The Meek Shall Pt. 05

Can Carol find faithful love?

Please read the previous parts in order.

Thank you for the honest and encouraging comments on the previous parts. For those who are anonymous bullies, I ignore you.

I found the one commenter who found discussing religion on Literotica to be offensive. I am mystified that if someone has deep religious beliefs that they would read a sex site. This story is about the contradictory impact of the three branches of the Abrahamic religious tradition and how the underlying scriptures we can interpret in ways to justify almost any activity and destroy natural love and bonding. That is really what this story is about. If we cannot be good without the carrot or the stick, then perhaps we are not good at all.

While this is a cartoonish enhancement for a story's purpose, it is based on my life's experience that often, when one partner embraces extreme religiosity, or even political ideology and other beliefs after the marriage begins, it is harmful and even destroys relationships. Most times, the non-believing partner seems to have suffered through it and stayed in the marriage for either family (children) or economic reasons, but it almost always leads to a sad life experience. If both have the same beliefs going into the partnership or later, it usually causes no issues. In this story, I try to find a middle path for Frank and Carol

I identify with my sceptical characters, Mom and Dad Connor, and although a sceptic, I think the approach of the Roman church of ritualizing forgiveness for the sin of being human is better than the narrow Protestant approach that often believes that adherents should live a life of anguish for being human. Most religious systems seem to advocate that suffering is our lot on earth and we should accept it but pay tithes to the religion to earn our nirvana.

Enough! On with the story.

***

Frank eased the RV to the Canadian check point at the Blue Water Bridge. The drive from Texas had been interesting but uneventful. Now that they were off of I-94l, he felt tense. He glanced at Carol in the passenger seat. Laurie and Pat sat behind in the living area.

"Carol, are you okay?" Frank asked.

Frank feared Carol would scream kidnapping, and it would fuck them all.

Carol said nothing, smiled happily, and the bored border guard hardly bothered with them. Their passports all checked out, and the story of Frank returning home with his wife for Canadian Thanksgiving satisfied him.

Frank pointed the RV down Highway 402. He had to keep a watch for the cut-off and did not want to miss it and hit the fucking 401. He loved the back roads. The Familiar parade of farms inter-spaced with the green-house marijuana grow ops and vegetable producers did not diminish the feeling of warmth and home. As a farm boy, he felt comfort, and in this horror he had lived for over two years, that healed. Daylight faded and soon the countryside became an impenetrable black night, broken by farmyard lights. He had intentionally crossed the border at dinner time so they would arrive in Grandview later at night.

Frank looked at Carol, sitting beside him with her eyes closed and lips moving.

"Praying," Frank thought, "but she looks happy. Even if our relationship goes to shit, I'll always feel good that I helped someone I love. Even if she isn't mine, she won't be in the cult either. Carol and I may never be together again with her loving me more than her god, but I'll feel better about myself. I don't want to spend the rest of my life thinking I'm an asshole."

"Carol," Frank said, "you look tired. Why don't you go to the back and lie down?"

Frank glanced over his shoulder at Laurie and nodded. She guided Carol to the bedroom with their arms around each other's waists. Pat took the passenger seat and smiled.

"You know what is going to happen back there," she said. "How do you feel about that?"

"Are you asking as a friend, or do you have your therapist's hat on?"

"Both," Pat said. "You know I care about you and Carol. As a friend, I want it to work out. As a professional, I want to help that happen."

"I'm not optimistic," Frank fought a tear. Pat noticed. She reached over and laid her hand on his arm.

"You love her," Pat said. "Can you forgive her?"

Frank stared beyond the headlights. He responded to a turn command from bionic Betty on his cell map. It gave him time to consider.

"The religious bullshit doesn't need forgiving, and I would never call it crap to her face. It's a problem to be resolved. I need to have a way to get Carol off the distortion about sex that her pastor used to trap her. More importantly, I want her to stop trying to save me and simply love me here on earth. Fuck heaven."

"Laurie is working on that," Pat said, but she could not suppress a giggle.

"What about the sex? She fucked a lot of men and women." Pat squeezed Frank's arm.

