The Humper Game Pt. 05 Ch. 08

"But when Jenny—well, abruptly dumped him, she had been with my former partner. And Phil would have been glad of this, and he had encouraged her to look for other guys for when he wasn't available. But she acted like she was ashamed of it, and attacked him when he asked. There was a lot more to it, but that's how it was. And I hate to gossip, and this is headed that way, but it's pretty clear to us both that she has someone now, where she is, but she's not saying anything about him.

"So do you see how very much that song seemed to apply? 'It's so hard finding out, and lately she's taken to hiding.' And back when they had quarreled, she wanted to keep the possibility open of coming back, but also to try to hang on to my ex-partner. She kept pleading for more time to make up her mind. 'It's so hard finding out, and life will go on while we're choosing. Gone again.' Oh, and 'Filling up all of the time.' That one really feels like the same thing.

"I guess that's more than you wanted and needed. But there it all is."

I said, "Hon, you'd better tell Scott and Martha about the second drawing. Unless they've figured it all out."

"Oh. You're right." She went on to explain it in about the same terms I'd used in explaining it to Barbara.

I added, "She would greatly appreciate your prayers. It's a hard decision for her. 'It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.' She's not resisting like that, exactly, but it's hard for her. Hard on her.

"And you might just as well pray for Ellen and me, for a whole host of things, but for that one too. We're facing the same decision, each with different doubts. We have some reason to think that we will believe, but that it won't be until after we're married."

Martha said, "Do you mind saying what your own doubts are, Phil?"

Barbara said quickly, "Do you mind if I jump in first? I'm going to need to leave pretty soon.

"Phil and Ellen told me that they'd told Kelly and Pete and Tammy about me in general terms, and as I understand it Tammy mentioned it to Scott and Martha when you all had dinner together earlier this week. They didn't say that their friend who's a lesbian was me, but I think some of you have figured it out.

"First off, I wanted to say that Phil was so very, very good to me in school, protecting my, um, my secret identity, caring how I felt, and then making sex with a man turn out to be wonderful, so that I know that this is possible. Ellen, you've been wonderful too, but it's been in a supporting role.

"But I thought I should ask if any of you had something to say to me or to ask me, while I'm here."

Tammy immediately said, "I do. When Phil spotted that I was a lesbian, I was devastated. There I am, outed. And Ellen told us about you, and Phil suggested that we should try and see. Pete was scared, but it really was a lot easier in our case. We were already in love. We just hadn't recognized that that's what I was feeling. For you, it took a lot more courage, I think. But your example made it work. And I've never been so happy in my entire life. At least since I was just a girl." Pete nodded, very seriously.

Martha said, "I don't know how much of what I said came to you. My situation was kind of the reverse of yours. I was straight, in a low-key way, not all that much interest in men. It seemed that any who looked twice at me didn't care about me, they just wanted sex. I kind of gave up, still a virgin. And a woman friend seduced me—except she was trying to help me at least as much as to get anything for herself. 'Seduced' gives the wrong idea. She offered herself to me as a possibility.

"So I lived as a lesbian, and thought of myself as one, for years. Then I fell head over heels in love with my boss. Scott. And I knew it was hopeless, he was a Christian and very moral.

"I'll leave out all the details, to keep it short. My housemate and partner at the time, and I, both wound up offering him a sexual relationship—um, independently, to try to fix a problem—and he accepted as long as it was both of us. In the end, she fell in love with him, too. A lot of what Ellen said sounded kind of familiar. Anyway, we both thought of ourselves as lesbians, and we found out we were both way more interested in men—if it was the right man!

"Anyway, Lynda was the one who pushed him to explain the gospel to us. I believed before she did, I think because my doubts were really philosophical and, um, factual, whereas hers were willful—she was afraid of giving up control of her life."

Barbara said, "That raises a question in my mind. OK, Scott, I understand that you're a Christian, and from what Martha said you were then. So what were you doing screwing these two women? I'm not trying to attack you, I really want to understand."

