“But, it is not the failing that matters – Jesus knew that we all would fail at one time or another – it is the trying and the doing that matters. So long as I keep using Christ as my template, and the likes of David and Jonah as my examples, I know that I can overcome the failings of my own humanity. I know that I can let the light of God in and absolve me of my sins and afflictions that not only plague me from my past, but also threaten to destroy me every day.
“So I say to you now: Don’t look to me Alice as your example, because I am just like you, and I fail everyday also; look to Christ as your template because he is the only example that we have of God-in-the-flesh – anything else is just a myth, a fantasy, a fairytale; here in the Bible we have the truth, the way, and the light. I have faith in the love that God provides to help guide me, and I look to the examples in the Bible as consolation for my own humanity – that if flawed individuals like David and Jonah can overcome their doubts and put their faith in God, then so can I.
“Amen.”
Alice walked up to my mum and I with her fingers awkwardly folding the sermon up and shoving it into one of her pockets. She had been holding it between her thumbs right up until the end of the service when everyone stood up and started mingling. “Hi David, so glad you could make it. Is this your mum?”
Mum reached out her hand. “Hi.”
Alice took it gently. “So good to see you here.”
“It’s good to be here” Mum replied.
“And nice of you to drag your son along.” Alice raised her eyebrows with a smile.
“Oh, actually it was David that dragged me along.”
“Kicking and screaming huh?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say kicking…”
“Actually, David has been a great help to us. You should be very proud.”
Mum smiled awkwardly. “Thank you.”
“He’s done so much!”
I rolled my eyes.
Christie touched me on the arm. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
We stepped aside as Alice overemphasised what little I actually had done to Mum’s receptive ear.
“David, have you thought about coming back to Charge Up to help us out?”
“Oh, I don’t think I could.”
“Look, Lucas has decided not to help out anymore. I don’t know if you know the reasons for that or not, but those reasons are his own and I have no desire to make an issue of it. My main concern is for the children who attend, and Alice and I would really love to have a male role model available for these kids and I really think you proved yourself to be that when you were here with them.”
“I’m not sure Christie. I don’t think I’m the role model that you imagine me to be.”
“Alice has absolute faith in you, and her faith is more than good enough for me.”
I looked over at Alice chatting the ear off my mum. Mum actually looked pleased to have someone talking so enthusiastically to her. I couldn’t help but smile.
“Regardless of how you feel about yourself, David, I also have faith in your abilities. Alice said something to me the other day that rang so true about us Salvationists: It’s our life experiences that make us what we are, and it’s our life experiences that make us capable of helping in the most humane way possible.” She smiled. “And besides, it’s amazing how little you have to do in order to provide these wonderful young people with a positive role model.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to jump back into that kind of responsibility.”
“It’s really nothing more than an everyday responsibility, David. Kids just want to have fun.” She placed her hand on her chest and laughed. “I just wanna have fun! And that’s all that we aim for.”
It sounded enticing, and she seemed so genuine about her concern for the kids. And in all honesty, I actually missed the physical fun that I had experienced at Charge Up. “Can I think about it?”
She smiled with a sense of empathy that I appreciated. “Absolutely no pressure David. Who knows, maybe you could jump into a Polytech course in between. Lucas did mention that you were interested in Art History or something.”
I rolled my eyes. “My flatmate seems to think so too.”
“Well, regardless of what you choose, David, I think you’ll find your calling when God is ready to call you into it.”
I didn’t doubt that she was right. But I think that God had already called me, and I think she knew it.
* * *
We had been kneeling for some time, quietly, each to their own thoughts; Mum beside me, eyes closed and head bowed in prayer. The congregation had left and Alice had closed the doors to the main room quietly behind us as mum and I stayed behind to pray.
My hands were clasped under my chin, but I didn’t really feel anything while we knelt there. It’s not that I didn’t want to or anything, just that at that point I was still thinking about a lot of things and wondering how much I believed in God, whether all the Christians I had ever known had honestly believed in God. They liked talking it up, going to church and putting on the good act, yet at the drop of a hat, they were willing to backstab and beat the crap out of someone…
I had somehow become one of them: The faithless under a banner of faith. Wave the banner, do all you can to look good in the eyes of your peers, but the rest of the world can go to hell. I had never wanted that. I had never wanted that of myself, yet I had slipped out of the hands of love and fallen into despair that had blinded me. Satan must have been rubbing his hands in glee as he looked upon me.
I stared at the brown carpet on the floor.
I didn’t even believe in Satan. At least not as an entity. It seemed like such a ridiculous notion to me. At least with Jesus there was evidential documents of his existence, and the fact that he was God personified as a human being meant that Satan as a counterpart was inconsequential. Even if Jesus had human limitations, and Satan had all the powers of an angel (if not more), Jesus had all of the Holy Spirit in him, complete and unbeatable. Satan is no counterpart to God, there is no duality; there is only the evil that we subject ourselves to because of our failure to attain love. And love is God. And God is supreme.
