For the love of Faith Tabernacle

“You cannot expect me to actually believe that one person actually wrote all those interviews with you by themself!”

This is Val, she’s talking to God. See, she just killed her boyfriend. In her right hand there, you’ll notice that dark thing...his heart, she was looking for God in there. See, the first problem is not only that this idea is totally unrealistic, but that Val will not realize this. The second problem is of course that Val does not understand that the feeling “love” is only associated with the body’s heart. The heart does not actually contain the love. Val won’t learn this because the only thing she is thinking now, holding the heart of the only person she has ever loved in her hand, is:

“Why are you hiding from me?”

She storms home, with her boyfriend’s body in a bag (all one hundred and ninety-five pounds of it) and stops when she is within the legal confines of her mother’s property, her mother, who is preparing the two dinner, swivels around to the sight of her only daughter covered in blood, blood dripping bag, bloody hair and blood on her clothes and her first thought is: IS IT HERS and then...I HOPE SO. God...God let it be hers.

They both attend Faith Tabernacle on the corner of Fitch Street and South Pelham Road in Welland. They are both very dedicated and enthusiastic about their faith. At first Ms. Scott (her mother) was thrilled to see her daughter’s acceptance of God, but, lately her love has been

a little out of control. Although Ms. Scott has recently tried to offer her daughter religious support, she fears it was something she said that may have sparked her daughters strange behavior.

“Mom, remember last night when you told me that to find God, what I had to do was look for him in things that I love?”

Bingo.

“Honey...”

“I looked in Wilbur and the Fish and inside of my cell phone and I couldn’t find him. I thought I was being superficial, so I went into Philip.”

Wilbur is the dog, Philip is the boyfriend.

“Valerie...I told you to look for God, not to try to find him. Go shower before you eat dinner.”

In the shower the blood turns the water red, Val wonders if detectives could find this blood. Probably. She’s glad Philip is supposed to be on vacation right now, that buys her a few days...but for what? Regardless, right now all she has to think about is dinner, although she still

finds herself thinking about God. Everything reminds her of him, she can’t help but think about

him. He’s everywhere. It turns her on a little, but she wouldn’t ever tell anybody that...he knows though. She winks at God.

In the kitchen, Helen (Ms. Scott) is worried that her only daughter is going to become a Satanist; she doesn’t know how to explain to Val that God may not show himself to her. Helen is worried that she is next. She considered herself Val’s most loved thing, but would Val consider this? Would Val kill her own mother to find God, and would God appear...and would it be worth it? Could Helen herself be convinced that this is a good and noble idea...does it make sense? I suppose it does...stupid though...yet, Helen did not look forward to dinner, and she hid all of the knives.

But Val could come downstairs with a knife or a...this is ridiculous.

Dinnertime today meant pizza that Helen made herself, some comments were made by Val about it that Helen didn’t hear. Helen didn’t hear because she was busy watching Val’s hands and feet to make sure she could not make any quick movements, and thinking ‘...my own daughter...I can’t sit in this house with my own daughter...’ while Val ate, rather happily in fact. The pizza was pretty good, the sun won’t go down until nine tonight, that means there’s time for a bike ride...and church tomorrow, but mom has to go to work...mom?

“Mom? Are you going to sit down and eat? I’d stay longer but I already had two pieces

and I want to get on my bike before it gets dark.”

“I will!”

Helen darts across the room, quickly slaps some pizza on her plate and...poison. Val put poison on it. I’ll die and she can take out my heart...my heart will burst open with the light of God, with what she is looking for. She picked the slice randomly though...but you can’t be too safe. That piece of pizza goes onto the counter, where it stays until it gets cleaned up the next morning, which starts for Helen at two-thirty (a.m) because she is afraid that Val is going to dissect her. Going to work at seven o’clock is a relief.

Val goes to Faith Tabernacle this morning. She has a talk with the youth group leader about God. This guy’s name is Brian, but everyone calls him “faith”. “Faith” has little muscles that look like tennis balls got stuck in his arms, or possibly like he inserted them into his arms himself for shock value. Hopefully he did the latter for comedic value, but the chances are slim. “Faith” is well known for helping people out when they’re upset, or in a “questioning period”, people feel bad for him because the majority of his arms are lanky and his tennis balls make no physical sense, he looks like Twiggy with thinning hair and with tennis balls attached to her upper-arms. The beautiful thing about faith is its ability to hold even the most underestimated people in high regard.

“I can’t find him, Faith. What does he expect me to do!”

“Have you looked in your heart, Val? Because it sounds to me like you haven’t. It sounds to me like you’re not depending on your own personal relationship with God, but with the idea of God...”

Three weeks ago, Val went to her doctors and took X-rays of her heart, her brain...

“...it sounds to me like you’ve been looking for God in other people. You can see his qualities in other people, but there’s only one God for you, and he’s all yours...and he’s in there...”

...her stomach, kidneys...

Everything!

The Doctor told her everything looked normal, and she asked him who it looked normal for, to which he replied: ‘most people your age’. Val assumed he was referring to everyone her age not lucky enough to have accepted God into their hearts, the majority...most of the people. What the doctor had meant was all people excluding those with alterations, blood clots, tumors...ETC, a.k.a., most of the people her age. But this is a fair enough misconception.

“...you just have to work towards making yourself more like God, Val.”

“I can never be as good as God is, you know that Faith!”

“But at least you’ll get to meet him someday!”

Someday...

“Have you ever felt him, Faith?”

“I feel him everyday.”

Everyday...

Val has to go. She has to find him. She loves him.

Helen has to go home, make dinner, pretend to know nothing about God.

There is no way to describe the horror that both of these situations are going to result in. It is, to a large extent, nobody’s fault. I suppose we can blame Faith Tabernacle, for exploiting the fragileness of today’s youth, but...why point fingers? We could just as easily blame Helen, but Helen is being hard enough on herself already. We could also blame Val for what happens, we could criticize her beliefs or her logic or her actions, but how can we blame her? Nobody told her.

Years after, someone looking back on the outcome will ask why nobody just told Val that her efforts for pointless, her faith was juvenile, and her desires were unnatural, and how they can accept that this message is wide-spread. This is how they replied:

“You have to understand that we did everything we could to prevent this from happening.

We simply had no control over the situation. Telling Val that she could not see God would have

been untrue, since we really don’t know if such a thing is possible. There is something touching about her story, her faith, her determination...she more than loved God, she was in love with him. This is the goal of our religion, we love our God like he is our lover, because he is not our equal and therefore not our brother. Val was able to put her love for God above her love for her friends, classmates, even her own mother! She realized that anyone can love these people, anyone. It takes someone special to have a special kind of love though, the kind Val had in God. Love is all-powerful, and we go where it takes us. We have no control over where that is.”

Captain God, on his love-boat. Through Hell and high water. C’est la vie.