Scott said, "Well, part of it Martha already explained, Tuesday night, and I'd better not go through that again, it's kind of long. Suffice it to say that there were reasons besides lust on my part. I'd had to fire Martha, and I needed her back on the job, and in a way this made that possible.

"But those reasons aren't a justification, and neither are my other reasons. I knew it was wrong, I was tempted by a lot of things, and I decided to do it. I did try to limit it. Ask Phil or Ellen sometime.

"Beyond all that, some things Martha didn't say. I'd been married eight years or so, when my wife was killed in a car accident. That was in my late twenties. I was devastated. I really did fall apart from grief. Phil, I'm entirely sympathetic to your problems in that. Martha can tell you that I still do it.

"And in my grief, people kept trying to pair me up with their sisters or their cousins by the dozens or their aunts, or just their friends, and I couldn't stand the thought. Later, when it should have been possible, well. Um. I'd loved Chris, she'd loved me, in many, many ways we were well suited. In some others not so well. In sex, especially. I wanted or needed lots more than she did. I couldn't really turn her on. We hurt each other terribly over it. And I couldn't face the possibility of getting married again and then finding out that I was in the same situation. So I built a wall around myself. And after more than fifteen years, well, I sure missed sex, but far more I missed the non-sexual parts of that relationship. Simple loving and caring and being together.

"I was afraid I couldn't find it in marriage, without risking being trapped again, for life, with misery over sexual incompatibility. But when first Lynda and then Martha came to me, it seemed to me that maybe I could get it for a few months without that risk. And I just couldn't make myself turn it down. I did know it was wrong, and serious disobedience.

"I hope that answers your question. I don't know what else I can say."

Barbara kind of sat back, and all she said was, "Thank you. I think I do understand."

"Anyway," Scott said, "in the end I got Martha, who is perfect for me. A while later, Lynda got her husband, Brian, who is perfect for her. Martha's much calmer than I am, she can steady me, and Lynda's husband the same but a lot more. Lynda's emotional the way I am, but way more so. We'd have wound each other up so tight, something would have broken. The Lord provided us each with what we needed. Despite the very wrong way we started it out. The way I started it out."

Barbara stood up and came over to Ellen and me. She hugged me and kissed me, not quite a peck but not lingering, either. She did the same to Ellen. "I really need to leave. Thank you for having me. I loved almost every minute of it, and you really helped me make up my mind. I needed to talk to you and be with you. I'll miss you terribly."

She went over to Pete and Tammy. "I'm so glad my example with Phil helped you, instead of leading you astray. I think your example may help me. I've been struggling to make up my mind. Or my heart. I've been afraid I'll get seriously committed to Bert and then decide I need women after all. If nothing else, you two have convinced me that Phil's not unique. I think I may never love Bert quite as much as I love Phil, but I really do love him, and he's strong and good." She took each of them by the hand for a moment.

And she went to Scott and Martha. "Thank you for your words. They may help me, in the long run. And I'm not conscious of anyone chasing me and demanding my attention, the way Sam is, and Phil and Ellen may be, but in the end it may come to that. Especially if it's true. I'm pleased to have met you, and Hannah is delightful. And your music was wonderful, even the parts that knocked Phil down so badly. I wish I could dance to your playing all the time." And she took each of them by the hand as well.

"Do you need a hand with your stuff?"

"No, Phil. Thank you for everything." She collected her bags and went out the door.

I said, "This week we've got to get back into studying. And Ellen thinks I need weight lifting and martial arts. And we've got to get more sleep."

Martha said, "We need to wake up Hannah, or she'll never get to sleep tonight. And then I want to hear what Phil's doubts are. And Ellen's, too, but especially Phil's."

Scott went into the bedroom and emerged pretty soon carrying Hannah. She blinked and tried to hide her face in his chest. He left her alone, for the moment.

