On the Dangers of Reading the Bible as a Kid

Other than regular Sunday readings and occasional rumblings heard as an altar boy, I first began to read the Scriptures at age 12 in the spring of 1963.  It was Lent.  Our teacher, a formidable Dominican nun in full white regalia, laid it down as a project for 7th grade religion that all students should memorize St. Matthew’s Passion!  Every day we practiced with the student sitting next to us, going over the latest new paragraph and then trying to string it all together from the beginning—the chain getting longer and longer.  In the end, during Holy Week, each student had to get up in front of the whole class and attempt to recite it.  Only two of us made it—myself and one pretty girl, whose name (surprisingly) I forget.  As a reward, we got an extra chocolate milk at lunch on Easter Monday.  I was proud and satisfied.

Having gotten acquainted with the Bible perforce, I decided to look around a bit on my own.  Naturally, as a 12-year-old boy, I went straight to the Apocalypse, having heard rumors of strange things in the final book!  I was delighted to find it had monsters in it!  A dragon with seven heads and 10 horns, no less!  Doing fierce battle for the human race—and eventually chained in the depths of Hell by my namesake, St. Michael!  It was great.

Reading Revelation was one of my earliest “goosebump” experiences of the “numinous,” Rudolph Otto’s term for the unique religious experience of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  I think I can remember only three other times in elementary school when I was (at least somewhat) “touched” by the awesome and other-worldly in this way: learning the Missa de Angelis in the elementary school choir, serving mass at 6:15am in the side chapel of a shadowy cathedral church when the priest hauntingly chanted the Pater Noster, and receiving the blow on the cheek from the Bishop—dubbing me a soldier of Christ—during Confirmation.  I remember this last more vividly, for some reason, even than going into the dark for my first Confession or receiving my first Holy Communion.  Unfortunately, the “smiting” is no longer part of the ceremony, and Latin is little to be found anymore—though with some signs of a “second spring.”

Incidentally, when I first heard about the “smiting” during preparation for the sacrament of Confirmation, I was already mightily impressed!  “The Bishop is going to smack me in the face with his fist!” I couldn’t wait!  In Church, no less!  In front of the whole congregation!  This was good stuff!  Maybe the Church wasn’t just made for women after all….

It made me feel grown-up and important.  I wondered how hard he would hit me and whether it would hurt.  I wondered if he would hit the girls as hard as the boys. I secretly wondered whether anyone had ever been so crazy as to hit him back!  Etc., etc.  (My young male imagination was again embellishing reality in ways I found supremely interesting).  But the whole thing did confirm to me that I was indeed a Soldier of Christ!

However—back to the Bible—next, while perusing through the Old Testament, I was suddenly brought up short!  I happened upon 1 Kings 11:1-2, part of the history of Solomon’s reign.  Unfortunately, it read:

SOLOMON LOVED MANY STRANGE WOMEN….

I was stunned.  Confused.  Intrigued.  Curious.  Slightly repulsed.  How could the wisest man in the world fall in love with weird women?  And what was it about them that made them weird?  What did they look like?  A seven headed, ten-horned dragon I could handle, but strange women?  I searched for illustrations on the neighboring pages.  Nothing.  I tried to picture “strange” women and wonder why someone would love them so much.  Were their faces structured differently from the rest of us?  Their arms?  Legs?  Bodies?  Or was their something strange about their personalities?  Were they psychos?  Did they hallucinate?  Did they walk in their sleep?  Were they from another planet?  Were they secretly of another species?  My 12-year-old male imagination was working overtime, spiced up by every scary movie I’d ever seen.  What did it all mean?

Yet it was not the kind of thing I felt I could bring to a parent, priest, or teacher for clarification.  I just couldn’t picture myself sidling up to my father and asking, “Hey, dad, tell me about strange women, will ya?’”  Much less a priest or teacher!  No, I was really on my own on this one.

Then, of course, as the bible verse goes on, Yahweh Himself warns Solomon against these “strange women,” yet the king goes ahead anyway even though “they will most certainly turn away your heart to follow their gods.”  So what kind of hold did these weirdos have on the poor guy—the greatest King of all time, the wisest man who ever lived? Then the next verse:

AND TO THESE WAS SOLOMON JOINED WITH A MOST ARDENT LOVE.

But if you are ardently united with what is strange and weird, don’t you become strange and weird yourself?  So how did Solomon look near the end?  I pictured him as terribly misshapen—perhaps like Igor, Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant.  I began to have a slight fear of women in general (and the kind of power they had already demonstrated more than once over my lonely teenage heart)—even though I didn’t know any “strange” ones, certainly not the kind Solomon fell for.  And he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.  Not being quite sure what concubines were, I figured they were probably the weird ones.

It was scary.

It was also two more years before I found out that “strange” here just meant “foreign,” i.e., non-Israelite.  I was relieved!  But also rather disappointed.  It seemed so mundane compared to what my imagination had done with it!  After a bit more reflection, I just felt really silly.  I’m afraid it was quite awhile before I picked up the bible again….

I tell you, parents don’t know the half of what goes on in their kids’ brains!  It’s a wonder we ever made it to adulthood!

This column first appeared August 1, 2012 on The Personalist Project website and is reprinted with permission.