Chapter 15: Divine Intervention

A few things have led me to today’s post, as if divine intervention were pushing me on.

First, I wanted to start including excerpts from some of my books into this blog, so you could get a feel for how I write literature, not just Web journals.

Second, I previously wrote a post about the use of different dialogue techniques like stopping the conversation to describe action and using imagery to describe how a character is feeling.  The following excerpt includes many of the techniques I outlined, which is unique to my writing because normally I like the dialogue to zip along at a fast pace without a lot of stoppage, but this passage uses a lot of imagery for a specific reason.

Third, the New York Times just did a story on the relationship between science and faith.  The main crux of the story was:

“Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.  And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.”

My book Angel of Life is mostly a suspense-thriller with either lots of tension or lots of action forcing the reader to keep turning the page, but the work also deals a lot with organized religion; its perceptions and the truths behind them.  Parts of my book create their own reality for religion, like when I describe how fate works and what it is used for.  But other parts just pose theories or ask questions.  Sometimes, people (either with similar or conflicting beliefs) have conversations as a way to float ideas out there.  What they say in these conversations is simply their opinions based on where they are in their lives at that moment.  A perfect example of this can be found in last night's episode of The Sopranos in which Tony Soprano has a conversation with a pastor who believes that Earth is only 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs and humans lived together, a la The Flintstones.  Of course, he doesn't bother to explain where the dinosaurs are now, because he doesn't have to, because the Bible doesn't touch on it. 

This idea is a recurring theme in my book.  Religious followers believe what they are taught because, "There is no way of knowing what happened, so we must rely on the Bible to tell us."  Well, yes, there is no way of knowing, so doesn't that tell us that we should try to find ways of knowing, instead of just blindly believing what we are taught?  If you were to write a thesis in graduate school, you would need to cite a lot more than one source.  So why does out desire for proof not apply to the Bible?  Why should we not seek out more sources to cite?

And when Tony Soprano tells the pastor about a scientist in the other room who might disagree with the 6,000-year-old Earth theory, the Paster informs Tony that this scientist is going to burn in Hell.  Not only does he blindly follow what he is told, but he condemns anyone who doesn't do the same.

Despite what might be implied based on what I just wrote, Angel of Life is not about bashing God or His believers.  One of the recurring themes, however, involves possible logical reasons for not believing the teachings of an organized religion.  For instance, the truth behind the aforementioned study: that prayer actually hurt the heart-surgery patients because it gave them added expectations.  This would be a logical conclusion for someone who didn’t believe in God: “Well, obviously prayer can’t help you, since there isn’t really anyone or anything listening to those prayers, so if you tell someone they’ll be cured because of prayer, you give them false hope.”

I didn’t want to start with too extreme an example of what I mean, however, so below is an excerpt of a flashback to a conversation between the main character before he died and went to Hell and a former priest while he was still a man of the cloth.  Both are young and naive, with seriously flawed logic, and both are trying to find their true beliefs.

This passage is probably the most derivative, clichéd moment in my typically inventive story, and the majority of the book has a much faster, less descriptive pace, but I'm including this section now because it is a subtle lead-in to the elements I have described, and well, because it's fairly short, and you don't need to have any further knowledge of the plot or characters.   If you'd be willing to dish it, I would love your take on how the dialogue flows and how I use action to break up the long speeches, as well as the main character’s thoughts on Catholicism:


