Feature: Abner Comes Home
Later, when Abner finally came home from prison, his father greeted him with a warm welcome and a piece of paper. “What’s this?” Abner asked.
Abner’s father had covered more than $40,000 in his son’s legal fees and debts while he was away. “Your bill,” he told Abner. “You’ll pay this back.”
After a mild Amish joke, one about Abner working on roofs for a living and a Bible verse about the misery of life on a roof, the laughter subsides, and it’s time for us to leave his father’s house. Before we go, they approach for a quick, wordless embrace.
The two men make easy company. Neither owes the other. Abner did pay back his debts, which took years, yes, but after all the shame and the sorrow, such firm forgiveness feels warm and soft, like sunlight on his face. His father could have cast him aside altogether. A drinker. A liar. A cocaine dealer.
Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish theologian and philosopher, called Christian faith “the absolute paradox.” Abraham, he said, was spared sacrificing his son Isaac “by virtue of the absurd.”
And now, embracing, the father and son embody all the lovely backwardness of the Amish paradox: Abner’s father holds him closer than many fathers with blameless sons.
