God Isn’t Here
Celestial Voices Are Not Speaking Back
Sara glides across the stage. Unleashed jubilation dancing within her heart. In tears, watching in the stands, her parents, Daniel and Rebecca, beam. Later that evening Sara will have a great night at one of the last parties she’ll attend in her hometown. The moment will feel like the most important night of her life. In many ways it is. Thomas, her ex-boyfriend, who decided to stay behind and forego college because he barely passed his final exams weeks earlier, takes a moment to say goodbye with a half-broken, half-joyful, heart. He’d held a puppy-love crush on Sara ever since she shared half of her banana muffin on a school trip to the aquarium in second grade. Thomas was always a spaz. He left his chocolate donuts back in the school locker before the class boarded the bus. In the aquarium cafeteria he craved a sugary snack after eating his turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich. Sara thought nothing of the gesture.
As Sara and Thomas sat in the bed of his truck to catch up with one another and reminisce that humid evening, they kissed. Tears soaked both of their faces. She got into his truck and they drove back to his place. In the rapture of each other and hoping to hold on for at least the rest of the summer, before she went across the country for college, they made love.
Weeks later, Sara, found herself pregnant after a routine checkup by her lifelong physician, Dr. Dale. She placed newborn Sara into the arms of her mother. Sara’s despair overwhelmed by her urge to cry. She was numb. Devoid of outward emotion. At eighteen, she knew motherhood wasn’t a test she was ready to confront. Especially not now, and maybe not ever. At a BBQ later that afternoon, Sara was reclusive. The opposite of her personality. Her smile hid the secret deftly. Sure, she deployed the cursory wave or hug to a well-wisher but she was deep inside her brain.
While cleaning up that evening, she flatly told her parents the news. They were much more floored than she’d ever shown. “I can’t do this. I’m not going to. There is…a lot I need for me. Will you help?” Daniel and Rebecca rushed to her — and said they would. Of course, they would.
Sara called the only doctor she’d ever seen. Aside from the one time she had a bad reaction to a hornet sting in Upstate, New York. Rebecca and Daniel made the call. Dr. Dale handled the procedure. Sara went to a handful of counseling sessions afterwards and ultimately came clean to Thomas days before her flight to her new state to begin her next chapter. He cried; they both did. “I wish you told me sooner but I understand. It’s not what I want, either,” he declared. Seven days later, she was moving into her campus living assignment, her parents assisted, and Thomas made sure a bouquet of flowers made it to Sara’s dorm before she went to a concert with a group of girls she met during freshman orientation that had an extra ticket.
Imagine Sara’s cute story is different. What if this family unit is less fortunate and sunny? Maybe Thomas was abusive. Physically and emotionally. Swap a few details on the margins and this tale turns grim rather swiftly. The leak concerning Roe vs. Wade is churning through the news cycle — and if the draft opinion becomes law sometime very soon — well, stories like Sara’s will be illegal.
God is bent in every which way. Weaponized. In this regard, the reference is to Jesus and Christianity. The Christianity that is practiced and yielded in America, specifically. Through the guise of God, politicians will commit heinous acts and say they were working for God. Through God. In order to pass laws to govern.
This is the work of divine followers?
Is America supposed to separate Church and State or not? That’s marketing. Church and State, in America, have always been linked.
Republicans have been tearing at reproductive rights for decades. They found themselves rabid when Roe v. Wade became law. Party acolytes on the right have been obsessed with the day that seems to be a foregone conclusion unless minds on the Supreme Court are changed in ways that seem impossible today.
They’re hiding behind God as they do this. Republicans. They ignore what Americans want, to be clear. Just under seventy percent of Americans don’t want Roe overturned. Most of the country wants women to have control over their bodies but the GOP pushes this forward. A right once put into law is close to being yanked from the hands of women in America. This swiftly changes the futures of families in ways that can’t be measured in the short-term.
Is there a single reproductive law in the U.S.A. that governs the body of a man?
Through God, for God, invoking His name.
It’s insidious. Republicans attack fellow congressmen/congresswomen, senators, governors, etc., from some place of moral high ground when their overarching play is to roll back any form of progressive law that doesn’t center white, American, men. It’s America’s oldest play in the playbook. It’s the whole book.
It’s done in the open. White Americans see the GOP as representatives of freedom, adhering to some divine crusade to save America…from some threat. An invisible adversary that’s ready to take everything from them. When a target is needed, attention turns to the other.
Men of adventure and conquest invoked God while nearly eradicating the Americans. The sole group of Americans that should not be hyphenated: Natives, American Indians, First Americans…you get the reference. Jesus was a shield when packing ship after ship with Africans and building gargantuan sums of wealth and generational power and influence across the globe.
Is there a God without heart? Wisdom? Rape, pillage and deceit are holy characteristics?
Dissolving reproductive rights won’t curb abortions. Sure, the absolute number of total abortions should — in theory — decrease. Yet, that number will have an asterisk affixed. More women will die in underground abortions that don’t have the safety of a licensed practitioner to complete the delicate procedure. This can’t be lost on the effort for those on the right to get their wish. It just doesn’t matter to them.
This issue is grilled meat for conservative Christian Evangelicals. Logic evaporates on the hot coals and if blood must be spilled…
It’s the Lord’s work.
Part two coming soon…
Additional reading: Read Kamil. Her poignant writing is thoughtful.
