. Ironically, it was the words of a preacher at my Mom’s church that issued the most tragic wound to my faith.
I had started going to church with my mom and Grandmom after the incident in the lot. I can’t say I was making any heroic efforts to obey the commandments, not if it meant turning my back on my boys, but I was trying to make amends for the things I’d done and would do in the future through prayer.
I was wearing my best suit; soft gray, double-breasted, pinstriped, with a black tie and handkerchief. Over my mother’s objections I wore a small platinum crucifix in my left ear. We didn’t have a car at the time so we walked the seven and a half blocks to the massive two hundred year-old Baptist church. We lumbered along at a snail’s pace due to the premature arthritis in Grandma’s knees.
Grandma wore a huge purple hat with a big white bow that matched her purple and white dress. Mom was dressed in a form fitting blue dress that came all the way up to her neck, with an open back that went almost down to her ass. She had a black shawl wrapped around her to make her party dress look more respectable, but that didn’t save her from getting dirty looks from Grandma. Her head was adorned with a blue pillbox hat that matched her dress and she wore black heels and carried a matching black purse. As always, she was the prettiest one in the congregation and stood out both because of her impressive height and beauty and her dress which just barely escaped being scandalous. Jealous whispers and envious eyes trailed us to our seats.
We had sat through three songs, two sermons, and one selection from Hebrews:11 when the choir began to hum softly a tune I recognized: “Jesus Is Calling My Name.” Reverend Thoroughgood told us all to turn to Chapter 42 of The Book of Job. This was the passage in which God rewards Job with “…Fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses…” and also, “seven sons and three daughters.” He then blesses Job with a long life of a hundred and forty years so he could see, “…his sons, and his son’s sons, even four generations…” All this after Job had refused to curse God even after God had smote him with sore boils from head to toe, killed all of his children with a hurricane, and destroyed all his servants, cattle, and wealth in order to win a bet with Satan. The bet was that Job would still praise his name no matter what cruel and torturous shit he did to him.
“And even as Job lay humbled, reduced to poverty and illness he still refused to curse God and God rewarded him with twice what he had before.” The reverend intoned in a deep resonant voice followed by a host of “Amens” and “Praise Jesus” from the congregation.
“So, when God tests you, when your electricity or your heat gets turned off cause you can’t afford to pay the bills, that’s when you should praise God the most!”
“Amen!”
“Praise the, Lord!”
“When you lose your job and you can’t afford to put food on the table. When your loved ones are murdered in the streets or fall prey to drugs or alcohol or crime, when your health is failing, that’s when you need to give thanks!”
“Yes, Lord!”
“Praise his name!”
“When you are victimized and abused by your fellow man. Give him praise!”
“Praise, Jesus!”
“Thank you, Lord!”
It was madness, all of it, complete and absolute insanity. I wanted to jump up out of my seat and scream.
“What the fuck are you people talking about? Give thanks to the bastard that caused all this pain? To some fuckin’ god that doesn’t lift a finger to stop our hardship, tragedy, and disaster in the hopes that he will make it all better eventually? And so what if he does cure your ailments after you‘ve suffered for motherfuckin’ weeks, months, or goddamned years? Couldn’t he have prevented it from ever fuckin’ happening? And when has anyone in the ghetto ever been repaid for their suffering no matter how strong their faith?”
It was lunacy, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
“Just remember in the midst of your suffering that God is merely testing your faith. Once he has seen the truth of your faith and piety, he will set you free. And just as Job was rewarded for his conviction, so shall you receive twice what you had before brothers and sisters. Remember it is all a part of his plan.”
Bullshit! I thought. Fuck his plan!
The whole congregation was on its feet praising God and hanging off the reverend’s every word. Even Mom and Grandmom were waving their hands in the air and shouting for Jesus, but I just sat there boiling in silent rage as Ivan Karamozov’s words echoed in my head.
“It is not worth it. It is too high a price.”
I was enraged that God would put man through such torture merely to test the depths of our love. If God is all knowing then why would he need to test anyone? He would already know who would pass and who would fail. It seemed cruel, capricious, self-centered, egotistical. This God that everyone loved so much seemed to possess some of the most fucked-up human qualities. That day I began to question every notion I’d ever had about God. I began to wonder if God really loved us after all.