Loco Parentis: He’s a Believer

“What do you kids know about the Bible?”

We’ve just sat down to supper when Doug poses this question. Marcy looks at him like he’s nuts. She knows her father and I view religious folk as mildly mentally defective, not quite bright enough to figure out they’re being fed the OxyContin of the masses.

“Uh … that it was made up by men to keep women subservient and pregnant?” That’s my little girl!

“No, no,” Doug backpedals. “Do you know any of the stories in the Bible? Do you know about Noah and the Ark?”

“What brings this on?” I ask curiously.

“Remember how you used to argue we should take the kids to church just so they’d have a background in Western civilization? I’m beginning to think you were right. How are they ever going to read great literature — Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s Progress — if they don’t have any reference points?”

“Have you ever read Paradise Lost or Pilgrim’s Progress?” I demand. “Because I have, and if that’s great literature — ”

“The animals. Two by two,” Jake breaks in.

We look at him. “That’s right,” I say encouragingly. “And then what?”

“A big flood. It killed everybody else on Earth.”

Where in the world did he acquire this knowledge? From the Sunday comics?

“Do you know about Moses in the Bulrushes?” Doug asks.

“In the what?” says Marcy.

“I do,” Jake says. “It was in that Disney movie. Prince of Egypt.”

“How about the Good Samaritan?”

“Is that where the guy helps somebody even though they’re, like, enemies?” Jake again. “We heard about that in Scouts.”

“The Prodigal Son?” Doug asks. That draws a blank. “The Loaves and the Fishes? Jonah and the Whale?”

“Ezekiel and the Wheel of Fire?” I put in.

Doug blinks. “Ezekiel and the what?”

“Nope, nope, nope and nope,” says Marcy, superior and bored.

Doug’s right; I did once argue that the kids would grow up culturally deficient if we didn’t get them some religion. And I tried to read them Bible stories when they were small. Honestly I did. I searched the Good Book from cover to cover for tales that taught the values I believed in. What I found was the Tower of Babel. David and Bathsheba. Samson and Delilah. Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot and his daughters. Abraham and Isaac — brrrrr. And Job, poor sucker Job, who saw all his offspring slaughtered just to prove a point. “Blessed be the name of Yahweh,” my ass. Sign me up for a spot beside Cindy Sheehan. My kids don’t get sacrificed for anything or anyone.