Sunday, July 24, 2005
A Rebel Through the Eyes of Love
How do you tame a rebel? The quick way is to kill him. One bullet and the problem is solved.
Or you can turn him. Brainwashing. Get your hands on him and work your fingers into the marvellously plastic human mind, and he'll end up believing anything. Then send him out as a poster boy for the New millennium, happily spreading his deadly contagion.
If that fails, just lobotomize him. So damage his mind that he can't think but will follow orders explicitly.
That's how I see the world. That's why I'm so determined to be a hard stone in the implacable machinery: it's me against Them, the ones who've tried to steal my soul from the moment of my birth.
What gave me the idea that my own little soul is so important? Why would I fight tooth and nail, and give up so many facets of normal human life, to preserve what I felt to be ME? In the cosmic scheme of things I'm just a very temporary assemblage of chemicals and minerals with no more claim to rights than any other. Completely interchangeable. If I don't do what I do, someone else will, or, if not, it didn't need to be done. No, I couldn't buy that. I'm here and must be myself. Otherwise, to exist is a complete lie; if I'm not here to contribute some sort of Larryness to the world I might as well off myself.
But man, oh, man, is it hard to hold onto that idea. It seems that everyone knows better what I should be doing. They all have their own ideas from little ones that just nip off a tiny piece to big ones that would swallow me whole. Little by little or all at once the end is the same: subsumed into someone else's worldview, my voice forever stilled.
Who gives my voice value? God himself. He says he wants me in his world. He died to make this possible, died so that I could get fresh eyes and a new mind. Eyes to see reality and a mind to figure it out.
Reality is that the world isn't so hard-edged as I've assumed. When you're a very fragile, brittle piece of stone caught in the gears, any dent is an incipient problem and must be resisted with all force possible. When, however, you're a child of the Living God, the One who made the Universe, the gears of the world might seem as large, but they aren't hard enough to grind me up. They may hurt, but the Holy Spirit knows how to heal me.
This isn't exactly a new idea. I've been thinking about it for the last year and a half, ever since seeing that God was taking this whole reconstruction plan very seriously. He was going to do it, because he made a promise before the world began. I could resist, but he would take every opportunity to remind me of the promise, and my own request to do whatever it took. What's new is seeing how wide-spread the reconstruction is. Everything in me is affected by God's touch; he follows the threads of history and reason down and down to where they originate, and my soul quakes as new awareness changes the relationships.
The Holy Spirit goes about his business to the degree that I let him, and he's at it all the time. I wake up and find something has changed. Most of the time I then resist the change, try to put things back, but we're way past the Humpty-Dumpty stage. The new parts are too big to fit the old soul. You can't put new rebellious wine in an old rebellious wineskin.
Rebellion is part of me. It's there for a good reason: this world is run by a master liar, and his lies are close enough to truth that it take real discrimination to identify them. Once the pattern is learned, though, the lies become easier to spot, which is why the Devil doesn't want anyone asking questions. He hates rebels, which is why I'm really, really glad the Holy Spirit holds me close. Otherwise, I'd be toast.
Or you can turn him. Brainwashing. Get your hands on him and work your fingers into the marvellously plastic human mind, and he'll end up believing anything. Then send him out as a poster boy for the New millennium, happily spreading his deadly contagion.
If that fails, just lobotomize him. So damage his mind that he can't think but will follow orders explicitly.
That's how I see the world. That's why I'm so determined to be a hard stone in the implacable machinery: it's me against Them, the ones who've tried to steal my soul from the moment of my birth.
What gave me the idea that my own little soul is so important? Why would I fight tooth and nail, and give up so many facets of normal human life, to preserve what I felt to be ME? In the cosmic scheme of things I'm just a very temporary assemblage of chemicals and minerals with no more claim to rights than any other. Completely interchangeable. If I don't do what I do, someone else will, or, if not, it didn't need to be done. No, I couldn't buy that. I'm here and must be myself. Otherwise, to exist is a complete lie; if I'm not here to contribute some sort of Larryness to the world I might as well off myself.
But man, oh, man, is it hard to hold onto that idea. It seems that everyone knows better what I should be doing. They all have their own ideas from little ones that just nip off a tiny piece to big ones that would swallow me whole. Little by little or all at once the end is the same: subsumed into someone else's worldview, my voice forever stilled.
Who gives my voice value? God himself. He says he wants me in his world. He died to make this possible, died so that I could get fresh eyes and a new mind. Eyes to see reality and a mind to figure it out.
Reality is that the world isn't so hard-edged as I've assumed. When you're a very fragile, brittle piece of stone caught in the gears, any dent is an incipient problem and must be resisted with all force possible. When, however, you're a child of the Living God, the One who made the Universe, the gears of the world might seem as large, but they aren't hard enough to grind me up. They may hurt, but the Holy Spirit knows how to heal me.
This isn't exactly a new idea. I've been thinking about it for the last year and a half, ever since seeing that God was taking this whole reconstruction plan very seriously. He was going to do it, because he made a promise before the world began. I could resist, but he would take every opportunity to remind me of the promise, and my own request to do whatever it took. What's new is seeing how wide-spread the reconstruction is. Everything in me is affected by God's touch; he follows the threads of history and reason down and down to where they originate, and my soul quakes as new awareness changes the relationships.
The Holy Spirit goes about his business to the degree that I let him, and he's at it all the time. I wake up and find something has changed. Most of the time I then resist the change, try to put things back, but we're way past the Humpty-Dumpty stage. The new parts are too big to fit the old soul. You can't put new rebellious wine in an old rebellious wineskin.
Rebellion is part of me. It's there for a good reason: this world is run by a master liar, and his lies are close enough to truth that it take real discrimination to identify them. Once the pattern is learned, though, the lies become easier to spot, which is why the Devil doesn't want anyone asking questions. He hates rebels, which is why I'm really, really glad the Holy Spirit holds me close. Otherwise, I'd be toast.
# posted by Larry @ 08:47 
