This week, I gave my grandfather's Bible to my son. (A thread.)
I loved Grandpa. We became close when I was a teen, after I got past my horror from him suggesting I have my hand amputated when I was 7. My parents weren't 'godly' enough to do it.
I loved Grandpa. We became close when I was a teen, after I got past my horror from him suggesting I have my hand amputated when I was 7. My parents weren't 'godly' enough to do it.
(2) I had grabbed my brother in self-defence, and my hand hit his crotch. Grandpa leaned over and said "If your parents really followed God, they'd cut your hand off for touching a man there. It's in the Bible."
(3) When I was 16, he and I had a Come to Jesus moment. I told him off - politely but firmly - for something he'd done. He shocked me by apologizing; I'm pretty sure I'm the first person in the family to get an actual apology from him.
(4) I asked him to pray at my wedding, since although he was a missionary and a minister, he was not ordained by one of those "demonations and abominations" of any organized religion. He prayed, alright. That's when I learned he didn't believe in fancy weddings.
(5) I used to call him almost every morning on the way to work, after I was married. We spent hours just talking - not always agreeing, like the time he told me aborted babies went to hell. I managed to make him see reason on that.
(6) By the time I had my son, not quite a year before he died, he and I were as close as two stubborn people who love each other but really agree on almost nothing can be. I still miss him; he's been gone 14 years. He was a character, is what I'm saying.
(7) So I gave my son his Bible, since we are estranged from about 95% of my family of origin, and my son is curious about his roots. The Boy flipped through it, looking at highlighted verses and Mother Shipton's Prophecies and the 2 copies of "The Devil's Vision" tracts.
(8) However, it was this tract that really caught his eye. "Good grief, Mom. If women had to deal with men like this, no WONDER they took up drinking and smoking! How long does it take to regain my lost IQ points from reading this?" 
(9) After all, he's heard my stories. He knows I grew up in a home that Offred would have found familiar, that I was raised being told over and over and over again that women were the sole source of evil in the world and were lesser creatures.
(10) There was something about seeing it written down, though, tucked in the pages of a Bible with verses about mercy and love highlighted, that drove the contrast home for him.
(11) "That's not the God I know" he said, and I knew that the vow I made when he was so tiny was one I had kept. The cycle is well and truly broken. He will never be taken in by #ChristianAltFacts. cc: @C_Stroop