I said to Martha, "The whole issue seems to me to boil down to, is the Bible true? If you assume that it is, then there are still some issues, but you can mostly figure them out. You can see some fairly consistent themes through it all, even where it seems exceedingly unlikely that the authors were relying on each other. On the other hand, if you assume it's mostly not true, you can find all kinds of issues, contradictions, what have you.

"I find it plausible, in general. Some of the objections people make actually make me very angry, because they're obviously not the least bit interested in understanding it enough to assess it. The people who pick out that proverb, in chapter 26, that equivocates on two meanings of "according to his folly," and say it proves the Bible contradicts itself, for example.

"But lots of serious people—Luther among them!—have thought that James contradicted Paul's teaching on justification by faith. There are lots of things like that, and then some issues relating to history, geology, and so on. As far as I've looked into them, I'm not convinced that the skeptics' objections are very strong.

"Then there are those who object a priori to any accounts of miracles—including some truly stupid ones who essentially define a miracle as something impossible happening and then say, but of course miracles are impossible by definition. They may fancy up the 'impossible' part by talking instead about laws of nature or what have you. Or they say, well these people believed in it—whatever miracle 'it' is—because they just didn't realize it was impossible. But on the face of it, those people were impressed by miracles precisely because they knew they're impossible in the ordinary way of things, but they thought them to be true in the particular case, and they knew that required an explanation—divine action being the explanation they accepted.

"The practical question isn't whether, say, the parting of the Red Sea was somehow impossible, but whether it actually happened. Or, maybe a better example would be the sun standing still while Joshua and the Israelites fought their enemies. Except that there really are questions of how much the text requires to have happened, in that one.

"But what none of that really settles is the central question. Is there a God of the sort the Bible says there is? If there is, how can we really know it? For sure? How can we really know what he's like? Things like that. Attempts to answer those kinds of questions often involve things like the ontological argument. And as far as I can see, all such attempts at proof are just flat out unsound."

Martha said, "How much philosophy have you studied?"

"How do I answer a question like that? I've been through a couple of survey-type classes, and done some reading in classical philosophy, mostly Plato, and some from the Renaissance on. Nothing medieval to speak of—though if I knew Aristotle better, some of that might be straightforward for me. Nothing at all outside the European tradition. I found things like existentialism and its cousins uncongenial enough to mostly ignore them. Some twentieth century British and American. But I've barely scratched the surface. I'm taking a fairly basic class on philosophy of mind right now, and it's probably my most interesting class."

"Goodness! You're way beyond me, that's for sure. I wish I'd gone to your high school—except that I would never have put up with that one class Ellen described. And I wasn't even a Christian then!

"But what I mean is this. I had doubts, of a sort that sound a little like what you describe. I had others, too, about questions of fact—things like history and archaeology—and Lynda actually was bothered more by the philosophical issues, and she never studied philosophy at all.

"Anyway, if you take a fairly standard intro to philosophy class, when they get to epistemology you get half the class who never do see the point. 'Why are we arguing about whether we really know anything about external objects? Of course we do.' Right up there with Dr. Johnson's supposed, or maybe alleged, refutation of Berkeley.

"The questions of what we know about the external world and how we know it are important ones, and we learn a lot of important things from them. Very important things. But the students who miss the point are kind of onto something, too. And I'd hazard a guess Dr. Johnson even more so—he probably knew what he was doing. There's a built-in assumption that what we have in knowledge must be on the model of mathematics—and even in math it's not really clear that this picture is right, mind you. But we need certainty, so we must start from certainties and reason from them deductively. If there's any purely logical doubt, then we don't really know.

"Of course, we all get out of our beds in the morning, eat our breakfasts—whether we fix them or buy them with more external objects—and go about our business, without worrying for a moment about whether we really know any of these things exist and have the qualities we perceive in them.

"It's even more that way when you get to the so-called problem of other minds. Here you and I are, skipping lightly over philosophy, and never any serious question along the lines of, is there really a person inhabiting that body?

"As far as the existence and nature of God go, is the problem really any different than the existence and nature of external objects, or of other minds? Important theoretical issues, but in the end rather artificial?

