MURPHY
Murphy Fenix doesn’t really remember his parents. The Society ran the Protected Level differently in the beginning. Murphy and his wife were apart of the first generation of Synthesizers. They lived with their parents until they were 4 years old, and then they grew up in Sanctuaries until they were 16. As fresh sweet sixteens, they underwent I.D. Synthesis being evaluated every 3 months. Then at the age 20, they selected their gender, sexual orientation, and spiritual practice.
A couple of years after he finished his IDS, the process changed over the span of 10 years. How the process works now was finalized a few years before Jon was born.
Unlike Jon, Murphy never got to see his parents. It was complete separation from their parents for the Collective of 52, believing parental bonds could influence who children decided to become. However, majority of Society members from Collective 52 suffered from severe depression and did not complete I.D. Synthesis. To date, most of the workers in Sanctuaries are from Collective 52 remaining inside a gender neutral environment.
When Murphy left the Sanctuary, he was given an occupation he had to keep secret. He would say he worked as a janitor in the Law House, located behind the wall in the Private Sector. A black car from behind the wall would come and pick him up early in the morning as the sun rose, and dropped him back off at his apartment late at night, after dark.
He remembers the first day he crossed the checkpoint of the wall and ventured into the Private Level. It was his second day amongst the Society. He just spent a wild night at the Lounge with his roommate Gabriel. At the time Murphy was attracted to men and therefore, hooked up with different bulky, manly, men every night. On his first night though, he brought home the most beautiful woman he ever saw. Her outrageous beauty and enchanting charm swayed him to spend one night with her. After that, they agreed to be friends not feeling any chemistry between them. She fast became his best friend.
Behind the wall, there are trees, grass, space from building to building, and smog-free blue skies. Everything looks pristine and presentable. The sidewalks and the streets are so clean at times it seems fake. It was that way back then and it is the same way now.
The sun fully rose and took the sky when the black car pulled up to the Philosopher’s house. Chief Philosopher Silas Angelcrest was and still is considered the wisest man when pondering the state of humanity and directing a path for humanity’s future… Silas’s father, Hugo Angelcrest, was one of the founding fathers of the Society and continues to serve as Chief Policymaker.
Silas was single at the time and lived alone. The man’s black hair went down to his shoulders. He wore beaded bracelets and a beaded necklace. That day he wore a bright red tunic with a golden dragon on it. He did not wear any shoes because he was in a season of groundedness, where his entire being needed to connect with the force in his surroundings. He claimed to feel a connection with all things, living and inanimate.
The first place Silas took Murphy was to his study and explained why Murphy was there…
‘You’re here Blanco (Murphy’s Sanctuary first name) because you tested to be a deeper thinker, connecting with the deep universal truths without being taught them. The Panel and I know you’re destined to be a part of the elect, but it is up to you to choose that path. I will take you under my wing. I will share my wealth of knowledge of wisdom with you. And if you pass your training, if the Panel accepts you, and if you choose this path, then you will become the first Philosopher from the Public Level.’ Silas said with an effeminate tone. He talked with hands whenever he got the chance. He was a very bright person. If personality could be colors, he would be the rainbow with a touch of sparkles.
They began right away. Often, Murphy would be up to his head in books for reading assignments. Murphy’s reading go so extensive that Silas would allow him to spend weeks at time in the huge manor. After a year, Silas made a room for him to stay when wanted to, which was all the time.
The remaining six months of Murphy’s I.D. Synthesis, Murphy (who then was Blanco Fenix, a caucasian, homosexual, spiritual man) confessed he was in love with Silas. And even though it was unethical they proceeded to have an affair.
Then a month before Murphy’s IDS was to be finalized, he was reading the Holy Bible for an assignment studying “The Limitations of Morality for the Stability of the Psyche”. He came across an old testament scripture.
Leviticus 18:22
22 “ ‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.’ ” (NIV)
Leviticus 20:13
13 “ ‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.’ ” (NIV)
Reading these scriptures infuriated Murphy. He deeply desired to tear the pages right out of the old book, but he didn’t want to risk going to prison for destroying Silas’s irreplaceable property.
