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Anonymous Tip: Lynn and Gwen Start a Bible Study

Anonymous Tip: Lynn and Gwen Start a Bible Study

Last updated on: February 12, 2016 at 11:22 am by Libby Anne

Anonymous Tip: Lynn and Gwen Start a Bible Study 2016-02-12T11:22:21-04:00 Libby Anne

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A Review Series of Anonymous Tip, by Michael Farris

Pp. 208-213

I’m going to skim over a few pages here first, because I really don’t want to bore you. We learn that Gordon has “gotten desperate for cash again” and has taken “the three to eleven shift at a 7-11 five blocks from his home.” Farris tells us that Gordon buys “two large bottles of beer” after his shift each day and drinks both when he gets home. On this particular day, he stepped outside the door to get the newspaper—I didn’t realize he had a subscription given his relative poverty—and began reading. Farris tells us he “thoroughly devoured the newspaper every day,” that he was “a good student in high school,” and that he “could discuss current events of Spokane or the nation with the best—when he was sober.”

I’m not completely sure what we’re supposed to think of Gordon. Farris tells us that he was always bright and didn’t have to work too hard to do well in school. He’s clearly also well-read, and he reads the newspaper regularly even with a hangover (which Farris tells us he has). Here is Gwen’s (earlier) description of why they separated and divorced:

“He refused to get a real job and was always chasing some new idea that would supposedly produce big money overnight. But they were always pipe dreams. I wanted him to get a real job and he just wouldn’t. We argued over it a lot. And finally, he moved out and sued me for divorce. A no fault divorce, obviously. Well, he’s still chasing dreams, doesn’t have a job, and now he’s begun to drink heavily. He don’ts pay his child support very often. He’s just a mess.”

Debi Pearl would probably say Gordon was a Mr. Visionary. That aside, to me, Gordon doesn’t sound unredeemable. It sounds like he drinks because he lost his family, and he lost his family because he valued pipe dreams over getting a steady job. But if he’s capable of taking a steady job at the 7-11, he ought to be capable of taking a steady job more in keeping with his abilities as well. Right? I point this out because Farris is obviously pushing Peter and Gwen together—in spite of the fact that Gwen already said she’s not ready to date again—and doing that while not portraying Gordon as a complete loser makes things less than simple.

As Gordon read the newspaper his eye caught on a section covering newly filed court cases and he noticed one of the headlines: “Child Abuse Search Challenged in Civil Rights Case.” Gordon picked up the phone and called the clerk’s office to ask about this case. The clerk couldn’t tell him much, and simply explained that he could come to the office and get a copy of the case, and that he should get in touch with the lawyers involved to learn about when hearings are taking place. When Gordon said he’d rather not contact the lawyers, the clerk, frustrated, suggested he get a lawyer himself, and told him that if he came to the office every two weeks to look at the hearing schedule he shouldn’t miss any hearings.

Farris never tells us why Gordon calls the clerk or what he’s thinking, which is frustrating. We don’t know whether he cares about the case because it involves Gwen or Casey and he cares about them, or whether he’s concerned it will come out that he placed the anonymous tip to begin with. We do know that he doesn’t want to call Peter to ask about it, but we don’t know why—and their previous contact wasn’t that bad.

The next section is an explanation of how Gail Willet ends up involved in this new case. We’re introduced to Matt Bartholomew, and I’ll just be upfront and say that I have no idea what his office is or what he does. Farris tells us that he “had been the Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney” for five years, and then had had a falling out with his boss, but was able to find a position with “the Washington Attorney General’s office” as “Chief Deputy to run the Spokane Office.” But later Farris tells us that the Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney, Charles Sexton, was willing to do him a favor because “it would be better to have the former Chief Deputy Prosecutor and current Deputy Attorney General for Eastern Washington as a friend than as an opposing candidate.” My takeaway is that Matt is with the Attorney General’s office and is an important person in charge of defending the state when lawsuits are filed against state officers.

The important bit is that Matt is tasked with defending the CPS office in this lawsuit, and he doesn’t feel competent because he doesn’t know much about child abuse law. Finally, someone willing to admit that he’s not competent in every area of law! (*cough* Peter *cough*) So Matt calls Gail and asks her to do it. Gail is annoyed that Blackburn hasn’t told her about this case—“I’m surprised these people didn’t tell me. I was researching an appeal for them and was supposed to talk with them latter today”—but she’s flattered by the idea of being given the title Special Assistant Attorney General, and she agrees to Matt’s proposal that she take the case for them (they’ll clear it with Charles Sexton, her boss, and cover part of her salary).

And now that we’re done with that we can move on.

