Goodnight Mom

Thanks for your prayers and good wishes. Mom seems to be fine and regaining a little humor. ;)

In that vein, here’s a bizarre story by Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer, a key founder and leader of the Religious Right…

Embracing paradox helped me discover
that religion is a neurological disorder
for which faith is the only cure.
~ Frank Schaeffer

“My mother, Edith, was herself a spiritual leader, not the mere power behind her man, which she also was. Mom was a formidable and adored religious figure whose books and public speaking, not to mention biblical conditioning of me, directly and indirectly shaped millions of lives. For a time I joined my Dad… I evolved into an ambitious, “successful” religious leader/instigator in my own right. And I wasn’t just Dad’s sidekick; I was also Mom’s collaborator in her mission to “reach the world for Jesus.” I changed my mind. I no longer ride around “saving” America for God… I told her that I was going to “tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may, Mom.” With a flash of her old self and a familiar defiant head toss, Mom said, “Go ahead; I don’t care what people ‘think’ and never did!..”

My biblically inspired sex education took a quantum leap…

“And the LORD spake unto Moses,” Mom said, in her most cheerful singsong bedtime-Bible-story-reading-out-loud voice. “And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.... And Moses was wroth with the officers. And Moses said unto them, have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel to commit trespass against the LORD. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

“But, Mom,” the eight-year-old version of me asked, “how did they know which women hadn’t known a man?” “Well, Dear, of course they checked,” said Mom as she reached over from where she was sitting next to me on my bed and gave my hand a friendly squeeze. Then, with her brightest, most encouraging these-things-are-hard-to-understand-but-trust-me-it’s-okaybecause-the-Lord-works-in-mysterious-ways-even-if-it-seems- crazy-to-us smile Mom added, “There’s a way to tell.” “How?” I asked. “I’ve already told you about that precious little barrier called the hymen.”

“But why did those women have to die?” I asked. “Because,” Mom said, giving me another radiant smile, “in Numbers 31:9–18 it says that before the battle God told Moses to tell his soldiers to kill all the women who made the children of Israel commit the trespass of following after false gods. You see, Dear, to worship a false god is like going to a prostitute. And besides, anyway, everyone is supposed to wait for their Wedding Night, Darling, even Midianites. Goodnight, Dear.” “Goodnight, Mom.” Mom completed our bedtime ritual by praying with me. I prayed, too, and she kissed me, turned out my bedside lamp, and left my room. A second later Mom opened the door just wide enough to pop her head back in… “Marry a virgin, Dear. You don’t want your wife to spend the rest of her life comparing you to other men. You should be the only man for her.” “Yes, Mom.” “Sleep well.”

I’m not saying that this bedtime Bible story exchange was a usual conversation between a typical Evangelical mother and her eight-year-old son in 1960. Edith Schaeffer wasn’t typical. However, that I know that I’m not the only person trying to get the ringing out of my ears from childhood overexposure to the bizarre collection of Bronze-Age short stories my family called “the Scriptures.” I know this because I’ve received thousands of notes in response to my writing about the impact of religion… from people who were also raised by parents with a zealous sense of mission and who, like me, once honestly believed that every single word of the Bible was true. People who say that they believe every word of the Bible (i.e., “Bible-believing” Christians and the more fundamentalist Jews) are not necessarily 100 percent biblical literalists. They believe that everything the Bible affirms is true because it is the “inerrant Word of God…”

From a child’s perspective peering out at the larger world from deep in the cocoon of a “Bible-believing home,” every word of the Bible is understood to be true in ways that nothing else is or ever will be even if, years later, that child grows up and changes his or her mind. That former child’s grown-up incarnation may be willing to admit Nuance and Paradox, but the emotional “weight” of the absolutely true Word lingers. The actual words in The Word are still the very fabric of a whole private universe inhabiting those raised inside the hermetically sealed tunnel of absolutist faith, “truer” than all the other words he or she will ever hear, say, read, or think put together—truer than any later reasoned evidence. And on top of that the words of the Bible—or even a few notes of an old hymn—cast a shadow of bittersweet nostalgia that defies reason as thoroughly as a whiff of perfume reminds a man of his first lover and evokes a longing that cuts to the heart…

I always assumed that any problem I had with the way things were was due to the fact that my “knowledge of the big picture” (as Mom called everything of “eternal significance”) was incomplete and that “only in Heaven will we fully understand” why, for instance, billions of “unsaved” Chinese, Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Episcopalians, United Methodists, Unitarians, Anglicans, and Roman Catholics- even the “wrong sort of Presbyterians”—were going to Hell with no second chance, let alone why my older brother had died.

Heaven would solve everything. Mom said, “Your bad leg will be perfect in Heaven!” She said that there would be no tears in Heaven. But Mom still cried when she told me about the doctor letting her hold my brother before he “took him away.” And Dad was at his most gentle with Mom when she told and retold the story of the stillbirth, how she was in the little Swiss chalet we were living in back then when the “baby came too early” and how she got on her knees and “prayed and wept before the Lord when the contractions started, but His answer was ‘no’ and He took him...” 

