YThe Way Things Are
The following is a speech made by my classmate, Alissa, in English class. We're supposed to do a speech a present it to the class. Alissa presented hers the Tuesday I came back from my rest period after the op. I'd had a Monday to ease myself into the system, and as I listened to her speech I was reminded about how, in just one day, I had already allowed my life to become hectic and restless. The main message, about how despite being free we still cling on to the ways of the world, is something I believe God has been gently trying to teach me.
Take what you will from it.
The Way Things Are
Fellow students, we are victims of circumstance. The education system of today makes us run in circles for our As. There is more: we may, after that, find our precious certificates as valuable as banana money. It is no wonder that many better people whom I have known, have turned bitter.
All this is part of an evil plot designed solely to constrain, to control and, yes, to manipulate us. Rattle your chains with me, prisoners, and agree that we are shackled in the iron grip of the education system, a system which defines our choices for us, then grades them according to the status quo (that is, the world system of today). Our choices are, simply and effectively, tailor-made for us according to the measure of our talent. This commandeering of our freewill by a human institution is archetypal of The Way Things Are.
What exactly is the way things are? In one word: things are imperfect. Being human, we interminably attempt to improve ourselves, thinking we can evolve into higher-minded, civilised human beings, one day gaining that perfection which now seems ever so elusive. Oh, yes, progress has brought us very far from the barbaric, pagan, human-sacrificing age of yesteryear. Parents of today will have nothing to do with the sacrificing of children on mountaintops or in the fire--it's to difficult and non-profitable, a waste of resources. We've realised that much. Instead, today sees the more practical, systemised sacrificing of children in classrooms--to the gods of examinations, term papers, and the most coveted A1.
Do not be fooled. These lesser gods use such sacrifices to appease their own higher-ups--the gods of good jobs and stable economy.
The fact is, the way things are has not changed since the beginning of time, and it will continue to not change. History is a broken record, a looped song of war after war after war, of bloody revolutions which, ironically, stemmed from trying to fix the way things are. A more practical example, to return to our archetype: say you hate the education system; you want to revamp it. Do it then! Only your children, and their children after them will hate it too, for some fallibility in the system you helped put in place. Corrective measures do nothing to change the way things are, they only replace the wrong with another one. In our world, two wrongs don't make a right, but a right, makes two wrongs.
What then, shall we do? There are two typical reactions. We may accept the fact, (not as fatalists but as pragmatists) and work with it, making the best of an education and a good job; we may find ourselves actually enjoying the wealthy benefits of being a sacrifice, like a cow destined for slaughter contentedly chewing its final cud--or, I suspect that most of us here will struggle to overcome such odds, in a last stand against the inhumanity of our human-made gods.
Such is our dilemma. We are in the bullring, wishing we could simply swish off the pokes and prods of pride, of envy, greed and malice--but they draw blood, and so goaded, we are at once ready to fight, even knowing that it is foolishness, because no one can fight forever. The bull eventually dies of sheer exhaustion. We know we shall succumb.
But there is one way that we had never thought of. From outside the death trap, someone opens the door. Not only does he open it, but he comes in and demands that we be set free. MGS, we know how this analogy ends. The anguished bulls are set free, but the bullring still demands its sport, for none can leave until the bull dies. Did we ever guess that it is Jesus' death which sets us free from the way things are?
My friends, we are freedmen who do not realise that we are free; we do not live like we are free. Today you have the choice of escaping this bullfight; everyday you have the choice of re-entering the arena of the way things are. Each day spent without conscious submission to the God Who Saves is a day spent ignoring the only voice which truthfully says, "I have come to proclaim freedom..."
Let us in wisdom heed that call; let us run from the blissful ignorance of doing what the bullring expects of us; let us swallow our pride and run from the false glory of self-martyrdom; run from the wreaths people will throw over our graves; run to the only One who can, who has already, escaped the way things are, not through a fight to the death but through obedience to life. And the Resurrection is our life.
Will you stay and fight and die, or will you run, and live to see another day?
Postscript:
This excerpt* I add as an additional source to my speech; it reminded me that my speech is lacking in the full treatment of the way things are. Due to the restriction in presentation time (3 minutes, which I had already exceeded), I chose not to include the fact that we are still a part of the system, though free from its values. Thus the call to be 'salt and light to the earth', and yet strangers to the world. My aim, instead, was to knock "Sunday Christians" off their seats and onto their knees. Hopefully they'd go on from there.
Alissa
16/3/2004
*The excerpt I chose not to post here. But if you want to read it, feel free to email me for it. --Jac
jac was here with you
3/20/2004 06:45:00 pm