The one thing that brought Rosalyn a bit of comfort was her RE course.  One Monday, Mrs Nightingale taught the class about Pascal’s Wager.  It was an argument thought up by a famous mathematician, which probably accounted for how bloody soulless it was.

“Blaise Pascal argued that it was only logical to believe in God,” Mrs Nightingale told them, “His point was that, if you believe and it turns out to be true, you’ll get an eternity in Heaven.  Whereas, if you believe and it turns out not to be true, then you’ve lost nothing.”

Rosalyn put her hand up.  “But what if you decide to believe in the Christian God, but then you die and it turns out that the one true religion is Hinduism?”

Mrs Nightingale grinned.  “Good!  Remember that, and put it in your essay.”

Rosalyn did remember that.  And she also remembered that, if you forced yourself to believe that Al-Qaeda or those American preachers were right about God, and then you died and it turned out they weren’t, then you’d actually lost quite a lot.

*

Rosalyn and Oliver spent most weeks at Mum’s, which took some of the pressure off.  Still, even there, they got emails from Sally every couple of days.  They were forwards, mostly, stuff she’d got from her friends and sent to everyone in her address book.  Even Mum, who she probably knew would delete them on sight.

“I can’t believe I let that woman talk me into giving her my email address,” she’d say though gritted teeth, staring at the computer screen as if it had wronged her, “‘Sorting out the children’s schedule,’ my foot.”

Every so often, though, Rosalyn would get to the emails before Mum did, and, because she was apparently a total masochist, she’d feel compelled to open them.  And there would usually be at least one sentence that would feel like a punch to the stomach.

There are countless others who walk into our lives with that same look of desperation and exasperation on their faces.  They may never utter the words with their lips, but surely if we listen, we can hear their very lives crying out to us, “Can you help me find Jesus?”  That lonely recluse who lives down the road is crying out. So is that pregnant teenager. And the prostitute. And the drunkard.

Sally would probably add her grubby little heathen stepchildren and their mother to that list.   It wasn’t exactly flattering.

Funny how you can send a thousand ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord people think twice about sharing!

Rosalyn had a nasty feeling about those quotation marks.  Sally had never said so specifically, but jokes didn’t seem to be something she believed in.

If the Lord lays upon your heart to send this to more than four “4” people , you are truly blessed!

As far as she remembered, the Lord had never laid upon Rosalyn’s heart to do anything.  She didn’t even know what that would feel like.  It made her feel kind of inadequate, as if part of her wasn’t working properly.

 This is the simplest test. . If you love God and are not ashamed of all the marvelous things he has done for you…..  Send this to ten people and the person who sent it to you!

Oh, God…

“It’s unbelievable,” Mum would say, reading over her shoulder, “How can anyone believe in stuff like that, in this day and age?  It’s the Twenty-First Century, and all she wants is to pull us back into the dark ages.”

Rosalyn swallowed.  It was alright for Mum.  She could just be annoyed, then shrug it off and go about her day.  Rosalyn could talk to her about just about anything else, but not this.  How could she tell her that she was having a nervous breakdown over something Mum had dismissed as a fairy tale?  How could you possibly help somebody who told you that?

*

One of those emails had said, Jesus is waiting to help you out. Come and experience Him into your life, and you will wonder why you waited so long to accept Him as your Forever Friend!

Sometimes, Rosalyn wondered if she should do just that, if only to stop Sally’s voice from squawking away in her head day and night.  Just offer up a quick prayer to Jesus, and all her worries would be gone.  Never mind that she didn’t necessarily think Christianity was the one true religion.  Never mind that she wasn’t completely sure what “experiencing Him into your life” actually entailed.  Never mind that she couldn’t hear the phrase “Forever Friend” without thinking of that stationery with the teddy bears on it she’d had when she was seven.  If it put her mind at rest, if it meant that she could go a whole hour without feeling like there were cockroaches crawling around in her brain, then maybe that other stuff didn’t matter.

Then one weekend, Sally told Rosalyn that there were plenty of people who’d offered up that prayer to Jesus and thought they’d been Saved, but would get a nasty surprise on Judgement Day.  “They just go through the motions,” Sally told her, “There’s no sincerity.”

That was another sleepless night for Rosalyn.  If you didn’t already have enough sincerity, where were you supposed to get it?

(To be continued.)

June 2004

Rosalyn’s stepmother believed two things:

1. That God loved every living thing, that He had known every detail of your being since before you were even conceived, and that He had a special plan for the universe in which you played your own particular part.
2. That God was also statistically quite likely to condemn you to be tortured for all time on a technicality.

When you put those two beliefs together, you had to wonder a few things.  Like what exactly she meant when she said she loved Rosalyn’s dad.

“I’ve never understood why so many people think they can pick and choose which parts of the Bible they follow,” said Sally blithely, as she and Dad drove Rosalyn and Oliver up to Brewer’s Fayre for dinner one Friday night, “I mean, either it’s the Word of God, or it isn’t.  Pick a side.  You can’t sit on the fence when it comes to things like that.”

Dad hummed in vague agreement.  He wasn’t particularly religious, but he admired the fact that Sally was.  “It’s refreshing to meet somebody who’s in touch with her spiritual side,” he’d told Rosalyn once when he and Sally first started dating, “So many people have lost sight of that, in the modern world.”

