The Breath of God

by Jeffrey Small

  Tim had always wondered whether he’d done the right thing by lying to the police. As loud as the nightly arguments got, Tim’s father never actually laid a hand on his mother. But if he’d told the police that, then he would have lost both his parents that night and been put in some foster home. He knew his father had suspected the truth about his problem as much as Tim had tried to hide it, and he knew that the suspicion disgusted the old man. Every night his father read aloud from the family Bible before they sat down to dinner. In the year before his death, right after Tim turned thirteen, his father would concentrate on passages, like Leviticus, that described the abominations of promiscuity and homosexuality. Tim often had trouble sleeping at night. His father was pious and controlling, and Tim felt no affection for the man who never shared any affection toward him, and yet he wasn’t ready to be an orphan. After his father’s murder, Tim watched his mother drink to excess and bring random men into their Little Rock home. Maybe foster parents would have been the better choice.

  As he stood up from the motel bed, Tim’s mind cleared. As if he could hear Reverend Brady’s comfortable voice speaking from the pulpit, he understood the real lesson. The father in the story of the Prodigal Son was metaphorical. It didn’t matter that Tim’s own father was dead; his destiny would be the same as the son’s in the story. God would welcome him back. God had a plan for Tim: a plan much more spectacular than the Emory bombing, a plan of redemption. Tim wasn’t sure of the details of this plan, but he knew that he would be given the chance to prove his worthiness, and his sins too would be forgiven.

  Feeling better, Tim strode out of the motel room. He would head back to his apartment and spend the rest of the night online. Maybe he would find a clue to God’s plan for him there.

  CHAPTER 15

  NEW HOPE CHURCH BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

  WILLIAM JENNINGS FOLDED his arms on the red leather covering of his walnut desk and hunched toward the computer monitor. His office was smaller than Brady’s, not even half the size, but it was richly appointed with mahogany bookshelves filled with theological tomes and a thick beige carpet. At almost eight in the evening, he was the only one left in the New Hope offices, as was often the case. The hallway outside his door was dark, and the only light in his office came from the Tiffany desk lamp and the LCD screen. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling were too bright for his eyes. Jennings thought better in the dark.

  His carefully laid-out plans were showing signs of stress. Firing Carla had made his job managing the finances of the construction more difficult, and it would take weeks to find a suitable replacement. His boss’s unpredictability was exhausting. If he could rein in some of Brady’s more self-indulgent tendencies for the next few months, they could get past the current financial difficulties of the New Hope development. Then the minister would become the next president of the National Association of Evangelicals during the spring election. Brady loved the limelight and was good at basking in it. Without Jennings’s strategic thinking, organizational abilities, and attention to detail, however, Brady would be nothing more than a charismatic small-town pastor. Theirs was a good partnership. Jennings had no desire for the public adulation that Brady so enjoyed. He sought something more important, influence—influence to make a difference in the world. But they had several hurdles to get over first, the primary one being money.

  Over the past twenty years, Jennings had watched the country go soft in the name of tolerance, multiculturalism, religious pluralism, diversity, and all the other euphemisms they came up with for turning away from the gospel. Even the focus of some of his evangelical brethren was being distracted from their true mission. A few of the pastors in the NAE had begun to take up the hysteria of environmentalism, a cause Jennings knew was contradicted by Genesis, which explained how God gave man dominion over the plants and animals. Other churches wasted resources on mission trips to Africa to minister to so-called Christian converts there who still practiced witchcraft and magic, practices which Leviticus clearly said should be punished by death.

  Jennings knew that if Brady could become president of the NAE, then they could bring the organization back to the power it had wielded in the 1980s. The popularity of Brady’s book—one of my better ideas, Jennings thought—demonstrated the frustration many Americans felt for their deteriorating country: their worries about the future and the hunger they had for understanding God’s will. After the NAE election, Jennings would have the ear of the politicians. He would become one of the most powerful men in America. He would leave the TV and public adoration to Brady. The years of his being subservient to Brady’s ego would be worth it; he would be in a position to influence U.S. policy for a generation. He would reverse the damage being done that was leading his beloved country on the path to Armageddon.

