Throwback: Slackers in the Hands of an angry Ms. Graf

“The Wrath of God is like great waters that are damned for the present!”

My head snapped back like a whip, ready to bombard Ms. Graf with excuses of why I had fallen asleep in class for the 666^th time, as well as question the sudden change in her vernacular of “ANALYZE ANALZYE ANLYZE”  to talk of the justified anger of a monolithic deity, when I realized I was not in Ms. Graf’s room. 

I was in a stuffed chapel, with thousands of members, all bustling and waiting for the enigmatic speaker on the pulpit, a tall spare man with piercing eyes and thin, set lips to continue with his sermon. The man had obviously startled everyone with his booming voice, and was continuing to preach, albeit still high, but in a calmer mannerism. A glass painting of the rupture that was to take place at the end of time was behind him, depicting the souls who were to be saved and those who were to be killed.

“How did I get here?!” I exclaimed, turning around, hoping that my love for literature is what compelled me to dream up such a world in my sleep.

A woman who sat next to me, about the age of 38 or so, turned around and scowled at me.

“Look sir,” she began in an icy tone, putting down the pad she was using to take notes, “I traveled all the way from Boston to here to settle an estate at first, but once I heard Reverend Edwards was in the area, I decided to hear him. Please take your unmannerly and disruptive quarrels out of the chapel, lest you want God to take you to hell early.” She sat back down and looked up the speaker (now identified as “Reverend Edwards”) and gazed at him intently.

Seeing no escape from this knight of a woman, I too sat down and tried to recall facts about Edwards.

“Edwards, Edwards, Edwards”  I muttered to myself, trying to recall facts from my head. Was he the guy who discovered India? No that was someone else…Wait! He must be the one who was named after the head of a cow no? No no no…I cursed myself, knowing that I should have paid more attention in Ms. Graf’s class. When she said “Even though this is history, the analysis you do now will help in the future” I didn’t know it meant literally!

Edwards. He was a child prodigy, and entered Yale at 13, graduated at 16. He was a Calvinist.

I stopped there, remembering the day before that after asking Ms. Graf what a Calvinist is, she smiled and said “I think you will find out soon enough.” Oh the irony of it all!

All of sudden, the scream of the people broke my recall of facts. I realized that I had ignored the booming of the Reverends voice while deep in my own thoughts. The people, who were once calm and complacent, were on the floor, writhing in agony like worms. A woman behind me behind me burst out in tears. Some threw themselves forward and began to recite the Lord ’s Prayer. Still many others lifted up their hands and shrieked that the omnipotent God would forgive them for their sins and that they could be spared from the judgment of hell. The woman who had denounced me earlier before was also standing up, proclaiming that she would never equate another human being to a pig ever again. A man in front of me was co-switching from Greek, Latin, Hebrew and French in what appeared to a song of confession.

Edwards drew a finger to his mouth, telling the people to quiet down so they can hear of more of the mercy of God and the atonement for sins. Struggling, the mass did a collective blowing of noses, wiping of eyes, and cleaning of glasses before being silent for Edwards to resume again. Such an ordeal occurred seven times throughout the message, with Edwards waiting for the congregation to silence their mouths and open their hearts each time.

Unable to take all of this in, I rushed out, and immediately the breeze of 1730’s weather. The sky had unleashed a torrent of water bullets that struck the ground with as much ferocity as Edward’s words. The sky crackled and lightning flashed across the sky, adding a divine and powerful overtone to the setting. Under such conditions I would step back inside, but I could not comprehend the reality that I found myself in. How did I get here? How would I get back? I shivered in the cold, becoming instantly drenched within seconds, and proceeded to step back inside, when I saw a misshapen and amorphous frame of a figure, bent and walking on with a limp. The rain personified the dark colors that were streaked across his jacket, giving him the appearance of a humped mass of sludge. “Some change please,” he uttered in a raspy voice, thrusting a broken porcelain mug, “Just something to help me find shelter.”

I dug into my pockets and gave him the 7 dollars, 3 nickels, 29 dimes, and 50 pennies that bulged my pockets, seeing no need for it now. The man’s eyes gleamed with ecstasy and lumbered off, not event thanking me or asking for my name. “Sir!” I called out to him, just as he was about to disappear into the night, “why don’t you go to the monastery? There is shelter there.” The man smiled, revealing an incomplete set of discolored and chipped teeth, “That place is dead to me now,” he said, “none of the people believed that this place was India! They all mock me, they with their Puritan ideals and hypocritical sermons. They say that old Columbus was frail and unfit to lead the voyage and publicly condemn me in public! The very words of the good book in which they speak are written in Scarlet Letters; taken from the blood of the witches, innocents, and immigrants that they have oppressed! Do not go in there; it only spells a chilling end to your worthy life.”

