Sex, Mom, and God

by Frank Schaeffer

  Franklin’s father became less political as the years passed. He also toned down his earlier hellfire Protestant fundamentalism, allowing, for instance, that Roman Catholics and other non-born-again people might even be saved. During one of our meetings at Mayo Clinic, Billy told my father and me that he’d got burned by getting too close to Nixon and being identified with his policies and that he did not intend to be seen endorsing a political figure or cause again. In the 1970s Billy had even point-blank refused to become part of the antiabortion crusade we waged, no matter how often Dad and I begged him to join our “call to save babies.” Billy said that we’d become “too political” and “too harsh.” (He was right.)

  By contrast, Franklin Graham became one of the shrillest of the Far Right Republican Party boosters and also a harsh anti-Islamic activist who capitalized on the post-9/11 political climate of fear that burgeoned, in many instances, into paranoia about the Muslim “Other.” Franklin disparaged Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion” that does not belong in the United States. And Franklin embraced overt politics. For instance, in an interview with Newsmax Television, Franklin was asked if he thought there was a “pattern of hostility to traditional Christianity by the Obama administration.” “I don’t know if it’s exactly from President Obama,” Graham responded, “but I’m certain that some of the men around him are very much opposed to what we stand for and what we believe.” Franklin continued, “It seems as though Muslims are getting a pass [from Obama].” In the same interview Franklin was asked about “secular oppression of Christians” in the United States. “No question, it’s coming!” Graham said. “I think when you preach that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, I think we’re going to see, one day, people will say this is hate speech!”18

  In 2010 Franklin even managed to get his father to sign a pro–Sarah Palin endorsement. There was something about that action that struck scarily close to home for me because in the 1970s and 1980s I was the Schaeffer version of a Franklin Graham, well positioned to succeed my father as a powerful Religious Right leader all the while goading my father into taking political stands he would have avoided otherwise. Tragically, I was the person who pushed my father into the antiabortion movement. The more doubts I had, the farther to the Right I moved ideologically, as if shouting loudly enough and demonizing any who disagreed with me could solve my real problem: the growing realization that the Bible is horribly flawed. And I think there was another factor in my tilt to the Right that might also have been the case with Franklin: Politics is sexier than mere evangelism.

  The secret wish of every person dedicated to “full-time religious work” is to somehow be (or at least appear to be) relevant. In my case it was my politics, not my faith in Jesus, that got me on “secular TV” (for instance, on the Today Show to blast “Liberals”) back when I was a Religious Right shill. And “taking a stand” gets the blood pumping harder than just doing something as mundane as trying to love your neighbor.

  I allow that the Franklin Grahams of this world may well have once believed what they preached about politics or may even have been sincere. There were sincere reasons for my antiabortion stand besides my drift rightward as a way to shout down my doubts. All those single pregnant women my parents had sheltered, all those stories about Mom’s miscarried baby, and, above all, the fact I’d gotten Genie pregnant and that “unwanted child” had turned out to be our beloved little Jessica played a part. I’d also lived in a fundamentalist community that was blessedly inconsistent in its own theological beliefs about biblical inerrancy. My parents did what few even in the larger world did at the time: destigmatized “illegitimate” pregnancy.

  When the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down legalizing abortion, something in me connected empathically to the unborn babies and to all those mothers and mothers-to-be I had been raised around, and I rebelled at the idea that pregnancy should be treated as a disease. That’s how my “pro-life” gut reaction started anyway, at least as seen by me in 20/20 hindsight. But soon my antiabortion activities were all about wielding power and sticking it to those who were Not Like Us, an expression of my resentment at being stuck with a belief system that can’t withstand honest questions. So I spoke out vehemently against any pro-choice advocates who I believed were tampering with The-God-Of-The-Bible’s Wondrous Plan for their unborn children. In retrospect, I think my political activism was coming from the same need to be vindicated that seems to have plagued Franklin Graham. It also was related to a more deadly phenomenon: the worldview that incited (TV evangelist) Pat Robertson to blame the Haitians for the 2010 earthquake in their country because they had once made a “pact with Satan.”

  According to Robertson, the Haitians “told Satan” that if he’d rid them of their French masters, they would worship him. Robertson said this “explained” why Haiti was not only poor but had also just experienced almost total destruction. This statement shocked and infuriated even some of Robertson’s fellow Evangelicals. But his explanation was in keeping with the religious view of The Other that I had once embraced or should I say that I had once hid my own doubts behind. No matter how bad Robertson’s public relations judgment was in blurting out his belief that the Haitians were to blame for their own destruction, Robertson’s outrageous statements are symptomatic of the tendency—in fact, the necessity—for all religious extremists to demonize The Other. They must blame the victim since to do otherwise would be to blame their version of God for such tragic events.

  What Robertson did when defaming the Haitians is what many religious conservatives do to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and what Jerry Falwell did when he claimed that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were divine punishment of America for its tolerance of homosexuality. Falwell’s and Robertson’s outrageous reaction to The Other was not so far-fetched for Bible-believing fundamentalist Christians steeped in the biblical “prophets’” scathing rants against the sons and daughters of Zion for bringing The-God-Of-The-Bible’s wrathful destruction upon themselves.

