Promises Pt. 04

"One of the points that we were attempting to highlight was that, and I quote the Bible here, 'The love of money is the root of all evil.' and I think that has been borne out in the events of the last day or so. Greed is a vice that has no place in today's church, and today's society, where the gap between the rich and the poor has widened, and is now a huge abyss between the obscenely rich and the desperately poor. The ideology of this church is not one of people who have much helping those who have little, but one of those with much exploiting those with little, one of; 'Greed is good, greed is God'."

"I said during the trial that I wasn't doing it for the money, that isn't entirely true. The deal that I had with my client was that, should we win, and we were always confident of winning, then I would submit an account for my fees. The money was however, to go to one of the projects that I work on, and that is a place where drug addicts and other substance abusers can come, and seek the support they need, as they try to put their lives back in order."

"Mister McIvor had agreed to donate any monies that he receives to the same cause. We are going to set up a foundation to be known as the 'Tunnel's End Foundation', the name we thought was appropriate given that the light at the end of the tunnel will come from the Shining Light Christian Church. We will oversee this project and embark on a fundraising drive so that we can get more money for this worthy cause. We see it as rechanneling the money taken by the church back into a project to help those people who should have been helped by the church all along. The hat will be passed around shortly." There was a ripple of laughter through the room.

"We have achieved all that we set out to achieve, and more. I can imagine that the floodgates will open and there will be a whole raft of class action suits, using this result as a precedent, brought by people who have been crippled by this and other churches' drive to extract money from those who could least afford to give."

"We have thrown the stone into the water and how far the ripples will travel is up to you people. While I don't rule out the possibility, I personally don't want to be involved in this process in the future because it has opened old and painful wounds that I'd hoped had healed over."

"We haven't set out to single-handedly destroy this church, in fact it would be a shame if that happened. What we would like to see is it return to doing what the church was established to do, help those who need help, whether physically, emotionally or spiritually, using the resources of those able to give. 'That which deceives us and does us harm, also undeceives us and does us good.' If this outcome results in people becoming more cautious, more selective about who, or what they place their faith in, that is a good thing. If this results in an up swelling of protest against the church and the demise of some, that also is a good thing, and all I can say is; "we have achieved our goal."

Frank held up his hands for silence. "Let me say that when I approached Michael to see if this case was at all possible, I knew immediately that he was the right person for the job. I, in my small way, became the catalyst in this whole episode, and for that I am proud. What I am not so proud of is the senseless loss of life because of my actions."

"I didn't know why Michael was the right person, and I wasn't aware, until he was called to the witness stand, of the pain that my actions would bring. He had been hurt badly by a church such as this, and to have re-opened those wounds was an unfortunate side effect. I just hope that this outcome allows him some sort of closure. Thank you."

On the other side of the world, Mindy Jones and Floyd Bowden had been home from the evening service at the Shining Light Christian Church for some time. Floyd had delivered an impassioned message about how he had been so bad-assed that he had done time, and how he had found Jesus and turned his life around. There was no more drugs in his life, no more booze in his life, no more criminal activity of any kind in his life. The only thing in his life was the Lord Jesus Christ, and he and his biker friends were now devoting their entire lives to spreading the good word of Jesus around the country.

The two of them were seated on the sofa in the front room when a late night news report flashed onto the screen. "Fuck!" Mindy took Floyd's hand from her breast and lifted herself from him and sat beside him as the broadcast told of the happenings at the Shining Light Christian Church in Australia.

"What are we going to do?" She asked Floyd.

"Business as usual Honey. We just take over the running of the church, we gotta keep it going or we have to find some other way of laundering the money that we make from drugs. Hell Honey, I can preach just as good as your Pappy."

"We'd better call a meeting for first thing."

"It's too late to do anything now. Come on Honey, let's go to bed." He took her hand and placed it in his lap. She stood up and walked, swinging her hips, to the bedroom.

The End