It happened, as most mind-boggling events do, with no warning.
A man whom TG and I have known -- though not on a particularly personal or socially active level -- for over forty years, showed up at our church some months ago.
The man is a pastor in a Midwestern state. He has served in that capacity, at the same church, for decades.
I had not laid eyes on this man since at least 1980. I don't remember seeing him at that time, but since we were both members of the same (outsized) congregation during the '70s, it makes sense that at some point I would have seen him.
As I said, we had no personal interaction.
The pastor -- we'll call him Pastor X -- about whom I speak swam through my consciousness more than a decade ago when I learned that he had acquired a second wife.
His first wife, to whom he had been wed for more than three decades, had died of cancer while still in her fifties.
I did not know Pastor X's first wife, so it wasn't her passing that piqued my interest as much as the fact that exactly one year after burying her, Pastor X remarried.
He married a youngish -- I think she was in her late forties at the time -- spinster from his congregation.
In fact, the woman who was to become the second Mrs. Pastor X had been instrumental in decorating what amounts to a dedicated shrine to the first Mrs. Pastor X, just off the main lobby of Pastor X's church.
I've seen pictures of the mini-museum. Its walls are covered with mementoes and pictures -- even a large, formal, guilt gilt-framed bridal portrait -- of the first Mrs. Pastor X.
Mmmmkay.
When Pastor X married the second Mrs. Pastor X, the wedding was scrupulously documented. As in, a professionally produced highlight reel was posted -- and is STILL posted -- on the home page of the church's web site.
Remember: the wedding took place more than ten years ago.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because several months ago, when Pastor X showed up at our church -- he had accompanied a pair of preachers who were on the program -- TG and I exchanged a few words with him after the service.
My TG -- the last of the nice guys -- courteously approached Pastor X (also a nice man) and greeted him, and of course was recognized by Pastor X, because of being a face from the "old days."
They chatted for a while and, in due time, TG called me over to say hello to Pastor X.
He won't remember me, I thought (and may have said to TG), but I complied and Pastor X cordially greeted me and said how long it had been, and all the other nice things you say to people who are practically strangers but to whom you have a connection, however tenuous, to the past.
Without delay, Pastor X informed us that his wife of thirty-some years had died of cancer. We indicated that we knew she had passed and offered our condolences, no less sincere for their belatedness.
Still not missing a beat, Pastor X began telling us the story of his need -- and search -- for a new wife, in the immediate wake of that sad event.
He bemoaned what he described as his inability to woo women, having been married for so long that, naturally, he'd forgotten how to do it.
Nevertheless he cited other pastors -- naming one, several times -- who began encouraging him in the matrimonial quest, and counseling him as to the sort of woman he should be looking for.
"She has to be a virgin," one pastor had told him. "Or the wife of a pastor."
(I assumed that what was meant was the widow of a pastor; I'm just telling you what was said.)
But to be honest, I was still stuck on the virgin part.
I took three steps back, so as to break the circle formed by TG, Pastor X, and me. I did it inadvertently, but at the same time I think I wanted Pastor X to know that what he had just said was offensive.
Even more offensive was what he said next.
"Where am I going to find a fifty-six-year-old virgin?" he bellowed. (I assumed fifty-six had been his age at the time of his bereavement). "I'm more worried about what does she weigh, and does she have all of her teeth."
Harty har har! Pastor X chuckled at his own funniness.
Perhaps we should pull over here for a moment.
I think I should describe Pastor X for you. I mean, his physical appearance.
For most of his life, Pastor X has been morbidly obese. I know from seeing photos and video of his wedding day to the second Mrs. Pastor X (an attractive lady of normal weight) ten-plus years ago, that he weighed at least three-hundred fifty pounds.
And he is a homely man. And I am being kind to use the word homely.
He has very little hair, and what he has is gray.
So there you have it: a fat, balding, ug -- ahem -- homely man, a grandpa of fity-six years of age, contemplating remarriage soon after the death of his first wife, is mainly concerned with his new potential spouse's weight and her dental attributes -- in addition to the fact (because his buddies have advised him that it's a prerequisite) that she be a virgin.
He continued his tale.
"I didn't know what to do," he said. "I didn't know where I was going to find a virgin. And then I looked down (from the pulpit, into the pews) one day and saw this girl, and she was a virgin."
I bit my tongue to keep from asking how he could have been remotely privy to the status of the lady's virginity.
