Read Online In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike - Free Book Online
Authors: John Updike
Ads: Link
experience, I guess you’d have no doubt—isn’t that so?”
He had struck a note of sly wheedling that brought home to Clarence the cruelty of a theology that sets us to ransacking our nervous systems for a pass to Heaven, even a shred of a ticket. “You’re too modest, Mr. Orr. Anyway, some among us teaching elders hold that there can
be
no palpable experience—just the impalpable experience of existing in God’s grace, won anew by His Son Jesus Christ.”
The silence that greeted this was perhaps longer than Clarence imagined it. Then Orr said, “Well, if I’m not to be among the saved, it was laid down that way at the beginning of Creation, and what can a body do? Tell me, sir. What can we poor bodies down here do?”
Clarence was taken aback; dying was making the man conversationally ruthless. “What we can do, Mr. Orr, is to do good to our fellow man and trust in the Lord and enjoy His gifts when they are granted to us. I don’t see how any deity can ask more of us than that.”
Orr closed one eye, as if to sharpen his vision from the other. “You don’t. Is that right? You talk like it’s six of one and a half-dozen of the other. We’re not dealing here with any deity, we’re dealing with the true and only God. He asks the world and then some.”
Clarence thought to respond, but his voice was slow to come, and the withered little laborer, opening both eyes, went on challengingly: “Reverend Wilmot, my life’s beenhard. I never had advantages. I never thought I had enough to spare to take a wife, though there were several that were willing, when I was young and able. Having put up with a hard life for sixty-six years, without much comfort in it but hope of the next, I’m not afraid to face the worst. I’ll take damnation in good stride if that’s what’s to come.”
“Oh come now, Mr. Orr!—there can be no question of your damnation.”
“No, sir? No question. And why would that be?”
Clarence weakly gestured, unable politely enough to frame his impression that Mr. Orr was not worth the effort, the effort of God’s maintaining and stoking and staffing an eternal factory of punishment.
The man’s suspicions were aroused; he repeated the scrabbling effort of his elbows to raise himself in bed. “Damnation’s what my parents brought me up to believe in. They were regular pious folk, from Sussex County. There’s the elect and the others, damned. It’s in the Bible, over and over, right out of Jesus’ mouth. It makes good sense. You can’t have light without the dark. How can you be saved, if you can’t be damned? Answer me that. It’s part of the equation. You can’t have good without the bad, that’s why the bad exists. That’s what my parents held—pious folk, good people, lost their pig farm to the banks in the Panic of ’73, never got their heads above water since. Every night, before supper, we used to sing a hymn. Even nothing on the table, we used to sing a hymn. ‘Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh.’ That sort of thing. So tell me, Reverend Wilmot, where’s the flaw in my reasoning? You’re a learned man—that comes across real clear, Sunday mornings.”
Clarence had had such conversations before, but usually they were abstract, amiable disputes among professionals ofthe faith; laymen on their deathbeds he had generally found modest and mannerly, anxious not to embarrass the minister of God come to offer rote comfort, their thoughts absorbed by their bodily upheavals and their final arrangements with loved ones. He sensed that Orr was terrified, and he knew that even as recently as yesterday he would have had stronger answers for him. But he forced out the words. He said, “You’ve left God’s infinite mercy out of the equation, Mr. Orr—there’s the flaw. Jesus spoke of Hell and outer darkness but He only condemned devils to it for certain, and who of us can claim to be a devil? Who would be so proud? God showed Man His love twice—when He
He had struck a note of sly wheedling that brought home to Clarence the cruelty of a theology that sets us to ransacking our nervous systems for a pass to Heaven, even a shred of a ticket. “You’re too modest, Mr. Orr. Anyway, some among us teaching elders hold that there can
be
no palpable experience—just the impalpable experience of existing in God’s grace, won anew by His Son Jesus Christ.”
The silence that greeted this was perhaps longer than Clarence imagined it. Then Orr said, “Well, if I’m not to be among the saved, it was laid down that way at the beginning of Creation, and what can a body do? Tell me, sir. What can we poor bodies down here do?”
Clarence was taken aback; dying was making the man conversationally ruthless. “What we can do, Mr. Orr, is to do good to our fellow man and trust in the Lord and enjoy His gifts when they are granted to us. I don’t see how any deity can ask more of us than that.”
Orr closed one eye, as if to sharpen his vision from the other. “You don’t. Is that right? You talk like it’s six of one and a half-dozen of the other. We’re not dealing here with any deity, we’re dealing with the true and only God. He asks the world and then some.”
Clarence thought to respond, but his voice was slow to come, and the withered little laborer, opening both eyes, went on challengingly: “Reverend Wilmot, my life’s beenhard. I never had advantages. I never thought I had enough to spare to take a wife, though there were several that were willing, when I was young and able. Having put up with a hard life for sixty-six years, without much comfort in it but hope of the next, I’m not afraid to face the worst. I’ll take damnation in good stride if that’s what’s to come.”
“Oh come now, Mr. Orr!—there can be no question of your damnation.”
“No, sir? No question. And why would that be?”
Clarence weakly gestured, unable politely enough to frame his impression that Mr. Orr was not worth the effort, the effort of God’s maintaining and stoking and staffing an eternal factory of punishment.
The man’s suspicions were aroused; he repeated the scrabbling effort of his elbows to raise himself in bed. “Damnation’s what my parents brought me up to believe in. They were regular pious folk, from Sussex County. There’s the elect and the others, damned. It’s in the Bible, over and over, right out of Jesus’ mouth. It makes good sense. You can’t have light without the dark. How can you be saved, if you can’t be damned? Answer me that. It’s part of the equation. You can’t have good without the bad, that’s why the bad exists. That’s what my parents held—pious folk, good people, lost their pig farm to the banks in the Panic of ’73, never got their heads above water since. Every night, before supper, we used to sing a hymn. Even nothing on the table, we used to sing a hymn. ‘Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh.’ That sort of thing. So tell me, Reverend Wilmot, where’s the flaw in my reasoning? You’re a learned man—that comes across real clear, Sunday mornings.”
Clarence had had such conversations before, but usually they were abstract, amiable disputes among professionals ofthe faith; laymen on their deathbeds he had generally found modest and mannerly, anxious not to embarrass the minister of God come to offer rote comfort, their thoughts absorbed by their bodily upheavals and their final arrangements with loved ones. He sensed that Orr was terrified, and he knew that even as recently as yesterday he would have had stronger answers for him. But he forced out the words. He said, “You’ve left God’s infinite mercy out of the equation, Mr. Orr—there’s the flaw. Jesus spoke of Hell and outer darkness but He only condemned devils to it for certain, and who of us can claim to be a devil? Who would be so proud? God showed Man His love twice—when He
Similar Books