He once liked Abrahamic Literature. A part of him wanted to believe in the God of the Bible, even though it was forbidden, but after reading how the God of the Bible would order his death for him being who he was… he then hated the Bible God.
He began having nightmares about a place of fire. The heat hot enough to melt his skin, yet his skin never did. He would cry in agony so intensely he gnashed his teeth, bitterly angry that no matter how much he pleaded for help, no one came to save him.
One late night, Blanco forced himself to stay awake in the study, sitting in front of the fireplace, watching a real fire burn. Silas came in to check on his pupil, his love. When Blanco told him about his nightmares, Silas responded back, ‘You’ve been reading too much ancient history about hell, hades, sheol, the place of death, or whatever you choose to call it… Fill your soul with positive things.’
When Blanco asked what hell was Silas chuckled thinking the young man was joking.
Blankly, Blanco stared at him innocently. Legitimately unaware of a mythical or religious place called hell, Blanco asked Silas to explain what the place was.
However, Silas suddenly got uncomfortable and very irritable. The corner is right eye flinched, which happened when he was frustrated. He said to Blanco, ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not real.’ He took Blanco by the hands and pulled him off the ground. He reeled Blanco close to him and asked, ‘Come spend the rest of the night in my room.’
Taking two steps away from him, Blanco asked a random, out of nowhere question, ‘You’re never going to marry me are you?’
Snapping loudly, and annoyed to the point of spitting as hollered his consonants, ‘YOU KNOW I CANNOT MARRY YOU. YOU KNEW SNICE OUR LOVE BEGAN!’
Weeping, Blanco fled the manor and ran to the wall desperate to get as far away as he could from Silas, from the cause of broken, confused heart.
Back at his apartment. Alone in his room, he sat at the foot of his bed. All the Bible stories where God would visit them in a vision or in their dreams… Deep in his heart, Blanco wanted to encounter the God of the Bible.
When he managed to fall asleep… nothing happened that he could remember.
Like all other mornings when he didn’t spend the night with Silas, the black car came to pick him up during sun rise. This time, however, Blanco didn’t get in the vehicle. The self-driving ride stayed parked outside Blanco’s apartment complex for days. Days where Blanco sat on his knees pleading to the God of the Bible, asking if He was real.
Day by day, Blanco changed the way he dressed, the way he talked, the way he thought. He would recite portions of scripture he remembered. ‘Be still and know I AM God.’ … ‘Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, the life’… ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ … ‘No light can extinguish the darkness’ … ‘He is my shepherd, I shall not. Though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil’… Day bay day, hour by hour, he began to believe these words.
He may have been held up in a white walled room, with a twin bed covered in white linens, and day and night he prayed on a cold, white tile floor, on his knees– but the more he believed the Word he felt like he was on top of a mountain peak, looking over a beautiful valley with a lake. He no longer felt alone. He felt this constant peace and an overwhelming warmth in his heart. He just knew… the God of the Bible was real.
One day, there was a knock on his door while Gabriel was at work. He had three days until his last IDS evaluation.
An old man stood in the narrow hallway and asked, ‘Are you Blanco Fenix?’
Hesitantly, Blanco nodded his head yes.
‘Have you ever heard the Gospel?’
Blanco shook his head, not because he didn’t hear that word, but because he did. He also knew, what happened when that word was spoken out loud, in any language, across the world… well, the world that remained. He shook his head wanting to protect this old man. Who was hunched over, frail looking with very wrinkly skin, and cloudy eyes.
Blanco wanted to warn the man and to tell him to go, but Blanco made contact with those cloudy eyes that once were all dark brown. The sense of pure love that emanated from them, captivated Blanco’s heart. If he remembered his father, Blanco imagined that gaze was the stare of a loving, proud, father. It was odd to miss someone you had no recollection of, but that was Blanco every day, he missed the man who was his dad, but he couldn’t remember what he looked like, or the sound of his voice.