"You know," Frank said, "the sex doesn't bother me. The deceit, abandonment and betrayal around it is the hard part. At least she didn't give me any STD. I got to fuck that Fran woman, and she is nice but another liar. I just want to be sexually exclusive if we reconcile, and I'm not into group shit or orgies."

Pat withdrew her hand. She did not want what she said next to be taken as a seduction.

"She seemed to enjoy doing women," Pat observed Frank. "What if she decides she needs that, too?"

Frank frowned, but then smiled. The low light of the dash softened his face.

"Laurie and you have both fucked Carol all week," Frank said. Pat noticed his tone was matter-of-fact and not angry or disappointed. "That doesn't bother me. Maybe it's because I have fucked Laurie as well. I'm not a hypocrite. Maybe that explains why I am not religious."

Frank slowed the RV and gave Pat a hard look.

"If I was ever to get into any group thing, it would involve you two sex maniacs." He laughed. "If it ever happened, and I'm not saying yes or no right now, it would have to be in the open, and only if we agree to whatever is involved, no sneaking, no ulterior motives like saving my soul or whatever."

"I would like that, and so would Laurie. We both are in the bringing happiness business, not soul saving. What if we decide it's the key to getting Carol onto some less judgemental ground and not to threaten her faith?"

"That would be a fucking miracle."

"Miracles are Laurie's business, at least they were. She thinks she is close to replacing the cult pastor as Carol's religious mentor. Somehow, sex between them is part of it."

"Just like with that fucking idiot in El Paso," Frank said.

"She doesn't want Carol to fall in love with her. Neither do I," Pat laughed, "but I'm selfish. I'll share Laurie's body, but not her commitment, and she has mine, unconditionally."

"I know sex has always been important to Carol, and she ties it into expressing love. She was wild before we met, and we fucked the first night we met, but as far as I know she was faithful all of our marriage until god seduced her. Maybe I'm just an idiot and missed everything before, and I don't think she ever used fucking as a sales tactic for her business."

"I don't think so," Pat said. "Carol confessed a lot to Laurie, every titillating detail about the church stuff and her young life. She declared on a stack of Bibles, as she put it, that you and she were exclusive, as you think."

Frank laughed, but in happiness, not sarcasm.

"Thank you," he said.

Pat eyed Frank. Her pussy actually was wet, but lust did not govern her. Her training and professionalism could keep that at bay, but it seemed like some tantric torture. Pat considered her words, a repeat of what Laurie often told her in the afterglow of sex.

"Frank, love is not a fixed amount we are issued at birth. It grows to include more and more people whom we come to love: parents, siblings, close friends, lovers, and mates. It is truly infinite. That's why an exclusive deity is so limiting as it demands a narrow, fixed and rationed love. Laurie grew beyond that in her faith, and it has likely negated all of her childhood beliefs and religious training. That great, all powerful god became too limiting and she and I feel it is unnatural. I have observed that in you, even if you don't see it. Your love expanded from your family and Carol to include Laurie, and I hope for me."

Pat watched Frank's reaction. He smiled, so encouraged she continued.

"I confess I have been watching you as a professional shrink," Pat said, "and I saw your love for both Trish in the office and Fran from the church. Your fatherly love for Trish is as I saw it with your parents. Fran is complicated because you fucked her, but I saw love in your eyes, even as we watched her in that last orgy video. I saw love and disappointment. I think I saw you seeing her as a sister whom you wished you could protect."

Again, Pat paused and considered.

"Carol sees you like you think of Fran. She thinks she is saving your soul, protecting you, and that is what drives her. Unfortunately, her approach, misled by that narcissistic pastor, was to use a butcher's knife when she needed a scalpel."

"It felt like a fucking axe." Frank said.

"You're right; I care for you all," Frank said. "That doesn't mean I want to fuck you all."

"Sex has little to do with love, Frank. As you said, it's the pledge of exclusivity, honesty, trust that raises partner sex into a make or break issue. Marriage is a legal expression of that, but it adds much baggage to the pledge, like property, money and even breeding rights. Our culture makes those more important, but other cultures have different norms. Religion has made adultery and even sex inside a marriage sinful as part of the way to control that property factor. That is all culture and economics and nothing to do with actual sin. The idea of sin, especially original sin, is used as a cudgel to keep us in line."

