Soldier of God--Final Version

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.

-Proverbs 17:17

David Jackson came from a secular, bourgeois household. His father, Karl Jackson, an urologist, had been raised an atheist by his mother after his father, a fiery minister with the habit of what he called “beating the Devil out of” his children, died young. Apparently, after he died, Karl’s mother took great pains to degrade her dead husband’s memory in her child’s mind, though this was barely needed, as Karl had already learned to despise his father.

David’s mother, Sharon, a lawyer, came from an upper crust family that was known for its radical beliefs and antipathy towards religious institutions. She had had an expensive education that was centered on progressive, atheistic doctrines. She was of the belief that faith in God was synonymous with intellectual lethargy. She and Karl did their best to raise their children with atheistic, progressive ideologies. Any form of religiosity or spirituality was scoffed at. When David first was introduced to the concept of God, his parents taught him the theories of Darwin, and later, when David expressed his admiration for the new pope, his parents agreed that the Catholic Church needed “a pretty facade” to mask its corruption.

            As all young men do when they leave for college, David suffered the burden of very high hopes. First there were the hopes of his parents—that he would choose either the path of law or medicine and thrive academically—and then there were his own hopes, which, oddly enough, were more vague in David’s mind. David had long sensed that he had a passionate heart, though to him it seemed that that passion had not yet had a real outlet. He enjoyed reading the books he was assigned in his English classes, and the experiments he did in his science courses interested him. But it seemed to him he was always on the surface of things, and that, if he only had the direction and would only put forth the effort, he would find a deeper meaning to his existence. All in all, he longed for something to pour his passion into, whether it be a lover, an occupation, or, even, a way of life.

            David, however, had several bad habits that made adapting to college life difficult. For one, when left to his own devices, he had the tendency to stay up and sleep in late. Often, especially in his senior year of high school, he would miss classes because of this habit. David saw no real problem in it, however. Instead, he interpreted it as a sign that he was ready to move on to the next step. He also smoked a great deal of marijuana, and occasionally, at parties and such, would snort Adderall as a way to enhance his experience. Again, according to David, this wasn’t so much a sign of any real addictive quality to his personality, but more to a free-spirited, adventurous nature, which he forgave. In any event, he believed his problems would be solved once he committed himself to a field of study.

            In spite of what David expected, however, in college his bad habits did not dissipate, but intensified. Whereas in high school he would only smoke pot a few days a week, in college it increased to a daily habit. And, as far as his sleep went, things became highly problematic. Some nights he did not sleep at all, and when he did sleep, he slept for long stretches—sometimes more than a day—so that he missed his classes and became depressed. In fact, it didn’t take long for David to begin to disregard his classes altogether. He was a Philosophy major, on a pre-law track. He had tried to read the texts for his courses, but found them lacking in something that he considered essential. What that essential quality was he couldn’t exactly say, but it didn’t take long for him to dismiss the texts altogether.

One evening, about a couple of months into his first semester, David was sitting in a hookah bar he frequented regularly, when a red-bearded young man sat down in the chair next to him and opened an old, leather bound book with strange, foreign lettering written in gold across the cover. David watched the young man read the book, which on one side of the page was written the same foreign language as the cover, and on the other side was written English. “Excuse me,” he said, his interest getting the better of him. The young man looked up. His eyes were blue and intensely bright. He peered at David as if from some distant ether. “What is that you’re reading?”

The young man smiled. “It’s the Tenach.”

The Tenach, David knew, was the Old Testament—the book that served as the holy bible of the Jews. Other than that, he knew nothing about it.

“Are you Jewish?” he asked.

“No,” said the young man. “You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate the Old Testament.”

David nodded and the young man returned to his book. He was probably right, of course. The Old Testament, after all, was one of the most widely read books in existence. In many of the novels he had read in high school, the Old Testament had been quoted or otherwise referred to. He had always been curious about it. Maybe it was time for him to read it. And so, he promised himself that he would get a copy of the book and do just that.

David bought the book on a Friday afternoon, and stayed up all night reading it. In the Old Testament, David found the element which had been missing from his Philosophy texts. There was an air of mysticism in it that he had never been exposed to before. He had read poetry in high school, but the voices in those poems came from recognizable human beings (Frost, Stevens, Poe, etc.). But here, in this book, was the very voice of God. He spent weeks pouring over it in his room, often staying up days at a time to read it. He even would sometimes imagine his grandfather’s voice coming through the words, and this was especially the case when he read the Book of Proverbs.