I walked back inside, partially to get out of the rain, but also to see whether Edward’s sermon really did such things to people. As Edwards continued to speak, I noticed the power of his metaphors. God was constantly depicted as a force of power and destruction while human beings were shown to be nothing but grievances to God. My heart was burdened at how sinful human beings are, yet noticed that Edwards did not add a “redemptive” factor in his message,

Edwards continued to preach, booming that all are destined to end up in the Devil’s home, we best enjoy our life now.

“You are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters continually rising and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds the waters back.”

I imagined that I was dropping “wrath coins” with the face of God stamped into every one of them, into a big leprechaun bowl whenever I disobeyed God. Oh how many coins I had! I felt the urge to throw myself down as well like the rest of the congregation, acknowledging the fact that I was powerless to the consequences of sin. But I decided to wait, still wanting to hear the talk of “free choice” that was present in Arminianism, while so far had not been found in Edward’s Calvinism.

The man next to me, looking as though he came from a long and distinguished line of clergymen shook his head with a sense of disgust and disapproval uttering that what Edwards was offering no redemptive factor to his messages. Interested to find someone who had thoughts similar to mine, I turned to him.

“Excuse me sir,” I began, “Why do you not like Edward’s sermon?”

The man did not even turn my way; his eyes were still fixated on Edwards while his hands were transcribing notes.

“Mr. Edward’s sermon indicts no method or form of redemption,” the man began robotically, “He wishes to esquire the fact that humans are all embarking on a perilous journey to hell and that all are doomed to such a fate.”

I bit my lip to contain my excitement, happy to find a like-minded individual.

“Why sir,” I persisted, “do you want a note of redemption to be uttered from Edwards?”

This time, the man turned to face me, and for a minute, I believed that I had established a connection, and finally found someone who could relate to me on a spiritual level. Was this finally a man of whom, despite all of the others members being die-hard Calvinists, could share and help cultivate a new generation of modified Calvinism/modified Arminiaism.

“I want it so I can help the witches,” the man said in rigid tone, as though this was something everyone did,“ I was hoping that if I could use this information at a trial, it would help prove Martha Carrier innocent.”

He turned back, and I decided not to talk to anyone for the rest of the service.

As Edward continued to speak, I could imagine an unseen hand holding a struggling human over a fire, letting the flames sear him, but not burn him. Flesh and skin would fall off into the fire and sizzle yet occasionally; the little human would spit into the shadows at which the hand would drop the human even closer to the fire. Yet at other times, the body of every human was replaced with the trunk of a snake, and we were all cast out from earth into a salt lake along with the false prophet and the beast. Yet at others I could imagine the rich, on a boat called Safety, pulled along by a motor called Peace, when all of sudden a giant fish would swallow them up and there would be no 40 days and 40 nights of contemplation because they were already in the depths of hell.

Finally, Edwards walks off the pulpit and walks around, muttering more about how we all hang on a slender thread, and that none of us should live such sinful lives. I sit at the edge of my seat, waiting for Edwards to drop the “punch line;” that despite our sins and the grievances that we cause God, that God still loves us and sent his only son to die for us and that because of that atonement, we can be saved. But Edwards does not conclude on such a note. His last phrase is “Nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.” He grabs his bible and walks off the pulpit, and the people scramble up to talk with him, biting scratching and fighting with each other, like Salem’s dogs on rye bread. The man next to me finishes his notes, gives one more shake of disapproval at Edwards and walks off. The woman meanwhile beckons to someone named John, and that they best be heading off.

I stand and push past the people, and walk out. I know that for me, while Edwards sermon radiated some truth in the fact that human beings are powerless to sin, I could not swallow the fact that people were pre-determined. I gave one more look at Edwards: a man who clearly believed in the content of which he was preaching and that everyone was destined to go to hell. I turn back and continue to walk, knowing that this Calvinism is only one of the few radical ways to read the bible. Armanianism will come, then the Protestant reformation of Martin Luther, and then the formations of the covenant, Baptist, Greek Orthodox and other such denominations. I know how the story will end-

All of sudden, I find myself in the familiar space of Ms. Graf’s room. She just asked the question “Is there anything else you can tell me from the Edward’s reading?”

She gives me a wink with her eye, trying to coerce me to raise my hand and participate (for once) while subtley acknowledging an innate knowledge of my journey. She turns back to face the class, bellowing “C’mon 6^th Period! Don’t let me down. I know you’re tired, but for those slackers and sleepers in the room, you don’t know where you’ll end up or what will happen if you don’t pay attention!” She scans the room again for a hand to emerge from the sleepy crowd, but really only having an eye out for one person.

Not knowing how I got back but happy that I am, I raise my hand, ready to tell the class of my journey with Calvinism.