Edging God Out

By touching the door of the classroom with his hand, Tory Vale felt one life leave and another enter. He wore a black blazer and white t-shirt black jeans and blue loafers. Back in that lecture hall in New Sweden University in Wilmington, Delaware, he had laid down the burden of faith. He walked out a nonbeliever in the theory of God. Although he had aced every exam, there still felt in the wood grain of the door the need to recall that he would never be the same A student. In his twenty-two-year-old mind, he recalled the various texts he consumed like a voracious predator on the hunt. The carnivore in his soul began to cry out in every word that went through his brain. There existed this duality that said “Go with God” and “Edging God Out” (EGO).

As a black man, about six feet tall with skin the color of cherrywood, he knew that his final days at college would prove to be fruitful, still. He stepped to go when his professor walked up to him.

“Mr. Vale,” Professor Dr. Micha Holder called.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“You seem a bit shaken…is there any trouble?”

“No.” It sounded like a book slamming shut or a hammer driving a nail into supple wood.

“You’ll be graduating soon. Get out of here. Go to a party.”

“It’s just that….”

“I knew it.”

“I’ve been awakened from a dream….”

“What do you mean, son?”

“I mean I’m having what I think is a crisis.”

The professor, a light brown man, fortyish and bespectacled, leaned into the young man’s words. He wore a a dark blue suit with an unbuttoned crisp, white dress shirt.

“Go on….”

“It’s like I’m split. I made up my mind to be this swaggering nonbeliever but still harbor the gnawing pangs of being a Christian.” The professor laughed.

“That’s normal. You’re going to experience that. This class was all about theosophy and theology. You passed with flying colors. Whatever you choose to be, be that.”

“But I want to not believe in God. I want to say there is no God beyond what you taught us. I mean you presented the lessons with such objectivity. To consider the opposing–”

“The ‘opposing’....”

“Yes, the opposing views. That’s where all of this stems. I was raised in the church and I knew that I had been Baptized in the name of the blood, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

“Yes.”

“Then I come here to my final class, complete every lesson in spirit and in tru––” he stopped and bit his tongue. “Oh, my God. I’m becoming a theist.”

“Atheist?”

“No, not an atheist but a theist.”

“Oh.”

“This whole time I’ve been struggling with my faith.”

“You can see the school chaplain.”

“No.” This time it sounded like a gunshot.

“Well, you should start to investigate why you’re harboring such feelings about your beliefs.”

Vale put his elbow on the door. The soft glow from the hallway light illuminated his dark face.

“Come in here, Mr. Vale,” Dr. Holder suggested. Vale moved towards his professor.

“Now, I know that you’ve been having trouble deciding whether to go to graduate school or become a Marine officer. You’ve got it all together. I’d say fall in line. Go for the idealism of a warrior. Then you can get your advanced degrees.”

“That’s just it….”

“What’s that?” Dr. Holder asked.

“I can’t be my true self in the Corps. They’re all about God and Corps. It’s practically drummed into your ears once you raise your right hand.”

“We live with twenty-first century technology with a first century morality. The sophisticated systems in which we use to annihilate the enemy are based on the notions that the United States is governed not by a commander in chief but by an earpiece from the heavens.”

Vale looked at Dr. Holder. It was one mixed with admiration and suspicion. He heard his words but couldn’t exactly pinpoint why he said them with such clarity of thought. He couldn’t understand why he had explained it so well. Then he thought Holder had been doing this all along. The whole semester. He spoke with crystalline words but somehow offered a cryptic tone of voice.

“I no longer believe that's it,” Vale asserted. He heard footsteps in the hallway. His girlfriend Frida Minkowicz, twenty-three-years-old, came over to where the student and professor chatted. She stood at about five feet four inches but made up her diminutive size with her sharp features. She wore blue jeans, sneakers and a NSU hoodie. Her skin looked like a freshly peeled, almost ripe banana. She had driven from the Naval Academy to see Vale toss his mortarboard skyward.

“Hi, Dr. Holder.”

“Miss Minkowicz. I’m glad you stopped in for our brief exchange. Your fellow student is perplexed.”

“Perplexed?” Her brow furrowed. “Why are we perplexed?” she queried.

“It appears we have a crisis of faith,” Dr. Holder explained. “You had my course last semester. It’s a shame you two couldn’t have been in the same room at the same time learning.” They all grinned. “Anyway, I’m sure you know that Mr. Vale is aware of the theosophical and theological implications regarding life and love,” the professor continued.

“Of course, Doctor. The Song of Solomon details these ideals in the Bible,” she replied.

“We better go,” Vale suggested.

“No, just a moment. We have to understand why you’re turning your back on God again,” Frida propounded.

“This is an ongoing thing, Mr. Vale?”

“I’ve been toying with the notion for years. When we first met, I was a full blown atheist…didn’t believe in anything. And there’s something…does one believe in God or believe God? Both? Neither? Anyway, then, we joined up in ROTC and she took me to the temple. I dropped my Jesus leanings and became a practicing Jew. I dropped that, too. When she graduated and went off to Annapolis, I knew I had to regain my Judaism.”

