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FAITH-BASED MUTUAL:
From the Confidential Files of Dr. Christopher Jacques
John R. Guthrie
Malcolm Boyd, a fixture in Glory Express, the senior’s group at Austerity’s
Malcolm was unable
to stay for long. He nearly slid from his wheelchair twice because the seat was
slippery wet: There were some unresolved bladder and bowel control problems.
Though his head was resting on his right shoulder and his tongue hung from his
mouth as he rolled out, the congregation waved and smiled as they continued
sand with vigor, “…Hail Him who saves you by his grace….”
The case of Malcolm Boyd was just one of the miracles that occurred due to
prayer at First Church. The sanctuary is located on
Jed Raney of Raney
Insurance Agency volunteered to come over to Austerity’s First church to help
with clean up following the Christmas pageant. The pulpit stood in the wings.
It’s a massive piece, solid walnut with heavily carved scrollwork, a cross
built into the front for added sanctity. Jed was 30 pounds heavier than when
he’d played center on the championship Austerity high school football team 17
years before. Not waiting for help, he leaned into the pulpit and pushed as if
it were the training sled on the practice field of those bygone days of glory.
Instead of sliding, the pulpit tipped. The Bible on its lectern slid off and
Ka-Whumped to the floor. Jed was chagrined. That
pulpit Bible, beautifully bound in goatskin leather with art gilt edges and the
words of Jesus printed in red was immense. Jed bent from the waist to retrieve
it, but as he snatched it to his chest and stood again quickly, he experienced
a pain in the small of his back worse than any he had ever experienced. As the
Bible tumbled to the floor again, Jed gripped his back, then sank to the floor
in a sitting position, trying unsuccessfully to contort himself into a position
of comfort.
“Preacher MacLeash,” he cried.
“Yes, Jed?” Rev. MacLeash called from somewhere backstage.
“Preacher, come
quick! I’ve just played heck!”
They brought him to
Dr. Christopher Jacques’s clinic lying on the seat in the back of the church
van and half carried, half walked him through the back door. His wife
After examining Jed, Dr. Jacques finally said, “Jed, the safest approach is to
admit you to the medical center.”
Jed, more
comfortable after receiving 100 of Demerol by injection, said, “Doc, I gotta stay home.”
Accordingly, Dr
Jacques evolved a treatment plan for home care that included heat, Demerol
tablets and prescription strength muscle relaxants.
By the next morning, Jed’s back hurt worse. He tried turning on his side to get
more comfortable. Attempting to turn was agony. “
“Yes, dear?” she said, wiping her hands on her apron as she walked in. She was
a slender woman with just a few strands of gray in her mouse brown hair.
“Pearl, this is awful. Please, go to a liquor store and get me something for
pain.”
She drew herself up
to her full height. “Jed! Liquor store? Oh, Jed, ‘Wine
is a mocker. Strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not
wise!’”
In spite of the pain, Jed sat up in bed, his face reddened now as he used his
every fiber to summon Godly authority. “Pearl, you listen! ‘Wives, submit to
your husbands as if to the Lord!’”
“But, Jed….”
Jed chopped one
hand against the other for emphasis. “’For a husband is head
of the wife as Christ is head of the church!’”
Jed smiled and
nodded.
As
Pearl parked half a block a way, hoping no one would see her car. She walked
briskly to the small red brick building with the red disc on the side. She
looked around, then dodged in. Proprietor George Papidopolis, a brown-complexioned man of considerable
proportion with a bristle of dark mustache and a balding pate, smiled and said
in a voice that sounded as if he had cigars for breakfast, “How may I help you,
Ma’am?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Papidopolis said, sighing inwardly, for he was familiar
with this furtiveness about entering an ABC store on the part of many of
Austerity’s residents. “Brandy!” he rumbled cheerfully, “Christian Brothers
Brandy; known for its medicinal properties. Made by a
religious order.”
”That sounds just
perfect. We don’t actually use alcohol, you see, but…”
“I understand
perfectly. Good choice, Ma’am.” He was already placing the black and white
labeled bottle in a brown paper bag.
Jed‘s agony increased by the time Pearl returned. He grabbed the bottle,
gulping a considerable portion of the contents down as a chaser for two Demerol
tablets. He made a wicked face as he exhaled, “whooo”
through his mouth. He quickly experienced a buzz, but his back still felt as if
it was in a vise. He took another Demerol, hesitated a moment then poured three
muscle relaxants into his palm and washed them down with more Christian
Brothers.
With the potent and
dangerous combination of high octane brandy and enough Demerol and muscle
relaxants to down a brontosaurus on board, Jed slept, mouth open, for 14 hours,
snoring like a chain saw. It was a fitful, restless sleep.
Jed stood on the mountain top, wind shrieking like a lost and wounded thing. As
he looked about, he realized that the mountain was either the one on which the
church retreat, Pulpit Crest, stood, or perhaps it was far-away Mount Sinai, or
perhaps in a way he could not, understand, both at once. Either way, banshee
wind or not, he found a strange peace in this geographical improbability, for
both Pulpit Crest and
As his eyes blinked
open, Jed looked around fearfully. “
“Jed, Honey, you OK?”
she said as she entered, still holding one of Jed’s shirts that she was
preparing to iron.
“Did you…hear
anything?” he said.
Pearl looking
perplexed, said “Jed, Dear, I didn’t hear a thing. Jed, you shouldn’t mix
brandy with those pain pills…”
Jed took a deep
breath, then said, “Yeah…”
“How’s your back,
Hon?”
