Сигрид Нуньес - Salvation City

“The idiot box has a way of putting everything on the same superficial plane. Plus the remote encourages a short attention span.”

Contempt for TV was one thing PW and Cole’s parents had in common.

“Televangelism,” said PW. “To most folks today it’s a dirty word. I can’t tell you how much I hate the word myself. Oh, I can see how it looked like a great idea at first, preacher’s dream, beaming the Good News into millions of homes—where’s the downside? But just look what happened. Greed, theft, false testimony, megalomania, cult of personality. I’m not saying Satan created TV, I’m just saying he really knows how to work it.”

Also like Cole’s parents, PW thought people would be better off with a lot less “e” and “i” in their lives.

“I’m all for Christians connecting online, sharing stories and music and videos and such. But remember, it’s always better to be together, in church or some other safe place, worshipping or doing Bible study or community service—whatever—than to be sitting home alone clicking away.”

Cole had always thought it was lame the way so many ordinary people wanted to post pages with photos of themselves and lists of all their favorite things and have everyone follow their every dumb move—like, who cared? He’d never kept a journal, but he was sure if he ever did he wouldn’t want it to be where the whole world could read it! What would be the point? Still, it was way strange at first, living in a house where the only computer you were allowed to use was in the breakfast nook (he was still in the hospital when he learned that his laptop, along with his parents’ laptops and everything else of value, had been looted from their house in Little Leap) and set up so that every site you browsed could be checked by someone else. His parents had never done that, but they would have approved of PW’s preaching a gospel of a less noisy and distracted life. They would have given an amen to his call for the need to break the hold the Internet had on people’s lives, especially young lives. Say what you would about the pandemic, at least it had helped slow down the rat race. It had also got people thinking more about the world to come. In communities like Salvation City, life had become simpler and more purpose-driven. People were sticking closer to home, spending more time with their families. And everywhere church attendance had soared.

According to Pastor Wyatt, what Christians had needed to figure out was that they’d had it right before . Dirtying their hands in politics, trying to influence the government and change the laws—all that he and many other Christians now declared a mistake. “We only made fools of ourselves. Everyone seemed to forget the saying that politics is the art of compromise, and that’s just not where our church is at. What do we care how we look to the rest of the world? What matters is how we look to God. Why should we waste energy trying to win other folks’ respect? Don’t we got a more important job than that? I want my flock to care less about what secular folks are up to and more about their own spiritual lives.”

It was said that when the Antichrist came he would make use of the Internet to lure people from the true path. Certain hidden codes were said to be already in place, waiting to be activated.

But why was it the Antichrist who got to use the Net? Cole wanted to know. Why wouldn’t Christ use it, too?

When Cole asked about this in Bible study, Mason’s one eye twinkled and he said, “Who’s to say he won’t use it, little bruh? Maybe he will. Maybe he’ll decide to have his very own blog. Wouldn’t that be dope?”

But PW said, “Jesus won’t need the Net nor any other worldly tool. He’ll be on his white charger, he’ll be wearing his blood-red robes, he’ll have his sword and his army of angels and saints. All the trumpets will be blowing. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him. Revelation, my boy! The King of kings! Say now, why would my Lord need a blog?”

Boots Ludwig and Pastor Wyatt were good friends, but that didn’t mean they always saw eye to eye. When Boots and his wife, Heidi, came to dinner, the two men often argued, as they often argued when they were on the air. They argued about more or less the same things all the time.

Boots accused PW of being too soft. He made it seem easy to be a Christian, Boots said, when being a Christian was never easy and was never meant to be. These days, too many preachers made the church sound like a warm, cozy nest where all you had to do was curl up and be loved. At heart everyone was a good little boy or girl, and however they might have strayed, the good Lord, like some soft-touch daddy, was happy to forgive them.

“Oh, I hear you, Boots, and I know what you want. You want me to put a little more fire and brimstone into it. Use scare tactics. Send folks home with their knees knocking and their teeth chattering in their heads. But you know, nowadays, the last thing I want to do is foment fear. I think we’ve already seen enough of the damage that can do. You know as well as I do, when folks get scared, that’s when ‘What would Jesus do?’ tends to go right out the window.”

“Well, I’m the kind of man, if there’s something that doesn’t sit right with me, then you know I got to speak out—”

“And I am listening, my friend. Aren’t I listening?”

“—and I don’t like coming out of worship service and seeing every kind of expression on people’s faces but the appropriate one. Seems to me, leaving church, you ought to have some mighty sober thoughts inside your head. It shouldn’t be the same as if you were leaving a ball game or a party. People shouldn’t be yakking away about what’s for dinner, and why hello there, Mrs. Ludwig, you do look fine today, is that a new dress, and so on.”

Speaking of Mrs. Ludwig, Tracy often did just that after listening to one of Boots’s tirades, and usually it was the same two words: Poor Heidi .

Heidi Ludwig was amazingly fat—globular—a circus fat lady. Even her scalp was fat. She hadn’t taken a plane anywhere in years, but the last time she’d flown, Cole was awestruck to hear, the airline had made her pay for two seats. Cole would have loved to sketch Mrs. Ludwig, but he didn’t think it was possible to draw her as she was without seeming mean. He’d had the same problem with Mason, but then Mason himself had insisted he wanted Cole to draw him. Cole had done his best, but he simply could not get the scarred part right, and Mason had come out looking like a pirate.

Boots said, “I can’t help feeling sometimes when you talk about sin it goes in one ear and out the other. Maybe it’s because you’re always smiling.”

“That’s what happens when I get filled with the Spirit.”

Another thing Boots couldn’t stomach was the praise songs of the church’s worship band. “What’s wrong with the old hymns? ‘Victory in Jesus,’ ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow.’ Those are songs you could sing with your head high! And don’t give me the same old argument about changing times. Nothing sadder than a bunch of Christians trying to prove they’re every bit as hip as the lost—unless it’s a bunch of Christians coming up with an idea like Testamints. I tell you, when Christ Almighty comes, he’s gonna go after those who dare to sell things like breath mints in his name like he went after the sheep traders and the money changers—with a scourge! My father’s house is not a place of business .”

“Boots, you know I don’t like Jesus junk any more than you do, but maybe you need to lighten up.”

“Now Heidi tells me the gals are starting a Knitting for Jesus group. I got nothing against knitting, but you know well as I do it’s just another coffee klatsch. They’re not knitting for the Lord any more than those Testamints are ‘Christian’ candy. And you know it gets to me, hearing the way some people jabber on about the end times. I mean, we are talking about Armageddon, the mother of all battles, like every WMD on the planet going off at the same time, and these gals—just listen to them. It’s like they’re planning a big shopping expedition or some kind of holiday.”