I have recently been sorting through my vast collections of photos, letters, articles, and other digital evidence of the minutia of my life, and I came across a copy of a 2002 letter that I wrote and had long since forgotten.
My mother died in 2001 at the too-young-to-die age of 68. This was a very rocky, emotionally charged time in my family, not only because this was still a raw time in the country due to 9/11 just two months earlier, but my family was also dealing with other tragedies.
In the week immediately following Mom’s death, my sister and I had a very positive week together going through Mom’s things and tidying up her house. (I write about that here.)
But the memorial service, which others seemed to find healing, was very stressful. You see, my mother considered Christianity to be the most important thing in her life, and her greatest wish was that her two atheist children, my brother and I, would become Christians. In the service, after telling the impressively large crowd of attendees about how wonderful my mother was, the pastor leading the service spoke of this wish. He didn’t address us by name, but it still was stressful in the midst of the already heavy setting to be told that my mother considered US to be her biggest cause of concern and upset. I tried not to overreact, but it was hard not to get moody about it at the time.
Fast forward a few months to when I received a letter from Carmen Coleman, a woman with whom my mom had been close friends since long before I was born. She had been a frequent, friendly presence in my childhood, and it was a delight to hear from her.
The first part of the letter was lovely, all about how special Mom was and about how Carmen wanted to “be there” for me. It was very touching. Then the second part of the letter was all about how much Mom had wanted me to come to Christ, and that my not doing so had been Mom’s biggest disappointment. Carmen closed with the obvious conclusion that I should of course accept Jesus into my heart, if not for myself, then for my mother.
Now, since Mom’s funeral I’d done quite a lot of soul-searching and was in a much better place about how to not be offended by people trying to convert me to their religion. Besides, I was very moved by the first part of Carmen’s letter and very much liked the thought of having her in my life. Not only had I always genuinely liked her, but she could help fill up some of that newly emptied Mom-shaped space in my heart.
I wrote Carmen a nice reply, telling her how much her letter meant to me, how grateful I was for her, and that I would dearly love to connect more with her. I then told her that I would never “come to Christ” and I told her why. I put a lot of effort into keeping things very friendly and warm, and I told her I looked forward to hearing from her.
I was not upset by Carmen’s letter. I knew that “bringing people to Christ” is enormously important to people in her church. One way to look at this is, since their sincere belief is that they are saving you from eternal damnation, it is really a loving and wonderful thing they are doing… at least as far as they’re concerned, right?
And here’s what I found deeply disappointing: Carmen never even bothered to reply to my letter. At all. Ever. I never heard from her again. I can just see her reading my reply, realizing she could never convert me, then just shutting me out of her heart and mind.
So, apparently Carmen reaching out to me when my mother died had nothing to do with connecting with or comforting me. Despite the warmth and loveliness of her letter, apparently my only value to Carmen was as a religious convert, as a potential jewel in her crown.
What’s this jewel in the crown stuff?
When I was a kid in the Conservative Baptist Church, we were taught that while we were living this earthly life, it was our duty to convert people to Christianity. In fact, every person we convert to Christianity was like gaining extra points and that you will be rewarded when you get to Heaven. The way we were taught this in Sunday School was that we all get crowns when we get to Heaven, and each person you converted while you were on earth will earn you an extra jewel in your crown. Now, I assume that was supposed to be figurative, but when I was a kid, that is exactly as it was presented.
At the time I bought wholly into it, but now when I think of it, I am reminded of video games. Think of Mario, running across the world to do a final battle at the end, jumping on every mushroom he encounters to collect extra points, and the more points he collects, the better off he will be in his final battle.
I was recently discussing with someone my experience with Carmen never replying to my letter, and I got to wondering about this jewel-in-the-crown concept. To what extent is this really a thing? How widely does it span across the Christian denominations? Is it just a Conservative Baptist thing? Is there any Biblical basis for it? And are the actual jewels and crown from an analogous concept used for the indoctrination of children and not meant to be taken literally?
I did some internet carousing and also talked with a few people about this. I learned that some Christians had never heard the phrase, many never interpreted it as anything more than allegory, some very much believe that they are awarded with extra glory in heaven (jewels in their crowns) depending on the number of people they convert, and then there are those who spread the word not for any reward but because this is simply part of what their religion tells them they must do.
For those looking for Biblical references: While the crown is mentioned in several verses across the Bible, 2 Corinthians 5:10 seems to most strongly support the points-for-play concept: that a person’s greatest glory lies in how they behaved while on earth, which includes winning souls to Christianity. In researching more about biblical references to crowns I came across this page that discusses five separate heavenly crowns.
So, back to the beginning of this post: The exchange of letters between Carmen and myself was over 20 years ago. I am no longer upset by it at all, but it forms an important square in the big patchwork quilt of my feelings about religion.