"Can you, Frank, separate the sex from the love? Do you even want to do that? Love always makes sex better. Your story shows that Carol, distorted by that exploitive cult, has used love to make the sex spiritual inside the group and sinful for outsiders. They convinced Carol you are an outsider and a sinner. The weapon of sin is obvious."

"I already told you that," Frank said. He scowled towards Pat. "It isn't the denial of sex; it's the betrayal, the transference of her loyalty to a new love that hurts and hurts so much."

Frank sobbed. Pat touched his arm and remained silent.

"Frank is not the problem," she thought. "Carol is not the problem. It is the cult's theft of her loyalty that has caused the problem. Laurie had better work wonders."

Laurie and Carol lay together on the bed. Their arms entwined and Carol looked into Laurie's eyes.

"I love Frank," Carol said, "and I love you too, Laurie."

She softly pressed her lips to Laurie's and withdrew.

"I feel so safe here in your arms. I used to feel that in Frank's arms. How do I get that back? How can I draw him into the fold of God's love?"

"What if you didn't need to draw him into your faith?" Laurie asked.

"Huh? How can that be? How can I feel safety with a sinner?"

Carol's tone was one of doubt, not anger or aggression. Since they had prayed in the camp in the Gila, Laurie had gently tried to pull Carol into a different perspective. No matter her own beliefs and scepticism, Laurie did not want to destroy what Carol believed, at least not openly or quickly. She wanted to expand Carol's understanding beyond the narrow, exploitive bigotry of her old pastor. She loved both Carol and Frank and wanted them to find their old love for each other.

"Does loving a sinner, at least your definition of a sinner, affect your faith in eternal salvation?"

"What do you mean by my definition of sin?"

"You seem to think that touching a sinner sexually is a sin. Your definition of sin is bound to your sexuality. You love sex, and you love God. It is no wonder you have the two glued together."

Carol closed her eyes in deep thought. Belief had not destroyed her intelligence, and she knew that Laurie had raised something important. Carol remained silent for several minutes. Only the rumble of the vehicle and the unevenness of the road intruded.

"Momma always said sex was a sin," Carol said at last. "When my hormones kicked in after puberty, sex dominated my thoughts. Mom hammered me not to sin. She meant to have sex or even kiss a boy. She cemented sex and sin together, and that became the way I could lash out at her after she threw me out for just getting to second base with a guy. I knew two things as I walked away in tears from home that night. I loved my tits being touched, and I was going to fuck my asshole mother by fucking as much as I could. Fortunately, my friend's family saved me from the street and being a hooker, but I still fucked as much and as many as I could. They gave me the pill, and I made sure my lovers were clean. I loved to take virgin boys. Oh, God, forgive me for my language."

"You did well in business, and then you met Frank."

"My accidental foster family kept me in school, and since my sweet foster mother loved interior decorating, I liked that and took the college courses. I tried hard to build a business. I didn't like authority much and could only work for someone else for a short time. Soon I thrived, but internet assholes nearly destroyed me, until my hero Frank came into my life. He saved the business, and he was an internet charmer. I grew to care for him on line. Frank was honest, unlike most on-line players and shy. God, he was shy, but smart and successful in a way.

I was in El Paso and he was in Toronto then, so I figured it was going nowhere until he said he needed a vacation. I invited him here and promised to show him the delights of the Rio Grande valley."

Carol giggled. Laurie kissed her lips and teased Carol's warm, wet valley.

"Was that the only valley you wanted to show him?" Laurie laughed.

"Hell no, but I figured even if he was ugly, he was a nice guy and he had saved my business for free. He said it was for practice.

"When he showed up in the Hilton lobby that first time, I would have fucked him right there. I told him once that when I first had him in my sights, he was dead meat.

"We were making love at the time and he showed me that his meat wasn't dead yet."

Carol giggled again and grabbed Laurie's breast. Laure reciprocated. They played with each other's nipples and moaning replaced words.

"You told me once you had fucked Frank that night, you never fucked another man."

"Yes, until Pastor revealed the delight of the holy worship."

Laurie frowned. Carol still talked about that with reverence. Laurie had a long way to go to change Carol.