  Jennings clicked on his email icon and began to scan the messages. He kept in constant communication with the other church leaders who would help to elect Brady, feeding out tidbits of information that would keep Brady in their minds. An email with an unusual heading caught his eye. Opening the message, he pored over its contents, reading it twice just to make sure he understood its implications. Then he pushed back his leather chair and templed his fingers under his chin. This could be a problem.

  CHAPTER 16

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  AFTER THIRTY HOURS OF TRAVEL, driving first to Paro and then flying to New Delhi, Paris, and finally on to Atlanta, Grant unlocked the door to his off-campus apartment, just three miles from Emory University. He thought he was used to the cast after five weeks, but lugging it around the airports and squeezing into the coach seats on the long flights had been uncomfortable to say the least. Fortunately, they’d given him an exit row, since he was incapable of bending his knee. He planned to see a doctor in a few days to have the cast removed, and he couldn’t be rid of it too soon. He leaned the backpack containing his clothes and laptop against the black futon in the living room. To his left stood a circular table with two dining chairs and beyond that the small kitchen. To his right, a sliding glass door led to a deck overlooking the woods behind the complex.

  “Bedroom’s there.” He pointed to the door directly ahead of him. After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “I’ll take the couch.”

  “That works,” Kristin said.

  He’d been pleasantly surprised when she’d agreed to travel with him to Atlanta. After he revealed the true importance of the Issa texts in the business office of the small hotel in Punakha, she could barely contain her enthusiasm for getting involved. He had to admit that he’d delighted in her awe upon learning that Issa was Jesus of Nazareth.

  “Didn’t Jesus live and teach in Galilee?” she’d asked with an intensity in her gaze that drew him in.

  “He did during his ministry,” Grant replied, “which began around the age of thirty and lasted about a year. But one of the great mysteries of the Bible is what Jesus was doing before then. The Gospel of Luke describes Jesus’ appearance at the Temple in Jerusalem at age twelve, where he impresses people with his knowledge of scripture and his eloquence, but then the Bible is silent about his whereabouts until the beginning of his ministry.”

  “You’re saying that nearly twenty years of Jesus’ life is completely unaccounted for in the Bible?”

  “The only mention of his life during those two decades comes again from Luke, which reads, ‘He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.’ So you see, these texts could be the most important biographical information on the life of Jesus that exists.”

  “But wasn’t Kinley trying to tell you something about this being about more than history? We heard about Issa learning certain secret teachings. I can’t shake the feeling that we’re supposed to understand something—a bigger message maybe about these teachings.”

  Grant waved his hand. “I respect Kinley. I’ve learned a lot from him, but this is my area of expertise. Don’t you see? These Issa texts go to the very heart of who Jesus was. Was he receiving his messages from G
od directly, or was he a man whose revolutionary teachings were derived from his studies of Hinduism and Buddhism?”

  “What about the virgin birth stories? I thought that Jesus was born the way he was because that’s how God made him.”

  “That’s what the authors of those stories wanted you to think. The majority of biblical scholars believe those tales to be later additions to the Jesus tradition, part of the myth that grew up around Jesus after his death.” Grant grinned. “And if Jesus was somehow divine from birth, why don’t we have a history of miracle stories from the first thirty years of his life, instead of only the final year?”

  “But if Issa really is Jesus, and he did travel to the East, wouldn’t those stories be known?”

  “Actually, the legend of Jesus traveling through India as a teenager, while not well known in the West, is widely believed in India. Do you remember hearing me mention the name of a Russian journalist, Nicholas Notovitch?”

  She nodded.

