Parents
James was born in the later years of his parents’ lives, meaning he never knew them as young people.
His mother had been a selfish and fanatically religious bully. His father, despite his failings, had been a fundamentally good man and the better parent, though neither could have been described as ideal.
James learned to accept his father was an alcoholic, and that whatever love his wife may have once felt towards him, no longer existed. The only reason she stayed was because her religious beliefs dictated she must. James could not recall her ever demonstrating so much as a hint of affection towards either himself or his father.
His mother’s beliefs were based entirely on Catholic doctrine, and her life was conducted in precise accordance with what she believed the Bible dictated – though James doubted she had spent much time studying the Bible for herself. Hers was a perfect example of blind faith. It required neither proof nor confirmation. It was an unquestioning belief that assured her, as long as she stuck to the script, she could look forward to enjoying eternity in a place she neither knew nor understood, but where she would have no concerns, no sickness, hunger, or sadness, just pure eternal contentment. So, she maintained her faith with grim determination.
Even as a child James had thought such ignorant faith was a product of idle stupidity. It was an easy option. It was foolish, too. Nothing is beyond question. And given sufficient evidence and investigation, nothing is beyond logical explanation.
Another religious concept James couldn’t accept was the idea of the soul – a mystical spirit his mother believed lived in her body that would eventually ‘ascend’ into heaven. What? How? If the soul is an intelligent, formless eternal entity, why would it subject itself to crude physical confinement? And how does it get there? He couldn’t imagine how the mechanics might work.
There were other religious questions that intrigued James, too. What is God? Did God have a creator? If not, where did God come from? His mother didn’t know and she didn’t want to. She knew what the church told her and that was enough.
James, on the other hand, did want to know. He wanted to know what the spirit was made of, what powered it, where in the body it resided, and how a lifetime of memories and intelligence could be retained in an entity with no physical form.
James had asked his mother, ‘If God is constantly watching over us, why does he tolerate such injustice? Why does he allow so few to live in luxury while so many live in pain and torment?’
His mother had answered, ‘A person who chooses a life of greed, selfishness and sin will eventually be cast into the bowels of hell and suffer eternal damnation. Only a fool would choose to sacrifice an eternity of contentment for a moment of pleasure.’
It sounded ruthlessly extreme to James, and the idea of demanding pointless, self-inflicted deprivation to gain God’s approval seemed slightly sadistic. Regardless, his mother remained adamant that the path to damnation was paved with material possessions.
He could recall countless memories of her lecturing him about the many sins of life. It had seemed to James that anything other than sleeping, eating, and praying was a sin. Even bath time would consist of painful scrubbing and the usual reminder of how there was no room in heaven for dirty children. His mother never seemed to tire of telling him how all boys were evil, and all girls represented the temptation of that evil. Having fun, playing, and acting generally childish were all activities to be frowned upon. There was no doubt – in the eyes of Mrs Henderson, being good and righteous was a serious business.
James had never told his mother, but by the time he was ten, he had already read the Bible twice. It had played such a large part in his life, he had decided to read it for himself and form his own opinions and interpretations. For years after, he had taken great pleasure in listening to his mother’s constant misinterpretation and misquotation of its content.
James had thought the Old Testament was a wonderful collection of interesting and exciting stories – but obviously not an accurate account of real events. The stories were typically exaggerated folklore tales and too easily disproven to be taken seriously. Some of the characters may have existed, but any factual content had become misrepresented and grossly exaggerated.
His mother also insisted the Bible was the creation and the property of Christianity, or to be more precise, the Catholic Church. It was largely true about the New Testament – a questionable collection of books recollecting the life of Jesus, written years after his death and edited beyond recognition by the church. But it was not true about the Old Testament. The origins of the Old Testament went a long way further back in history. James had never had the heart to tell his mother her religion shared its origins with Judaism and Islam.
It would have been too much for her to discover how the followers of all three Abrahamic religions ultimately traced their story back to the same God, the same family, and the same beginning. She would have fainted to think that much of the religious tension could loosely be described as a family feud – centuries of relentless bickering over who was most accurately maintaining the word of God.
James had thought the whole thing was pitifully sad, and that whatever the fundamental message might have been, it had been lost amongst endless petty political altercations.
Of course, it all meant nothing to his mother, whose understanding of religion was so detached from the truth that it was virtually unrelated.
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