Puritan Panic

The magic deck of cards was my most prized possession, right up until my dad threw it into our fireplace as a sacrifice to the gods of temperance.

If I shuffled them one way they looked like a normal deck. When I shuffled them another way all you would see was the four of hearts. Cut them one way, and I’d come up with any one of 52 different cards. Cut them again and- you guessed it- the four of hearts would come up every time.

The fact that each simple trick could be explained by my 13 year old education was lost on my father in his moment of puritan panic. Apparently these were they workings of the devil, spawned in the fires of hell. And thus, after one glorious afternoon of peering into the nether regions of the universe, I watched as each card became an ashen parachute and floated up our chimney flue.

Something changed in me that day. I was no longer content to sit under the tutelage of my elders and absorb their half-baked, inherited notions of how the universe worked. I began to question things.

Why was rock music evil, but country music good?

If bad people went to bars, why did we keep brandy in the house?

Why did only the nasty evolutionists talk about dinosaurs?

The only thing I didn’t question was why a money grabbing evangelist was on the same television setting as a porn show. That discrepancy didn’t bother me one bit- some things just were, and you couldn’t do anything about them.

In the conservative circles I run in, sometimes asking questions can lead to being labeled as postmodern. And being postmodern is akin to being a heretic. It implies you have no compass for truth or morality. Post-modernity is seen as the great enemy that threatens the church.

I say ka-ka. Ultimately, nothing threatens the church. The only thing that post-modernity threatens is the pompous idea that the world needs to swallow the medicine we’re selling without reading the label.

By the way, what sounds more ridiculous to you? That a beaten, crucified man comes back from the dead or that the same man comes back from the dead and then runs in fear from a reporter from CNN?