Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction Read Online Free PDF

eyebrows to warn Sarah she is going a little far. Still, we have had this discussion before. My argument is that defense attorneys aren’t given many weapons, and you have to make do with what is at hand. She says that lawyers like me hurt innocent people in the process and then act as if it couldn’t be helped. Worse, according to Sarah, I seem to be more alive right before a trial and during it than at any other time. I seem to enjoy it too much. She’s right. I do.
    Rainey nods, apparently having made peace with her self long ago.
    “This way I can exercise a little influence over him,” she says, as if I were not sitting across from her.
    “If you’re not willing to help him, he won’t listen at all.”
    I roll my eyes and pretend I don’t know what they’re talking about. In fact, not too many months ago I stashed in this very house a witness who needed to disappear for a few hours. She spent the night, and Rainey deposited her at the courthouse to testify the next mo ming
    “So tell me about Christian Life,” I say to Rainey, who nods as if she expected me to play dumb.
    “Only if you won’t make fun of it,” she demands, her lips pursed, daring me to make some smart remark.
    “Why didn’t you ask Chet Bracken?”
    Sarah, who has not missed Sunday Mass in months after not going for a couple of years after her mother died, nods in agreement. At least I have a clue as to why Rainey has gotten religion. With Sarah I have no idea. Church seems to be a woman thing, mostly, is all I can figure.
    “I promise I won’t make fun,” I say, meaning it. Rainey can be a big help if she’s willing to poke around for me.
    “Actually, I would have felt kind of weird asking Bracken,” I admit. If Chet had started telling me about how Jesus Christ had changed his life, I would have tried to crawl under my desk. I can handle that kind of talk better from a woman.
    “It’s not like you think, Gideon,” Rainey lectures me.
    “It’s not hellfire and damnation.” Rainey turns to Sarah, who is listening respectfully.
    “Your father has this image of a Jimmy Swaggart praying for money and promising to heal people. That’s absurd! What Christian Life is about is helping people to accept the belief that God broke into human history two thousand years ago.
    Christian Life starts with a person just as you are right now, faith or no faith, and invites you, invites me, to witness the changes in the lives of the members of its congregation. People who are just starting are assigned church families. They are not blood families just groups of about fifteen to twenty people who become your Christian Life family. It’s incredible how persons in your family have changed their lives. Most of them weren’t what anyone would call bad before. They lived ordinary, typical lives filled with the normal boredom, despair, and the sense of meaninglessness that accompany twentieth-century existence. Now their lives are truly God-centered, and they have a joy in their lives that is just thrilling to be around.”
    While Rainey is speaking, I am tempted to slurp my soup. When she gets started on Christian Life, she positively glows. It is hard not to be jealous. I never have been able to generate this kind of excitement in her.
    Trying to conceal my irritation, I ask, “I don’t get the connection between their lives and a literal belief in the Bible.” I look at my daughter, who is listening intently.
    Mass, unless it has changed, is pretty much a cut-and dried affair in the Catholic church.
    “What happens if you let it,” Rainey says, her voice soft and fragile, “is that God, working through your family, gives you the courage and will to believe that the Bible is His Word. It’s simply through His grace that you come to accept the Scriptures.”
    I realize I have begun to resent the amount of time Rainey spends at Christian Life. In the last couple of months she has been up there at their huge complex for part of four or five