Cast the first stone
Esther threw her head back laughing, “let he that is without sin cast the first stone.”
“I beg your pardon.” Brother Evan looked shocked.
“Beg all you want. So tell me how’s Brother Joel?” Brother Evan turned pale at the mention of the man’s name.
“I’m afraid I don’t know whom you are referring too.”
“Oh no, does the name Clair Morrison ring a bell?”
With a forced cough, he cleared his throat. “God has forgiven me for that.”
“Well God be praised. He may have but did you ever ask her for forgiveness? Did you ever ask my grandpa for forgiveness? He went to his grave wanting to kill you.” Brother Evan’s eyes grew wide. “Did you know I was playing under the sink?”
Oscar was in awe of the transformation that was taking place in Brother Evan’s body language. When he first walked through the door, he was so sure he had arrived at this house to bust a sinner. But he wasn’t so confident now that his sins had followed him.
His face turned bright red, “it’s a sin. There was no one there to witness to. No one there to forgive him. He is rotting in hell.”
“Who are you to judge?! How do you know the conversation that he had with God before or maybe even after? Do you know if he was able to live thirty seconds, a minute after he pulled the trigger? You know nothing!”
Brother Evan said not a word. “It is a sin,” he whispered.
“No one is disputing that.” Esther screamed. “But what authority gives you the unmediated gol to say that he is going to hell?!”
“God.”
“Did God whisper in your ear and tell you point blank that my dad is in hell washing the feet of Satan?”
“Well no, but the Bible is our guide to what is right and wrong?”
“You bastard. How dare you? My gram and pap went to their graves grieving over their son. Where were you? Their spiritual leader. Where were you?”
Oscar stood, “you need to leave.”
Brother Evan left the house, jumped in his truck, and squealed his tires as he peeled out of Oscar’s drive way.
“What just happened here?” Oscar asked.
“Piece of trash,” Esther said flatly.
He rubbed her shoulders, she was shaking. He held her as long as she needed him to.
As they sat at the table, Oscar was dying to ask her. So he finally did, “Esther, finish the story.”
She looked up from her picked at plate. He reached for her hand and she took it. “Brother Evan came over to the house one Saturday afternoon. He made sure Pap was gone when he came over. He talked to my Gram like a dog, telling her that what dad did was a sin and that he was going to hell; not only for killing himself but because he placed the burden of raising me on them. I found out in my later years how much guilt Gram and Pap felt for not being able to reach out to their son or try to help him get the help that he needed. But then to have a man of God tell them that the son they loved and cared about had no hope was just cruel. Even if it is true, and he can’t go to heaven, why would you tell grieving parents that?”
“And you were playing under the sink?”
“Yeah, I liked being in the dark. It was calming to me. Still is at times.” She smiled.
“Haven’t you noticed how dark my bedroom is?” She cleared her throat. “I snuck out and went to find Pap, he wasn’t far.”
“Who was Brother Joel?”
“Oh, he was a deacon at the church who fought tooth and nail for Evan. He had done no wrong. There could be no wrong in doing the will of God, for telling the holy truth.”
“This is why you don’t like organized religion?”
“In a nut shell.”
“Wow. I’m so sorry, Ess.” He guided her onto his lap and held her.
“We lived in a small town and my grandparents were well liked. Everyone knew what had happened to my dad and grieved with them.”
Poetry & More 
on the street
odd to even
say more
than a simple mere salutation
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I’m glad that you’re willing to examine some of the contradictions inherent in blind faith to religious word. I think of spirituality as a place to turn when in need of help, and sometimes the lessons religion wishes to teach us (it really is and always has been a teaching tool) are painful or outdated. I would like to think that as we grow on our spiritual path we will be able to search out and find the true answers within ourselves, even if they’re not ones we want to hear. In a way that brings us closer to God, who should be the only one capable of judgement.
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I’m not a theologian by any stretch of the imagination. But I believe we do need to ask questions. Explore deeply the word of God. If Jesus can forgive a thief hanging on a cross moments before death, who am I to say that someone can’t find that same forgiveness in their final hour?
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I’ve been searching for a Blaise Pascal quote for like an hour now, something about how we often mistake the road to Heaven for the road to Hell.
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Sounds like an interesting read. I heard this quote and I had to stop for a minute and think. Then I was like wow! Yelp! “The gates of hell are locked from the inside.” C S Lewis: The Problem of Pain
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C.S.Lewis and Blaise Pascal were both Christian apologists, that is, they both tried to explain the difficult parts, the parts that are hard to explain. They have a lot in common, even in their sayings. Pascal’s Pensees are a fascinating read (I should know, I just spent the past hour searching through them.) Towards the end he seemed to get pretty rough on the Jews, which I don’t care for, but there are a lot of great thoughts in there.
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Thanks for sharing 💕
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