Like with any book, I opened up the Bible, and I started to read page one with relative naivety, "In the beginning…." That's how we would begin with any other book; why not the Bible? The notion: the "Good Book'' is a book. Thus the same rules should apply, shouldn’t it?
Shouldn't the Word of God, the same voice who created heaven and earth have such perfect order also in his text?--something straight-forward? I should be able to read the text with both clarity and plain thinking. It should be as black and white as the print on the page, right?
Or so I thought at seventeen.
Spring of 2007–The friends I had in high school would compete over some of the darndest of things in high school. We were all cross-country runners, so besides who'd beat who around the track, we'd see who'd solve a rubik's cube the fastest, or which one of us would have the whitest thighs come by the last meet of the season. I won the white thigh competition one year. And so in this peculiar feat, the challenge would be who could read through the Bible from start to end first.
Easter was right around the corner, and I was edging to snag a copy of a Bible. At that time, we were nominally Episcopalians. We had attended a church service twice-a-year in Swarthmore. It was the same place my paternal aunt had worshiped before her death after a brain aneurysm.
I had asked my father years before what exactly was an Episcopalian? He described a line of apostolic succession and maintaining a lot of traditions of the church. As well, we recognized the bishop, but we rejected the pope. That's all he told me.
There have been many who were raised in "Christian" homes, especially from Roman-Catholic descent, that reject their parents' strict law-abiding rearing. Some reject the legalism of their "Christian" household or schooling, similar to how someone hates to read because they were forced to absorb the content or else a nun might crack a ruler down on the child's knuckles.
I didn't have this kind of brow-beatten trauma. There existed no transactional decorum between the church and me. Ignorance to the Gospel was for me a blessing so I could hear the Word of God fresh for the first time as opposed to those that already "heard" with their own preconceived notion of God. Often their prejudices of God reflect their relationship with authority whether that be parents, schools, or churches. Being unchurched was not a severe stumbling block in my openness to Faith.
That year, my parents decided not to go to service. I was rather antsy about winning this little book-reading competition. Easter afternoon, I went next door and borrowed a bible from my grandmother because we didn't have a copy in our household. My grandmother handed me a 1950 print edition of a King James Version. When I got home and made myself comfortable in bed, I read the first few chapters. I -est, -eth, and thee’d my way through the Elizabethian text. Ugh. I mustered onward. I was going to win. That's all I knew besides my own preconceived notion of God. My doctrine of faith was vague: Christ died on a cross, and He loved us. I watched the equivalent of a brief movie trailer about God through a handful of sermons before deciding to read the book first myself. Later, I would then compare the movie to the book afterwards just like any book. I assumed the book was better.
I manage to read up to Genesis Chapter 19 where Lot had incest with his two daughters. O holy hell! I slammed the book shut. I ain't reading this garbage. Then I threw the Bible in the trash that night. Enough with that.
Three days later, my friend Dave picked me up in his Ford Contour at my house. We were going out to eat Italian. Runners need their carbs before a race. Our friend Pat–also a runner–was already in the front passenger seat, so I climbed in the back and pushed aside the giant heap of empty water bottles from all the prior track practices that season.
We were coming up the intersection of Bethel and Foulk Road. There used to be a two-way intersection. However, due to growing suburbanization in recent years and the uptick in their associated car accidents, the township had hired a construction crew to install a four-way traffic light system. In the meantime, black covers were draped over their newly minted signals.
Dave, being a "fresh'' driver on the road, was unfamiliar with the new traffic terrain. When he realized that he should have tapped the brakes, it was too late. He hit the gas instead hoping to miss oncoming traffic. Another vehicle headed straight for the front passenger side door panel where Pat sat.
I sat in the back seat, and before my eyes I saw the world turned gray. The many empty vessels, the disposable trash hung within the air from our impact. It's odd to call water bottles beautiful. But it can be in all of its crunch up manner, how they can reflect and glimmer back a refractory light.
The car from opposing traffic t-boned our vehicle at approximately 45 mph. Because Dave hit the gas instead of hitting the brakes, we had enough momentum to jump the corner curb and slam into a telephone pole. Three other cars whipped around the center traffic, totalling their vehicles into each other.
The front of Ford Contour crunched itself inward like an accordion. Airbags went off.
The impact was right where Pat's legs rested. The front of the other vehicle had bent passenger-side front tire in and up. Dave turned to me and yelled, "Get the hell out." But Pat couldn't. He was stuck. Pat screamed.
But by some common grace of God we pulled Pat out through the driver's side door. His legs were unscathed, however, he screamed like they were useless to him. He suffered some shock. His fists pounded the grass. Except for some minor bruises we all crawled out okay.
Dave wasn't much for emotions. I was more the talker in the friendship, but in that moment, he broke down and cried. Dave looked at me, and he asked, "Can you ever forgive me!?"
"Dave," I said, "you're already forgiven."
I reflected back on what had occurred that afternoon. That was something easy enough to say. Accidents do happen. To a friend, I can be more forgiving for a momentary lapse of judgment. However, those what-ifs poured into my head. Would I be so forgiving if he wasn't my friend. What if he was a stranger who hit my car? What if I was injured beyond those few bruises of a seat belt strap? What if I lost my legs, would I be so forgiving? Forgiveness felt at the time like a throwaway line, a piece of garbage a minister might say. It sounds nice, but came off to me as cheap.
So later that evening, once Dave and Pat returned from hospital to get checked for injuries, Dave and I spoke again on the phone. Dave said, "Somebody out there was looking out for us."
And that night, I pulled out my Bible out of the waste bin and continued reading onto Genesis chapter 20.