These are the questions that keep me up at night.
He told us his bride's name, even though we already knew it (the second Mrs. Pastor X, in her girlhood, had been a student of TG's when he taught high school science).
TG mentioned that he'd known the current Mrs. Pastor X, as well as her sister.
"Well she's dead," Pastor X said, referring to his wife's sibling.
Within a few moments of that exchange, I bade Pastor X a good evening and rejoined my daughters and son-in-law who were still lingering at our family pew.
I was so stunned by what I'd just heard, that my children saw it on my face. By this time, TG had said goodbye to Pastor X and was heading towards us. His face was half-smile, half-grimace. He knew how bad it had been.
"Let it go, baby," he said to me. "Let it go."
(He always wants me to let stuff go. Sometimes I am unwilling to acquiesce to his request.)
My girls began singing Let It Go and I was sort of laughing but I was reeling too.
"I've been totally triggered," I said. "I think I may need to lie down."
I told our girls and our son-in-law what Pastor X had said. They were flabbergasted.
Seriously, we all just stood and looked at one another in amazement that a man in this day and age could be so tone-deaf, so blatantly sexist, so unashamedly neanderthal, as Pastor X.
Blind. Blind. Dumb, too.
Sir. Let me ask you first -- and this is what TG continued to marvel at, even several days after the conversation took place -- upon what Biblical authority does anyone conclude that when a pastor's wife dies and leaves him a widower, his next wife must be a virgin OR the widow of another pastor?
That belief, that conviction -- if that's what it is -- is ludicrous and without foundation in Scripture.
The Bible simply directs that a bishop (pastor) must be the husband of one wife.
It does not say that she must be a virgin when he marries her, or at least the widow of another pastor.
Does anyone really think that God minds if a widowed pastor marries another man's widow, even if that man was a layman?
And although I realize that everyone is entitled to their opinion, does anyone think it's a good idea for pastors to talk about which women are virgins, or in any other way qualify to be the second wife of a widowed pastor?
It's preposterous. And it's a vulgar subject.
Why vulgar? Because it conjures the image of a woman in a sexual light, rather than a spiritual one.
Preachers need to stop using the old, tired, outdated trope of "the little woman" being an object of contempt.
However mild the scorn, it's still scorn.
Let me give you another example. The Sunday before the Wednesday evening on which the events I've just relayed to you occurred, we had a guest preacher.
He taught Sunday School in addition to preaching in both the morning and evening services. His specialty is soul winning.
And in the Sunday School hour, he shared not one but two "illustrations" that I considered inappropriate.
The first was when he described knocking on a door one day in a neighborhood, accompanied by a fellow soul winner.
According to this preacher, the lady who answered the door was a prostitute. Furthermore, he stated that three of her "customers" were on the premises.
He repeated this salient fact at least three times in the telling of the story, which involved the lady getting saved right then and there.
That's right, folks! The prostitute got saved in front of three of her customers.
Okay ... call me old-fashioned but is it necessary to titillate with such details? Does it somehow make the woman more saved than she would otherwise have been, because she was a "harlot"?
Of course it doesn't. Saved is saved. I suspect -- and this is what gets my dander up -- that the inclusion of these vulgar details serves a two-fold purpose: to denigrate women in an oblique fashion, and to make the "soul winner" appear to have superhuman powers.
Either way, it's bogus. You don't have to say anything except, a dear lady prayed and was saved. And it was glorious.
That's all we need to know.
But that just doesn't satisfy like saying she was a prostitute, and that three of her customers were present. Does it?
In a second and (blessedly) final teaser, the preacher said that he had certain materials out on the literature tables in the lobby, and to secure a copy of a certain book (or tape; I can't remember which) if we wanted to hear or read the story of the lady who "got saved while in the bathtub."
I rest my case.
The problem here is that the Independent, Fundamental, Bible-believing, Soul-Winning, King James Only Baptist church is one of the last bastions of male chauvinism.
Yes. That's what I said. It's blatant male chauvinism for a man who purports to be a Christian gentleman, to say the sorts of things that I've described here.
And I heard them with my own ears. This isn't hearsay.
Men, look inside yourselves and locate the part of you that has vague contempt for women.
Ask God to remove it from you.
Barring the ability to sincerely do that, learn to watch your mouth.
Reader, I implore you. Is that too much to ask?
What? You don't think so?
#MeNeither.
And that is all for now.
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Happy Wednesday