By the time David came home for Thanksgiving break, his head was filled with vague conceptualizations of God and the spiritual realm. His parents immediately recognized that something had changed in him since they last had seen him. He seemed distant, distracted. That first night back, as David sat at the dinner table with his parents (his brother was at a late basketball practice), David’s father asked him how his studies were going. David said he was learning a great deal. His father pressed him further, and asked him what some of his favorite classes were.

“All my classes are the same,” said David, cryptically. There was a long silence.

         “What are you learning about?” his father finally asked.

         “My ancestors,” said David, just as cryptically as before.

         “Your ancestors?” his mother interjected. “Care to explain?”

         David swallowed the piece of pork tenderloin he’d been chewing and sat up straight in his chair. “I’ve been reading the Old Testament,” he said.

         “I see,” his father responded, his eyes narrowed in disdain. “And have you been reading anything else?”

         David smiled wryly to himself. “If you must know,” he said, “I haven’t. I suppose that disappoints you...”

         “How did you guess?” his mother said, with a quick raise of her left eyebrow.

         “That doesn’t matter,” continued David. “You’ve been deceiving me since the day I was born. Actually, the both of you have been deceiving yourselves. You worship Mamon, and are going to Sheol because of it. But I won’t let you drag me there with you. I have discovered the truth, and with that truth I will pave my way to the Kingdom of Heaven.”

         His mother was about to object, but his father raised his hand to silence her before she spoke. “Let him believe what he wants,” he said. “It won’t be long before this attitude of his catches up with him.”

Despite his father’s harsh words, both of David’s parents were very concerned about their son. His mother’s brother had suffered from schizophrenia and had been institutionalized as a young man, and he had never truly recovered. Secretly, David’s father and mother worried that David was experiencing symptoms of mental illness. But they decided to let things be. They did not want to inflame David any more than he already was.

That night, David went out to a party with his brother, Jason. Jason was sixteen, an A student and a promising basketball player, who only recently had become involved in the wider social scene at his school. He looked up to his brother (who had also been a superior athlete in high school), both for his athletic prowess and his jovial nature. Jason himself was shy by nature, and very susceptible to peer pressure, yet David had always known him to be straight-laced and committed to his academics and basketball game.

The party was being held at a senior’s house, an old friend of David’s named Thomas Bowman, a bench warmer for the school’s basketball team that David knew well from his time playing on the school team. When David and Jason arrived at the party, Thomas, along with an underclassman everyone called Shorty, greeted them enthusiastically at the door. House music was being played loudly in the living room, where a group of people—mostly girls—was dancing. A game of beer pong was going on in the kitchen, and everywhere, from wall to wall, were familiar faces. When these faces turned toward David, they showed instant recognition, and swarmed to greet him. An attractive senior girl, whose name David could not remember, approached him and playfully punched his shoulder. “So, what are you up to these days?” she said, tossing her hair aside flirtatiously. “You’re at College of Charleston, right?”

“That’s right,” said David, feeling distracted, and mostly aloof.

“Cool. So, are you living it up down there?”

David nodded half-heartedly, glancing over the girl’s shoulder. There near the stairwell, Thomas, who was standing with Jason and Shorty, was gesturing at him to come over. David dismissed the girl abruptly and walked over to the three boys, leaving her standing alone and pouting in dismay.

Thomas, Shorty, and Jason looked to be in devious cohesion. “There’s something you have to see,” Thomas said, smiling. David glanced at his brother, who seemed to be enjoying himself, however coyly. In truth, David felt awkward seeing his brother in this environment, especially amongst Thomas and Shorty, whom he considered to be the dregs of his old school.

“Alright,” said David, resigning himself to Thomas’ will. David and Jason followed Thomas and Shorty through the crowd of people, up the stairs and down the hall to Thomas’ bedroom. The four boys walked in. It was a typical high school boy’s bedroom, replete with a beanbag chair, lava lamp, and dirty clothes strewn over the bed, dresser, and floor. Incense was burning on the nightstand. Thomas walked over to the dresser and opened the second drawer from the top—his underwear drawer—and from beneath a pile of socks, he took out a large Ziploc bag full of some of the largest buds of marijuana David had ever seen. He tossed the bag to Jason, and told him to take a whiff. Jason opened the bag, snuck his nose in, and inhaled deeply. “Mmmmm.” Smiling, he looked up at Thomas and nodded in approval.

