Dehortatio

Dehortatio (de-hor-ta’-ti-o): Dissuasion.

“I believe in miracles” Sally told me as we walked home from church. I said, “Yeah, you believe you can get pregnant from swimming in a public swimming pool too. You keep telling me how it happened to your cousin Ella, but I have it on good authority that she was banging a line of boys in the ladies’ changing room. Clearly, her activities were the cause of her pregnancy—not little sperms swimming up her vagina in the pool.

Miracles were on my list for debunkery. Especially since Sally was a believer—a Christian as a matter of fact. Jesus was a regular miracle machine. He brought a dead man back to life. He made wine out of water. And the BIG ONE: he died and came back to life. He got out of his tomb and hung out with his pals for awhile before he went straight up like a helicopter to heaven where he landed and sits by his dad, God, on a throne.

For obvious reasons, I don’t believe any of this, although I’m trying. Like Pascal, if I don’t believe in all this crap and I’m wrong—ha ha, what does it matter? So, I might as well believe and hope I’m right—or something like that. So, I believe Jesus might have walked on water! I believe that Jesus’ horse could’ve always won at the racetrack. I believe Jesus could’ve caught his limit every time he went fishing. I believe that, for Jesus, the crown of thorns might’ve been a fashion statement. I believe there is an evil clown who lives in the sewer on Elm Street. The list goes on and on now that I’ve scrubbed all the skepticism from my head. I’ll pretty much believe in anything!

There’s no way you can change my mind about any of my beliefs. I am a man of faith. I believe because I believe—belief piled on belief, affirming each other as they stack up from bottom to top, to hallelujah brother!

I have never met the clown in the sewer, but I have imagined him peering out of the grate with sharpened teeth and blood stained clown suit. That’s all I need—my imagination to affirm his existence, that, and the rumors I’ve heard. Rumors + Imagination=Faith, and faith is necessary to deal with the vagaries of the human condition. From evil clowns to the earth being round.

So, after wrestling with Sally’s profession of belief in miracles, I became a Christian. I am studying to be an Episcopalian minister so I can show people the way, the truth, and the light and how to walk the path of righteousness straight to a sewer grate. Ha ha, that’s a joke. I think I’ll have another glass of wine.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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