Today my son and I hauled three pickup loads of religious books, counseling courses, audio tapes from every inspiration speaker for the last 30 years, and boxes of Evangelical critiques of secular society from my brother-in-law’s attic, material, which after his passing a few years ago and his wife’s going to a home, was going to churches that wanted them or the dump. Today’s mountain of books and tapes was what no one wanted.
My brother-in-law was a spiritual man wrapped in a Christian cloth, and he never met a religious book he didn’t want. It was as if—as with all collectors—the next piece would make his collection complete, the next piece of knowledge would fulfill my relationship with God. But there was always more, until his house had no more space.
A collector is a collector, no matter what the objects being saved. My brother-in-law did not collect things, he collected knowledge. He was a resource center, and I’m sure that is what he collected for so he could find what people needed for religious help. Whole industries are being built up around collectors of religous knowledge. “Give me a collector and I’ll give you a religion to wrap them in, ” I’m sure somebody out there is thinking.
Another thing struck me today. If I were from Mars looking at this Evangelical material, most of which was an attack or a corrective study of modern secular or humanistic society, I would think this guy was a revolutionary. Here was damning material if Christians were being hunted down as terrorists. Here was a burning offense if the Inquisition was still digging out heretics. This guy wanted to overthrow the current humanistic society and put God on the throne, or somebody who said he knew God. During Karl Marx days before the Russian Revolution, there must have been plenty of attics like this, only it was the Czar and the aristocracy that was the evil society.
All revolutionaries believe in a promised land and overthrowing the bad promise, and when Bush got elected, I’m sure many Evangelicals felt their time had come. But like Communism, the Bush promise didn’t turn out so good. However, for my brother-in-law the good fight is over, and all his ammunition and weapons have gone to the landfill of history.
But this is just one slant on the beautiful life of my brother-in-law and his wife. I don’t speak the truth, just a slice of it. You fill in the rest.
Posted under current events
This post was written by ed on December 12, 2008
