Godsent

by Richard Burton

  Despite the crowds of excited shoppers, the aura of barely repressed hysteria he sensed in the air, which rose sharply upward every time a disembodied voice announced an unadvertised special over the mall PA system, Ethan felt himself to be in a place as bleak and desolate as the empty, red rock desert of his dreams of long ago, where he’d been taunted and tempted by the devil himself in various guises, and where his brother had come to lead him back to the path he’d lost.

  Godcast #11, from The2ndSon.com.

  Hi, everybody. Thanks for listening. I’m sorry for the rumbling sound of the engines you probably hear in the background. I’m recording this at twenty thousand feet, on the flight from Minnesota to New York City, where I’ll be appearing next week at Yankee Stadium, while the Yankees are on the road.

  Yankee Stadium. Wow, that’s the promised land to a baseball fan like me. I’m from Kansas, and I’ve always been a Royals fan, but the Yankees are something special. I mean, you have to respect their incredible record of endurance and excellence, from Ruth to Gehrig to Mantle to Jeter, all the way down to today. It’s a tradition. No matter how much the game has changed, and the players, the Yankees have made a point of holding on to their past even as they advance into the future. They don’t just reinvent themselves every season like a lot of teams do. Sure, they spend money and shop guys around like other teams, but somehow, despite that, they’ve managed to maintain their identity. The guys who play for the Yankees are not just professionals out there doing a job. You can see in their eyes that they’re proud to be where they are, proud to be part of that tradition. It means something to them to wear those famous pinstripes.

  I think that’s what I love most about baseball. Rules change, players come and go, teams rise and fall, but there’s always that sense of continuity. Of history. The belief that the past matters, that it’s something worth preserving, something worth honoring not just by putting it into a museum or hall of fame but by striving to keep it alive in our hearts, our actions.

  It’s the same with God.

  God has been with us since before we were born. He’s been with humans since before there were humans. God was there before Darwin. But for too many people today, God is some kind of quaint historical artifact or interesting primitive tradition. Too many people put God into a museum. Or into a church that might as well be a museum. They don’t keep Him alive in their hearts or their actions. Either He’s not there at all, or He’s there in some kind of petrified form—you know, as a whole list of thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots, a set of blinders to keep people on the straight and narrow.

  But you know what? God’s path isn’t straight or narrow. It’s as wide as the whole world, and it’s full of twists and turns. It’s like a maze, packed with wonderful surprises, dead ends, wrong turns. You can get lost in it. But then again, you can’t get lost in it. Because there’s no right way through. The path doesn’t lead to God; the path is God.

  And yet, people manage to lose their way. They stray from God. We’ve all done it. Some of us manage to find our way back. Some don’t. When I lost my way, a long time ago, my brother came to me and walked with me. He put me back on the right track. That’s what I’m here to do for you, if I can.

  God is alive. And what lives changes, evolves. “But wait,” I hear some of you saying, “isn’t God perfect? How can a perfect being change or evolve? If God can become more perfect, then He must not have been perfect to begin with.”

  You know what? God isn’t perfect. He’s admitted it. He admitted it when He flooded the world in the time of Noah. He admitted it when He sent His first son, my brother, Jesus. And He’s admitted it again by sending me. No, God isn’t perfect. God has made mistakes. But God wants to fix those mistakes. He wants to improve His creation. And because we’re part of that creation, the most important part, He wants to improve us as well. He wants us to improve ourselves. Of all His creations, only human beings can improve themselves. We can become more perfect by drawing closer to God, who is more perfect than we are. And by drawing closer to God, we help Him grow more perfect too, because He made us. He made us, and we’re still joined to Him by the spark of divinity He placed within us. Our souls. We’re in this together, Creator and Created.