Jed sat up, feeling
his back. “Pearl, I can’t believe it! Just a little soreness is all.” He paused
a moment before continuing. “
Like a good omen,
the very next Sunday, on Preacher MacLeash’s nod,
comely Megan Satterfield, a twenty-something who was as enticing as a whipped
cream confection, stepped down from the choir loft and stood before the
congregation. She, whose lovely mezzo-soprano voice embellished the choir,
clasped her slender hands in front of her and gave her personal testimony.
“I discovered a
lump in my left breast,” she said. “I was a terrified. I, like, shared this
with my Sunday school class, The Shepherd’s Singles. We established a major
prayer chain. Everyone prayed real hard for 28 days.” She paused, brushed a
tear off one cheek. “The lump--it’s totally gone!”
“Isn’t our God a
great God?” Preacher MacLeash cried out, pointing in
the general direction of Megan’s well-formed left breast. Jed found great joy
in contemplating the ever-shapely, now perfected-by-prayer bosom of Miss
Satterfield.
“Awesome,” he
cried, his vocal affirmation lost in a chorus of “Amens!”
and “Glories!” as many in the congregation held their right hand up, index
finger pointing toward heaven.
“I’ll use First Church as the start-up group for Faith–Based Mutual Insurance,”
Jed confided later to Attorney and long-time Deacon Paul Long, Esq. “In the
case of illness or accident involving an insured, a prayer chain will be
established immediately-- one that would reduce both the death rate and
producing shorter and less complicated convalescence.”
Paul nodded, jowls
waggling as he spoke, said, “A spirit-filled concept if there ever was one!”
Paul agreed to be a
full partner and to act as legal counsel and corporate treasurer. Jed and Paul
went together to ask Preacher MacLeash to become the
third and final corporate officer. He agreed, for a modest monthly stipend, to
be the chaplain of the corporation, a position that required only that he open and close the meetings of the board of directors and
the stockholders with prayer.
After that, getting
church members to buy into Faith-Based Mutual was, as Jed was fond of saying,
as easy as selling ice water in Hades. Then on a leaden day in November, Paul
Long, Esq., was admitted to the
Dr. Jacques stopped by the pathology lab after rounds the next morning. Dr.
Hilary Stein, the pathologist, he of the steel-rimmed glasses and generally
stern demeanor stood at his white porcelain autopsy table with the gutters
along the side. He was working his way through the post–mortem on Paul Long,
Esq. Stein put down his bone shears. “Hi Chris. Good
to see you. What brings you into the netherworld?”
“Hoping to confirm cause of death for your patient,” he said, nodding toward
the cadaver on the table.
“Paul Long? He
fooled me. I figured a simple bilateral pneumonia. But the proximal cause of
death was a ruptured cerebral aneurism.” Then he slipped off the heavy gloves
he wore. “Chris, have time to chat?”
The sheet rustled as the diener re-covered the
remains on the autopsy table. Dr. Jacques and Dr. Stein sat in Stein’s office
at the edge of the lab, one where every horizontal surface was stacked with
files and journals and books. Like everything else in the pathology department,
it smelled of formalin.
Stein said, “Chris, what is this Faith-Based Mutual Insurance Group Paul Long
was involved in?”
Dr. Jacques replied, “Jed Raney developed a business model for life and health
insurance based on intercessory prayer. They figured that with a prayer chain
they could beat the odds of the actuarial tables, have shorter periods of
convalescence, and postpone death. Premiums would be paid for a longer period
of time, pay out would be lessened. The company could charge less and get a
greater return on their investment. They were relying on studies that showed
the strength and efficacy of intercessory prayer.”
Stein snorted.
“Those studies are invariably seriously flawed. They’re usually conducted by
physicians who may be good and well-wishing practitioners, but who are not
necessarily trained in rigorous scientific methodology.”
“Figures,” Jacques
said, thoughtful now.
Stein continued,
“These researchers typically have one thing in common.”
“And what’s that
Hilary?” Jacques said.
“They seriously
wish to prove that Jesus is The Man. So their results are not reproducible
under valid scientific conditions, ever! There is seldom any peer review except
by other supernaturalists. The ‘scientific’ articles
used as primary and secondary references are often from ad hoc publications;
essentially journals on the supernatural.”
“So,” Jacques said,
“there are no data that substantiate the underlying thesis.”
“No. Probably the
best study available is an extended one reported in the American Heart
Journal.” Stein pulled a bound set of journals off the shelf behind him and
flipped it open, searched a bit, and handed it to Dr. Jacques. “Read the
abstract, Chris.”
Jacques read aloud
from the summary paragraph, “...no evidence that intercessory prayer is
efficacious in these intensive care patients. Patients who knew they were being
prayed for, however, did show a higher incidence of serious complications than
patients who did not know….” Jacques folded the volume and handed it back.
As the last rain-washed days of winter turned to spring, Dr. Jacques saw Jed
Raney in his office again. Sitting across Jacques’s desk from him, Jed was
red-faced, gesticulating with both hands as he spoke. “Doc, one of Sheriff Sam Hatchette’s deputies delivered a subpoena from the state
Attorney General. It’s the liberals, Doc, Secular Humanists, Atheists,
Darwinists and a good sprinkling of good old-fashioned Communists. Christians
are under attack all over! If I weren’t a Christian, I’d…”
Chris took a deep
breath, “Jed, friend, I’m sorry. Have you retained a lawyer?”
Jed shook his head.
“Not yet. But I’m gonna. Pray for me Doc. That’s the
strongest medicine of all. My nerves are all torn up,
I can’t get to sleep at night.
The above short story originally appeared in a slightly
different version in The
The
Chickasaw
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