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By Root 327 0

something about their devotion. I could even see the ragged existential poverty of the unbeliever’s journey of self-discovery as compared to the warming, collective Walk with God that Christians experienced. When Matt Taibbi woke up alone in a Texas boardinghouse, with every thought that bounced through his head, with every minute of the endless asinine dialogue with himself that passed pointlessly into the out-box of history, he became stranger than he was before, more alienated from the rest of humanity. But when my Christian friends woke up and bounded out of bed to dust their furniture, that other voice in their skull was God’s; they were part of the same ongoing conversation the rest of their friends were having. And when those same Christian friends met for Bible study later that evening, it was like they had already been talking all day long.

But these same friends of mine had a powerful appetite for stories about killing and hating, and that I didn’t get. There was one Bible-study meeting I went to at Richard and Cassie’s house that nearly bowled me over. To set the scene: a typical Bible-study meeting at the one-story suburban home of the cell leaders, chit-chat to start, cookies and key lime pie in the kitchen. I grabbed a soda, chatted with the doctor and some other folks. Laurie came over and mentioned a neighbor had gone through eye surgery, but she seemed upbeat. Everything was normal. We got together, sang, whispered the usual incantations, and everyone seemed positive. But when we got to the prayer requests, Cassie coughed up a whopper.

“Lord,” she said, “I ask you to lift up Scooter Libby.”

Libby had just been convicted that day.

“I ask you to comfort him and deliver him from the spirit of vengeance,” she said. “Do not let him try to take vengeance, Lord, even though he might want to. Take vengeance for him.”

She frowned as she spoke the word “vengeance,” and the room buzzed with each mention of the word. The implication was that it was going to be really, really hard to resist the urge to take vengeance on his behalf, and everyone in the room seemed to feel the spirit of this request. This was one area where Christians of this sort do not mind admitting that they have a hard time obeying God’s instructions. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord—and while they understand this command in Texas, they struggle with it. And frankly, they like to advertise their struggles with it.

“Take vengeance upon his enemies, Lord,” she continued. “And please, take away his spirit of vengeance, and give him instead…”

She paused for a long time. The room fell silent. Cassie, who was normally a very composed woman who never missed a beat, seemed lost—her hawk eyes were closed, and people began to look up from their prayer and stare at her quizzically.

“Give him instead,” she said finally, “a pardon.”

The crowd whistled in approval.

“Amen!” said someone near me.

“Grant it, Lord!” said another.

“Pardon him, Lord!” I said, though silently recoiling. I just didn’t get the anger, the buzz that the word “enemies” had aroused before. I wasn’t tuned in to where that was coming from. Weren’t we all happy ten seconds ago?

We went on to read from Deuteronomy 20, a section concerning the laws of warfare. Cassie spoke about that for a while, then used that topic as a chance to examine 2 Chronicles 13.

This was the story of Jeroboam and Abijah, and the story was a theme that the church had examined very frequently even in the few short months I had been in Texas—an outnumbered force of Israelites seemingly headed for crushing defeat, but suddenly rallying and whipping ass with the help of the Lord. Pastor Hagee had sounded a similar theme from the book of Ezekiel, seeing in the story of Ezekiel’s faithless servant a metaphor for the spineless opposition to the Iraq war. In the scripture Cassie sent us to, Jeroboam had rebelled against God and caused Israel to be split into northern and southern sections, with the south being called Judah, led by a God-fearing Abijah. Well, Jeroboam had eight hundred thousand men,