  The history of theology (Christian or otherwise) is the history of people desperately trying to fit the way things actually are into the way their holy books say they should be. (Think of the billions of words written in tens of thousands of books on religion “explaining” pain and suffering in the light of God’s purported goodness.) So some people do what Mom did: spend a lot of time making excuses for The-God-Of-The-Bible. Others contrive their theology to make it seem more enlightened than it is: Roman Catholic medieval dogma is rechristened as “Natural Law,”19 Creationism is rebaptized as “Intelligent Design,” Islam calls the oppression of women the “protection of women,” and so forth.

  There is another choice: To admit that the best of any religious tradition depends on the choices its adherents make on how to live despite what their holy books “say,” not because of them. “But where would that leave me?” my former self would have asked. “I’d be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty.” Yes, and perhaps that’s the only honest place to be. Another name for uncertainty is humility. No one ever blew up a mosque, church, or abortion clinic after yelling, “I could be wrong.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The-God-Of-The-Bible’s Unauthorized Biography

  PHOTO: Mom and Dad, 1947

  Mom was sitting on my bed next to the eight-year-old version of me, reading the story of King David’s Sin to me (again), when she looked up from her Bible and cheerfully declared, “Your father demands sexual intercourse every single night and has since the day we married because he doesn’t want to end up like King David!” I got that sinking feeling. I knew Mom was about to launch onto her favorite topic (besides Sex): how examples of Sin in the Bible help us all “better understand Fran’s Many Weaknesses.”

  “Uh,” I said noncommittally, while trying not to sound too interested.

  “You see, Dear, King David and Fran share a Very Strong Drive in That Area. At least Fran recognizes his Need.” Mom paused, smiled sweetly, then added in a brisk upbea
t tone, “But I don’t want you to get the wrong impression; it’s not that I don’t enjoy being with Fran in That Way. Within a Christ-centered marriage the union of a married man and his wife is a wonderful gift. It’s just that because Fran has a Daily Need, I have to go with him on every single speaking trip. I hate leaving you alone so often, even in a good cause.”

  To an outsider, Mom’s constant citing of Bible passages like King David’s Sin to “explain” Dad’s failings might have seemed like a snide rebuke. Actually, it was Mom’s way of defending Dad. She was placing his Sins on a high pedestal right up there with the failings of the biblical heroes. Mom was excusing Dad by saying in effect, “Even King David, that the Bible says God loved most of all, sinned terribly. He was forgiven and I forgive Fran, too. Moreover, if even King David was awful sometimes, how can Fran be perfect?”

  I don’t know if the good cause Mom referred to was traveling to teach Bible studies (from Holland to Italy to England and France), enjoying the “union of a married man and his wife,” or keeping Dad from straying by meeting his “Daily Need.” Since the Bible is full of Sex, and since Mom wanted (had?) to talk about Sex, Dad, and God—a lot—my mother could use our Bible studies as the excuse to “share” the Facts Of Life and exonerate Dad in the context of putting him in the company of biblical heroes who had “sinned too, Dear.”

  One thing I do know is that every time Mom left home, she’d leave a note and small gift for each bedtime she’d be away. My parents’ speaking trips sometimes lasted up to a month. I remember the sense of being enveloped in her love as Debby or Susan would read the daily note to me as I’d unwrap that day’s gift. (I collected a whole shelf full of excellent model car Dinky Toys in this way.)

  I also look back on my mother’s tremendous warmth and kindness as her love spilled into the lives of the next generation. My mother showed unbounded love to my daughter, Jessica, and son Francis when Genie and I were living in “Noni’s” home (as her grandchildren call Mom). From birth until Jessica was ten and Francis seven, Noni played an outsized role in their lives. We lived with my parents in their chalet’s basement apartment for the first five years of our marriage, then we moved into our own place across the street. (When Jessica was ten and Francis was seven, Genie and I moved to the States and our children’s daily encounters with Noni ended.)

  My mother’s influence in Jessica’s and Francis’s lives was significant. She patiently compensated for Genie’s and my being so young. As Genie says, “Noni was the best mother-in-law a young married woman could ever have had. She never ‘advised,’ rather was just always there to help and, when asked, gave the wisest relationship advice I’ve ever heard.” And Jessica and Francis loved visiting Noni; as Jessica described it, “Going upstairs to Noni was a moment each day when I felt as if I was stepping into bright sunlight.” Francis has always compared all ice cream to Noni’s Sunday ice cream and chocolate sauce. “She always let me help her make it,” he says; “it was the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted.”

  When Mom was home, she always had handy a Bible story that, with just the slightest nudge, could illustrate my father’s Sins—from his Strong Drive In That Area (King David) to his sometimes violent Moods (King Saul). And the cross she had to bear because of his “unfortunate working-class background” (reminiscent of Esau and the Bible’s other “rough-mannered men”) was handily illustrated by the Apostle Peter, along with the other confused and uneducated working-class fishermen Jesus called to follow Him and to whom He had to explain everything, just like Mom constantly had to instruct Dad.