  “Notovitch published a book in 1894 entitled La Vie Inconnue de Jesus-Christ, or The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, detailing his discovery of a text at the Himis monastery in the mountains of India. The book created quite a stir for a few months. It described Jesus, or Issa, traveling to India with a merchant caravan while in his teens. He studied first Hinduism and then Buddhism before returning to his own land. But immediately after Notovitch published, several academics denounced him as a fraud. One professor claimed Notovitch had never visited Himis, while another wrote to a lama there who denied such a text existed.”

  He added, “Scholars agreed that either the Russian fabricated his story or the mischievous monks at the monastery were having fun at his expense. The entire matter was essentially dropped, and in a world before TV or the Internet, the incident quickly disappeared from memory.”

  “And that was it? Why didn’t someone go and check out his story?”

  “After the rebuttal articles came out,” Grant said, “most academics assumed Notovitch’s report was false, and reaching a remote Himalayan monastery a hundred years ago would have been an arduous trip to find nothing. However, several other independent sightings of the text over the next twenty years were recorded, but for some reason, the press never pushed those stories.”

  “So what happened to the text?”

  Grant shrugged. “We don’t know. That’s why I went to India in the first place. Maybe the lama who ran Himis was afraid of the attention the manuscript could bring. He may have sent it elsewhere. We’ve seen firsthand how insular monastery culture is, fearful of outside influence.” Grant had a sudden mental image of Lama Dorji on his throne. He was a monk who would need little provocation to make the Issa texts disappear if it meant keeping foreigners out of his library.

  She squeezed his arm. “So this is the basis for your dissertation?”

  “It is, but most academics, by the way, discount the theory.”

  “Well, if Jesus didn’t travel to India, then where was he during those missing decades?”

  “The majority of scholars, including Professor Billingsly, assume Jesus grew up in his hometown of Nazareth, learning his father’s woodworking trade. But similar to the legend of his travels to India, other apocryphal stories arose that claimed he traveled to what is now Wales with his uncle, while others tell of him growing up in Egypt.”

  “Hold on.” Her grip around his arm tightened. “Why is he called Issa and not Jesus in Kinley’s texts?”

  “In Islamic texts like the Koran,” Grant said, “Jesus goes by the name of Isa, with one s, but in Buddhist and Hindu literature, he is known as Issa.”

  After she’d pelted him with additional questions for another hour, she accompanied him in the taxi back to the dzong later that afternoon to collect his belongings. When they returned to the hotel, they ate together in the small, brightly lit restaurant with checkered tablecloths. They’d stayed up talking well past midnight. As they separated to their own rooms, she’d said that she was in no hurry to return to New York and she wanted to meet Professor Billingsly. With her journalistic contacts, Grant thought she might be useful in helping to convince the Bhutanese government to allow the texts to come to the States. Before they left the country, he and Kinley decided that Grant would begin to lay the groundwork at Emory for the release of the texts, while the monk would speak to the Je Khenpo. Since Kinley had neither phone nor email access, they would have to communicate through Karma, the doctor. Although Grant had been anxious to return to Atlanta, he was surprised how choked up he got saying good-bye to Kinley in the monastery courtyard.

  Although the three days of travel that followed, along with the ten-hour time zone change had been exhausting, traveling with Kristin made the trip pass quickly. Talking with her felt different from talking with other women. They moved from one topic to another with an ease that was never interrupted by uncomfortable silences. Even if she was more free-spirited than he was accustomed to, her inquisitive mind and exotic looks intrigued him. He wondered if she felt the same. She gave him mixed signals. She looked at him and touched him as if she were attracted to him, but then at other times, like in the business office, she seemed more distant. Indecision was one of his major pet peeves.

  After dropping her backpack on the floor of his living room, she strolled to the built-in bookcase that took up the entire wall opposite the futon. Other than the TV in the center, books filled every shelf. She ran her fingers across the spines. “You alphabetized these?” she said.

  “By category.” How else would he be able to find the one he was looking for?

  Next, she lifted one of the six framed pictures displayed in front of the books. Each picture was in an identical black frame. “This impresses the girls you bring over?”