“I had words with my sister about just that,” continued Sally, “When I told her I believed that every word of the Bible was true, she said to me, So do you think Owen and me are sinning by living together?  Well, actually, yes!”  She gave a nervous little laugh.

Mum thought that Sally was completely insane, and that Dad’s marrying her proved that he’d finally lost his marbles.  Then again, Mum had a dim view of religion in general- her position was one of “If there’s a loving God, why do children die in earthquakes?”  Rosalyn’s RE teachers had given her a few answers to that question- all of them interesting, none of them completely satisfying- but Mum was rarely up for a debate.  To her, it seemed to be more of a gut feeling that anything else.  Rosalyn sometimes suspected that everyone’s religious views worked like that, and the logical arguments people gave were just a way of making it look respectable.

Naturally, Sally had an answer for that question, too.  It wasn’t pleasant to hear.  Rosalyn desperately hoped that meant it also wasn’t true.

“The thing is, people today have moved away from worshipping God,” Sally continued, “They’re more interested in worshipping themselves.  You can hear it all the time- self-esteem, self-improvement, self-actualisation.  Well, maybe your self isn’t quite as important as you think it is!”  Another nervous little laugh.

In the back seat, Rosalyn squirmed.  She’d never thought her self was all that important, but that didn’t make her feel any better.  Every time Sally talked, it was like having pins driven through her skin.

Sally’s answer to Mum’s question was that those children deserved to die in earthquakes.  Everybody deserved to die in earthquakes, and then everybody deserved to go to Hell afterwards.  Jesus had saved a select few from that last part, but basically, anything bad that happened in your life was your own fault, and you should be grateful that it wasn’t ten times worse.

Dad was about to park the car.  There was just enough time for Sally to make her closing statement.  “And that’s what’s wrong with the world, isn’t it?” she asked, “In this day and age, people are afraid to stand up for God.”

“You’ve got a point there,” said Dad, who hadn’t really been listening.  He turned off the engine and let them all out of the car.

*

Rosalyn could feel the sky pressing down on her again.  This time, it was a whole lot worse, because her real worry was who might be behind the sky.

They said there was an all-powerful force watching your every move, listening to your every thought, controlling every good or bad thing that could possibly happen to you.  And that was OK if you assumed that the force in question liked you and generally wanted you to be happy, but what if Sally was right?  What if having the wrong thought at the wrong time could lead to your entire family being slaughtered in retribution?

Rosalyn had heard a lot of people say that you shouldn’t presume to know the mind of God, but sometimes it seemed that was all people did.  Most people seemed to assume that God was like them.  Rosalyn desperately wanted to believe that the kind-hearted, open-minded people were right about that, but there was a chance that Sally was instead.  Or someone a lot worse than her, because Sally was no monster- just kind of dim and up her own arse.  What if Al-Qaeda were right, and the only way to please God was to slaughter as many non-believers as possible?  What if those preachers in America were right, and the only way to please God was to shun gay people and feminists and boycott anything that might make you have a single original thought?  Rosalyn knew what she wanted to be true, but she couldn’t know for certain.  It was a matter of faith, and she didn’t know if she had enough.

If any of those people were right, then every atom of the universe was arranged against Rosalyn, and everything she loved was about as solid and resilient as tissue paper.  And once she’d thought about that possibility, really thought about it, she couldn’t keep it out of her mind for two minutes at a time.

*

Oliver’s favourite show was Little Britain, but they were only really allowed to watch it at Mum’s.  “If Jesus was sitting on the sofa next to you, would you put on a show like that?” asked Sally, “Just because you can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not there.”

“True, true,” said Oliver, “Jesus always seemed like more of a League of Gentlemen kind of guy.”

Rosalyn bit her tongue to avoid laughing.  Lately her stomach was tied up in knots even at the best of times, but it got ten times worse every time she arrived at Dad and Sally’s.  If you wanted to pick a night when you could guarantee that she wouldn’t be able to finish a meal or get more than half an hour’s sleep, you’d just have to check when she was visiting them next.

They switched over to Midsomer Murders, which Dad liked, but Sally still didn’t look satisfied.  “What’s the matter, Sal?” asked Dad, “This is good clean fun, right?”

Rosalyn expected Sally to make a snippy remark about the fact that Dad’s idea of “good clean fun” involved beheading, pitchfork-stabbing and one guy getting burned alive in a caravan, but she didn’t.  “I just feel…”  Sally trailed off, threw up her hands, and sighed.

“What?” asked Dad.

“Well, what are we getting from programmes like this, really?  Do they teach us how to live our lives?  Do they stir our souls to worship God?”

“They stir my soul to avoid the countryside,” said Oliver, “Looks like a bloodbath out there.”

Rosalyn thought about what Sally had said; her requirements for a good TV show.  They were similar to her requirements for a good book or a good song.  If it wasn’t a constant reinforcement of stuff you were already meant to know by heart, Sally didn’t seem to be interested.

A few weeks later, Rosalyn found out about a particular church that disapproved of any kind of fiction, condemning it as no different from lying.  They said that the only books people should read (besides the Bible, of course) were real-life testimonies of people who’d been Saved and come to Jesus.  After that, Rosalyn stopped reading (or watching, or listening to) much of anything.  She’d lost her enthusiasm for it.

To Be Continued