David was surprised by his little brother’s behavior. It wasn’t so much that he was smoking pot that bothered him. Certainly, David had smoked with his brother many times. What angered him was his choice of companions. Thomas Bowman was known primarily as a pothead and a slacker—someone whom David had once felt an affinity with, but who now seemed undeserving of his trust. And Shorty, though he did not know him well, had always seemed cagey and roguish to David. He knew that by smoking with his brother in the company of these two boys was setting a bad example, but he couldn’t get himself to say no.

Jason passed the bag to David, who took it, not without some ambivalence, and smelled inside. He nodded, and handed the bag back to Thomas.

“Let’s fire that shit up,” said Shorty, grinning and nearly shaking with anticipation.

Thomas pulled a packet of zigzags from his pocket and proceeded to roll a joint. “Let’s make this nice and fat,” he said, crumbling up copious amounts of the red-haired bud into the rolling paper. When he was finished rolling, he lit it up the joint and took a hit, coughing.

As the four boys smoked, David began to feel extremely uncomfortable. The laughter of the other boys sounded low and demonic, and he completely lost track of the conversation. He looked up at Jason. He and Thomas were laughing about something. As his brother laughed, David noticed there was something strange about him—a look in his eyes that was unfamiliar, even sinister. Then he saw two bright red fiery horns appear on top of his brother’s head, and his eyes became completely black. Jason suddenly looked square into David’s eyes, and with a low rumbling voice, like a roll of thunder, said, “Your brother is mine!” Baffled and terrified, David walked up to his brother, and peered into his black eyes.

David grabbed his brother’s throat and began to squeeze. The other boys looked on in amazement. Jason was terrified. “I won’t let you take him!” David said. He forced his brother to the floor, continuing to strangle him. The other two boys, now recognizing the severity of the situation, began to shout at David, but he did not listen. Finally, they grabbed hold of him and pulled him off of his brother. Pushing the two boys away, David ran out of the room and down the stairs, exiting the house in a fury.

When he left the house, it had just begun to drizzle. By the time he had run several blocks down the street, the rain was falling torrentially. David barely noticed the rain. His mind was in a state of panicked terror. As he ran, he had the sense that something was chasing him. At first, he couldn’t put a name to it. Whatever it was, he knew it had the power to destroy him. In fact, it existed in everything—from the street lamps that shone over the road to the houses that sat like dark, stalwart idols in their lots, from the cars passing by him on the street to the very raindrops that rolled down to the tips of his fingers. He could not escape it, and yet, the one thing he could do was try. The only label he could give that which pursued him was, “The Devil,” and the only reason that he could come up with as to why it was after him was that he was a “soldier of God.” He ran for what seemed an eternity, up the road as it led into the ritzier suburb where the houses were much larger and spread further apart. He had no intention of stopping until this feeling was gone, but it would not go. It only grew with every stride.

As David ran he felt himself growing colder, and he ran ever harder because of it. His clothes were completely soaked and weighing him down. In particular, his new white Nikes were filled with water, and for a moment he lamented the fact that they were being ruined. However, he told himself that it was a necessary sacrifice for being a “soldier of God.”

Suddenly, out of the hypnotic noise of the pattering rain, there came a deafening explosion of sound. David was certain his moment had come. He turned and saw the red and blue flashing lights of a police cruiser. The window was rolled down, and the two officers were watching him curiously, and, as it seemed to him, contemptuously. Again, they flashed their siren.

Here, certainly, were two more incarnations of the Devil, ironically (or perhaps not so ironically) represented as enforcers of an earthly law. David, in a desperate attempt to escape, turned and bolted into the yard of the house he was running next to. Behind this house he could see a forest. If he could make it there, he thought, he might be able to escape. The police officers stopped and exited the car, and made chase.

As David ran, he had the notion that his very heartbeat might be under the sway of the Devil, and that at any point it might stop altogether. Still, he truly believed that if he could make it to the woods before the officers caught up to him, he would be saved. The forest was much farther off than David had first judged, however, and because he was already half-exhausted, it did not take long before the officers caught up with him. They tackled him about twenty-five yards from the forest. As the officers cuffed him, David let out a terrible cry for God that woke the family of the house whose yard he was in. As he was pulled back to the car, he wept uncontrollably, and said, as one of the officers later reported, “Lord, why have you placed me in the hand of these devils?”