  That’s why it hurts God when we move away from Him. And when we draw away from God, He draws away from us. That’s why this disposable society of ours is so dangerous. What do I mean by that? Simple. If our marriage hits some difficult times, we dispose of it, don’t we? We get a divorce and move on. If our children become challenging to raise, too many of us blame someone else or put the burden of raising them on others. And that goes double with our parents and grandparents, when they become too old and too difficult to care for. We ship them out to a nursing home. Or to a eutube facility. When it becomes too inconvenient to live our lives the way we know in our hearts that God intends us to, we cut corners. We rationalize.

  That way lies disaster. We must strongly resist these kinds of temptations and remember that the easy way is not necessarily God’s way. Each of us has our own cross to bear. What counts in a time of need is our willingness and ability to shoulder those crosses when called upon to do so. That time is now. Pick up your cross uncomplainingly. Help your neighbors when they stumble under the weight of their own crosses, if you can. Pick them up and follow me back to God.

  Or you may find that my father also knows how to dispose of the difficult and the inconvenient.

  At last, after weeks of persistence, Rita Rodriguez had succeeded. She had landed an exclusive interview with Maggie Richardson. Maggie had held a few press conferences, but this would be her first one-on-one interview. Rita suspected that it had more to do with the apology Ethan had recently posted on The2ndSon.com than it did with her persistence, but whatever the cause, it was a major scoop, and Rita’s bosses had hinted that there would be a hefty bonus in her paycheck this month. There was even talk of giving Rita her own cable show. Yet as she drove with her cameraman, Hobie, to Christ the Redeemer, the Catholic church in Olathe where Maggie had insisted the interview take place, Rita found herself almost wishing that Maggie had turned her down.

  The truth was, she had too much sympathy for the girl. And that was always a bad thing for a journalist. Once you lost your objectivity, you stopped being a reporter and started being something else—just another schmuck with an ax to grind. But the Richardson girl was so obviously suffering that Rita’s heart went out to her, woman to woman, and there was nothing she could do about it. What made things even worse was that, sympathy aside, she also felt very strongly that Maggie was dead wrong. She didn’t think Ethan was a fraud at all. In fact, she secretly believed in him. So there went even more of her precious objectivity. At the rate she was going, she thought glumly, she was going to run out altogether before too much longer. And then what? Then where would she be?

  “You know what, Hobe?”

  “What, boss?”

  “Sometimes this job really sucks.”

  He glanced at her as he drove, but didn’t reply.

  After a moment, she queried, “Hobe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What do you think about all this? Just between us.”

  “You mean about Ethan and all?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hobie shrugged. “Shit, I don’t know. He seems like a decent kid. I think he’s sincere, for whatever that’s worth. But is he God’s second Son?” He shrugged again. “Fuck if I know. I’m just a camera jockey. But I’ll tell you one thing, boss. It’s a hell of a story. The story of a lifetime. And I’m proud to be on it with you.” He blushed as he said this.

  “Thanks, Hobe,” she said. “That’s sweet.”

  “What about you?” he asked in turn. “What do you think?”

  “Stay tuned,” she told him with a wink.

  When they arrived at Christ the Redeemer, they were met by Father Edward Steerpike, the priest who was acting as a kind of combination counselor/manager for Maggie. He was a silent presence in
the background of her press conferences, a look of prayerful piety on his horsey face as he listened to her speak.

  Now, as Father Steerpike advanced toward her with a big hand outstretched and baring the biggest and whitest teeth she’d ever seen, which in her line of work was saying something, Rita almost expected him to neigh or whinny. Instead, what came out of his mouth was “Ms. Rodriguez. So good of you to come.”

  Rita took his hand. She’d shaken clammier mitts in her day, at least she was pretty sure she must have, even if she couldn’t quite call to mind where. “Call me Rita, Father. This is my cameraman, Hobie.”

  “Good to meet you, Hobie.” He nodded.

  “You too, Father.”

  “Has Ms. Richardson arrived yet?”

  “She’s waiting in the rectory,” said Father Steerpike. “I wanted to speak with you privately first about the ground rules of the interview.”

