Let us plead for faith alone
Who: William Jesse and Open
What: thinking and guilt-tripping
Where: the beach
When: saturday night
Warnings: religion
William Jesse Grant is a man in conflict.
His chapel was too small for his restless mind and so he left it, and headed east, headed around and away and he kept walking till the ocean forced him to stop.
He has never seen an ocean before and keeps a careful distance as he paces up and down the shore.
Nothing he has encountered in his own world prepared him for the depth of the controversy found in this one, and his confusion has left him feeling somehow unworthy. The closest he has known is the civil War that divides his own country.
That is a war, and all war is unjustifiable, horrible acts of violence, but if war breaks out here, it perhaps is worse. It would be a civil war, a tearing of this place, and none can remain out of it, all drawn in as civilians in a battle from which, perhaps there is no escape. This place is not so large that he can ride away.
As he walks, William Jesse hums to himself the old familiar hymns of his faith, the poems written by Charles Wesley and set to drinking songs. The vibration of the hum is soothing to his soul, but it is not enough.
Even not taking a side feels wrong. He can not stand by and let things happen. But he doesn’t know how to stop it either.
And he is afraid. Horribly afraid. Terrified even, deep down in the places where he knows he is a coward. He could stand up to the giant robots, declare that this war that will certainly result in lose of life and suffering is better avoided; that all can survive if we merely go home. He could stand up to Isis and say that it is wrong of her to put the people of this city into a position of choosing to leave their homes or fight a war. That it can’t possibly be necessary for her to destroy this place.
He has done neither.
Maybe… this place needs to be destroyed. Maybe Isis is an avatar of God… if that other being was an angel then surely Isis is as well. But then, what is a devil but a fallen angel?
Does he defy God here? Or is this place truly of godliness? If it is then destroying it, the opposite of creation, is surely an evil act. But if it isn’t then maybe it ought to go the way of other sinful cities, such as Sodom?
But… the God of the Hebrew bible has a different relationship with his people than the god of the New Testament. William Jesse believes in a loving and forgiving god. What would Jesus Christ do?
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