The old man told Blanco the Gospel in the simplest form. Every person is born a sinner. That’s just the truth. Sin keeps people apart from God. Jesus, who is God- the Son of God, came as a human, born of a virgin, fathered by the Holy Spirit. At the age of 30, he started healing broken people, sick people, helping the poor and needy, feeding the hungry, taking social outcasts and giving them a new crew, and bring the dead back to life. Three years later he was put to death on a cross, naked and scared he died a shameful death charged as criminal though he was innocent. This act was taken as a perfect sacrifice by God, and in that moment God forgave every person that ever lived, was living at the time, would live. Three days later, Jesus came back to life, and forty days later ascended to heaven saying he would come back again, but with an army to destroy all that is bad and make everything good. The catch was, to be apart of this, was to believe, and to accept Jesus came and died for the sin of the world, that Jesus died for you and for me, for anyone who may believe. Once you believe in your heart and confess that Jesus is your Lord and Savior… then you are forever apart of God’s family.
Right as the old man said, ‘Murphy, do accept Jesus as your Lord and your Savior?’ the law enforcement came and violently apprehended the old man. Three armored officers tackled him to the ground dog-piling on top of him. When they stood up, the old man lied limp and twisted on the ground, laboring to breath. One officer snatched him by the foot and dragged him away across the floor. As the officer yanked the old man down the stairs, he wailed in deep pain. Blanco knew horrible torture awaited him.
The two remaining officers asked Blanco if he believed what the man said, using advanced technology to check if he was lying based on heart rate, voice pitch, basal temperature, and eye pupil dilation. The technology was built into their face masks.
Blanco could feel every drop of sweat drizzle down his forehead. His heart felt like it was beating in his throat. He was terrified to confess yes, but he felt like it would be wrong to say no. He didn’t want to lie anymore. Yet, he didn’t want to die. In that moment, he wondered if heaven was real or a state of consciousness like he was taught in the Sanctuary.
‘No,’ Blanco said.
The officer standing on Blanco’s left said, ‘His readings are on the cuff, but he’s probably shaken up by what he saw… I think he’s telling the truth.’
The other officer agreed with the once that shared the face mask scans. Then they left.
Blanco went back to his room and he looked at himself in the body mirror that hung on his door. He remembered reading a book on the Gaelic language. He remembered that Murphy means Sea Warrior… Then he wondered in his mind why God would name him Sea Warrior. Then he remember Jesus told his disciples he would make them fisher of men… God saw him. God was calling him to spread the Gospel to the Public Level. The old man, like a loving father, gave his life for Blanco Fenix… for Murphy Fenix.
Three days later, Blanco Fenix returned to the Sanctuary where he was raised. He took his last evaluation. The evaluator asked how the young man identified, he said, ‘Murphy Fenix, a caucasian, heterosexual man, who is spiritual… and I will marry Jaya Patel, the most beautiful woman in the world…’
FINDING JAYA
Seven years, a hundred and twenty-three days, fourteens hours, and sixteen minutes after his final IDS Evaluation, Murphy found Jaya in the most fated away.
He was cooking dinner for his ex-roommate Gabriel and his husband and their girlfriend when he sliced his finger open and had to be rushed to the Emergency Healing Center. As he and his grossed-out dinner friends were waiting for him to get seen by a Healer and an apprentice, when Jaya came in with a medic team bringing in some pretty battered up people.
She looked rugged, worn out, and exhausted and her hair was in a frazzled messy bun, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup, but Murphy knew it was the same beautiful woman from nine years ago, his first one night stand he ever had.
He leaped out of his seat and shout her name across the waiting room just as she was disappearing to the healing corridors. The sound of her name made her come back out into the waiting room. She stared at Murphy without a clue as to who he was…
He rushed over to her and exuberantly pleaded, ‘I know I seem like a total stranger but we do know each other. May I have permission to kiss you?’
