The Secret Sinners’ Society

Michael Mattair

       A friend of mine once told me an outlandish story, about a church he attended while in college. He had gone to one of those Southern colleges where half of student life seems to revolve around church. You’ll see groups of well-dressed students filing out of the dorms on Sunday morning, all carrying their Bibles dutifully, the girls wearing dresses, just happy to be alive it seems like, even though where I went to school it was probably the last thing you’d want to do on a Sunday morning.

       Anyway, he told me this story, and I didn’t believe it at first, because it just didn’t seem like something that would actually happen. You’ll understand when you read it why I thought that. But then I thought about it… and thought about it some more… and I suppose perhaps it could happen at a place like that, where people are so fervent, and faith is in their blood, so to speak. I go to church myself every once in awhile, and sometimes I look around at the people there, and I start to see those people in my friend’s story, and what they did there almost seems possible even here, as crazy as it was. I thought I would write it out, as close as I could remember to how he told it.

       I had been going to this church for about a year. I went there on Sundays at first, just to try it out, and then I started meeting people, and began to do their picnics and Bible studies. The whole thing kind of drew me in: it went from everything being weird, with people all so happy and introducing themselves to you, to the point where one day all these people were your friends, and you planned your calendar around church activities. There was a crowd there that you saw all the time, with a lot of the familiar types from other churches: the girls with long hair and Jesus t-shirts, the athlete guys with big white teeth, the band member guys with their guitars and the leather necklace with the wooden cross, all of them super-happy of course, people you used to think were strange and different, but now hanging around you and calling you by name. Were you one of these people now? You weren’t sure.
       It started with a conversation I had with Kristen. Kristen was a girl who I had met when I first started going there, and who I had suspected felt the way I did about not being fully part of it all. She was a little different than the typical church girl – kind of quiet, with dark eyes that seemed to brood on you, and a grim set to her mouth.
       “There should be a group for us,” she said one evening, on a church retreat, when we were sitting alone.
       “Us?”
       “Yeah,” her eyes bored into mine, “all of us bad people. All of us with a past.”
       I wasn’t sure I knew what she meant by “people with a past.” Then she told me something that opened my eyes, and has affected the way I’ve thought about that church ever since.
       “They’re all virgins” she said, leaning forward, her eyes possessing me as her chin gestured slightly in the direction of a group. “Look at them.”
       I looked, and what I saw were people playing with each other, prancing around as innocently as if they were nine years old instead of nineteen, and guys interacting with girls as if they were all siblings, as if Eve had never offered Adam a piece of fruit.
       “Isn’t it obvious?” And her gaze fell, and as she brushed her dark hair over her shoulder her hand seemed to tremble slightly.
       I don’t know what crimes Kristen thought I had committed, or what made her sense that there were other people in her position: the position of a woman familiar with dark powers whose existence those around her had no idea of, but I let her know that anything she came up with, I’d be interested in.

       I didn’t think of it again until about three weeks later when someone came up to me after a Bible study meeting as we were walking outside – someone who I knew as having “a past,” though not for the same reasons as Kristen – and asked me in a hushed tone if I were going to be in the secret society.
       “Secret society?” I asked surprised.
       He nodded his head quickly and explained. It was a secret society for people like us – people who couldn’t identify with the super virtuous ones, and needed a place of our own to share experiences and talk things out. We wouldn’t stop doing the other events or anything, it would just be an extra place for us to get together.
       It must have been getting serious, because I heard about it from three other people the following week. When I asked Kristen about it she just smiled one of her rare, grim-happy smiles. Soon it had a name – “The Secret Sinners’ Society.” A place where you could admit your inadequacies and still be accepted. So the slogan might have run, if there had been a slogan.
       There was going to be a meeting. On a Thursday night, when nothing else was going on, we’d all meet in the church. Now, between the name and the meeting time, there was definitely an excitement, like we were in some kind of underground movement. I would overhear someone whisper in the church hallway “Are you going to the event?” to someone else, and the other person would nod and look on, with a set look on their face, like of a crooked cop or a politician when the cameras are gone. When the week arrived, somebody even put in the church bulletin “SSS Meeting – Thursday, 8:00 PM,” and you could hear a few people in the crowd outside church on Sunday saying “What’s SSS?” I had to fight to keep from laughing. Luckily, most people at the church – all the happy ones, the athletes and band members – apparently didn’t notice it, because they didn’t say anything.

       What happened when the day finally rolled around I’ll never forget.
       I remember walking up to the church a few minutes after 8:00 (I was late, as usual) and suddenly getting nervous – really nervous. It was dark, and the tall windows of the church glowed a dark yellow, ominous of what was inside. The things I had done, that I was going there to talk about, weighed on me. I had tried to call Kristen, but she didn’t answer. Every step I took as I approached the church door seemed to fall more heavily. The great wooden door at the front of the building rose above me, its brass handle waiting for me to click the heavy bolt, and I remember thinking that if I clicked that bolt and opened that door, it would be like an affirmation of all my sins, all my failures before God and Christ. I would open it up, look in, and everyone who was in there would see me: see that I was a sinner, that there was no faking it anymore – I was one of them.
       I stood in front of the door and breathed a deep sigh. I wanted to turn back, but even more than that I wanted to know what was in there, and show myself to it, whatever it was. I placed my hand on the handle, opened it, and looked in.
       The entire place was full. Even the pews on the sides were taken up. There hadn’t been more people at Sunday service. They turned and looked at me come in, and in the pale, expectant faces that filled the rows, I saw everyone I knew, not just the people I thought had a past, but everyone – all the people I had ever seen on a retreat, the leaders and the musicians, the virtuous ones and the super-happy people. Apparently the word had just spread and spread until everyone who thought they were more sinful than the rest had decided to come. Now they were all sitting there, nervous and silent, glancing around and not knowing what to do.
       Kristen was there too, not in front like I had expected, but just seated in one of the pews, wearing the same expression as everyone else – an expression of amazement at the people that were there, the place we were in, and the thing that had made us all gather there. So she was not unlike the rest of them after all.
       I let the door bang shut behind me and walked forward, and as I did so I couldn’t help but smile, because one of the most warm and joyful feelings I have ever experienced had just then suddenly leaped into my heart.
       Church there was a lot different after that.