Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--And How I Learned to Love Women Read Online Free PDF Page A

whole continents were filled with spiritual dark or spiritual light, depending on what they believed about what we believed. If they agreed completely with us, then they got the rarest of accolades: truly kindred spirits.
    Everything we did was to be a witness. (To “witness” was to “share Christ”; in other words, talk about your faith in hopes that you would convince the person listening to convert. To witness also meant to live in such a way that people would “see Christ” in you and want to convert because your life was so admirable.)
    People’s eternal destinies hinged on a word or tiny event, maybe on no more than an unfriendly look. Even an improperly served high tea on Sunday afternoon could send someone to hell. What if the sandwiches were prepared wrong and they went away with the impression that we were like all those so-called ministries where they didn’t even know how to butter thinly sliced bread out to the edges? What if the
person visiting was given a plastic spoon and we were mistaken for uncouth Pentecostals? We had to be people that others wanted to join, attractive ambassadors for Christ in word and deed.
    “My dear mother,” Mom said, “used to say that every meal should be served as if the Queen of England might drop by.”
    “Really, Mom?”
    “Why, yes, darling. In Mother’s day, of course, that was Queen Victoria. But Queen Elizabeth is just a person, too, and she needs Christ as much as any of those terribly confused Anglicans do. And her family skis in Klosters and there are some English people we met on the last English trip who know one of her ladies-in-waiting, so you never know. I’ve been praying for her.”
    We often reviewed our family’s history to discern God’s hand on our lives, something like the people of Israel looking back in thanksgiving to discern God’s hand on them as they were brought out of Egypt. Just before our exodus from Champéry, I got polio. Mom always said “That year was the greatest testing we ever went through. Looking back, it’s not surprising Satan attacked us.”
    “Why?” I asked. “Because of what happened next,” Mom would say.
    “What was that?” I’d ask, knowing what the answer was, but compelled to ask by an unspoken rule that this sort of spiritual heart-to-heart was edifying.
    “L’Abri was about to start, and Satan knew that and was doing everything he could to stop us from founding The Work.”
    “Does Satan know the future?”
    “Yes, dear, he does.”
    “But I thought only God knows everything.”
    “That’s right, but foreknowledge isn’t the same thing as foreordaining.”
    “Oh?”

    “God chose you to be born, to accept The Finished Work Of His Son On The Cross, to be one of his Elect. Satan can’t do anything like that.”
    “I guess not.”
    “Satan knew that if we started L’Abri, the Lord was about to use us very powerfully.”
    “And he knew about all the people who’d get saved?” I asked.
    “That’s right, dear.”
    “But if it’s predestined, why did Satan bother to try and stop us?”
    “Because, dear, he’s always trying to fight God.”
    “But God always wins?”
    “Yes, and that is why Satan fell, he thought he could win.”
    “So he was stupid?”
    “No, dear, Satan is a wily adversary. Don’t ever underestimate him.”
    “And that’s why I got polio?”
    “Yes, dear. Your leg is part of the battle-in-the-heavenlies. You are like a soldier who got wounded. It was during The Year Of Testing, but, by God’s Grace, we all came through, and your father did not lose his faith, though he certainly fell into the temptation of doubt. Poor Fran,” Mom said with the deep sigh that always accompanied her many versions of “poor Fran.”
    If Dad didn’t get a joke, it was “poor Fran.” When he couldn’t figure out what fork to use in a restaurant, it was “poor Fran.” Mom rarely said those words to Dad’s face. But we children could read her thoughts. A certain eye roll, a