At the emergency room he told the working psychiatrist that he was a soldier of God, and that everyone was possessed by the devil except for him. “I don’t know how,” he said, raving, “but I will find a way. All of you will be punished, and I will reap God’s reward.” When the psychiatrist turned to the nurse and told her to bring a shot of sedative, David cried out at the top of his lungs: “Devils!” The nurse brought a shot of HA cocktail, and, as the security officers present held him down, she inserted the needle into David’s arm, and injected him with the medicine. Soon, David was asleep.

When David woke up, his mind was fuzzy. He had a vague impression of the events that had occurred, but he could not tell if it was a dream or if it had actually happened. Lying on his side, he was facing a small window, about two feet by two feet, which was latticed into hundreds of tiny squares. Outside the sky was dark. Staring through this window, David realized where he was and that what he remembered had actually happened and was not a dream. He rolled over in bed and groaned, shutting his eyes, in hopes he might fall back to sleep. But he couldn’t. His heart was swelled up like a balloon, and the nerves in his body were shooting off like firecrackers. He opened his eyes, and noticed a small table with a plate and silver wear on it next to his bed. His mouth began to water. He sat up, lifted the lid off the plate and found a meal of what appeared to be chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. David began to eat. The food was lukewarm, but he was so hungry he didn’t notice. Suddenly, he heard a knock on his door. “Come in,” said David. A gray haired man in his mid sixties, dressed in a suit and tie, with broad, stooping shoulders and dark, gentle eyes walked in. David noticed the heavy bags beneath his eyes and immediately took him for a shrink. The man approached and held out his hand. “Hello,” he said, in a deep, sonorous voice.  “I’m Dr. Goldberg.” David took his hand and shook it. It was large and dry, and his grasp was loose, though his hand felt strong. “I’m your psychiatrist. Do you mind if I sit?” He pulled over a metal chair that was sitting against the wall and sat down next to the bed, facing David. “Do you feel refreshed?” he asked. “You were out for nearly twenty-four hours.”

David swallowed down a mouthful of food with a significant gulp. “Twenty-four hours?” he said. “Jesus.”

“We gave you a shot of a very powerful sedative,” said Dr. Goldberg.

David suddenly remembered receiving the shot, and felt a pang in his stomach.

 “David,” continued Dr. Goldberg, his face becoming very grave. “Do you mind if I ask you some questions? It won’t take long, I promise.”

David nodded.

“How much of what happened do you remember?”

“I remember everything,” said David. “At least, I think I do.”

“Do you remember saying that everyone was possessed by the Devil, except for you?”

David had forgotten that one detail, but it came back to him instantly when the doctor mentioned it. He also remembered that he had called himself a “soldier of God,” and as he remembered it a wave of shame ran through him, and he looked at the floor. “Yes,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“David,” Dr. Goldberg began. “These types of things are very common. There is no need to feel any shame over it. But it is my belief that you have bipolar disorder, and I would like to start you on a dosage of Lithium.”

David’s shame abruptly turned into anger, and fear bordering on panic. He began to explain that he had been smoking marijuana, and pleaded that that had been the sole cause of what had happened.

“But from what your parents told me,” the doctor refuted, “you’ve been having trouble sleeping, and displaying irrational behavior.”

Again, David felt ashamed. Dr. Goldberg explained to David how the drug would work and what possible side effects there might be. “Now, of course,” he said, “the final decision is up to you. But I would urge you to consider the fact that this is a degenerative illness, and the longer it goes untreated, the worse it will get.”

David nodded to show that he understood. “OK,” said Dr. Goldberg. “Thank you for talking. I’ll leave you to your food.” And with that he got up and left.

For the next two days David did not go back to sleep, and during this time, some of the old paranoid thoughts came back to him. At one point, he thought one of the nurses was a demon. At another, he thought he heard the voice of God telling him he was his “only soldier on Earth.” He made nothing of these hallucinations, not wanting to cause another row, but felt tormented nonetheless. It definitely impacted the debate that was going on in his mind over whether he should take the prescribed drug or not. The idea of it frightened him. To take the drug, he believed, would be admitting defeat, and what would make this defeat so bitter was that he had never even suspected the enemy. He had never even known that it existed. Part of him wanted to go on denying its existence, but when he thought of the events that had taken place, along with the consideration of his current inability to sleep and the resurfacing of his delusions, he realized that to go on denying it would mean living in a world completely apart from everyone he had ever loved. And this he could not accept. He finally decided, and the morning after the second night of no sleep, he told Dr. Goldberg that he would try the drug.