"This may not help you at all. And you have to go through the details some, where I've just brushed over them. But to some degree your doubts sound like mine, and mine became a lot simpler when I stopped demanding mathematical proofs and started looking at the actions of God as seen in the world. OK, it's logically possible that we really didn't have peppers for lunch. Maybe you've developed a new kind of edible plastic and made imitation peppers out of it, and that's what we ate, say. There truly are sometimes errors, illusions, and whatnot. But you can't sort them out until you settle the global doubts. There are plenty of things we really do know. I know those were peppers, really and truly. That we're sometimes wrong about what we think we know doesn't invalidate that. And I've seen God's hand on my life, in so many ways I can't count them. I can construct doubts, but they don't invalidate what I've seen and know."

I thought for a bit. "That's the way I'm heading, I think. Quite honestly. In the last year there have been a bunch of things. Sam's repentance was—well, amazing. It hit me very hard at the time, but even a year later I can't explain it very well in human terms. But—Ellen, is it OK if I tell them?"

She looked puzzled for a moment, then said, "Sure."

I said, "One thing that had things up in the air is this. Toward the end of last year, Ellen had a vision, and the whole thing frightened her. Now, her grandparents were Christians, and fled because of persecution. Her maternal grandmother claimed to sometimes prophesy, and in fact they fled in response to a vision, and soon after that most of their church was imprisoned or killed. And at one point, maybe ten years ago, her grandmother told her that she had been shown that Ellen and her husband would come to believe, after they were married, But before that, she would be given unwelcome knowledge, and she wouldn't believe despite that, even though what she was told would be true. At the time, Ellen just privately dismissed this as craziness. She and her brother were raised to never contradict their elders, more or less.

"And Ellen's vision, when it came, terrified her. There are things I shouldn't say about it, but she saw us as married and in a certain place, with our children, and she was told, somehow, that our children and I would accomplish something very important. Not quite as much as saving the whole world, but I guess big enough that it makes sense to say it that way! Averting some kind of large-scale disaster, or something like that, anyway. And that she and I would have had trouble of some sort, between us as I understood her, and would have weathered it and been strengthened by it.

"A lot terrified her about this, but one thing in particular. She loved me, and being married to me should be a dream come true, but this seemed like she was being ordered to marry me whether she liked it or not. I did explain that theologically that's not the right way to understand it—I mean, if it's not God telling her something there's no reason to think of it like that, but if it is, that's not the way it works. But of course she had to sort things through in her own mind.

"Oh. You need to know this, too. There had been some indications, earlier, which Ellen knew nothing about, that I may wind up in the place this vision said I would be, probably in a position that might dump a crisis in my lap if one arose. A couple of people had taken time out to raise this with me.

"And Ellen's had more visions, minor ones. She is pushing me to learn some martial arts, because she's seen someone attack me without seeing how it ends, for example, but she feels very urgent about that. And I'm due to start this Tuesday. Oh. And we've already had trouble, big trouble, in our relationship, and I think we've weathered it and we're stronger for it—but I hope that's the last one, because I might not survive more like that.

"And there are other things. I told you this morning, since graduation I've heard exactly three sermons. In fact, that's since a little before I started high school. And one of these had Sam in tears, one had me not quite crying, and this morning it was Ellen's turn. In each case, the text and the way it was brought out seemed entirely aimed at one of us.

"But beyond that—. I don't know whether I can make you understand the connection here. But the sequence of events that brought Sam to utter humility and repentance, and seeing those in her, well, that was scary to me. I have to really get it straight in my mind, but it's hard for me to see any explanation except the hand of God for it." I was heading toward crying again. "She came to me in front of a whole lot of people, and confessed to me that for no real reason she had constantly tried to hurt me for three years, that she had no excuse, that it was totally wrong, and that she could never make it up to me, so her only hope was to ask me to forgive her. And she understood that I didn't owe that to her, she could only hope I might." And yes, tears were rolling down my face again.