Famine

Chapter Twenty-Four

    Jonah came to some hours later in the same dark room. For a brief time he wondered if he had already been exiled and re-awakened in the mega-future.  Was he among enemies, with friends, or beyond human issues as he would understand them?  Will he have to learn another different language so unlike his own as to take him years to talk to anyone?  How fast could he learn, fast enough to survive coming eons.  Was he in the present?  Was this new present like?  He didn’t have to wait much longer.

   The spotlights came on with Dr. Boron sitting self-satisfied with his hands in their customary over-confident fold.  Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb were on his left and right.  Rene was also there.  Would she once again play devil’s advocate, or was she fed up with Jonah’s antics too?  Somehow Jonah was still glad to see herm the closest thing he had to a friend in the lion’s den.

   This time Jonah started off.  “I can say one thing for you, Dr. Boron.  You certainly have a flair for the dramatic.  I guess you get your kicks from sending even kids off into oblivion.   What do you tell them to get them to go quietly?  Do you tell them they will get all the ice cream they want?”  Jonah stared him down.  “Oh, you’re such a brave man!”  Jonah wanted to keep them off guard although in the end it would do little good.

   Rene spoke up first.  “Mr. Mark, Sean Hagar’s fate has been

set aside for the present. “

   Dr. Boron interrupted.  “Jonah Mark, there is little doubt about your fate as you meet before this committee.  What intrigues me is that you were such a coward before, and now you have such a passion for self-sacrifice.  Why now?  Our tracking device we placed in your clothes in Germany revealed nothing suspicious.  We had nothing on you at all.  Yet you reveal yourself.  You make a show of it and of all things chose the Circus to make your faith known.  Why?”

   “It’s simple,” Jonah reflected.  “I made a promise in good faith to a young boy.  He needed my support at the most horrific moment in his life.  He had to believe in somebody during his last moments in the only life he ever knew.  He needs to remember that there was someone with honor when he wakes in future eons.  He’ll have confidence that there are people of honor  there as well.  I could not have acted brave on my own account, or to benefit myself here on earth another minute.”

   “What about you then?”  Dr. Boron was still as a loss to understand.

   “Sean’s need was greater than my own survival.  For Christ’s sake, I had to lose myself for someone else in order to find myself.  I now know who I am.  I am God’s, not yours.  It doesn’t matter what you do to me now.  In a million years, if it comes to that, I’ll still belong to Him.”

   “That’s cracy!”  said Tweedle Dee on Dr. Boron’s right.

   “I suppose it is!” Jonah laughed in his face.  “It’s foolish.  But it’s God’s foolishness.  Perhaps God has made me foolish to confound some who thinks he is wise, like you, when he isn’t.”

   Tweedle Dumb then spoke up.  “Look at what we’ve accomplished in our wisdom: incredible medical advances with the extended longevity that it brings.  Wealth for everyone.  We don’t need a God!”

   “God gave us ‘the power to get wealth.’ “

   “Jonah, we gave peace to the world.  Cain killed Abel in your Bible because of religion.  Christians waged wars, the scourge of humankind.  We took away religion and all its cancerous influence in order to have peace.”

   “You have not begun to heal the wounds of humankind.  Rather you have cried ‘Peace. Peace, when there is no Peace’.”  Is it peace that the mobs brought to believers? Is that your peace?  People cannot pray without looking over their shoulders.  Is that your peace?”