  “Ground rules?” she echoed skeptically. “Nobody mentioned any ground rules.”

  “Yes, well, I have a certain responsibility to Maggie,” he told her in a tone of voice that somehow managed to be both apologetic and arrogant. “This girl was brutally deceived by the man she loved. Used by him and then callously cast aside. I’m not going to let that happen to her again. Her welfare is more important to me than refuting the blasphemous allegations of a confused and quite possibly psychotic young man.”

  “I’m a journalist, Father.”

  “Hence my concern.” He turned that megawatt smile on her again. “I don’t mean to disparage your professionalism, Rita, but you must admit that you journalists don’t exactly have an unblemished record when it comes to playing fair.”

  “My record is unblemished,” she answered coolly. “If you saw my interview with Ethan, you know I’m tough but fair. I won’t treat Maggie any differently. If that’s not good enough for you, Father, Hobie and I will clear out right now.”

  He looked stricken. “No, no. I didn’t mean . . .” He stopped and sighed heavily. “Forgive me, Rita. You’re right, of course. Only, I won’t have her badgered or browbeaten. She’s in a very fragile state emotionally. This interview can be an important step forward for Maggie. That’s why I agreed to it. But it could also set her back. I’m depending on you to help her through it, Rita.”

  “In other words, you want me to treat her with kid gloves.”

  Father Steerpike winced. “I’ll settle for simple human compassion.”

  “Father, this young woman put herself out there as a public figure. With, I might add, the support and backing of your church. She’s made some controversial allegations based on her personal relationship with Ethan Brown. I’m not going to shy away from that. I didn’t come here to do a puff piece. That’s not my job, and it’s not what my viewers expect and deserve. But I’m not planning on a hatchet job, either. Of course I have compassion for Maggie and all she’s been through. But all I can promise you about the interview is that I’ll conduct it in a professional manner. If that’s not satisfactory, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding someone else to do it.”

  “She asked for you personally,” Father Steerpike admitted somewhat grudgingly. “She doesn’t want anybody else.”

  “Then I suggest we don’t keep her waiting any longer.”

  Father Steerpike’s eyes hardened, and Rita knew that she’d just made an enemy. One more to add to the list, she thought wryly as he turned with a brusque “Follow me” and led her and Hobie (who gave her a grin and a thumbs-up once Father Steerpike’s back was turned) down a hallway and into the church rectory.

  There, before a simple wooden crucifix that hung from one white wall, Maggie Richardson was kneeling upon a cushion, her head bowed in prayer. She was wearing a simple and severe ankle-length black dress that bore a suspicious resemblance to the habit of a nun. Rita had a sense that the whole scene had been staged for her benefit, and she felt a twinge of annoyance even as her heart went out again to Maggie. She couldn’t help thinking that, for all his protestations to the contrary, Father Steerpike, or at any rate the church he represented, had other priorities than Maggie’s welfare. The girl had become a pawn in a bigger game than she had ever intended to play.

  As Maggie stood, Rita was shocked to see how thin the young woman had become in the last month or so, as though wasted by some illness that was paring her down from within. There were dark circles around her eyes, and her skin had grown sickly pale, almost translucent. But the eyes themselves were smoldering with a feverish intensity that Rita found both mesmerizing and disturbing. How long would it be, she wondered, before that flame burned itself out? And what would be left behind in the ashes?

  None of this was visible in her face or her voice as she responded to Father Steerpike’s introduction and shook the girl’s hand, which gripped her own with a palpable heat. “Thanks for agreeing to the interview, Ms. Richardson.”

  “Please, call me Maggie,” said the girl.

  “And you must call me Rita,” she replied. “I hope you’re not too nervous.”

  “Oh, no,” Maggie said with placid assurance. “I know I’m doing God’s work.”

  “I’m sure that must be very comforting,” Rita said. “Shall we get started?”

