by Matt Taibbi
He tapped the exposed skin of his arm. Ron was a white-haired, shortish man in his fifties, with a mustache and glasses, the formerly wayward younger brother of a longtime group member, now a full-blooded Christian on the Right Path. He’d been Lost and was so happy to be Found again, he couldn’t be silent about it. The crowd ate him up.
“We’re overjoyed to have you here, too, Ron,” said Richard, scratching his beard.
“Thank you,” he said. “God bless you.”
The meeting went on. The “Bible lesson” turned out to be a reading of Deuteronomy 19, which to me seemed like a fairly arcane and legalistic section of the Bible, involving God’s instructions with regard to “cities of refuge.” In biblical times, if a man were to kill someone accidentally, he was supposed to flee to a city of refuge, where he would be safe from any family members who might be inclined to seek retribution against him. He was to remain there until there was a judgment against him by a court. Of course, if the killing was not accidental, the “manslayer” was not supposed to go to the city of refuge, but should be executed. The primary point that our group leader Cassie wanted to make with this lesson was that we modern Christians do not have to physically flee to a “city of refuge,” but instead can simply take refuge in the Lord by turning to him at any time. Your basic meat-and-potatoes “God is always there for U” sermon.
However, there was a secondary point of the lesson, and that is that the guilty should indeed be executed.
“If the manslayer did it with premeditation, he’s got to be put to death,” said Cassie. “Because God is for capital punishment—let’s not have any doubt about that.”
“Hallelujah,” said someone from the crowd.
“Let me tell you,” continued Cassie, “we are so far from those times. I mean, how long do people stay on death row nowadays? Twenty-five, thirty years? It’s ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous,” I agreed.
“I think the thing about that,” said Richard, “is that God so values life, that when someone takes a life, the only thing that’s going to satisfy him—he’s so offended that the only thing that will make it right for him is if that person gives up his life.”
“Amen,” muttered the group.
“Amen,” I said. Why object now?
Ron was frowning during this time. He raised his hand. Richard called on him.
“You know,” he said, “you know, lately, we’ve been having so many of those cases where people on death row go free because of DNA evidence…”
The crowd murmured. I could see eyebrows rising all over the room. I wonder where he’s going with this, I thought. Ron looked up and seemed nervous all of a sudden; he went on.
“I think the thing is, we’ve got so many of those liberal judges now…And when you’ve got jury trials, and people are sitting on the jury trying to decide these cases, I think that people who are good Christian people, it’s easier for them to make a rational decision about these things. I think that people who are in the world, who aren’t with Christ, it’s hard for people like that to make a rational decision. About cases like that, I mean.”
He looked up. I had absolutely no idea what the fuck he was talking about, and I’m pretty sure no one else did either. But this group was not much for arguing; this group was about “testifying,” and testimony, for those to whom the concept is foreign, does not involve much rigorous debate. You give your opinion, you tell your story, everyone claps and pats you on the back and nods in agreement, and then the group moves on. That’s what happened here. Ron made no sense, but everyone nodded like they agreed with him, and that was that.
The meeting went on, through the reading of scripture, more “teaching,” communion, etc. Finally, at around 9:00 p.m., it broke up. I made a beeline across the room to talk to Ron.
“Hey,” I said.
“Oh, hi,” he said. “Really nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said. “I was just wondering—what did you mean about those DNA tests?”
“Oh,” he said, his smile disappearing. “I just meant—you know, they’ve been releasing people from death row, because of DNA and all.”
“Right, but what do you mean about that? Do you—do you not believe in the death penalty?”
I asked this in almost a threatening voice, like I was asking if he was gay. I didn’t want him to think I was soft on the death penalty, so the best way to accomplish that, I figured, was to put him on the defensive, like I was an inquisitor trying to weed out a heretic. Incidentally, this was also amusing.
“Oh, no,” he said instantly, looking frightened. “I’m definitely for the death penalty.”
“Then what about those DNA tests?”
“Oh, well, it’s just—a lot of mistakes are made. By liberal judges.”
I frowned. “Okay,” I said. “The people who are on death row by mistake are there because liberal judges put them there?”
“Right,” he said. “I just think—there are people who aren’t in Christ who can’t make rational decisions about these things.”
“But Ron,” I said, “aren’t liberal judges usually against the death penalty?”
He frowned. “I guess, yes.”
“So you’re saying,” I said, “that liberal judges who are against the death penalty often make mistakes by sending people to be executed by the death penalty, which they’re against?”
He looked at me and a new expression—suspicion—came over his face. “Um,” he said, “I guess what I was saying is—wait, are you a Democrat or a Republican?”
I smiled. “Oh, I’m a Republican, of course,” I said.
“Me too,” he said, sighing in relief.
“I just didn’t understand what you were talking about,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay. I guess I was just saying, people make mistakes. It does make you think sometimes, though.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, frowning again. “But I’m still totally for the death penalty.”
“Oh, me too,” he said.
I smiled again. I felt sorry for the guy, but Jesus—what a pussy. So afraid of being labeled a political dissident that he has to keep his doubts and his rational opinions hidden behind some half-assed tirade against “liberal judges.”
I had already seen this same phenomenon at least a dozen times. For most churchgoers it isn’t a conflict, but there are a few who struggle at times with the political orthodoxy that somewhat unexpectedly goes hand in hand with the religious orthodoxy they so enthusiastically volunteered for. Many of these people don’t mind being an ever-saluting soldier for God, but they chafe a little at some of the other restrictions. I knew one churchgoer who admitted that he smoked marijuana on occasion, and he even tried to convince me that it was harmless and just something that he did “to relax” every now and then—but when I went silent he quickly insisted that he only used it according to a doctor’s advice, and that he abhorred drug abuse, etc., etc.
