Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [43]
From this perspective Mary’s and Bobby’s roles were reversed: if Clark was correct, then her Bible-thumping self-righteousness might have been totally, tragically wrong, and Bobby’s efforts to assert his gay persona—including his offering her this very book—might have been desperately right. The implications sent a chill down her spine. She wondered as well whether the book had helped Bobby. Perhaps it was too little too late. He had wanted her to read it.
. Soon after, she had a dream about Bobby. He was at the extreme left of the dream’s frame, in a state of torment. Bobby kept pointing to a book, which was old and tattered. He beckoned her to find a page, which she did after a long search. All it said was “God is all goodness.” Mary woke to the thought that if God is all goodness he could not do all the terrible things the Bible says he does. He could not be a God of wrath and vengeance. He could not turn against Bobby. In the dream Bobby could not understand how God could want to inflict such pain.
She pondered, and scrutinized the holy book with newly critical eyes. She reread Deuteronomy 22:18: “If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother [then he or she] shall take him out to the elders of the town…. They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us.’ Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”
Stone a rebellious child to death? Mary struggled with this notion, remembering that Moses had gone to the mount, conversed with God, and returned to the people with the Law, which included this directive. But if God had spoken directly to Moses, he would have given him the full benefit of his infinite wisdom and knowledge. The prophet would certainly have known more about human nature than is displayed in this verse. Kids have a will, and they’re going to raise that will toward their parents. To think that God commanded that such a child be put to death! Mary heard herself intoning, “I don’t believe that.”
In her new, analytic mode, Mary began to notice other portions of the Bible that seemed barbaric and inhumane. In the story of Elisha,, the Bible recounts how some boys taunted the prophet about his bald head. Elisha summoned two she-bears to devour forty-two of the children. Such acts, it now occurred to her, were the doings of a sociopath. Yet Matthew Henry, in his annotation to the Bible, condoned Elisha, calling his act the result of “divine impulse.”
She felt as if a ledge were crumbling from under her feet, as if she were risking heresy. She yearned for the comfort of unconditional belief, but could not turn back. It frightened her.
The Sodom and Gomorrah story especially haunted her with its straight-out condemnation and savage vengefulness. This was the God with whom she had grown up. This was the God who killed sodomites. The God without mercy. The God who could have allowed and did allow Bobby to die.
Mary realized she had gone as far as she could go alone. She needed some expert theological help. But where to turn? The traditional church was no longer an option. It was a twist of irony: Just a few years ago she was desperate to change Bobby to conform to a rigid standard. Now, still as driven, she sought a context in which to validate him as he had actually been.
She remembered the Metropolitan Community Church, the gay church. There was one in Concord, the next town to the north. Bobby had actually gone there a couple of times, which disconcerted her. The notion of so-called ministers using God’s name to justify homosexuality had made her shudder: it was the devil’s work.
Now she needed help, and MCC was, after all, a church. If gay people had found a way to reconcile sexuality with religion, she wanted to know how they had done so. She thumbed through the phone book to get the number. She punched it, hand trembling, and hung up after