“Do you still believe, Miss Minkowicz?” the doctor asked.

“No. I mean, I know there’s not a G-d, now. I mean I knew before I met this fellow. I tried to convert him, but he remained so intransigent in his comportment it rubbed off on me.”

“Off and on, I tried to come up with a way to show myself just how to behave in the faith. I was a Jew for two weeks,” Vale admitted.

Dr. Holder switched gears upon looking at his former students. “Now, you’re both getting to see how this duality is expressed. Mr. Vale is more split than you. You see, this struggle is rooted in the history of mankind. When the first humans looked to the heavens and saw the stars and watched lightning strike trees and wind turn into tornados, they had to come up with an explanation for all of that. They chose the mountains, the water, the land, the sun. They worshipped them all. We’ve covered this territory in class. We all know where that led.”

“Tribal wars, acts of terror and the renunciation of reason,” Vale spoke softly but his words were like water to a parched throat.

Frida spoke up. “And then people explain away the different faiths. They say, ‘No my messenger is better than yours. He saved my soul and made me whole.’ Others express contempt and animus through constant thumping of whatever holy text gets their juices flowing. That juice is blood and history, as we all know, is stained with the blood of billions.”

“Now, I know why you were my top student,” Dr. Holder pointed out. He turned to Vale. “You fought a good fight, but Archie Dunbar had you beat with just a few points.”

“Should I pray for Archie? Should I drop down to my knees and pray that God blesses him and that his days are long on the Earth?” Vale countered, his voice rising a bit.

“I’m not saying that….” Dr. Holder made clear.

“I’m losing my wits over this. I don’t know if you two are making it better, with all due respect.”

“That’s why we have these discussions. I’ve been teaching this course for fourteen years. In that time, I’ve encountered all sets of faith. Everything from the Eastern philosophies to the Abrahamic thoughts. It just seems like top students like you two should be able to go out into the world.” He turned to Vale. “And you should be not split but confident in whatever faith or lack thereof.”

“I’m sure only that I’m not sure….” Vale divulged.

“Exactly. You have plenty to learn. Wait until you become an infantry second lieutenant. You’re going to be challenged by a sergeant major who will be twice your age and who will possess even more knowledge about Marine life and life in general.”

“I’ve already discovered that in my time at the Academy….” Frida confessed.

Dr. Holder laughed a little bit. “Yes, life is like that sometimes. All of this leads up to the point of deciding faith or reason. You can’t have both. It’s either or in this circumstance.”

“I’m just ambivalent. I’m torn. I want Moses to lead me. Mohammad to teach me. And Jesus to keep me. Nevermind knowing that Buddha could remind me that life is all about suffering and Shiva could wipe us all out anyway.”

“Boy, you’re bad off,” Frida put a hand through his low cut fade. Her face crinkled a little bit and it looked like a crushed tissue.

“I’m telling you, I’m trying to believe. I’m trying to know God. I’m willing to do anything.”

“But not everything. Jesus is the ultimate symbol for sacrifice. He showed this on his dying day and in the Resurrection as outlined in the scriptures. Jesus loves you so much. God loves you so much,” Dr. Holder stated.

“I’m ready to go back into the fold, but I don’t know what that’s going to be like. I’m just going to unravel and fall out just the same. I’m not afraid of Hell but what a bargain the whole concept of Heaven and Hell is. In the thought of seeing your loved ones again and finally meeting Jesus and God…as opposed to being tortured and tormented forever and ever in a lake of fire and burning sulfur all around. What would you choose? What would you think is the ultimate destination, Dr. Holder?”

The professor grinned. “That question’s been around since man first stood upright. Once he learned that he could be a witch doctor and a doctor of medicine at the same time, man has been even more split than you, son.”

“I see that, but the wager of knowing that you could spend your eternity in Paradise or go to Perdition and be punished over and over again is what is so appealing. That wager that also claims that souls must be cleansed when they go to Purgatory, also deepens the mysticism. I struggle with all of this and it makes me angry.” Some rancor colored his voice.

“It’s fine, baby,” Frida cooed. “You’re just antsy about graduating and being aboard with me. You already know that I will outrank you….” She tried to soften the blow with a joke to no avail.

Dr. Holder walked a few paces towards his desk. He retrieved an old book that neither of the twenty-somethings had ever seen. It looked battered and weathered like it had been through a war or storm. Its pages turned up and almost appeared as a sly grin from the side.

“I want you to take this. Read it. Hell, you’re both too gifted to even consider not reading it. Learn from it like I did. Keep it. It’s a present for your graduation.”

Vale took hold of the robin's egg colored book. Gold lettering against leather popped out which read, The Book of All Faith by Carson Nettle.

“Thank you, Doctor. I will read this and I will apply it to my life. It must have some code that stretches across all of the backgrounds we covered in class. It should hold all of the truths and answers to the mysteries we never had time to cover. I truly appreciate this. I think I’m becoming more of a non-believer but I’m willing to read this. Did you want to pray before we left..out of respect for you?”

“Yes, did you want to be in prayer?” Frida asked with a slight giddiness.

“No, thanks. I’m an atheist.”