I shook Ron’s hand and peered at him queerly. “Well, you have a nice evening,” I said. “It was nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” he said, tapping my shoulder. “God bless you!”
“God bless you, too,” I said, walking out.
BY THE MIDDLE of March, after many months in the church, I was finding it harder and harder to drag myself to church events. On the one hand, playing the role of a good Christian—a superficially good Christian—had become not merely easy but effortless. I was no Joel Osteen, but I could handle most biblical conversations by then, was able to pray out loud convincingly in a group in a pinch, and at any rate had mastered a blank, beatific, whacked-in-the-face-with-a-pine-plank expression that seemed effective in conveying an air of simple, sincere devotion to folks who might otherwise have been curious about what I was doing there.
But on the other hand, I was having an increasingly difficult time swallowing certain aspects of the experience. There was a deep-seated viciousness and intellectual violence interwoven into the c
hurch ideology that I simply didn’t understand, which at times made it hard for me to play my part.
There were a great many things about the church that I could readily understand and identify with—the genuine warmth and sense of community that we all felt at the Bible-study meetings, the easy intimacy with other members of the church, the sense of belonging and being a part of something, the feeling of relief that comes with the knowledge that you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself, that at least some of the answers are there for you.
I understood these things. I didn’t have to fake the friendliness, the emotional connectedness. At the Bible-study meetings I could see clearly that this chance that people had to get together and be welcomed and listened to and appreciated by others was a source of tremendous comfort, that it was an antidote for loneliness and rejection. When I saw poor confused Laurie singing and dancing with the group, or Frances and old Dr. Hiroshi holding hands as they read their Bible together, I didn’t have to fake a smile. I could feel the “spirit of gladness” coursing through the room. And even though I don’t believe in God, I felt I understood 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, while Abijah had only four hundred thousand. But when it came time for battle, Abijah kicked his ass.
“God just killed them all,” said Cassie with relish. “It says here that he killed five hundred thousand choice men of Jeroboam. They weren’t ordinary men.”
“Choice meaning special,” said Richard, interjecting. “They were like special forces. Like Green Berets.”
The crowd cooed. I heard Laurie say, “Wow.”
“Right,” said Cassie. “They were special, but God just killed them dead. Five hundred thousand of ’em.”
Another man in the crowd raised his hand.
“Yes?” Cassie said.
“It says in my Bible they were ‘chosen’ men,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Well, God chose them all right,” he said. “He chose them to die.”
“That’s right,” said Cassie. “He sure did.”
Jesus, I thought. This is creepy. We went back to Deuteronomy 20 and the rules of warfare. There was a section there about what to do with conquered cities. We read from a section at the end:
15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
16 Howbeit of the cities of these peoples, that the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.
“Again, notice how God kills absolutely everyone,” Cassie said, smiling. “He leaves alive nothing. Everything has to die.”
A hand across the room raised.
“Even the animals?” Laurie said.
“What?” said Cassie.
Laurie gulped. “I mean,” she said, “I can see how you have to kill all the humans, but why do all of the animals have to die? They can’t contaminate—”
“NOTHING THAT BREATHES,” Cassie repeated. “Just look at what it says. Kill everything that breathes.”
“Mmm-hmm!” said someone in the room.
“Amen to that!” said another.
“God means business,” came a third voice.
“But the—” Laurie began.
At this point we devolved into a discussion of Saul’s disobedience in making an offering, how Laurie’s thinking was similar to Saul’s, in the sense that she was deciding for herself how she wanted to worship God. From here we moved on to a discussion of Sennacherib, the cocky Assyrian (read: Arab) king who showed up in Israel in the middle of the book of Kings boasting about how he was going to waste everybody. “He did a lot of talking,” said Cassie, “but he soon found out what this God was about. God destroyed him.”
“Mm-hmm,” said yes-man Richard.
And there was more and more of this, and finally we got to a section of the book of Romans in which the concept of defeating evil with good was discussed. “We have to defeat our enemies with love,” Cassie grumbled. “Now, I know that’s really hard to do sometimes, but…”
“Does that mean that I have to put
a picture of Nancy Pelosi up on my wall?” grumbled Reggie, the guitarist.
The room exploded in laughter.
“If that’s what it takes,” laughed Cassie. “Now, I know how hard that is…”
“That would be impossible for me to do,” said one man.
“Don’t know if I could,” said another.
The jokes went on and on. This part I understood by now. This was a sort of Church of America, where the religious and political orthodoxies were inextricable. You could no more protest on behalf of Nancy Pelosi here than you could question the wisdom of God. It was groupthink in the classic sense of the word, with the rants against Pelosi and against Libby’s “enemies” an essentially exactly parallel version of the Two Minutes’ Hate. But I couldn’t find a way to get off on it the same way they did. Like Orwell’s protagonist Winston, I was in trouble because to be a convincing hater you really have to feel it. And when you don’t feel it, you give off a kind of stink. I was stinking pretty hard that night and had to scoot out the door as soon as the meeting broke up, even though Richard tried to engage me in conversation.
“So, Matthew, how are things going?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Gotta run, though.”
“Where are you working these days?” he pressed, squinting at me.
“Um,” I said, “I’ve been tutoring kids…Those Mexicans have trouble with the language—terrible grammar—listen, I’ve really got to go…”
A few days later I went to church and met Janine before a meeting of Joshua’s Generation, which was a sort of Sunday Bible class for thirty-somethings ministered by Matthew Hagee, the porcine son of the lead pastor. I hadn’t seen her for a while, and we passed an awkward few minutes as we got reacquainted. Rebecca and Brian, a couple from Janine’s Bible-study group whom I’d met while visiting one night with them, hovered nearby and seemed to be watching us closely. I had the distinct feeling that Rebecca was grading me on some kind of mental scorecard.