THE GOD GENE

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THE GOD GENE

         Did she have it?
         The biological hard-wiring that makes mortals clamor for intimacy with a higher power? Fashionably known as “The God Gene,” it was the cover story of a weekly news magazine. Clearly some people had it.          
         Not just Christians either. The report was an ecumenical overview of spirituality world-wide, a photo essay heralding ecclesiastics along the Euphrates to the Inuit in Iceland. Devout people who never wanted to miss a good wall wailing or prayer before Minke whaling or daily devotional time.
         Despite her name, Grace didn’t really care about having daily devotional time.
         When it coincided with ancient history and-slash-or Hollywood, the Holy Bible could be captivating. Celluloid sagas such as "The Robe" and "The Ten Commandments" sucked her in whether they were Sunday-Afternoons-at-the-Movies or Blockbuster rentals. Grace watched "The Ten Commandments" a half a dozen          times, no small feat considering its running time. She reveled in Charleton Heston’s manly Moses, whose lust rippled through ripped upper arms whenever he embraced Ann Baxter as Pharaoh’s painted hoyden in harem pants.
         Even when Charleton talked about delivering the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, which he always pronounced “bund-age,” though it made him sound like her Pennsylvania Dutch grandfather, he was still buff, bronzed—beautiful. To any healthy female with vitamin-fortified blood coursing through Curves-carved capillaries, Chuck was the Promised Land in a goat’s wool vest.
         There was no disputing that churches deserved to be worshiped for their architecture. Stained glass, marble fixtures, and embroidered vestments and altar coverings had all won her admiration. But not necessarily her commitment to a higher power. Somehow an unwavering devotion to a divine creator had bypassed her in the same way she never got her dad’s blue eyes or red hair like her sister and brother.
         Since she was living in a baby Bible-belt awash with religious fervor, she tried to do something about her wavering. She felt real pangs of piety at her old church, more than once, mostly because her former pastor was well reasoned. He made each adult Sunday school session better than a good continuing education class. At one point, she even considered getting a master’s in theology while his parishioner.
         Now fervor-sotted, she decided to wring herself out teaching in a private Christian school. That way she could get paid to delve into Scripture, rather than paying seminary tuition for roughly the same benefit.
         There she fared better than she expected, praying two to three times daily because she had to and once or twice more because she wanted to. On red-letter days she realized some of the peace that “passes understanding,” coincidentally, the same days she felt under the most duress.
         “God?” Grace prayed. “Thank you for helping me with my last-period class. We actually got through the whole lesson for a change, but I guess you know that since you are a 24/7 kind of guy.”
         Or sometimes she would say, “Please, Lord, help me not to have a vengeful heart and fail those miserable offspring of breeding dogs in the research paper unit.” But she was sorely tempted to slash-and-burn with a red Bic when she found a note on the floor that said, “I can’t stand that Mrs. Gibson. Who does she think she is, that bitch, coming in here, telling us what to do all the time?”
         Grace’s prayers began to sound more like Regis Philbin’s game show patter: “Lord Almighty, help me show them the same mercy You’ve shown me despite their a. rudeness; b. surliness; c. disobedience; d. disrespect; or e. all of the above.” Some days, all of the above wasn’t inclusive enough.          
         Initially she had a higher opinion of her fellow teachers than her students, believing them to be gentle, well-disciplined folk whose faith inured them to the same pleasures of the world that felled adults of weaker character. However her respect for her colleagues diminished inversely with the strength of their fanaticism.
         Some of the fanatics on staff could hardly help revealing themselves during daily faculty devotions. One morning one of the single female teachers blurted out, “I’m in love with Jesus” when it was her turn to do a sermonette for the others.
         Grace wondered how any woman could truly be in love with a man she has never once touched or seen face to face. Then she thought about Viggo Mortensen in Lord of the Rings, picturing his Jesus-length hair, his demeanor of inherent goodness as Aragorn. Beautiful Viggo, Jesus of Middle-Earth.
         Maybe this was the kind of love her co-worker had found in her ethereal Savior, like when Grace said, “I’m in love with Viggo Mortensen.” Love without substance but high in fantasy value—cuddling up with Viggo on a slab of Middle-Earth bedrock in the midst of a moor, running her fingers through his medium-brown hair, stroking the manly scrub lining his face.
         While they were walking out of the prayer room, Grace had to ask her, “Just curious. Wouldn’t you rather be in love with a real man, you know, one with skin on?”
         “Jesus is real to me. And he loves me unconditionally,” said Her Saved Snippiness, the one for whom the “Can’t melt butter...” expression was coined.
         Come to think of it, a real man would have to put up with a lot to be in a love relationship with her. Either that or she had never known any sins of the flesh with a living breathing hunk of hydrocarbon. Then an otherworldly lover didn’t sound so bad.
         But it sure didn’t sound like fun. Nothing fun about being in love with Jesus. Jesus was, after all, the antithesis of fun. Maybe Grace would be condemned to a fiery afterlife for even mentioning fun and Jesus in the same sentence. And she was too scared to ask her colleague what she really meant about being in love with Jesus. Because anybody who publicly stated she was in love with Jesus was a scary person with a capital “s.”