I waited for mum to raise her head and wipe the tears from her eyes and cheeks. She rested her head on her arms. She seemed so tired.
“Do you believe in God Mum?”
Didn’t answer for a while. Probably wondering what the hell I was asking such a stupid question for. And then she raised her head and looked up at the same cross.
“I have faith that God will absolve me of my sins.”
This had never felt like an honest answer to me, even when I heard it straight from the mouths of preachers. It was as if they were trying to pull one over my eyes, make me feel like I was guilty of a crime that I didn’t commit, guilty of being human; rather than just answering the question with a simple and open ‘yes’. I looked up with her. Most wooden crosses were just symbols. I wondered how much that really meant without the image of Jesus himself hanging from it. “But do you actually believe in the existence of God? That there is an actual God… in existence.”
“Yes I do. I always have. For a long time I only went to church because it was the right thing to do, because I believed that I was a sinner and needed my sins to be absolved. But I realised that my sins were already absolved, that faith in Jesus was my absolution. I’m here for myself now. So that God’s love can bless me with happiness and good will.”
That was an honest answer.
“There’s something I never told you mum.”
“Do you need to tell me?” It was that whole tired ‘I’ve had enough for one day’ tone of voice. Heard it many a time.
“Well, yeah. I think so.”
“Do I need to know?”
“Don’t you want to know?”
She wiped a tear stain from her cheek. “Look, son. You’ve had enough problems this far through your life. Don’t add to them by telling me something I might be better off not knowing, okay?”
“I just thought, that, y’ know, you should know because, well, I’m your son.”
“I love you regardless of what you’ve done. I always will. Your father said once that he loved me, but I don’t think he ever did, and he left because he had somebody better to be with. You lost him the same time as losing another part of your life that was just as important to you. I guess to you that must have seemed like losing two fathers, but God stayed with you – your dad didn’t – and here you are, a much stronger person because of it. I admire that. It can’t have been easy.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “Especially with a mother as useless as I am.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I wanted to say ‘you’re not useless’ but the words stuck in my head when I started thinking of losing Serene. Dad had meant so little to me, and his loss didn’t particularly anger me, but Serene had been like a light – a different light – that had given me physical happiness where I had only found stumbling release in the past. She had calmed me in a way that no drug could, and nobody had ever bothered asking me why I had gotten involved with her in the first place, only that it was inappropriate and ‘didn’t look good’.
I missed Serene so much. I missed her touch, her smile, the way her long black hair fell across her face; the way she just wanted to hold me when she was sad, and the way I let that embrace envelop me in its love.
Mum reached out and took my hand. It felt warm, but shook a bit before calming down. She gave me a smile and then went back to looking up at the cross as though she had a lifetime of sins to undo. I wondered if she already knew about me and Serene and was saving me from more pain.
There was a part of me that was never going to forgive Rucker for what he did, and for his involvement in Serene’s life the night of her death. I hated feeling as though he could have done something, but knowing that even something may not have changed anything… in the end.
I wasn’t sorry for what I did to Rucker, but I was sorry, sorry to the only person who really mattered – Jesus. I felt like he was the one that I had let down, whose voice I had failed to hear, whose love I had failed to accept into my heart as a saving grace. I had denied him, wilfully gone against everything that I had learnt growing up knowing that if I had heard Jesus – heard and understood – I would never have wanted to go out and take revenge. I had ignored the one person whose unconditional love could have stopped me from committing the act in the first place.
Lucas had said so much that made sense to him and confirmed his own beliefs while those same things had not made sense to me, hence confirming my own beliefs. Lucas had propagated the idea of agnosticism as something that is compatible with all beliefs, yet it didn’t make sense if I knew for a fact that God existed to accept the possibility that God didn’t exist; if I could feel with every part of my being that God was real then what was the point in denying that – or even questioning the validity of that? If I couldn’t trust my feelings what could I trust?
And it was that thought that took me away from the physicality of what I was feeling as my senses began to reach out beyond me and experience that higher state of consciousness that I had been searching so long for, but had now come to me as I put faith in the Christ that had died for us and risen again to shed his forgiveness on a world steeped in sin. I knew that there was no longer any need to worry, no need to be so hateful of my own feelings, and that love was always waiting for me in the hands of God. I could no longer deny that love, I could no longer pretend that love wasn’t available for everyone, including all those who had died by their own hands in the name of confusion and earthly sin.
I took Mum by the arm. She smiled and started rising up. Together we walked to the doors, carrying each other, not one of us taking all the weight, but each taking some and feeling that much stronger for it. We smiled to the officer who asked us to have a nice day as we walked through the doors, out into the glorious sunlight that had bathed this cold town in its warmth.
And I left that church with the voice of God ringing through my whole body, asserting me with infinite wisdom that I am not going to hell.
And neither are you.
I Am The Local Atheist Page 31