Category: Storytime

It was just a few weeks after Ebenezer’s Scrooge’s wondrous transformation and finally Ebenezer’s former fiance, Belle, finally got wind of the change in her former beau. Upon hearing the report Belle had to see for herself so she secretly put herself in the way of Ebenezer’s acts of kindness to see for herself.

Having witnessed it all, she was drawn back to the enchantment she once had for Ebenezer and this enchantment increased the long endured  misery she had with her current husband. Life had been hard since she had spurned Ebenezer. Her husband was so generous towards orphans, immigrants, and the Oliver Twist types in London that she and the children often went around in rags and sometimes went hungry. She had tried to talk sense into her husband but he always responded with… “Hey, we need to love everybody the same.” Her husband had used the same type of reasoning for his dalliances with other women. “Now, Belle, honey, it’s hardly right or Christian, in light of the fact of the ‘Brotherhood of all men’ that I should favor you above all the other Sheilas.” And so Belle had spent her married life in misery constantly thinking that being married to a miser like Ebenezer could have been any worse.

And now Ebenezer was a changed man and her own Eberhard remained so unchanged. Belle couldn’t help but wonder why three spirits had not visited her husband … why Eberhard could not have been transformed just as Ebenezer clearly had been.

The children were all grown now and Belle was left alone with this spendthrift that she had grown to find repulsive. If Ebenezers later years could be lived as a changed man then why couldn’t her life also be changed from what she had endured all her life?

Belle decided not to wait for an extraterrestrial visitation from a syndical of Spirits. She would take matters in her own hands.

And so Belle began to plot. It all began with her separation and divorce from Eberhard. She had proper reasons to do so for decades but now with the possibility of returning to a transformed Ebenezer and a life lived of comparative comfort the iron was hot for such a divorce from Eberhard.

When Belle told Eberhard of her intentions, he merely shrugged and reminded her that he had plenty of other phillies in the pasture.  Belle rejoiced at this response. Now, she had to set the hook for Ebenezer.

On Christmas Eve day of the year following the visitation of the Spirits Belle put herself in the way of Ebenezer in the best dress she had left, along with all the feminine accouterments that she thought would be necessary for Ebenezer’s next transformation. Belle thought of herself as the Spirit of Christmas Femme-fatale. “And why not” she thought, “after all Ebenezer will be even happier after he sweeps me off my feet.”

And just as Belle planned Ebenezer remembered all that was past when all of Belle was present again before him. In no short amount of time Ebenezer had “wrenched” out of Belle her “story.” The sympathy for Belle swelled to levels not seen since that same sympathy had swelled for Tiny Tim almost a year ago.

From that point on, the old flame of the old romance was kindled. Just as Ebenezer had been transformed by the Spirits of the previous year, so Ebenezer was transformed by the  Spirit of Belle and in July a Christmas wedding was planned.

And for the few years that Belle and Ebenezer had left together Ebenezer never treated her as if she was “just another woman.” Ebenezer prized her above all women and even treated Belle’s children as having a unique relationship to him. All the egalitarianism of Eberhard was gone from Belle’s life and her life was now transformed.

They had only read books that had described families that were quite clearly altogether different than clan Franken. Those books were usually the history books that described a less enlightened age when family units were morphologically the same and would suffer from a bland longevity wherein family units stayed together for decades.

That was the time before researchers had discovered that true satisfaction could only be discovered in a rotating pleroma of family members.

The Franken’s were just such an example of such a family. Gathered around the table for the Martin Luther King Holiday the Franken’s were recognized throughout the community as being the poster children for what destiny had always intended for the family to be. Father Franken (Shelby) was born with two left arms but due to the work of the Handicapper General of the United States (a new cabinet position established in 3066) he had risen to be a professional athlete and Captain on a all right-handed girls volleyball team.

While during his time on the Volleyball team, Shelby had met, wooed, and finally had a child with Terry. Terry, standing 4′ 2″ was one of the stars of the Sarasota Spikes — a team which was a member of the multigenerational, multigendered, multiracial “National Organization Uniting Volleyballers Each Advancing Uniformity (NOVEAU).” The league was not so constricted so as to compete only in Volleyball. Many years they would spend half the season competing against an All-Start Rugby team from the United Arab Emirates — who of course had ceased being uniquely Arab centuries ago. Terry made the team because of the Handicapper General’s rules that Volleyball teams were required to have an equal number of people under 5 feet as they had people playing for them who were over 6 feet.

Shelby and Terry didn’t particularly like each other when they first met, but on the one weekend a year where they were required, by league rules to cohabitate with one another, they discovered they disliked each other less than they disliked everyone else on the team. As such true love was inevitable.

Shelby’s original last name was Fran. Terry’s original last name was Kenn. As such their “married” name was “Franken.”

