How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.[Part].Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I'm afraid he's going to find it," [Molly said]. Again Edmonds sat in his chair, looking at her. "Afraid he's going to find it?" Still she looked at nothing that he could see, motionless, tiny, like a doll, an ornament. "Because God say, 'What's rendered to My earth, it belong to Me unto I resurrect it. And let him or her touch it, and beware.' And I'm afraid. I got to go. I got to be free of him." (2.3.1.15-17)
Molly uses her religious beliefs to guide her decisions. She seems genuinely convinced that Lucas is setting himself up for sinful behavior. Do you think she took literally the phrase "What's rendered to my earth"?
Quote #2
[…] even though they knew at the time it couldn't and wouldn't last, they had touched and become as God when they voluntarily and in advance forgave one another for all that each knew the other could never be. (2.3.1.34)
Isaac reflects on the one and only experience of sex with his wife. They each had a lot to forgive (the conflict over the inheritance), but in that moment of union they accepted each other fully. This parallels one of Isaac's ideas in "The Bear": that God knew man was going to mess up big time, but created and forgave him anyway.
Quote #3
Then the other said what he had not intended to say, what he had never conceived of himself saying in circumstances like these, even though everybody knew it--the dead who either will not or cannot quit the earth yet although the flesh they once lived in has been returned to it, let the preachers tell and reiterate and affirm how they left it not only without regret but with joy, mounting toward glory: "You don't wants ter go back der. She be wawkin yit." (3.1.6)
Some people might see this as just a weird folk belief, but Rider's friend's idea that some souls don't leave the earth right away can be found in many traditions. Proof that this really happens: Patrick Swayze.