Robert Flynn - Holy Literary License: The Almighty Chooses Fallible Mortals to Write, Edit, and Translate GodStory

Other Works by Robert Flynn

North to Yesterday

In the House of the Lord

The Sounds of Rescue, the Signs of Hope

Seasonal Rain

A Personal War in Vietnam

The Last Klick

When I was Just Your Age
(with Susan Russell)

Wanderer Springs

Living With the Hyenas

The Devils Tiger
(with Dan Klepper)

Growing Up a Sullen Baptist

Tie-Fast Country

Slouching Toward Zion

Paul Baker and the Integration of Abilities
(with Eugene McKinney)

Echoes of Glory

Burying the Farm

Jade: Outlaw

Jade: The Law

Lawful Abuse: How the Century of the Child Became the Century of the Corporation

Holy Literary License: The Almighty Chooses Fallible Mortals to Write, Edit, and Translate GodStory

2016 by Robert Flynn

Cover: Holy Venus! by Bryce Milligan

(with apologies to Botticelli)

ISBN: 978-1-60940-465-9 (paperback original)

E-books:

ePub: 978-1-60940-466-6

Mobipocket/Kindle: 978-1-60940-467-3

Library PDF: 978-1-60940-468-0

Wings Press

627 E. Guenther

San Antonio, Texas 78210

Phone/fax: (210) 271-7805

On-line catalogue and ordering:

www.wingspress.com

Wings Press books are distributed to the trade by

Independent Publishers Group

www.ipgbook.com

Cataloging In Publication:

Flynn, Robert, 1932- author.

Title: Holy literary license : the almighty publisher chooses fallible mortals to write, edit, and translate GodStory / Robert Flynn, author of Growing up a sullen Baptist.

San Antonio, TX : Wings Press, 2016.

LCCN 2016033172

ISBN 9781609404659 (pbk. : alk. paper); ISBN 9781609404673

(kindle/mobipocket ebook); ISBN 9781609404680 (library pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Bible--History--Miscellanea. | Bible--Criticism, interpretation, etc.--Miscellanea. | Flynn, Robert, 1932

LCC BS447 .F59 2016

DDC 220.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016033172

To David Middleton,
colleague, friend, fellow pilgrim

I want to acknowledge and thank the following people for their assistance, complaints, questions and encouragement that made this book possible. Colin Bass, Joseph S. Blair, Rev. Kyle Childress, Sybil Pittman Estess, Rev. Mark Hart, Barbara Higdon, Mark Noblitt, Edgar Twedt, Lori Tyler, Garrett Vickrey, Leslie Williams.

I also want to thank the writers of the hymns, some of whom wish to remain anonymous, and a special thanks to Jerome Malek for giving permission to use his composition for William Blakes poem, The Lamb.

If this book upsets your pretty picture of life and death eternal, organized and disorganized church history and heaven that is smaller than NASAs photograph of our universe, you can thank the people named above.

If this book is more than you can tolerate you may blame me.

M y brother Jim will not read this book. He died before the book was in a form where I could have sent it and gotten his opinion. If he werent dead this book might have killed him. No, it wouldnt have but we would have argued about it. We were brothers, separated by two years. He was the older bother (a Freudian slip that I have made several times). The older brother in the biblical sense, too. As I am. He was not inclined to wander or wonder into the unknowable. We argued about everything. Cars, tractors, fountain pens, churches, movies, cities. God. Nothing was too grand or too trivial.

We did agree on a few things. We saw the film Gentlemens Agreement, and neither of us believed there was discrimination against Jews in America. We didnt know any Jews. As far as I know neither of us had ever seen a Jew, but they were relatives of Jesus, Moses, the apostles and our other heroes. How could Americans be prejudiced toward them? We didnt believe the Jews killed Jesus. We believed we did. We were taught that Jesus died for our sins. We believed the movie was a veiled attempt to show the discrimination against African-Americans. We both knew the resentment, the anger, the outright hatred toward black people; he more than I.

My family did not use the N-word, except as Negro which we carefully enunciated. Once when we were together I used niggardly in a sentence and it had the desired effect. Jim angrily accused me of bigotry while I innocently claimed it was a legitimate word. He knew that as well as I. He also knew why I used the word. I dont think I have used it since.

My older daughter, Deirdre, reminded me recently of an incident in a Deep South city. We were walking in a park. Either my wife, Jean, or I held Brigids hand. Brigid was a toddler. Deirdre danced and skipped ahead of us, as usual taking up the whole sidewalk. For some forgotten reason I called Deirdre Spook. When an African-American family approached us I called Spook, get off the sidewalk. The family stepped into the street. I apologized, explaining that I was yelling at my daughter. It didnt matter because they would have stepped into the street anyway. They knew the unwritten rules but I had humiliated a man in front of his family. My shame equaled his.

Decades later Jim pastored a church in east Texas that is closer to Alabama than to West Texas. One Sunday on his way to church Jim asked some black children why they werent in church. They told him they didnt have a church so he took them to his. There were more of them the next Sunday. Soon their parents began coming to the church and then wanted to be a part of the church, to become members. Jim said yes and the congregation said no. He left east Texas to pastor a church in California.

I felt a sense of vocation or call when I was very young. Jims call came much later when he was attending an agricultural college. He was going to take over our fathers farm. I still kind of question the good Lords judgement in revealing my call when I was so young. I didnt know what it meant or what to do with it. I wanted to know what I would be doing the rest of my life, forgetting that even Jesus struggled to discover his mission.

I was occasionally preaching when I was 14 and people tolerated the stupid things I said. For the most part. For a time I held services at the county jail. The prisoners would listen to anyone to pass a bit of endless hours with nothing to do. My father didnt like organized religion. His church was the Masonic Lodge but he always went with me when I spoke anywhere nearby. He was the only one who laughed out loud when at my first jail service I greeted the prisoners by saying, Im glad to see so many of you here.

That wasnt the worst thing I ever said. I was curious about other countries and assumed I was to be a missionary. While working in my fathers cotton fields after school and in the summer I dreamed of taking the Gospel to Africa, or maybe China after reading Pearl S. Buck. No, she was not the wife of Bring Them Back Alive Frank Buck who captured wild and dangerous animals for American zoos and wrote about his adventures. Pearl Buck was the first American writer and first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Toni Morrison is the second woman.

As a missionary, along with the BibIe I was also going to teach Chinese or Africans how to make ice cream and play American football. I didnt see how I could be happy in either place without ice cream and football. After my first year in college I enlisted in the Marines because my country was at war with North Korea, and later, China. Despite my prayers, God did not send me to Korea where after killing an heroic number of Koreans or Chinese I might return to those defeated countries as a missionary. When despite my prayers I didnt go to Korea, it seemed to me the Almighty had closed the door to a missionary career.