Of course, Shelby and Terry were never really married. Marriage was one of those ancient vestiges from “the way things used to be.” However, they did have children. Turns out that both Shelby and Terry were quite fertile. Shelby ended up birthing 3 of the children, while Terry birthed four of the children. Neither Shelby, nor Terry, were certain who the original sperm donators of their children were but as that was a custom long disregarded neither one cared.

Naturally, other children had been adopted by Shelby and Terry. Indeed, there were times when the joke was that there were no children who weren’t adopted by Shelby and Terry — such was their magnificent generosity. Shelby and Terry loved all children the same, yet despite all this love Shelby and Terry had been taken to court several times by children unknown to them claiming that they had a need that Shelby and Terry didn’t meet, and as such Shelby and Terry were involved in child abuse. Fortunately, on these cases the US Handicapper General would often step in to rescue Shelby and Terry’s good name by writing a check from the US Government for the well being of the children bring suit in the name of Shelby and Terry Franken.

Five of the “biological” children were vertically challenged like Terry. Three of the seven were born with two left hands. Two of them (Norm and Norma) were miserable birth defects being neither short nor blessed with the absence of right arms. Despite these birth defects Norm and Norma were treated as part of the family.

In later years Norm and Norma made up for their birth defects by having children together. When that happened they were never considered abnormal again.

It should be noted here that Shelby and Terry had not been the only parents of this anti-family family. The whole Volleyball team had rotated in out of the bedroom that had been originally claimed by Shelby and Terry.  One of the things that made the Franken Family so admired was that it was so undefinable. Even the children didn’t know completely what it meant to be a member of the Franken Family.

One thing that the whole family had in common was the same pigment skin color. One of the requirement of NOVEAU was that pigment be of a very particularly mottled character. In such a fashion NOVEAU reasoned that they could broaden their appeal while at the same time serving as an example of the necessity for all colors to bleed into one. Indeed, so strict was the NOVEAU League on this rule that any fan attending a game also had to have mottled skin pigment.

One thing that NOVEAU emphasized was the elimination of distinctions since distinctions were the reason for all disharmony and hard feelings in the world. This policy explained why NOVEAU was not just about volleyball. Indeed, anyone attending a NOVEAU match were not exactly sure just what they would be spectators of. Sometimes, it was certain to be Volleyball, while at other times it could be rugby, shuttlecock, darts, or fencing, or even some combination of all the above. At those times the rules that would be followed were called “Watterson-ball” rules, named after the first President of the League — Bill Watterson.

If they had lived in 2020 Shelby and Terry and the children would have been called “Cross-dressers” but since all distinctions everywhere had been eliminated there was no way to know what cross-dressing would look like. Shelby enjoyed the skorts while Terry was a big fan of the Kilt. (They used to call them “Scottish Kilts”) but the whole notion of “Scott” had long been lost.

Being stars in the NOVEAU league Shelby and Terry traveled extensively and they were constantly amazed to occasionally come across locations where distinctions still existed. These poor people lived as social outcasts considered as the derelicts of society. Despite all the global and local peer pressure these offscourings of the planet marshalled on determined that the now obsolete categories of gender, race, ethnicity, and intelligence mattered.

Shelby and Terry were of course “Christians,” though they often commented to one another that they didn’t see much difference between themselves and the other members of their Volleyball team who were not “Christians.” It certainly wasn’t something that anybody spent any time talking about. After all, if faith has to know its place, and the place for faith certainly wasn’t on a table tennis court.

Shelby and Terry had learned their faith from an early age. They had been dedicated as infants and from the tenderest of years they had been members of “Most Conservative Presbyterian Church Possible in the World (MCPCP)” There they were catechized how God found it blasphemous to even think in terms of gender, age, race, intellect, or ability. Before they could speak they were taught that being a Christian means being saved from nature and entering into the grace world where the carnal distinctions invented by man are forever eliminated into an ocean of God’s great undiscriminating love for everything and everyone.

Indeed, for Shelby and Terry their Christian faith meant everything to them, although they had a hard time understanding how there was a time when Christians would have condemned Shelby and Terry for being not true to Christ or the Christian faith just because they were intersexed queers who were pressing the Crown Rights of King Jesus to eliminate antiquated notions of marriage, family, nation, gender, race, intelligence, and age.

Still, Shelby and Terry just knew in their hearts that they were doing the King’s work and they were resolved that together via their work with NOVEAU, they would stamp out the remaining bigotry that remained in this sin sick world of God blaspheming distinctions.

