Soldier of God, version 2

David Jackson came from a secular, bourgeois household. His father, a urologist, and his mother, a lawyer, scoffed at all forms of religiosity and spirituality. When David was first introduced to the concept of God, his parents taught him the theories of Darwin, and later, when he expressed his admiration for the new pope, his parents agreed that the Catholic Church needed “a pretty facade” to mask its corruption. But his paternal grandfather, ironically, had been a Baptist minister, known for his fiery sermons and his staunch devotion to the spread of the gospels. Apparently, he had been somewhat of an ogre himself, relying heavily on corporeal punishment—“beating the Devil out of the children” is what he called it. When he died young, David’s grandmother remarried and the family lost any connection it had with the church.

            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. He was able to make up for it by doing well on tests and completing his assignments on time, but his teachers grew impatient with him, and griped to his parents. But his parents were forgiving of this habit, seeing it as a sign that David 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. This could not be so much attributed to any real addictive quality to his personality, however, but rather, more to a free-spirited, adventurous nature that, again, his parents forgave, for in their own liberal bourgeois mindsets, it was a virtue. They believed these problems would be solved once David committed himself to a field of study.

            In spite of what David’s parents expected, however, in college his bad habits did not dissipate, but were 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. 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 these texts completely.

One evening, while sitting in a hookah bar he frequented regularly, a red-bearded young man sat down in the chair next to him and opened an old, leather bound book with strange, foreign looking lettering written in gold across the cover. David watched the young man read the book, which, on one side of the page was written in the same foreign language as the cover, and on the other side was written in 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 Tenakh.”

The Tenakh, 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 important books ever written. Perhaps it was part of the responsibility of being a human being to read it. And so, he promised himself that he would get a copy of the book himself. And indeed he did just that.

David bought the book on a Friday afternoon, and stayed up all that night reading it. In the Old Testament, David found that 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 these poems came from recognizable human beings—Frost, Stevens, Poe. 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, and distracted. That first night back, at the dinner table, David’s father asked him how his studies were going. David said he was learning a great deal. Pleased, his father asked him what some of his favorite classes were.

            “All my classes are the same,” said David, cryptically. There was a long silence as his father tried to determine how to press him further.

            “What are you learning about?” he 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. Thomas, a bench warmer for the school’s basketball team, was otherwise known as a pothead, a slacker—someone who, while David had once felt an affinity with, now seemed undeserving of his trust. 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) were dancing. A game of beer pong was going on in the kitchen, and everywhere, from wall to wall, were faces familiar to David. When these faces turned toward him, they showed instant recognition, and they 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 playfully. “You’re at College of Charleston, right?”

“That’s right,” said David, feeling distracted, if not completely aloof.

“Cool. So you must be living it up down there, huh?”

David nodded half-heartedly, and hearing Thomas call his name from near the stairwell, dismissed the girl abruptly and walked away, leaving her standing alone and in dismay.

Thomas was with Shorty and Jason. All of them, especially Shorty, looked giddy. “There’s something you have to see,” Thomas said. David glanced at his brother. In truth, he felt awkward seeing Jason in this environment, but he seemed to be enjoying himself, however coyly. Then he looked at Shorty, who was red in the face and smiling. He began to nod vigorously at David.

“Alright,” said David, resigning himself to Thomas’ whim. 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. 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. “This is some of that chronic shit,” said Thomas. “Here,” he said to Jason, “smell.”

Jason took the bag, opened it, and stuck his nose inside. “Mmmmm.”

David was surprised by his little brother’s behavior. He would never have guessed he would be the type to smoke pot. It angered him, and made him wonder if his brother had been putting up a front for him all these years.

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 Zig-Zags 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 the joint, he lit it up and took a hit, coughing. As the four boys smoked, David began to feel extremely uncomfortable. His mind was racing with lines he remembered from the Proverbs. The laughter of the other boys sounded demonic, and he completely lost track of the conversation. He looked up at Jason. He and Stephen 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 head, and the whites of his eyes became completely black. Jason suddenly looked square into David’s face, and with a low rumbling voice, like the echo of a giant explosion, he said (or rather it wasn’t he, but the demon inside of him): “Your brother is mine!” Amazed, David walked up to his brother, and peered into his black eyes. He grabbed his throat and began to squeeze. The other boys looked on in amazement. Jason was terrified. “I won’t let you take him!” David cried. 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 David 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 wracked with 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, he had to try. The only label he could give it was “The Devil,” and the only reason that he could come up with as to why it was after him was: 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.