  It was decided to hold the interview there in the rectory. The crucifix on the bare wall made a starkly effective backdrop. With Hobie’s help, Father Steerpike dragged over a plush leather armchair for Rita, while Maggie professed herself satisfied with a simple, straight-backed chair. Hobie set up his camera array with practiced ease: a fist-sized central camera on a tripod plus three coin-sized satellites—attached to a wall, a lamp, and a bookcase, respectively—that he could control independently from the main cam in order to provide multiple angles for editing purposes. Then he pulled out a makeup kit and touched up Rita’s face with equal expertise; before moving to camera work, he had been a special-effects man on some low-budget horror flicks, and his skills continued to come in handy—though when he attempted to put them at Maggie’s disposal, she politely but firmly declined.

  “Suit yourself,” said Hobie. He retreated behind the main camera and hooked himself into the array. “We’re rolling,” he told Rita after a moment.

  Rita flashed her best professional smile and began. “Since claiming responsibility for healing every patient at Olathe Medical, Ethan Brown has gone on to become one of the most famous and controversial figures on the world stage. Advertising himself as the second Son of God, he’s acquired legions of fervent believers and detractors, stirring up fears and passions that in some cases have resulted in outbreaks of violence, both in the United States and abroad.

  “As Ethan has toured the country, speaking to crowds that number in the hundreds of thousands and urging listeners to turn back to God before it’s too late, criticism has also swelled, with many questioning not only his claims to divinity but his professed desire to, as he put it in one of his popular godcasts, ‘give warning and offer help.’ Of all his critics, none has spoken out with greater authority and to greater effect than the young woman who has agreed to talk with me today, Maggie Richardson.

  “Maggie, hello, and welcome.”

  Maggie smiled and nodded but said nothing.

  “First of all, Maggie, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, Rita.”

  “In his recent apology to you, posted on his web site, Ethan expressed some concern about your physical and mental well-being.”

  “He wasn’t too concerned about either one until I started my own web site, Rita. It’s all an act. The only person Ethan Brown really cares about is himself.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Nobody knows him like I do, Rita. I loved him. I gave him my heart. We were as close as a man and woman can be. And then he cast me aside without any reason or explanation. But I know why. It was to take advantage of a real miracle.”

  “You mean the Miracle at Olathe Medical Center?”

  “Ethan claimed responsibility for it, used it to prove
his claim that he’s the second Son of God, the Son of man. But he’s not God’s son. He’s a phony. A fraud.”

  “How do you respond to those who say that you’re just out for revenge against the man who broke your heart?”

  “He did break my heart,” Maggie acknowledged with a tight smile. “But that’s not why I’m doing this. In a way, he did me a favor. He showed me the kind of person he really is. And helped me find my way back to God. Which is kind of ironic, if you think about it. No, I’m not doing this for revenge, Rita.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I can’t sit by and watch him do to others what he did to me. I won’t be a silent witness to the hypocrisy and the lies. I have to speak out. What he’s doing is wrong, Rita. It’s dangerous, and it’s evil.”

  Rita raised an eyebrow. “Evil, Maggie? Isn’t that a little extreme?”

  Maggie gave that smile again. “Is it? Ethan calls himself the Son of man. He’s always ready with a Bible quote to answer any criticism, as if being able to quote from the Bible is proof of anything. Even the devil can quote from the Bible, Rita. But there’s one passage that Ethan never quotes. I find that interesting. It’s from the Book of Psalms. It says, ‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the Son of man, in whom there is no help.’ It’s as though God knew that a false prophet like Ethan would arise, and He tried to warn us against listening to him. That’s all I’m trying to do. Warn people about Ethan before it’s too late.”

  Rita glanced at Father Steerpike. The man was watching from behind Hobie with a smile of infinite satisfaction on his face. Rita had to admit, the girl was good. Maggie had been well coached, and she clearly believed what she was saying. That kind of conviction had the power to sway people.