I’ve never been a Math and Science (STEM) kind of chap. All of my interests and abilities have been in what has been questionably dubbed “the humanities” — you know, History, Philosophy, Theology, Literature and even Sociology. It wasn’t that I didn’t make an effort at Math and Science its just that it took me too much time to que up to a speed where I could be in the middle of the pack. Because of this reality, languages were a struggle for me as well. In Undergrad I tried Accounting and failed miserably. I also took a twirl in Economics but unfortunately my Economics classes were long on the Mathematical equations in order to come with GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and GNP (Gross Net Product) and very short on Economic theory. I only later learned that I had some proficiency at Economics as theory. However, I had precious little proficiency at Economics as Mathematics. This reality explains how I struggled to get through the required statistics class in undergrad.

It was only when I took Theology courses I began to realize that here was something that I could excel at. For whatever reason Theology just clicked and made sense. In point of fact, in short time fellow students were coming to me for help with their theology. Theology clicked faster than even politics history and philosophy — all subjects for which I finally received a BS degree. However, that was due to the fact that I was also being taught presuppositionalism (epistemology) at the same time and it took a few years before lights turned on. I remember to this day being assigned as a Freshman to read Francis Schaeffer’s “Escape From Reason.” Some of you may recall that this small book is less than one hundred pages. As I read each word and turned each page I had no idea what I was reading. It may was well have been as been written in French. Still, I was bound and determined to read it cover to cover despite not understanding a single word I was reading. I wanted at least to be able to say that I had tried. When the exam came I was ready to walk away from College. All my course work was beyond me. I was not ready for College. I told the Lord that if I failed the Schaeffer exam (and I had already failed more than a few exams and classes at this point) that I was walking away from College. So, I went in like a trooper and took the exam and fumbled my way through it the best I could and just knew I had failed miserably. I was sure that I was finished with this whole college thing.

However, as the Professor (Dr. Martin) graded his Freshman classes on a curve, the fact that the rest of my peers were even more bumfuzzled than me rescued the day. I went to look at the grade curve, posted on Martin’s door, and there I discovered that my failure in understanding was a average failure of understanding. I had not failed but had received a “C” on the exam and I said to the Lord, “apparently you don’t want me leaving here,” and so I stayed and pressed on. It took a couple years of failing more than a few classes before I began to get a grip on matters, but that grip never included math and science. (Though in biology and the pig dissection with its pure memory work, I aced.)

All of this to set up what I am learning now on the intricacies of the human body. With my surgical procedure on the horizon I have been required to learn about the human heart. I have been reading on the subjects and listening to lectures and I have to admit that I am stunned at the precision and order there is about the human body. A Presbyterian would say that “everything in the human body is decent and in order.” There is nothing about the human heart that bespeaks chaos or happenstance. I keep muttering to myself over and over again, “We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made,” and “What is man that thou are mindful of him. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor.”

In my learning I have come away asking myself, “How can anybody who studies all this as a career and living not believe in design and a designer?” “How can any medical Doctor not be a servant of Christ?” How can they study all this and not fall on their faces before their Creator God?

Then I was reminded again that the natural man is at warfare with God (Romans 8:7). It all came forcefully upon me of the power of the fallen mind to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Then I was reminded again what grace and privilege it has been to have been sent the Spirit of the living God so as to be able to see and interpret all of life in light of the reality of God. There is no difference between me and any genius surgeon who does not see that the human body screams DESIGN and so DESIGNER except for the fact that sovereign grace has arrested me and opened my eyes while the genius surgeon continues to suppress the truth in unrighteousness and so can only see time plus chance plus circumstance.

There are a few truths I’m pressing with this entry. The obvious one is how all of creation screams a Creator God. The second one is the necessity of gratitude that the Spirit of the living Christ has turned on lights so that the Christ believer is living in a illuminated world that is bright with the reality and glory of God. Everything proclaims the handiwork of God. Our prayer is that we would, over time, see that more and more clearly. The third truth I’m trying to push in this entry is for the person who may think that they don’t have the ability to understand theology, philosophy, history and academics in general. Don’t give up. Keep pressing on. Make it a matter of prayer. If God could turn on lights for me so that a kid who graduated High School with a 1.9 GPA and who was jagged and broken around the edges then His grace can turn the lights on for any one upon whom His grace is given. However, lets me honest, ignorance, like demons, is not cast out except by prayer and fasting. (Not to mention a stubborn refusal to allow the material to conquer you.) There has to be a willingness to be seen as stupid by your peers who are ahead of you initially. (My stories here are the stuff books are made of.) There has to be a willingness to suffer the dismissal of professors who are hinting that “you’re not college (seminary, ministry) material.” (More stories and more books.)

The mindset of people who are in the position that I was in and remain in is to take the mindset of the tortoise in his race with the hare. People like you and I just need to keep praying and plugging away morning, noon, and night in order to get to the finish line.

