In God We Trust

When my parents got home Mum quietly opened my bedroom door and peeked inside. We were both naked on the bed, I was half on top of him with one leg over his and my arm around his neck. She could see in the half light from the hallway Matthew's sperm that had oozed from me and lay in a dried pool on his thigh. She pulled the sheet up over us and just as she turned to leave I opened my eyes and smiled at her, we smiled at each other.

Sunday morning and for the first time in living memory my father joined us in church. I caught a glimpse of Matthew and smiled at him. He looked scared and for good reason.

After the usual couple of up-beat and happy choruses Pastor Andrew walked onto the stage. "Ladies and gentlemen, today is a sad day for me and my family. My son Matthew, along with a couple of his friends, has been charged with the rape of a girl from this church. I don't know whether she is here today but I don't intend identifying her to save her the embarrassment that comes with this."

"Matthew will have to face the full wrath of the law! Matthew will have to face the wrath of God! Matthew will have to face my wrath! And Matthew will have to face the wrath of this church!"

'I have ordered him to seek counselling for his actions. I have ordered him to pray for God's forgiveness! It will be hard for me to forgive his betrayal of me and my values, and I pray to God that I will eventually reach that stage of forgiveness, but until then he is not a part of my family and he is no longer a part of this church family. I have always encouraged him to lead a Godly life. I have always set an example that he can aspire to and I am absolutely shattered that he should betray me in this way!"

"I, I, I'm sorry. I can't go on." He burst into tears and through those tears he began to pray.

Pastor Mary walked onto the stage and took the microphone from him. "I am going to say something today that I've wanted to say for some time but lacked the courage, and I'll probably use language more associated with a construction site than a church but here goes. Andrew Jennings you are a hypocrite!" There was a shocked silence from the congregation and Jennings stopped praying and glared at her in amazement and confusion.

"'John Chapter eight verse seven. "Let he who is without sin be the first to cast the stone at her.' Andrew Jennings you are a fucking hypocrite!" He made that flat handed signal across the throat to the sound engineer to cut the mike feed. The volume went up instead. "You stand there with your holier than thou attitude and condemn your own son for doing the same thing that you have been doing for years. You go on about your family values and you stance on pre-marital and extra-marital sex and abortion and this is what I find." She signalled the person operating the big screens and a receipt was flashed onto the three huge screens. "Here you have an example of your Pastor's moral values. This is a receipt from an abortion clinic. Your Pastor had an affair with a woman in this church and she fell pregnant. He begged her to tell everyone that the child was her husband's but she refused because that would have been impossible as her husband had a vasectomy several years ago. He eventually agreed to her having an abortion and him paying for it."

She turned to face her husband. "Where are your values now you hypocrite?" What happened next was amazing. From the body of the church a chant arose. "Hypocrite! Hypocrite! Hypocrite!" It was taken up by the church and Pastor Jennings attempted to leave the stage by the doorway at the rear of the stage that was used by the musicians but he found it blocked by a couple of singers. He turned and rushed from the stage and ran from the auditorium followed by the taunting chant. "Hypocrite! Hypocrite! Hypocrite!"

Pastor Mary held up her hands for silence that took a long time to descend over the crowd. "Under the circumstances I think that we should close this meeting with a prayer of forgiveness for all of the people who have sinned."

Pastor Mary and my mother hugged each other. "My God that felt good! I wish that I'd had the courage to face him a long time ago."

"Why don't you join us for a walk in our church? Matthew is coming with us and you're more than welcome."

"Walk in your church? I'm confused."

"We're going for a walk along a walking trail in the bush where we can marvel at what God has given us and open ourselves, really open ourselves, to Him. That is our church."

"I'll do it. It has to be better than this one."