The Lithium was almost immediately beneficial to David. He was able to sleep at night and his thinking became clearer than it had in months. However, David still had many scruples about taking it. The main one was the idea that his life, now under the influence of a prescribed drug, was somehow no longer his own, and that it was therefore less “real” than before. His anguish over this was almost constant, yet he continued to take the drug and benefit from it.

After several days on the ward, David began to meet regularly with a pastor employed by the hospital. This pastor, a man in his late forties with balding red hair and lively blue eyes, made a strong impact on David. He was calm and thoughtful, and had a rational answer for every question. David explained to this pastor that he had found great meaning in the texts of the Old Testament, but that he was now afraid to go back to it on account of what had happened. “You might consider reading the New Testament,” the pastor told him. “It might enlighten you. Here.” He reached into his coat pocket and took out a blue leather bound book with a gold cross on the cover. “Take this copy.”

That night, David lay in his bed holding the New Testament in his hands, looking at the cross on the cover. On the one hand, the cross seemed a warning, and made him doubt whether he was ready for the contents within. But on the other, it seemed to offer him hope that the peace he was striving for within himself might lie within these pages. He opened the cover and began to read.

Like the pastor had said, he found the New Testament enlightening, mostly because the God that Christ spoke of was a compassionate, forgiving God, and those two things were exactly what he needed. He often found himself weeping as he read it, and it was as though through these emotional outpourings, the demons which had entered him when he read the Old Testament were exorcised from his soul.

One afternoon, as he lay in his bed reading the Sermon on the Mount, he was surprised by a knock on his door. “Come in,” he said, putting the book down and sitting up on the edge of his bed. It was his brother. As he stood up and made his way over to Jason, he felt such a surge of joy run through him that he forgot that the last time he had seen his brother he had had his hands around his throat. He embraced his brother fully, and Jason accepted his embrace with forgiveness.

After their embrace, the two brothers stood gazing at each other until David recognized a note of apprehension in his brother’s face. “What is it?” he asked.

“You look different,” said Jason. “Like a changed man.”

David smiled. “I am a changed man,” he said. “I think, changed for the better. I’ve been reading the New Testament.” He gestured at the book laying open on his bed. “It has changed everything for me.” (He began to feel tears welling up in his eyes. He wanted to share everything with his brother.) “I had always known that there was a God,” he continued. “Even when our parents did their best to teach us otherwise. Only, the idea of it was always very vague in my mind. When I read the Old Testament, God presented himself like a light turning on in my brain. He seemed to be an indomitable force, vindictive and tyrannical, and all the fear and hatred that had been building in me all these years became tied up with my conception of Him. That’s why what happened, happened. But the New Testament...the New Testament shows that God is not above us, but within us, and all around us, waiting to be expressed through love. This has given me such hope. In truth, I have been mad all my life. I was like a wounded dog before—fearful of everyone and everything. I was blind—blinded by my ambition, my desire for life. The passion in my heart was like a curse, because, I didn’t trust it. I didn’t know that it was love within my heart that so desired to be expressed. It took a bout of insanity for me to open my eyes. Now I can see you, not only as a brother in blood, but as a brother in spirit.”

Jason stood facing his brother, amazed. He could see that he was still mad, only, his madness had transmuted into something completely different, into something almost beautiful. “I know nothing about spirit,” he began, feeling a lump growing in his throat. “I was always taught to believe that spirit was just an illusion, and that the only thing I could trust was what I could experience with my own senses. But I do see you standing here in front of me, and I know that you are my flesh and blood. And because of that, I love you. And maybe that will have to suffice.”

David embraced his brother, and they wept in each others' arms, David for the sin he had committed against his brother, and Jason because he knew he was losing his brother to a wider world.

When it came time for Jason to leave, he turned to his David and asked him: “What will you do?”

David smiled. “Follow in the footsteps of our grandfather,” he said. “I’ll be a minister.”