ME & ADAM
I was born 9/10ths of a century ago in
a Bible Belt Eden on a planet in the center
of a starry sky revolving around it which
God created around 6,000 years ago
in only six days.
There were only 2 billion people
living on the earth then.
The Lord God was never far away.
He liked to walk in the garden during
the cool of the evening and was
always there when you needed him.
Those were the days.
But one day Adam messed up big time.
He then heard the footsteps of an angry
God looking for him and heard him
shout, “WHERE ART THOU?”
I now live on a post-Galileo planet circling a star
spiraling the massive black hole at the center of our
galaxy, one of over two trillion galaxies in a universe
which began nearly 14 billion years ago.
Today over 8 billion people live on the earth.
One time me and Adam went on a twilight hike
to the Mount Wilson Observatory. Suddenly,
Adam screamed, “WHERE ART THOU?”
God, how I miss him.
ALMAH
My first year at Bob Jones University was shortly after Emmett Till
had been tortured to death by two white supremacists in the state
of which Nina Simone sang as MISSISSIPPI GODDAMN!
When the mutilated, partially decomposed body of Emmett
came to Chicago, Mamie Bradley, his mother, insisted
on an open-casket funeral, so "all the world could see
what they did to my son."
But Dr. Bob Jones Sr, the founder of BJU, would not look.
The Revised Standard Version of the Bible had recently been published
but instead of translating the Hebrew word almah in Isaiah 7:14 as “virgin”
as the King James Version had, those sacrilegious scholars said
the messiah’s mother was merely a young unmarried woman.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Dr. Bob was beside himself
when he heard about a “modernist” theologian who uttered
the blasphemy that the birth of Jesus could have been
due to his mother being impregnated by a Roman soldier.
"Listen! Listen!" he said, cupping his right hand to his mouth.
"You can’t ever get hell hot enough for apostates like this!"
Hotter than the flames for the Klan killers of Emmett Till?
Of course, if they will accept Jesus Christ as their lord
and savior before they die, they’ll still get into heaven, while
if Emmet hadn't, he would have gone straight to hell.
I believe Dietrich Bonhoeffer called this Bible Belt view
of salvation, “cheap grace.”
Soon after this, the "World's Most Unusual University" produced
a movie about general Stonewall Jackson, a Bible-believing
Christian, who witnessed for Christ while fighting for the freedom
of Southern masters to keep their slaves.
Dr. Bob Jones Jr, founder's son and Shakespearean actor
played the role of this pious hero of plantation owners.
Anyway, in the year of our Lord, 1956, a mother mourns
the loss of her only son while the founding father of
a Bible Belt fundamentalist college laments the news--
Mary has lost her virginity.
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