Gwen was looking forward to her visit from Lynn Roberts on Wednesday morning. She found Lynn to be very personable when they spent twenty minutes in the counseling room after rate invitation on Sunday morning. Lynn had made good on her promise to call Gwen every day since Sunday. And Gwen and made good on her commitment to read three chapters from the Gospel of John.

Daily phone conversations sounds a bit excessive, but then this was in the days before the internet and Lynn clearly doesn’t want to lose a new convert. Only reading three chapters of John seems odd, as the entire book of John is not that long and you’d think a new convert would be eager to read the Bible, but okay.

We learn that Lynn has finished homeschooling for the year—it’s the beginning of the summer—and that she’s left her children home for the morning, tasking her oldest son with watching his three younger siblings. Farris feels the need to assure us that, at fifteen, he was old enough enough to watch the younger ones. Lynn and Gwen sat at a table in the backyard while Casey played on the swing-set. I’m suddenly curious why Lynn didn’t bring her youngest to play with Casey. Maybe Farris didn’t think of that.

At first they exchanged small talk and life histories. Lynn later gave Gwen a Bible study book that Valley Fourth used in follow-up for all new believers. Gwen happily agreed to meet with Lynn once a week for eight sessions over the summer.

And this is hugely important. If evangelicalism really were all about the Bible and the Bible alone, churches like Valley Fourth wouldn’t need to make sure all of their new converts go through their Bible study book. But it’s not. If you let someone read the Bible and the Bible and alone and ask them to lay out Christian theology and doctrine, you’re going to have a problem. The book is at times confusing and often rambling and at many points directly contradictory. This is why we’ve seen people argue over what Christianity means for nearly 2000 years, why Christian doctrine and beliefs have changed over time, and why even today there are thousands and thousands of different sects of Christianity. I mean for goodness sake, evangelicals’ theory of atonement differs from theories of atonement held by the Christian church for well over a thousand years.

When I was a girl I was encouraged to read the Bible for itself, but I also attended a Bible club called AWANA that laid out doctrine and cherry picked verses, which we then memorized, to support it. Unlike Catholicism, evangelicalism does not come with a catechism. Programs like AWANA—and Bible studies like Lynn’s—take the place of that catechism. One would think, based on the way evangelicals talk about the Bible, Lynn could simply tell Gwen to read the Bible and let the Holy Spirit guide her in understanding it. But she doesn’t, because of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t just want Gwen to be Christian, or a Christ follower, she wants Gwen to be her specific brand of Christian, and a follower of Christ as she views him. She wants to be able to correct Gwen if she starts going off the proper evangelical theological track. And that’s important enough to point out loud and clear.

Eventually, their talk came around to the subject of Peter Barron. Lynn brought him up first.

Oh good, it’s relieving to know that Lynn, and not Gwen, brought him up first.

Or something?

Anyway, Lynn tells Gwen that Peter and her husband, Aaron, are best friends and that they meet for a weekly Bible study too. Convenient! Gwen asks why Peter still has to do Bible study when he’s been a Christian for a long time, and Gwen tells him that “we never outgrow our need for studying God’s Word, no matter how long we have been Christians.”

“My . . . there’s a lot to think about,” Gwen said, a bit surprised.

Quick, someone tell her she’s also going to have to give up taking Casey trick-or-treating, like, ever. And also that there’s a no-cleavage dress code. And that wives are expected to obey their husbands and working moms are frowned on. And that she’s very likely going to be pressured to homeschool. You know how TV adds for medicines always finish with huge lists of side effects? Conversion pitches need lists like this too.

“No matter how many times I read or study a particular passage in the Bible, when I read it again, there is usually something new that God shows me to apply to the issues I am facing at that time,” Lynn said.

Hey, you know what’s cool? The same thing is true about tarot cards.

And then there’s this:

“What passage in the Bible talks about marrying divorced women?” Gwen asked suddenly.

“Boy, that’s a question out of the blue. Why do you ask that?”

“Well, the first time Peter and I met, he told me that I didn’t have to worry about him because he was a Christian, and he believed he wasn’t supposed to marry a divorced woman,” Gwen replied.

“That is a very strange thing for him to say. Why did he bring that up?” Lynn asked.

“It’s a long story. And it’s not totally strange. I had another lawyer before Peter. He made an extremely crude pass at me, and I was leaning on Peter’s car crying about that—not to mention I had just lost Casey a half-hour earlier—when I first met Peter. That whole story came out in the course of our conversation, and I think Peter wanted to reassure me that he was genuinely different from that first jerky attorney.”

“All right. That makes a bit more sense,” Lynn said.