"What did the pastor tell you?" Laurie asked. Carol had already told her back in the Gila, but she saw this was the weak point where her wedge of doubt had to be hammered home.

"He said that any sex act was holy and blessed as long as it was between true believers."

"How did he define true believers?"

"He said it was anyone he deemed holy, since God guided him."

Laurie winced. She had heard that argument used many times to bury any contradiction in faith and worship in Christian churches. It justified everything from the silly Genesis story to misogyny and war. Mortals had created the Bible and when someone questioned their fallibility, even one professor at divinity school claimed God and not human politics and opportunism guided them. Those circular arguments disgusted Laurie.

"My God says otherwise," Laurie said. Her hammer drove the wedge into the schism.

"How so?" Carol asked. Her intelligence led to thoughtfulness.

"Nowhere in the gospels does it claim that a man or woman could interpret God's will for each of us. That is clearly between the individual and God. We can listen to what people say about their relationship with God, their personal relationship, but we are never told to adopt the same relationship. God claims it is his to decide for each of us. Humans are not to judge other humans."

Carol gasped. She had judged Frank to be a sinner, following pastor's teaching. Laurie said that the pastor had no right to teach in such a dictatorial way. Confusion grew in Carol.

"The New Testament never even advocated churches or religions. All that is based on the writings of Paul, and the Roman emperor used his writings to direct Christians to serve the empire in a new, organized religion to replace the old gods and goddesses. If you ask me, it was a step back. The old system at least gave power to females."

"So, you say I have no right to judge Frank?" Carol asked.

"Yes, that's what I'm saying, and that even if Frank is a sinner, his sin does not affect your relationship with God. Let God take care of Frank and don't judge any outcome. Love your enemy; do unto others and all that. Frank's sin will not rub off on you and fucking him is not a sin. It also follows that no sex act is sinful, whether it's oral, anal, or between the same sexes. It is how people conduct the sex. If there are lies, coercion or violence, then that would be sinful."

Carol smiled and embraced Laurie. Her tongue found Laurie's, and she pressed her body against her new mentor. One hand went to a breast, and the other slid to Laurie's pussy. Laurie reciprocated, and the talk ended in gasps and shudders. Both women had been on the knife edge of horny. The sweet taste of each other's cunts followed the frantic removing of clothes. Fingers slide deep into both pussies and asses. The RV rolled along, bouncing on the rougher county roads and enhanced the love making.

Laurie slept with Carol for the final two hours of bumpy back roads. If the front had had a bench seat instead of buckets, Frank and Pat would have snuggled as he drove. They had to settle for her teasing hand on his thigh and her lewd joke that she did not realize the RV had a stick shift. Frank kept the vehicle on the road.

"In Ontario, there's a law against distracted driving," he said.

"This would give the cops something to laugh about then," Pat said and squeezed his hard cock.

Frank pulled up in front of the renovated house in Grandview, but he resigned himself to having to deal with his hard, holy staff on his own. They laid a still sleeping Carol in a double bed and Pat had obvious intentions of tearing Laurie's clothes off and fucking her. Frank left the keys on the kitchen table and wandered home. The drive had exhausted him and he fell asleep before his left hand could be unfaithful to his right.

Carol knew the town. In happier days she and Frank walked the streets, enjoying the rural atmosphere and especially in the fall when the towering maples and oaks fluttered in red and gold. Tonight, the trio did not want Carol to know where she was. Frank hoped it would only be a few days before they could wander freely, arm in arm.

Frank knew that Mom and Dad would welcome Carol with love. Both were fond of their daughter-in-law despite her two years of craziness. Dad had especially liked her tight sweaters and her seductive winks and innuendo.

"That gal sure has bright high-beams," Dad would say.

Mom threatened to cut him off beer if he did anything, but in reality, she liked Carol's visits because Dad always came to bed as horny as he had been at 16 in the hayloft. They hated what had happened to their son, but they also felt badly about what had happened to Carol. They could restrain their religious scepticism.

After a session of wild loving, Pat and Laurie went to Carol's bed, and each slept with her between. As part of their plan, they decided Carol should never wake up alone, even if from then on neither of the lovers would play with her, although one of them would need to be near Carol at all times and for a few days she could not leave the house.