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Show become a hussy to fulfill his prophecy, to maintain him in his peerless position as oracle - even though he had never actually claimed to be a prophet of God. It was wrong, perhaps the greatest of my sins: idolatry or blasphemy to make my father a god on earth. I had too much evidence of his humanity. Did he realize howofdeeply his zeal to serve had cut me, had cut the mothers? When he came to the crossroads between old and new relationships - the same crossroads I had faced with Ed, though I had no-ft doctrine to support it - he had chosen the new, had subjected his loyal wives of thirty-five years to the prison of loving him. Just as he had done to Aunt Karen. How different was he, then, than Ervil, than any of those who take heaven by force, than the violent who bear it away? like Ervil Well, he was not violent*- he was loving and kind. But was there not a kind of psychological violence in claiming to hold a monopoly on the truth, in separating people into piles of wheat and chaff, and holding the market on the wheat? Was it fair for him to live in a heavenly mansion while I dwelt in a psychological shack, starving for his approval? And I remembered that the difference resided in free agency - 'the cornerstone of the Gospel,' he always called it. This was the difference between Christ, who wished to Persuade men to come to God through love, and Lucifer, who wanted to force people into goodness. But a precious little cornerstone it seemed to be when I thought of the pain that had been forced on women and children. What of Aunt Karen, of her terrible choice between sharing her husband with an indefinite number of women or losing him altogether? What of Aunt Karen's |