  Mom often said, “Shall we consider King David?”

  “Yes, Mom,” I’d answer, knowing full well that we were going to consider King David with or without my permission.

  “The story is in the book of Second Samuel,” Mom said, flipping open her well-worn and heavily underlined Bible. She started to read in her impeccably clear, lilting, Bible-reading voice, enunciating each word c-r-i-s-p-l-y and pronouncing the biblical names perfectly: “Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem.” Mom paused to comment, switching from her Bible-reading voice to a more intimate, conspiratorial, tone: “You see, Dear, David wasn’t where he belonged. If David had been out on the battlefield killing the enemies of God where the King was supposed to be in the springtime, instead of turning his palace into a peep show, this never would have happened.”

  “What’s a peep show?”

  “We’ll get to that later. The point now is that David was battling a midlife crisis, too. He wasn’t in Paris, where Fran dragged me that time. But like your father, David wasn’t where God wanted him either, which is always that first tragic step of backsliding, as Fran knows. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Mom reached out, took my hand in hers, and then continued to read.

  “Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance. So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, ‘Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’ David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.”

  Mom closed her Bible with a snap and sighed.

  “I should point out,” said Mom, shaking her head in a manner that denoted her seen-this-a-thousand-times sadness at the way some people carry on, “that Bathsheba shares in David’s guilt. A woman has no business bathing in public or for that matter even wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Men hardly need stirring up.” Mom sighed deeply. “Of course her guilt was nothing compared to his! I’m sorry to say that David just wanted what we call a ‘one-night stand,’ but, as usual, Sin had consequences: The woman conceived.” Mom leaned toward me, lowered her voice to a just-between-us amused whisper, and said, “David hadn’t planned on that possibility, had he?”

  “Was he a Roman Catholic?” I asked.

  Mom laughed.

  “Contraceptives weren’t invented yet, so they were all Catholics back then—in a Jewish sort of way. The only ‘method’ in those days was for the man to pull out before ejaculation, and that’s not reliable. But evidently David didn’t even do that,” Mom said. “Even if he had, that would have been a Sin, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because in the Book of Genesis, after God had killed Onan’s brother Er, Judah asked Onan to have sexual intercourse with Tamar and impregnate her. Then Onan had sex with Tamar and sinned by coitus interruptus, casting his seed on the ground because he didn’t want any offspring he couldn’t claim as his own. The Bible says this displeased God.”

  “How do we know it displeased God?”

  “It’s pretty obvious: God killed Onan, Dear.”

  “So King David couldn’t pull out because he knew what had happened to Onan?”

  “I’ll ask your father what the Reformed Presbyterian position on the meaning of the seed-wasting Onan passage is. I’m sure he must have studied it in seminary. I don’t know if the Sin was casting seed on the ground in general or just in this one instance. Anyway, Dear, I do know that passage explains the origin of the term ‘Onanism.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just don’t! When you get to puberty and start having Those Feelings we’ve discussed, think of poor old Onan and wait for God to send Wet Dreams, though God didn’t kill Onan for Touching Himself but for not raising up offspring to honor his dead brother’s name. But the point you need to remember is that in Leviticus 15:32, the ‘emission of semen’ is referring to Touching Yourself. Notice that masturbation would cause a man to become Unclean under the Law of Moses.”

  “Like having babies makes women Unclean?”

  “Sort of, but before the coming of J
esus, the male seed was Unclean; not only was the Onan-type misuse of seed Unclean, but the actual seed was unredeemed.”

  “What?”

  “Children born in the Old Testament were Unclean, so nocturnal emissions were Unclean, too. Now that Jesus has come to redeem everything, even Wet Dreams are no longer Unclean, unless you do it on purpose!”

  The “menstrual track” of thought (that I started over forty years ago while peering into those wastepaper baskets) illustrates my cure from brooding on the “Unclean.” You see, there came a day when a Vagina was no longer an object that seemed to exist independently of a person but rather was one beloved woman’s property and interesting to me not just because it was a Vagina, but also because that particular Vagina belonged to a person I loved, treasured, and respected body and soul.

  Once that’s how I started to perceive Genie and her lovely body, I had a problem with the fact that The-God-Of-The-Bible sanctions rape. As we’ve seen, Moses commanded his soldiers to take their enemy’s virgins for their pleasure and to “have”—that is, rape—them. Remember, after Moses told his troops to kill all the enemy’s men, he said, “But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” Did all those girls then fall in love with the men who they had just watched butcher their mothers and fathers? Did the surviving virgins then marry and bed their captors willingly?

  The supposedly “more loving” New Testament doesn’t let Christians off the hook. To the contrary, it makes everything far worse. A verse in the book of Second Timothy says that all Scripture is for our edification. This absurdly self-referential circular argument states that the Bible is true because ... this book says so!