The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Three days after I got off the bus, I found the entrance to the farm. My feet were burning and my throat was burning and I felt like I was going to vomit. I thanked God for giving me the strength to make it. I literally got on my knees and looked to where Heaven is supposed to be and thanked Jesus Christ and God. I thanked them for guiding me and keeping me safe and showing me where to sleep and where to find water and where to find food. I thanked them for allowing me to recognize non-Christian predators and avoid them. I thanked them for allowing the doctor to tell me where to find Ben Zion. I thanked them for Ben Zion himself, and for the gift of having him as my brother. I stayed on my knees for an hour, praying and thanking Jesus and the Heavenly Father. I stayed on my knees until the urge to vomit disappeared and until I felt like they had given me my strength back.

The walk up the drive was easy. The road was long and straight and there were woods on both sides. It took about ten minutes. When I came to the end, there was a large white farmhouse and a barn, and huge overgrown fields behind them. There were people around. Some were working a garden, some just sitting around. They all looked happy. A large woman asked if I needed help. I told her I was looking for Ben. She said he was out and she wasn’t sure when he’d be back. I asked for a glass of water and she got me one. She tried to talk to me but I asked her to leave me alone, and she did.

I watched the people around the farm. There were all types of people, all colors, different ages. Some of them were definitely strange, or what Jacob would call perverted or deviant. Men were holdings hands. Women were holding hands. I had been taught for my entire life that homosexuals were evil and damned to Hell. That they spread disease. That they were mentally ill. I was scared of them. I didn’t want them coming near me, and although I had seen Ben kiss Jeremiah, I thought that was more just to anger Jacob than because he accepted them or their lifestyle, and I couldn’t believe he was living with them.

I sat on the porch for an hour or so. Once I stopped moving, my fatigue caught up with me. I had trouble keeping my eyes open. It took a great effort to bring the glass to my lips, though the water was wonderful when I did. It felt like my chest was weighted down, and each breath was work, and with each I could feel my strength dissipating. The woman who had gotten me my water checked on me occasionally. The rest of the people, and they were coming in and out of the house, coming down the road with bags that appeared to be filled with food and clothes, people going out to the barn, seemed not to notice me, and when they did, they were very friendly, and seemingly normal. Finally Ben came walking out of the fields. He was with a couple, and they looked happy, and he hugged each of them. He turned towards me and saw me and smiled. He looked thin, and his hair was longer, and he was still pale, and his scars looked worse than I remembered them, or they seemed to jump out more. He walked towards me, and I started smiling. He sat down with me and took my hand and put his arms around me and said hello. I immediately started crying, sobbing, into his shoulder. I couldn’t say anything, I just sobbed. And it felt wonderful to do it. I felt secure and strong. I wasn’t scared anymore. I felt comfortable and calm. I felt like what I wanted to feel like when I was praying to Jesus and the Holy Father. I felt loved.

He took me by the hand and led me to a room. He told me I should lie down, and the bed was big and the sheets were clean and I was so tired. I tried to tell him about what had happened in New York and why I was there and how our mother needed him and how Jacob was going to lose the church and how Pastor Luke had left. He just smiled and said I should sleep. I told him he would only have to come back for a few days and he could leave again and come back here or go anywhere. He said once he left he’d never be back, and I asked why and he said because we both know what is going to happen when I get back to New York. I told him we’d get our mother home and he’d talk to Jacob and everything would be fine. He smiled and told me he loved me and would come get me later, after I’d slept, and he left the room.

I fell asleep almost immediately. I woke to Ben Zion sitting next to my bed, his hand on my arm. It was dark, and there was no light coming through the window. He smiled at me and said it was time to go. I got out of bed. He had a pair of shoes for me. Not new new, but someone else’s shoes that were in better condition than mine, and were better for walking. I asked him why we were leaving in the middle of the night, and he said it was easier to walk because it was cooler, and there were more trucks on the road, which would increase our chances of getting a ride. He walked out the door and motioned for me to follow him.

We walked through the house. It was silent and dark. As we came down the stairs, I saw people in the living and dining rooms. There were five or six in each room. Most of them were nude, and they were entwined with each other. I saw two of them kissing, and moving, and I immediately looked away. I believed that whatever they were doing, it was wrong. Whatever they were doing, it was against the ways of God. Whatever they were doing was a sin. Ben didn’t pay any attention to them. We left the house.

The yard was the same. It was warm out and people were sleeping on blankets in the grass, and some of them were still awake. The moon was high and half full, so I could see them better, and they were doing the same sorts of things, and some of them were making noises. I saw two men kissing, their arms around each other, and I looked away again.

I must have tensed up, because Ben took my hand and spoke.

It’s okay to look.

I spoke.

It’s wrong.

Why?

It’s a sin.

Why?

It goes against the word of God as expressed in the Holy Bible.

Two people making each other happy isn’t wrong.

They’re both men.

They’re both human beings.

Leviticus 18:22 says you shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.

I can see that they’re happy, and they love each other, and they’re making each other feel good.

Their souls are damned.

You hate them for how they live?

Yes.

Your Bible also says, in 1 John 4:20, if anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

In God’s eyes, as I have been taught, because of what they are, they are not my brothers.

You’ve been taught wrong. We are all the same, regardless of who and how we love.

That’s not what the Bible says.

The Bible is a book. Books are for telling stories. They’re not for denying people the right to live as they choose. Live by what you feel, and what feels right to you, not by what some book of stories tells you.

I can’t look at them.

You don’t have to look, but it’s no different than a man and woman in love, and you wouldn’t look away from that.

If they were sinning I would.