         Her Christian school stint also introduced her to the modern phenomenon that is praise and worship music. She thought most of the songs sounded like Lionel Richie tunes perfect for slow dancing with? Another hunk of hydrocarbon. What was next? A Christian cover of the Carpenters’ “Close to You”? A Barry-White-style praise and worship CD? Grace could envision whole congregations gyrating as raucous praise bands pounded out, “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, God.”
         Did the Creator really want his people to love him unabashedly, with so little formality? Even her fitness salon had techno versions of “Rock of Ages” and “How Great Thou Art” to do aerobics to. Could her half hour of body sculpting three times a week then be construed as worship? Was Grace a twenty-first century Shaker in yoga pants?
         Why did people go to such great lengths to superimpose Him into every scrapbook page and frame of earthly existence, like He was the co-star in each person’s feature-length film entitled It’s My Wonderful Life? Isn’t it possible, Grace wanted to ask anyone willing to listen, roping God into every step of our mortal shuffle is for the benefit of those shuffling rather than for God himself?
         The kicker came a few months later when Grace led faculty devotions. Because the task unnerved her, whenever her turn came around, she prepared weeks ahead. She surfed the Internet for a theological topic with a touch of the educational, finding a blog and a couple articles on teaching the Bible as literature. She felt sure no one had done a devotional on the subject before.
         She prepared two overheads, inserting some images from clip art files: an open Bible, a snake coiled on a branch, the Holy Grail, and Elvis Presley.
         “How many of you realize the strong academic foundation you give students when you teach them the Bible?” Grace began. “Knowing the Bible is essential to our cultural literacy and  later success in any liberal arts curriculum.”          
         At the mention of the word liberal, she noticed a few toothpaste-commercial expressions in the crowd flatline into scowls.
         “The greatest literature of Western civilization makes frequent references to great Biblical figures and stories,” Grace continued. “No one can be considered well educated without a command of the Bible.”
         Grace uncovered the transparency to show the Bible clip art.
         “Its influence on classic and modern literature is inestimable. Shakespeare knew his Bible. He made more than a thousand Biblical allusions in his writings. Modern writers depend on Biblical concepts, too. For instance, in "Lord of the Flies" when schoolboys make an island paradise into hell on earth, William Golding makes a broader statement about original sin.”
         Grace showed the image of the snake on the branch.
         “Golding is saying that before we condemn these lawless boys, any of us would have behaved in the same way under the same circumstances,” she continued, “ because man is inherently sinful.”
         She shot a glance at the clock. Five minutes down, five to go.
         “Besides helping students understand references and symbols in literature, it offers some of the finest examples of prose and poetry in the English language. Many young people no longer read the King James Bible. So, I use the KJV of the first Psalm to teach literary techniques.”
         Grace put a verse on the overhead: Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. Psalm 1:1.          
         “Students can’t miss the parallel structure of walketh, standeth, sitteth,” Grace said, underlining the verbs with a red transparency marker, “and the lyrical quality parallelism adds to writing.”
         She noticed a woman in the second row yawning.
         “The first Psalm is full of figurative language, too. Take a look at the fourth verse. The ungodly are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Psalm 1:4,” she read out loud. “That’s a fresh simile made more powerful with carefully chosen words like chaff and wind.”
         Since the school sat in the middle of a farming community, Grace assumed chaff needed no explanation.
         “If that is not enough to convince you, how can students understand the legend of a great king—,” Grace said, uncovering the Elvis clip art. No one smiled. “Sorry, wrong king...of a great king like Arthur if they don’t know the significance of the Holy Grail?”
         She scanned the crowd, then looked over at the clock. Eight minutes had limped by.
         “I guess I’m out of time,” Grace said, turning the rest of her notes face down. “Thank you and have a nice day.”
         The principal closed in a two-minute prayer.
         As Grace packed up her overheads, the physical education teacher approached her.
          “That was certainly a different take on why we should teach the Bible,” he said. “But I am disappointed that you failed to mention the real reason. It’s the path to salvation.”
         “Why tell you something you already know?” Grace quipped.
         “By the way, you misspelled the word chafe,” he said and walked away.
         Jesus was right about one thing. Never cast your pearls before swine.
         Maybe she’d get in touch with her God gene later in life like her mother had.                              Perhaps at seventy-five, Grace would be able to relate to the last of "The Voyage of Life" paintings by Thomas Cole called "Old Age," which features an aged figure in a row boat traveling down the river of life, winding amid a now-ravaged landscape, waiting to be embraced by a hovering angel. At forty-seven, she wasn’t ready for an ushering into her afterlife, angel or no angel. More than a few times, especially when with her husband on a Sunday afternoon after their daughter left for work, she had no desire to be reminded of angels hanging about. To Grace, the hydrocarbon-studded landscape was still beautiful, well worth riding on down the river.
         Angels, be gone.
         For now, she’d leave the fervor to those genetically hard-wired for it. Having tried churchgoing for eight years and teaching in a Christian school for half a dozen more, she’d given Nature plenty of Nurture.
         It wasn’t in her genes.

THE END