Picture from Pinterest
This single “pin” from Pinterest sums up one of the most frustrating things to me about how many of us view the Church. In her story “The River”, that fiery sage of the South, Flannery O’Connor, helps us understand why.
It won’t take you longer than an hour to read this story but if you don’t have the time, here’s the gist (or the closest that a high-need-to-know-summarizer can come to giving a gist)…
The Baptism of Bevel
A boy all but forgotten by his parents gets the rare treat of a nanny who takes him to meet a traveling preacher. They travel to the edge of a river where the preacher is singing hymns knee-deep in the water. When she asks the boy his name, he lies and tells her that his name is Bevel, the same as the preacher’s. When the preacher nears the end of his sermon, the nanny volunteers Bevel to be baptized.
The preacher comes and grabs the boy, carries him out into the river, and treats him seriously, perhaps for the first time in young Bevel’s life. “You’ll be washed in the river of suffering, son, and you’ll go by the deep river of life. Do you want that?” Bevel assents and is forcefully submerged into the current. After the plunge, Bevel is yanked back up into the firm gaze of the preacher and eyed squarely in the face. “You count now. You didn’t even count before,” the preacher tells him.
Baptism
The next day, awake long before his parents, Bevel decides that it is about time he struck out on his own. He borrows money from his unconscious mother and uses it to make his way back down to the river.
Once there, he decides to take his salvation into his own hands. At this point I’ll let O’Connor do the talking…
He intended not to fool with preachers any more but to Baptize himself and to keep on going this time until he found the Kingdom of Christ in the river. He didn’t mean to waste any more time. He put his head under the water at once and pushed forward.
In a second he began to gasp and sputter and his head reappeared on the surface; he started under again and the same thing happened. The river wouldn’t have him. He tried again and came up, choking. This was the way it had been when the preacher held him under- he had to fight with something that pushed him back in the face. He stopped and thought suddenly: it’s another joke, it’s just another joke! He thought how far he had come for nothing and he began to hit and splash and kick the filthy river. His feet were already treading on nothing. He gave one low cry of pain and indignation. Then he heard a shout and turned his head and saw something like a giant pig bounding after him, shaking a red and white club and shouting. He plunged under once and this time, the waiting current caught him like a gentle hand and pulled him swiftly forward and down. For an instant he was overcome with surprise: then since he was moving quickly and knew that he was getting somewhere, all his fury and fear left him.
That’s about the end. The old man who sees Bevel in the river chases after him once he realizes that the boy is in danger of being swept out to sea, but he doesn’t catch him. He is left, empty-handed, staring out at the expanse of water.
Lessons from “The river”
Any Flannery O’Connor story can be seen a dozen different ways, like the way you can see an endless array of colors in a gem depending on how the light is hitting it. Part of me wants to focus on the old man who heckles the preacher during the sermon, just to watch the boy (probably) die in the end after his last recorded thought is that the whole Baptism is a joke. Part of me wants to focus on the mother of the boy who suddenly seems desperate to find out what the preacher said about her and is answered by her son, “He said I’m not the same now. I count.” Part of me wants to focus on the fact that Bevel is run over by a pig and then reads later in a Bible storybook for kids about how Christ exorcised the demons of a man and allowed them to possess a herd of pigs. But here’s how I see this gem tonight, blame it on the light if you wish.
Flannery O’Connor
This boy is unrooted in the river he has tasted. He has no idea what it is and yet he knows that he needs it. And so he mulls it over and decides to plunge headfirst on his own, no need for the preacher’s hand this time. At best, he’s lost out at sea. At worst, he’s dead the day after he’s been told for the first time in his life that his life counts. He is handed Eternity with a pat on the back and a stern look, but no direction. It ends up, I would argue, killing him.
We need the Church. We need a community of Christians to strengthen our virtues and challenge our vices, helping fashion us into children of God with the razor-sharp blade of Love. It is only through the love of Christ, shown through actions of our brothers and sisters, that we can do the equally important and difficult work of reaping the wheat and burning the chaff in each of our lives.
If there were a community of Christians to wayfare with young Bevel, perhaps his unquenchable thirst would not have led him to drown in the river where he was baptized.
Some questions for the quote
That is why this quote angers me. Could this person truly believe that the sole purpose of Christianity is to think about God? Is that the end goal?
Does it matter how we think of Him?
Does it matter what we think of Him?
Should our thoughts turn to actions or is Christianity a mental exercise, equivalent to a spiritualized Lumosity test?
If we don’t feel like being in church on a particular Sunday, does that make it less important that we worship in community or is that the day that we most need to show up?
May we choose more and more the river of suffering and sustenance that is the Church and less and less the mouthfuls of river water that leave us drinking our own fear and fury.
Eat This Book 