You may not think you have it in you and it may be the case that your talents lie elsewhere but all of God’s people are called at some level to “study to show thyself approved, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed.”

Upon finally fleeing Vanity Fair Hopeful and Christian continued on the way to the Celestial city but when they stopped at a well for a drink they encountered two fair maidens named Egalitarianism and SJWism. The maidens did ply them with kindly words and sweet morsels intended to delay them from returning to the road that wended its way to the Celestial City. Dusk came upon them and suddenly Evangelist appeared to chastise Christian and Hopeful for their tardiness. At the sight of Evangelist SJWism and Egalitarianism did hiss and froth. They clutched and pulled at Christian and Hopeful’s clothing seeking to pull them to their Father, Frankfurt’s house.

SJWism said to Hopeful, “Will you not come hither with me to my Father’s house. There you might meet my valiant brothers ‘King Gramsci,’ ‘King Marcuse,’ and ‘King Burnes’ who could teach you the ways of my land.” Hopeful looked longingly at SJWism and then back at Evangelist and finally said, “Fair maiden, I am sorely tempted to learn those arts but Evangelist has reminded me that our Master has said ‘the poor we have with us always.’ “Besides, envy is one of the seven deadly sins and it is reported far and wide that your King Brothers Gramsci, Marcuse, and Burnes, excel at teaching the art of envy. Release me, I must not turn aside from the road to the Celestial city. At these words, SJWism viciously gouged Hopeful with her sharpened nails and drew copious blood. Evangelist applied a tourniquet to the wound and informed Hopeful that this wound would doubtless weep for some time and leave a scar but, “it is a slight thing compared to what would have been the death of your soul had you gone to the Frankfurt home. Every time you look at the scar you will remember the grace of the Master of the Celestial City to have delivered you from this Jezebel tryst.”

All the while Christian and the coquettish maiden Egalitarian had set to whispering and more. Christian was slowly being infected with the serpentine words of mistress Egalitarian. Suddenly Evangelist wounded Christian with a thrust of the sword of the Word causing both Christian and Egalitarian to shriek. Egalitarian shrilly said to Christian, “Why do you tarry with this madman when you could lay with me in my Father’s home.” Christian, in turn, was shocked and asked Evangelist how he could wound him so. Evangelist simply said to Christian, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” Evangelist continued, “If I left you to the banalities of this woman without injuring you, you would have forever been lost to the Celestial City. As it is now I now have your attention. Listen to me Christian, this woman will reduce you so as to be the same as all those who dwell in her Father Frankfurt’s house. Eventually, she and her Father will convince you that who you are as a son of Adam is no different than who she is as a daughter of Eve. She will eventually convince you that there is no difference between residing in the Celestial City or residing in the Sulfur City. She and her Father, Frankfurt, will disinherit your family and make your children’s hearts hardened towards your Christian land bequeathed to them by the Master of the Celestial city, even to the point of erasing all borders between Christendom and Sulfurdom.  She will convince you that nations are evil and mythical and will have your children invite in those who hate the Master of that Celestial city where you are now headed on pilgrimage.” As the words swept over Christian suddenly the enchantment of Egalitarian began to wear off and being ashamed he now saw her as a fanged and disfigured hideous beast who was both all things living and no thing living. She was at the same time male and female, at the same time Shemite, Japethite, and Hamite, at the same time young and old, at the same time human and animal and goddess, at the same time Christian and Mephistopheles.  Christian cried out loud in sweaty horror, “For a reason, you were named Egalitarian.” Then like SJWism, with Hopeful, Egalitarian lunged at Christian and did catch him with her fangs and left two gaping holes in Christian’s heel. Evangelist tended to the wound reminding Christian of how the serpent always struck at the heel of the seed of the woman.

Then Christian and Hopeful, both wounded, returned to their path to the Celestial City. It was true they bore the deep wounds of the daughters of Frankfurt but it was also true that they were now all the wiser. Evangelist did accompany them continuing to apply the balm of the Word to their weeping wounds. After several days, Hopeful and Christian parted with Evangelist petitioning him to return to their children and grandchildren and warn them against the house of Frankfurt. Evangelist promised to return and speak the Word to the heirs of Christian and Hopeful but added these words, “The house of Frankfurt has coiled itself tightly upon the place and time you once called home before you went on pilgrimage to the Celestial City. The House of Frankfurt has even seized deed to the Palace Qahal resident of the Master of the Celestial City in that place and time. However, take great courage. The Master of the Celestial City will soon visit His Palace and few rebels will be left after His visit. At that time the house of Frankfurt will be removed and your heirs will be rescued. The Master of the Celestial City is faithful and He will do it.”

And comforted with such words of promise Christian and Hopeful set their faces towards the Celestial City and continued on their pilgrimage.