  The one she’d picked showed him surrounded by spray, screaming with exhilaration as he descended a rapid on the Chattooga River. “Kayaking,” he said, feeling himself redden. He took the picture from her and placed it next to the one of him scaling a rock wall in Tennessee. Conscious of her stare, he said, “Thinking about my adventures helps me unwind after work.”

  “I’ll unpack,” she said. She grabbed her backpack and headed for the bedroom.

  “There’s some room in the closet, if you want to hang anything up, and I’ll clear out a drawer for you.”

  “No need.”

  He watched through the open door as she unzipped the bag and proceeded to upend the contents on the floor by the bed. He shook his head. He felt suddenly overwhelmed by how moody and disorganized she was.

  He sat on the futon and opened his laptop. When his email inbox popped up, he gasped.

  “What the hell!” he yelled at the screen as he scrolled through over two hundred messages.

  Kristin raced into the room. “What?”

  “No. No. No!” He lifted his computer off his lap. The urge to hurl it across the room and through the glass doors was overpowering. Instead, he dropped it onto the futon.

  “Grant, what’s happened?”

  He rotated the screen so she could see the list of emails, most from university professors and biblical researchers around the world. All had either the words “Issa” or “Jesus” in the subject line. He punched at the keyboard with his index figure, opening one of the messages. Reading over him, she rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “Kinley’s entire translation of the Issa texts, the one I emailed Billingsly”—he fought back the burning in his throat—“has been posted online.”

  CHAPTER 17

  NEW HOPE CHURCH BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

  “LOOK AT THIS BS,” Reverend Brady mumbled to himself.

  The Birmingham newspaper headline read, NEW HOPE COMMUNITY IN FINANCIAL SCANDAL. Brady settled his ample frame deeply into the leather chair in his church office.

  Decorated in an English gentleman’s style, the office was spacious to allow for meetings with his parishioners. Brady’s favorite touch was the Flemish painting hanging on the wall behind his chair: Jesus, with the cross on
his back and thorns cutting into his scalp, struggled up the Golgotha hill as the tendons in his legs and shoulders strained under the weight of his effort. Clouds obscured the sun, casting dark shadows on a background of twisted, leafless trees and distraught followers, but a single ray of light illuminated Christ’s face as his eyes looked ahead to the top of the hill. Despite the immense burden of the cross, his face expressed a sea of calm. Brady liked sitting under this painting when he met with people, so that every time their eyes drifted upward, they would be reminded of Christ’s acceptance of his own sacrifice, just as they might be asked to make a sacrifice on behalf of the church.

  Turning the page of the newspaper, he thought how Satan had an easier time in the modern world. Through print, television, and the Internet, the Evil One could reach millions of corruptible minds. Brady recalled the teaching of John 8:44, that Satan was “the father of lies.” Clearly he used the media as his pawns. Why else would they jump at every chance to condemn prayer in schools, to lobby for the removal of the Ten Commandments in public spaces, and to promote other, heathen religions?

  These godless reporters had been digging for dirt the moment he’d announced the plans for the New Hope Community. And now, after two years, this was what they came up with? Brady turned the page, shaking his head as he read about his own limited partnership interests in one of the developers building the town homes in the community. Just because he was a clergyman, why shouldn’t he have the same right to make a living as anyone else? Anyway, the entire concept was his dream, with God’s guiding hand, of course. The following page detailed the “severe funding crisis” the project faced, claiming that contractors were threatening to stop work if late bills weren’t paid.

  As he thought about the effect the article could have on his campaign for the presidency of the NAE, his stomach began to constrict as if it were attempting to fold in on itself. The surge in support from his fellow evangelical ministers had come after the dual home runs he’d hit with the ground breaking of the New Hope Community and the popularity of his book. The election was only a few months away, and he couldn’t afford any negative publicity now that his popularity was peaking. Brady envisioned the trips to Washington he would make as the man who could deliver the votes of millions of Christians. Senators and congressmen would bend over backward for him, and the national news media would cling to his every word.