‘No!’ She gasped fretfully taking a huge step back from him.
‘Right… creepy question… well, can we meet somewhere for coffee? I don’t drink. But we slept together – you know – had sex – nine years ago and lately, I keep thinking what would have happened if we ever went out on a date… May I take you out on a date…’
‘If we never had another night that meant I felt no chemistry with you, what makes you think that would change in nearly a decade?’
‘I’m different.’ He said gazing deeply into eyes, feeding all the chemistry he could muster in pure awe and fascination of her.
‘I prefer tea… cold tea… why don’t we meet at the Sailor’s Barge…’
THE SAILOR’S BARGE
A few days later, they met by the marina, at the Sailor’s Barge. She had iced tea, fish and chips. He got coffee and a burger with egg on it. Not only did they keep going back for every date, abstaining from sex until they were married. The Sailor’s Barge became their favorite restaurant.
Because for those who believed in the God of the Bible, during the bar hours, believers would gather in the basement, and study the world of God together, prayed together, and worshipped together. Over the years new members would come in after the bold faith of past member led the new believers there. And instead of morning the tragic loss of their martyred member, they would cling to the hope they would see them again in paradise, and thanked God for the new members to join their ranks in the battle for souls.
Two and half years ago, Jon came home to be with Jaya and Murphy. Six months ago, he left their home to get his own place. He works as a Janitor in the Law House behind the wall. He is engaged to be married to Gwendolyn Angelcrest… who meets in the basement at Sailor’s Barge twice a week. She writes new verses down from the Bible in her dad’s study and makes copies. She brings them to the basement group for members to pass out on the streets to those the Holy Spirit leads them to give scripture to.
Seeing them together makes Murphy think of him and Jaya… Jon has become the man Murphy prayed for him to be. He was never tempted with same sext attraction. He found God at a young age. And he found the right woman for him immediately after finishing IDS.
THE CALL
In the middle of the night, Murphy woke up suddenly panicked by the vision he had in his sleep, but when He prayed for strength, he found the courage to get up and to get dressed.
Jaya woke up and asked what he was doing.
He said, “I must go take care of something very important. I love you forever and beyond, Jaya.”
Gasping as fresh tears pooled in her eyes, she covered her mouth with her hands to muffle her scream. She furiously shook her head. Then she latched her arms around his neck and weeping with heavy tears.
“No, no, no, no, no, no… noooooooooooo,” she hushed just below a whisper.
“I have to go. I can’t be late.” He ripped her arms away from around his neck and he held his wife’s face in his hands and kissed her tear covered lips. As he broke away, her grief caused her to collapse on her face into the bed covers that buried her legs. She laid there bent with her upper half sandwiched with her lower half.
Murphy showed up to the spot of his vision. He waited under a street lamp, across from the popular Lounge where Synthesizers and Elects mingle in the landscape of the night scene. He wanted to see the person whose soul was worth his own life. He kept thinking about Jesus… bruised, beaten, scarred and marred hanging on a cross for him. The blood dripping from His side. He thought about Jesus drowning from the fluid in His lungs with a caved in chest. He thought about Jesus being mocked for being who was… the King of the Jews… the Messiah. Murphy thought about Him bearing the sin of the world and becoming sin all for this future moment… so that Murphy would know Him, and love Him, and to make Murphy a man willing to die so someone else may know Him… This was the heart of the Father- to give up everything one has for another with one’s own life, life being the most precious treasure one can own.
Murphy waited for his signal and once it came, he took a deep, and in his head he said, ‘Here I come Jesus! I’ll see you soon..’
Author’s Note
As I wrote this last part of Murphy’s story… I had worship music playing and I was balling as I typed the last two paragraphs. I’m a typical American. I love my life and I want a good one. When things get rough, I act entitled and go, “Why me God?!”
But Jesus said the greatest thing one could do for their friend is to give their life for their friend.
Sure, I would die for my family, for my best friends, but would I die for someone I haven’t even met yet.
