hobby writing excerpt

This is an excerpt taken from some "just for kicks" writing I've been doing the last few days. I'll probably post bits and pieces periodically both here and at the Bipolar Confessional.

Greg was pretty happy with how the Sunday School lesson had turned out. It covered material from the first several chapters of Isaiah. Somehow the writers of the Sunday supplement had been able to make relevant to the 21st century all the judgment meted out via God’s wrath to the Israelites and their mean old neighbors. A nice, lengthy discussion ensued at one point. Frank Orbeth, having thought for a good deal of time about the recent tsunami that had wiped out a chunk of the Asian population, suggested that this catastrophe was comparable to certain events described in the Old Testament. He suggested that perhaps God had decided to revert to the old school method. The tragedy smacked of God’s judgment to Frank. He had a short list of actual reasons why God lowered the boom on that bunch of heathen.

A more liberal-minded classmate suggested that it was hard to imagine God meting out this kind of punishment in our present Messianic Age, when all men have already been judged through Jesus Christ. What was the point? And what about the children who weren’t old enough to be in cahoots with their elder sinners?

“Well,” Frank Orbeth countered, “it was men, women and children in the bible. God didn’t look at ‘em no different, they perished as well, in whatever gruesome manner of destruction.”

Frank had a favorite bible verse (as did most everyone in the church). It was Isaiah 12, verse 16: “Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished.” He especially liked that last line about the wives being ravished. He had a good idea that the biblical usage of the word “ravished” was a bit more forceful, more akin to “rape” when read in the original Greek manuscripts. To him, it was not so bad. Likely women waited all their lives to be ravished. The kind of thing where the woman being ravished, who may well have objected strenuously before the act was begun, quickly begins to enjoy it…to love it, even. He didn’t mind the part about infants being dashed to pieces, and the looting seemed so insignificant in comparison to that. But he definitely became aroused when contemplating the women being ravished. His favorite New Testament verse was to be found in 2 Peter 2, right about verse 13:” They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures, while they feast with you.”

Whatever reasons Frank had for exalting those two verses, even to such lofty heights in his esteem, there they were. Take ‘em of leave ‘em. You can’t help but wonder if they rode gently on his mind as he expounded upon the probability that God had indeed judged with the strong arm of a tsunami. Men, women, children, dogs, cats, hamsters, horses, insects of various makes and models, fish of all kinds, your general wildlife. You got all the animals in the jungle and all yer animals in the backwoods, all the critters who share the land with the human species…everyone of ‘em, and MORE, damn ye. DEAD! EVERYONE SINGLE ONE OF ‘EM! God damn ye, do I need to say it again?

Anyhoo, that’s how it was back in the day. What the hell, though, might as well pick out the worst sinners from an awful bad lot. And then You just wipe ‘em right out, make folks remember how it used to be, and who knows but that this Asian holocaust is just the first of many similar catastrophes God will send down the pike, ya know? Makes you want to pull out your own bibles, search through the major prophets until you find what you’re looking for and count all the catastrophic judgments laid down on them folks in those early days.

Sara Johnson thought Frank Orbeth was a fool, but she didn’t mind him. Actually she found him quite handsome. In fact, she once fantasized about him while having sex with her husband. Closing her eyes it was not all that difficult to conjure the striking image of Frank, to see his sweating, grimacing face instead of Jimmy’s. She had no doubt that Frank would be much more forceful than Jimmy was capable of being. It was all that “wrath of God’s judgment” stuff that sold her. Every time he brought it up she would go weak in the knees with the thought of how rough a night it would be if fate ever threw them together. Above all, she wanted to be ravished. She didn’t care if it was Frank’s version or the Authorized Old Testament’s definition of the term.