Out of the hypnotic noise of the pattering rain came a deafening explosion of sound. David, certain his moment had come, 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 David, contemptuously. 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 free himself. 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 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 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, he 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, according to one of the officers, “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 who had been listening to David’s tirade turned to the nurse, 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 he woke up, his mind was fuzzy. He found himself looking through a small square window. This window, which was about two feet by two feet, was sectioned into hundreds of tiny squares. Looking through these hundreds of little squares at a dark night sky, David began to remember in vivid detail most of what had happened. He could not tell how long he had been asleep, however, and as he sat up in his bed, he began to ask himself if it had all been a dream. Then he noticed a tray on a table next to the bed. He lifted the lid off the tray and found a meal of what appeared to be chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. He was ravenously hungry, and just as he began to eat, he heard a knock on his door. A gray haired man in his mid sixties, dressed in a suit and tie, with dark, gentle eyes with heavy bags of skin beneath them, and large, stooping shoulders, walked in. He 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 leaning against the wall and sat down next to the bed, facing David. “Do you feel refreshed?” he asked. “You were out for nearly twenty hours.”

David swallowed down a mouthful of food with a significant gulp. This news surprised David, but then he remembered being given a shot, and suddenly he felt a sickness in his stomach.

“David,” said Dr. Goldberg, “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 instantaneously. And he also remembered that he had called himself a “soldier of God.” 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.

“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 the final decision is up to you,” he said. “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.”

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, one of the nurses appeared to him as a demon. He said nothing, not wanting to cause another row, but felt tormented nonetheless. It definitely impacted the debate that was going on in his mind. The idea of taking a prescribed drug frightened him. To do so, he believed, would be admitting defeat, and what made the possibility of 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 the 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 the morning after the second night of no sleep that he would take the drug.

The drug 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 the drug. 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.

One afternoon, after he had been in the hospital for close to a week, his brother came to visit him. Because of his shame in regards to the tenuousness of his situation, and the guilt he felt over what had happened a week before, David felt very awkward seeing his brother. But by the warmth and enthusiasm of his embrace, David could tell that his brother had forgiven him and did not scorn him for his situation, but rather had more compassion and understanding for it than he himself did. When Jason asked him how he was doing, because of the complexity of his situation, he hesitated, despite the fact that he and his brother had always had a very open relationship. But, again, when he saw the look of responsive compassion in his brother’s eyes, he felt such an affection for him that he knew he could keep nothing from him. “I’m in pain,” he said. “I feel such a regret. And more than that, I feel my situation is completely ridiculous. This drug that I’m taking is killing something in me. Maybe that’s a good thing but...it’s hard to accept, because it’s making me less than what I was. At least it feels that way. Don’t you think,” he continued on, pleading passionately with his brother, “that by taking this drug, I am making myself and my life...less real?”

Jason looked at the ground. It was strange for him, seeing his brother this way—so unsure of himself. “I don’t know that it makes it any less real,” he said. “Maybe, if anything, it makes it more real.”

David gave his brother, who was looking him square in the eye, an inquisitive look.

“Because,” he continued, “instead of being a devil, I’m just your brother. And, instead of you being a soldier of God, you’re just a man.”

Had not Jason’s statement been so completely bound in the love he had for his brother, David might have again felt ashamed. As it were, its poignancy brought him to tears. His brother again embraced him in the same warm, compassionate embrace. “I love you, brother,” he said as David continued to weep. “No matter what.”

After this, David felt less dubious about taking the medicine. The fact that he was just a man, and not a “soldier of God” was something that he never would have been able to accept on his own. Only through the love of his brother could he see that the destruction of that delusion was not a blow from the hand of God, but a blessing to be cherished.

David stayed another week on the ward, in which time he met with a pastor employed by the hospital. David explained to the 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. “You might find it enlightening after your experience. 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.” And so David began to read the New Testament. And like the pastor had said, he found it enlightening, mostly because the God which 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 as he read the Old Testament were exorcised from his soul. By the time he finished reading, he was again a changed man—full of hope, faith, and love.

When David went back to school the next year, it was to study theology in the hopes of one day becoming a minister, like his grandfather. He continued taking his medicine, and though he still felt as if something inside of him was dying as a result of this, he also recognized that each day something new was born inside of him as well, and it was this constant renewal that kept his love—for his brother, for his family, for himself, and for all—strong in his heart.