    We were eating hamburgers when I blurted out, “So I think I’m going to burn in Hell.”
    “Why do you say that?” Father Mitchell asked, folding his napkin into a neat triangle and placing it on the table before studying me with bright, inviting blue eyes.
    “Well,” I began as straight-faced as I could muster, “my next door neighbor’s wife is really hot, and sometimes I find myself coveting her.”
    Father Mitchell lowered his eyelids, causing a dark shadow to pass over his bright eyes.
    “Okay, okay,” I said, trying to fight back a chuckle.  “But I have a real question for you.”
    “And hopefully I have a real answer."
    “We’ll see,” I said.  I took a deep breath, as if what I was about to say was difficult to talk about.  Then, I let it all out.  “Yesterday I got into an argument with my mom.  A real hardcore screaming match.  And then I muttered ‘bitch’ under my breath.  Does that mean I’m gonna burn in Hell?” I asked with a sarcastic tone.  “Because according to your commandments, I have to honor my mother and father.  I certainly didn’t do that last night.”
    Father Mitchell smiled as I continued.  “But come on, pops.  Name me one person in all of history who didn’t yell at their parents.  Does that mean 99.9% of the people that ever lived are in Hell, and like .01% actually make it to Heaven?”
    Father Mitchell let a slight laugh escape his smile.  “They didn’t teach me this in the seminary, but frankly, some people take the Bible too literally.  You’ll never hear another priest say this, but the Bible isn’t the word of God.  It’s the word of God who passed the word to someone who passed the word to someone else who passed the word to yet another someone who eventually thought to write it down.  It was then translated thousands of times and turned into the version you don’t read when you don’t attend church.”
    “Oh, low blow,” I informed him, my palms waving in the air in a fake sign of surrender.
    “Did you ever play Whisper Down the Lane in school?”  Without waiting for an answer, he said, “A phrase may have started out as, ‘Mrs. Kramer went to the Sears Tower when she visited Chicago,’ but by the time it gets to the end of the chain it has become, ‘John F. Kennedy was abducted by little purple aliens and turned into a cyborg that made excellent alien cappuccino.”
    He said this as I took a sip of Coke, and his comment caused me to chortle, forcing the soda up into my nose.  I choked on the carbonation and sputtered sharp coughs.  His mouth straightened and he looked at me expectantly.
    “I’m good, I’m good,” I said with huffed speech as I pounded my chest with my fist.  “Continue.”
    “You sure?”
    “Uh huh.”
    He paused.  As I continued to cough I rolled my hands, one over the other, as if to say, “Come on, get on with it already.”
    He shrugged slightly, took a quick intake of breath, and said, “The same Whisper Down the Lane principle occurred with the Bible.  Plus, if you’ve ever translated something into another language, you know the transformation of phrases is not always identical.  Words and meanings become misconstrued.”
     At this, my coughing fit subsided.  I leaned in close.  “So you’re saying…”
    “That the Bible is no longer the true word of God.  And regardless, His words were not meant to be taken literally.  It is symbolism.  The stories are metaphors.  They don’t mean God literally went POOF and there was Adam and then POOF, there was Eve.”
    “Yeah, that would make us all inbred,” I interjected.
    “You’re a little brat, you know that?”
    “So I’ve heard.”  I popped a French fry into my mouth and as it crunched under the weight of my teeth I said, “but think about it; if we all came from Adam and Eve.”  I paused.  “Actually, strike that, since everybody but Noah and his wife was supposedly wiped out in the big flood, then if we all come from Noah and his wife, we are all inbred.  You,” I pointed at him, “me,” I tapped my chest with my pointer finger,” that crazy dude with the shit in his beard who talks to himself on the corner,” I waved my hand as if referring to something way off in the distance, “we’re all related.”
    “You’re going off on a tangent,” Father Mitchell said, slapping his hand on the table as if he thought that would make me subside.
    “But it’s a good one.”  I pointed a French fry at him to emphasize that point.  “Has anyone bothered doing the math?”  I shoved the fry in my mouth.  “How many people currently live on this planet?  Six billion?”  I chewed like a cow as I spoke.  “What year did the flood happen?  2400 B.C.?  I want some mathematician to determine whether it is scientifically possible for six billion people to exist if the entire population started with just Noah and his wife in 2400 B.C.”  
    “Stop,” Father Mitchell said, his voice calm and collected, yet loud and authoritative.  The tone silenced me instantly.  I swallowed my French fry and grimaced as it spiraled down my throat.  
    “My point,” he continued, “is not whether you and I are actually distant relatives or whether math and religion can coexist within your flawed interpretation of a Bible story.  My point is that yelling at your mom is not going to land you in Hell.  Listen.”  He put his palms together and intertwined his fingers.  “In the Book of Isaiah, Cyrus, the Persian king, does not know God’s name and does not practice Judaism, but he shows a respect for different religions.  Even though he does not follow God’s precise teachings, God embraces him, and even calls him messiah, or, the anointed one.  By doing this, God is trying to show a tolerance for people who share His moral vision, no matter their nationality or faith.”
    “But you just told me not to take the Bible literally, and I proved to you why that’s probably a good tactic to take.”
    The thin lines in Father Mitchell’s faced drooped, displaying their displeasure with me.  “Listen to the message.”  He said it again for emphasis, “the message.  The Book of Isaiah is trying to teach us that strict adherence to the Bible is not necessary to live a fulfilling life.  Just try to be a decent person.  Try to lead a good life.  Donate to charity when you can.  Help an old lady cross the street every once in a while.  And let a brilliant priest have your last French fry when he’s hungry.”
    He snatched a fry off my plate with lightning speed.          
    I never really believed anything anyone told me, but for some reason I believed what he said.  You don’t go to jail for petty crimes, so you shouldn’t go to Hell for petty sins.  Yet, there I was.  So I had to figure out why I was there.  And how I could get out.