Coveting

 Religion has played a central role in western and European history since the medieval times. Sometimes as a drive for morality, sometimes as a guise for self-serving political aspirations, religion has served as a force that has shaped the world that we live in.

I just started reading The Poisonwood Bible, which follows the story of a missionary family who goes to evangelize in the Congo during the era of post colonial Africa. While the patriarch, the Evangelical Nathan Price, seeks to bring salvation to the local people, his family struggles with conflicting thoughts about the nature of their mission.

The story is narrated by his wife and four daughters, each with a different perspective on the twelve months ahead of them. I’ve only just begun the novel, but there was a line that really struck me - “and with all my soul I coveted the delicious weight of goodness he cradled in those palms.” Spoken by the pastor’s daughter, it highlights the drive for Christian morality and affirmation that brought their family here and how it has been manifested in her own life. She feels an urge to gain her father’s approval, which she sees as being readily accomplishable through adherence to Christianity.

The language here is particularly interesting, as this quote uses the word “coveted,” which has an overtly negative biblical connotation. When people covet, another word for desire, it is often associated with sin and jealousy in the Bible. To satisfy their wants, people go to extreme measures and deviate from their scruples. Coveting is technically a sin, yet the daughter’s desire for religious approval is causing her to sin, which is a contradictory predicament. With other words like “delicious” and “cradled” that enhance the emotional portrait the author is trying to paint, the reader can see the depth of her yearning and want.

This cycle of sin caused by religion, yet driven by religion, creates a conflict that will be explored throughout the rest of the book. It’s a difficult predicament that I saw a connection to in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 147, where he talks about how love similarly causes this downward spiral.

My love is as a fever longing still,

For that which longer nurseth the disease;

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

Here, Shakespeare parallels this want and love to a disease, describing an appetite (paralleling the use of delicious in The Poisonwood Bible). Somewhat in the theme of Valentine’s Day, both authors discuss desire and how it changes our behavior. While the Sonnet never had a resolution, I’m interested to see how my book plays out, and how this continues out in the other female characters as well.