It is strange how intentions and results do not always align. What I may believe to be a negative event has often turned out to have a positive effect on my charge. I can only hope that the reverse is not true in this instance.
I have been trying to persuade Anna to step out of her accustomed schedule, so that she can meet some new people and start forming friendships that will ease her loneliness. I was delighted when the activity that caught her interest was a Bible study that meets weekly at a local coffee shop. She was informed of it by a woman in her church whose daughter attends, and Anna has attended three times now. And in fact, tonight there was a man there who caught Anna’s eye, and whose eye Anna caught in return. I am just not certain that it is a good match.
The study is an interdisciplinary collaboration—there are four different leaders, each of whom take a different week of the month and approach a certain passage or theory from their own perspective. Those who attend are mostly Christian, but there are a pair of Jewish women who come to give their opinion, and often the local Mormon missionaries will be invited to sit in. All are made welcome, and like me, Anna enjoys the contributions of different believers.
They have been in a series lately on the Ten Commandments, and tonight they had reached the fourth commandment. After the presenter had opened the floor to discussion, the first man to raise his hand was a newcomer.
“Yeah,” he said, and there was smugness in his voice and challenge in his tone. “I just want to point out a contradiction.”
The presenter, whose smile was not at all hidden by his thick beard, laughed. “Why am I not surprised? That’s your favorite word, isn’t it, Rob?”
“One of them,” Rob said, grinning with easy familiarity at the presenter.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please don’t be alarmed by the atheist in the room,” Scott said, holding out his hand. “Rob is an old college buddy who has given me some of the best mental workouts of my life. I invite him to join us every now and then to shake things up a bit. Go on, then, Rob, what have you seen this time?”
I was not impressed—why would an atheist attend a bible study, except to try and weaken the faith of those who are present? But Anna, who had noticed Rob the moment he entered due to his height and his curly hair, turned around in her chair to give him her full attention.
“So the commandment says to remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy,” Rob pointed out. “But in Romans 14.5, Paul says on the subject to ‘let all be fully convinced in their own minds.’ So which is it? Kind of the point of a commandment is to take the choice out of it, right?”
“A good point,” Scott said. “My reply to that would be that Paul is not saying that there should be no day of rest, only that the specific day is not the issue. You have to remember that in Paul’s day the church is just getting started. New Christians were trying to figure out how to worship in a way that would set them apart from the Jews, and moving the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday was one of the changes they made. Paul’s point is that it’s not what you do, but how you do it that matters, as you’ll see if you look at the next verse—can anyone find that one for me? Romans 14.6.”
Anna flipped through her bible and located the verse first, so she read it out to the room: “Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.”
“Thanks, Anna,” Scott said, smiling at her—he noted Anna’s shyness the first day she came, and he has gone out of his way to make her feel welcome. “So, Rob, does that satisfy you?”
“Not really,” Rob said, to my irritation. “You kind of avoided my question. God gives a commandment, one of the main tenets of this faith, and then suddenly some dude later on says, ‘oh, wait, no, never mind’? And you’re okay with that?”
Scott’s smile did not waver, any more than did his assurance. He glanced around the room. “Does anyone else have an answer to that?”
There was a little silence, as the other members of the group glanced around at one another and tried to decide whether they were brave enough.
Then an idea occurred to Anna, and I encouraged her to speak up.
“Um,” she said, and every eye in the room turned to her. I put my wing behind her shoulders, and she took a deep breath and went on. “Well, the bible was written by several different people, for several different cultures. The two passages you’re talking about—” She managed to turn and look Rob in the eye, who was looking curiously at her—“have different purposes. The commandments were for the Israelites, to teach them how to live as God’s people. That was so they would lead the world to God through their witness. But Paul, I think, is more concerned with the people who are already in the church. He doesn’t want them to fight about semantics—he wants them to be unified, so the church will survive. So he tells them just to do what makes sense to them, as long as they do it in honor of God.” She shrugged. “Which, if you think about it, is still keeping whatever day they choose holy—isn’t that what holiness means?”
“An excellent point,” Scott said, pleased, and a little surprised—Anna has not spoken much since she started coming, and so he had no idea how well educated she was about the bible. “Thanks, Anna. Rob, any rebuttal?”
Anna looked over her shoulder at him, half-nervous, half-challenging. Rob liked the expression, and he only held up his hands. But he kept an eye on Anna the rest of the night, and when the group broke up to get coffee and snacks, he went up to her.
I did not like it. Of course I did not know enough about him to discourage Anna from talking to him, but I watched with misgiving as they introduced themselves and began to chat.
Finally Anna asked the question I had been wanting to ask all evening. “So what brings an atheist to a bible study, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Rob chuckled. “Partly Scott,” he said, glancing across the room to where Scott and his wife were getting to know a newcomer. “He’s a good friend of mine, and I have to admit, I’m impressed by his faith, even though I don’t agree with it. And partly nostalgia, because I grew up in a really Christian house.”
“So what pulled you away?” Anna asked.
He shrugged. “No real sob story. I just got older and started to really poke some holes, and no one filled them to my satisfaction.”
“Not even me?” Anna was teasing, but a part of her did hope that she had managed to change his mind at least a little bit.
He laughed. “No, not really. I could’ve argued a little more, but I saw Scott giving me the look that tells me I have to stop, which I took to mean I shouldn’t scare you off.”
Anna’s chin came up at that. “I don’t scare easy,” she said. “Maybe we should get together somewhere that Scott can’t interfere and have a few arguments.”
I have to admit, though I did not like the way this was going, I was proud of Anna’s confidence.
Rob responded well to the flirtation—how could he not? Anna is clever and beautiful, and her aura shines with kindness—and so they exchanged numbers with a promise to meet early next week. Anna left quite satisfied with the evening, and looking forward to seeing him again.
If it were simply discussion, I wouldn’t worry. Anna’s faith is strong and unlikely to be shaken—indeed, challenge can often make it stronger, for it makes one think about the reasons for one’s faith. But I clearly saw the attraction between them, and that does worry me. With two such different foundations to their spirits, how can they go well together?
We shall see. I will not try to stop them—anything is possible, and as I said, I have often been wrong about what is good for my charges. But I will certainly go cautiously with these two.