We know God is all knowing and growing up in church, I would hear sermons about God knowing everything about us and having a plan for us… which I believe is true.
But on judgement day, the Lord will either know us or He won’t. What if He doesn’t think about anyone and activates a plan for their life until they get witnessed to or someone prays for them.
Honestly, I don’t understand how God does it. I know He is good, the word says so, and I know He is love, the word says so… But I can’t understand what it is like to be perfectly just and to be perfectly holy… In my human understanding, I think it’s wrong for someone to go to hell just because they didn’t know Him. I can understand if they rejected God after hearing about Him, but what if no one ever told them about Jesus?
Maybe God has plan for that and took care of it, but there’s nothing in my Bible indicating this that I have found… so I can’t live my life based on a small margin of possibility. I must live my life on what I know the word says. The truth is Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is who the Bible says He is, and the Holy Spirit affirms that. There are no deeper truths. Jesus was not #WOKE like the New Age Movement says. Oprah is wrong about Christianity. Jesus was more than just a teacher and a good prophet. He is my Savior. He is my Lord.
I’ll confess I’ve been so ashamed to right this story. I’m afraid people will misconstrue what I’m doing here. I’m afraid of getting attacked by people who for the LBGTQI Community.
I still live in a time where I can write a story, based on a thought, and I can share my beliefs. I would rather someone gets offended hearing the truth than to adore my stories on their way to hell.
The crazy part is, from age 8 to age 20 I felt like a boy. I had dreams about dating famous actresses. Intense, visual dreams at that. And I almost thought I would be stuck being a single, lesbian Christian woman because I couldn’t find enough support in the Bible that God made a mistake when I was born a girl.
Now, I proclaim a very different narrative. I am a woman, and boy, lately I got real desires to be married to a man so pray for me y’all!
And no, I never felt judged by the church because no one knew that I struggled with gender dysphoria. I didn’t even plead with God all the time to be free. I pretended to be a man in my imaginary word, and in my made up stories… That is how I coped with a reality being stuck as a woman that tormented me day and night… Then, as I matured in Christ Jesus, I got to a point I couldn’t take it anymore… I needed to embrace my desires to pursue becoming a man or I needed God to change me.
I prayed on election night, in 2012 – deeply troubled and in a moment God set me free. Since then, I have not lusted after a woman nor have had any dreams about being intimate with women. November this year, will be my 7th year of freedom and I believe God has something really special in store, because it wasn’t until last year around this time that I actually felt like a woman… I know… it doesn’t make complete sense to me either… It took six years to restore me into who he designed me to be from birth. God created the world in six days, and on the seventh day he rested in celebration… My seventh year of freedom is going to be my year of rest and celebration!
If you identify with the LBGTQI Community or support the community. Feel free to message me and we can discuss whatever you would like.
I also believe though you’re reading this story for a reason. Someone, somewhere in the earth is praying for the eternal destination of your soul. It’s no so much about where you’re going but who you know. Past the the thorns of religion and religious people is a God who loves you and is so committed to your freedom, He asks you to do something crazy and to give your whole life to Him.
Is your life easy now? Probably not and if it is, you should be worried… This life is meant to be a battle, but it’s important to end the war on the winning side. The victors are with Jesus the Son of Man. What God would call themselves the child of humanity? In its historical context, a Son of Man in Hebrew refers to someone called by God to be the hero for people. But I like to look at it like this… Jesus would have no purpose without humanity needing redemption. The state us in our sin gave birth to his humble entrance into the world and his walk on the earth that led to Him saving us! He may be God but He wouldn’t be our God without our need of Him.
In Revelation 4, it mentions God created us for His enjoyment. Not to torture us. Satan does that. But to enjoy us as sons and daughters. Join the family today by believing Jesus died for you, rose for you, and saves you from your sin nature. Now go tell three people you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior and welcome to the family! Find a church family and use a Bible App until you get a Bible. Read the word, it’s the only sure way you can get to know God quickly.
Feel free to message me with questions and for prayer.
Reverential 