No, no it doesn’t. You want to know how Peter could have assured Gwen that he was different? He could have assisted her in reporting her previous lawyer’s actions to the bar right then and there—something he still hasn’t done—and assured her that he takes his profession’s ethical codes very seriously. Except that he doesn’t. Because if he did, he wouldn’t have blackmailed her previous lawyer into violating clearly established rules by turning over her records without any statement from her that he should do so, and he wouldn’t have had dinner at her house or invited her to church with him when she’s his client.

I mean seriously.

Anyway, Lynn tells Gwen that she’s going to have to do some study on what the Bible says about divorce—because, she says, it says a lot on the topic—and get back to her on that. She promises to give her “a full answer” the following week. I guess this really is pre-internet. Today all you’d have to do is pull up a web browser and type “everything the Bible says about divorce.” But then I guess you’d have to make sure that any website synthesizing these verses was doing so from your sect’s perspective, because this is one area where the Bible is contradictory and where there is more than one interpretation.

But wait! Gwen has more to say:

“I assure you that Peter has been a perfect gentleman the whole time. But . . . ” She changed her mind and didn’t complete her sentence.

“But what?” Lynn asked. “You can feel free to talk with me. I won’t tell Peter anything.”

“Well, it’s just that Peter has said and done some things that normally I would interpret as suggesting that he was interested in me as a woman, and not just as a client,” Gwen answered. “I really can’t give you specifics. It’s just something I sense.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Well, it confuses me. I think Peter is absolutely wonderful. The way he got Casey back won me as a lifetime client. There are many other things I like about him as well. And the other night, he was here with my parents for a dinner celebrating our victory in court when Casey had a nightmare. He swept Casey up in his arms and rocked her to sleep in a way that really touched me. He’s a really great guy. But I guess he feels he can’t be interested in me because I’m divorced. I’m really confused.”

So, I’m a big Jane the Virgin fan, and, SPOILER ALERT!

In last week’s episode, Jane is in graduate school and got the idea that her advisor might possibly be interested in her, and she was very definitely interested in him. When she got her signals crossed and tried to kiss him—awkward—he immediately told her that as her adviser, anything of the sort was inappropriate and could get him in a lot of trouble, period. Jane found it difficult to relate to him as her advisor after that, because she was so embarrassed, so she decided to switch to a different advisor. And you know what? As soon as she did, her no-longer-advisor asked her out. That is how it’s done, ladies and gentlemen.

END SPOILER.

Okay, so my point is this: Peter needs to either (a) stop sending mixed messages, STAT, and that means no more going to Gwen’s house or going to church with her, or (b) pass her case off to another (potentially more qualified) lawyer and ask her out already. Of course, (b) would require Peter to change some of his religious doctrine. But now that I think about it, there’s also (c) pass her case off to another (potentially more qualified) lawyer and get out of her life, since he’s already said he can’t marry her and he’s now only toying with her, and it’s really too late for him to be able to be her lawyer in an ethical way. Because frankly, the chance for (a) has passed. Now that Gwen’s converted, she’s going to be at his church, and they already have this history of him sending her these messages.

Peter, for god’s sake, what are you doing?!

Oh, and also this:

“And the other night, he was here with my parents for a dinner celebrating our victory in court when Casey had a nightmare. He swept Casey up in his arms and rocked her to sleep in a way that really touched me.”

I’m sorry, but I found that moment creepy and way overstepping boundaries, and I wasn’t the only one to feel that way. It’s not like Peter was the only one in the house, and he wasn’t any closer to Casey than the other three adults in the house. I would be creeped out if I were having desert with my parents and my lawyer, and my lawyer ran to comfort my crying child in my kid’s bedroom. Like, if the kid takes a tumble and there’s no one else in the room at that moment? Sure. But that’s not at all what we’re talking about, and it suggests that Farris’s creep-meter is completely broken (as, apparently, is Gwen’s).

Anyway, Lynn tells Gwen that God forgives everything and that “divorced people are not second-class Christians.” She says she’ll have a full answer on the divorce issue the following week and Gwen says “I’m looking forward to learning, and you are so nice to teach me.” Does anyone actually talk like that?

“I’ll still call every day for a couple of minutes of that’s OK.”

“Sure. I look forward to your calls.”

Gwen needs more friends. I mean honestly, have we ever met a single one of Gwen’s friends, or even heard them mentioned? No. It’s just Gwen and Casey and her parents and her ex. No wonder Gwen looks forward to Lynn’s calls.

Farris tells us that Lynn prays for Gwen and Casey as she leaves, and also that she “prayed silently that she would figure out how to answer this difficult question about Peter and divorce before next Wednesday.” Yeah, good luck with that.

And there you have it. Bible study day 1.

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