When Mom talked about my older lost brother, she often shed tears. “He had all his fingers and toes,” she’d say. “He was so beautiful. His little face was so sweet! I think he would have been my most beautiful child. His fingers looked as if he’d have been a great pianist, so long and graceful! He had a full head of hair just like you did.” My brother was growing up in Heaven instead of with us. Or was he? Did babies in Heaven grow up? My sister Susan said that they all were “the same age as everyone else is in Heaven is,” which, according to her, was thirty-three, the age she said Jesus was when He was resurrected...

Mom glanced up and said, “We space our children.” The “we” she was referring to were all Saved Protestant fundamentalists in general and We Schaeffers in particular. Then Mom whispered, “You see, Dear, they don’t believe in family planning like we do. Those poor Catholics live in such terrible darkness.” Mom looked pityingly at the large family sitting next to our family on the Paraggi-Portofino beach. We’d been curious about the twelve children, their ages ranging from one to twenty (or so), attached to the boisterous “Obviously Very Roman Catholic Family,” as Mom had labeled the overflowing happy tribe lounging on assorted deck chairs…

I asked Mom what spacing children meant. She motioned to me to slow my pace. We paused and gazed out at the aquamarine sea as it stretched, glittering, to the horizon. Mom always said that “this view is the most beautiful in the world, except for the view of the Pacific Ocean from Big Sur in California, Dear, that I saw as a young girl.” I took a deep breath and was rewarded by what must be the most delicious combination of scents in the world, Big Sur notwithstanding: wild arugula and oregano, Bain de Soleil suntan lotion, gardenia scent wafting from the other side of the old stone wall separating the path from an adjoining estate, a faint hint of garlic and meat frying in olive oil wafting from one of the restaurant kitchens beyond the brow of the hill, balmy salty sea air, pine resin, and, of course, Mom’s ubiquitous Chanel N°5.

When Dad and my sisters were out of earshot, Mom explained the basics of contraception. This led to (yet another) discussion of how and why God might have chosen me to be born and not my brother, and that ended with (another declaration) that “we’ll never know the answer to that until we’re in Heaven.” A few minutes later Dad and my sisters strolled off to watch a fishing boat unload. Mom marched me up to her hotel room and, like a magician extracting a rabbit from a hat, pulled her diaphragm out of her toiletry case. “Mommy puts this up inside my Special Place so that when Daddy puts his seeds into me,” she said, “this stops them from swimming into Mommy’s womb and fertilizing the precious egg God created.” This explanation set my mind on fire with thoughts of just where that actual diaphragm had been…

Did my mother really want me zeroing in on Male Vagina Obsession that young? Probably not given that our Puritan ancestors had been “battling the flesh” centuries before we came along and Mom constantly warned her children to beware any temptation that could lead to Sex on the wrong side of the all-important Marriage Bed…”

~ Frank Schaeffer, Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway

"Here’s what my mother showed me how to do by example: forgive, ask for forgiveness, cook, paint, build, garden, draw, read, keep house well, travel, love Italy, love God, love New York City, love Shakespeare, love Dickens, love Steinbeck, love Jesus, love silence, love people more than things, love community and put career and money last in my hierarchy of values and — above all, to love beauty. I still follow my mother’s example as best I can and I have passed and am passing her life gift to my children and grandchildren not just in words but in meals cooked, gardens kept, houses built, promises kept, sacrifices made, and beauty pointed to...

Mother taught me that sex is good, stood by me and my young wife Genie when we were foolish and got pregnant as mere (very unmarried) children ourselves, backed every venture I launched from movie making, to being an artist and writer, stood with me when I dropped out of the evangelical religion altogether, stuck with me even when I denied her politics and turned “left” and “went progressive.”

Mom spent every dime she had on keeping her family together through family reunions and setting her example of putting family first. She stood with her sometimes abusive husband as he became famous in the American evangelical ghetto, though she well knew that she was the stronger partner in her always productive, sometimes lovely though at other times disastrous marriage.

Mom treated everyone she ever met well, spent more time talking to “nobodies” than to the rich and famous who flocked to her after her books were published and became bestsellers. Put it this way: through my experience of being a father (of 3) and grandfather (of 4) I’ve finally been able to test Mom’s life wisdom and spiritual outlook and found out that she was right: Love, Continuity, Beauty, Forgiveness, Art, Life and loving a loving all-forgiving God really are the only things that matter.

Each time I pick up my little grandchildren (or hug Genie’s and my grownup grandkids) and pray for wisdom about how to pass on the best of what I was given I know it is my mother’s example speaking to me. I never go to a classical concert or walk into a museum without remembering how Mom saved her money to take her children to hear the great music played by the great performers and helped me to learn that creativity trumps death.

I never say “I love you” to my wife Genie, to my children Jessica, Francis and John or to my son-in-law Dani or daughter-in-law Becky, let alone to my grandchildren Amanda, Benjamin, Lucy and Jack without remembering who showed me what those words mean.

Mother was a force to be reckoned with, a whole energetic universe contained in one trim little female frame, and she used that force entirely for good."
~ Frank Schaeffer