The Matrix Retold

[Doc]

Do I spill my guts and take the risk of getting laughed at and made ridicule of? It's never stopped me before.

Such a daunting task. To ask such a question of such a deep and personal nature. And to expect an answer, simple or otherwise, neatly typed out and presented in a simple forum post. You either not know what you ask or know not the scope of your curiousity.

To understand me is to understand my time. What I grew up in. The times I grew up in. How I grew up. Those are complicated things.

Allow me to start some place. To understand my paradoxial nature, one must first understand that I am a Christian. I am also an Existentialist. Yes, I am fully aware that one should not exist inside the other. I am also a staunch Iconoclast. And yet still a Christian. What a mess you must be thinking. I am a pragmatist. So, I am a practical smasher of idols existing in a hostile universe alone. Existentialists also deny the existence of God and preach the concept of Salvation From Within. Lost yet? I believe strongly in the Bible and yet hold fast to the ideals of existential salvation from within.

I grew up in the sleepy South. During the days of segregation. Jim Crow Laws. Dark times. I was raised in honty tonks, whorehouses, and road houses. My mother was little more then a dime a dance whore. I grew up with folks who called themselves "Christians." Every so often, my mother would cart me off to church cause it was good for me... And on Sunday I would see folks in the church who had been in the whorehouses just the night before. On occasion, I might have even rolled them outside and emptied their pockets for small cash after they had got rip roaring drunk and passed out. I heard about sin this and sin that and how we should love one another and avoid vice and all this other crap. Funny... On more then one occasion it was the preacher himself who had been out on the town just the night before. Love one another? With all the segregation, I didn't see much love. I saw a lot of hate though. One group of so called Christians burning down another group of Christians churches. Bombs. Beatings. All done in the name of the Holy Jesus.

I grew up. I ended up smack in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. I was one of those who was neither black nor white, and, as such, was often caught between the two. I knew I needed creditentials. So, I went to college. I had strange ideas of how to work at this gigantic problem. But I lacked direction. Life had been pretty bad up to that point, and, was only getting worse. I was filled with hate. Anger. All those things which poison the soul. I was haunted by the things I had seen growing up. Things I will not go into here. Old ghosts would not go away.

Oddly I ended up in Bible college. Was I a Christian? Not at the time. Nope. I just figured I would be like everybody else and use God to further my own ends. I needed clout in my line of work. And having some sort of religious title would really help out. I wont go into all of the things that happened, but, a lot did. I am not going to use this post to convince people to believe in God, but, for those that already do, allow me to say, God spoke. I ignored him. God spoke a little louder. I ignored him. God got my attention. While I had acknowledged Him, I was not ready to make my peace with Him. We disagreed for a long time. I picked apart His Word. Seeing what sort of Christians I had grown up around, I found my self in an unusual position. A skeptic who found himself acknowledging God, yet denying faith. Paradoxial.

So what did I realize? I realized I was more then the sum of my parts. Seems so simple eh? And mayhap it is simple. At the time though, it was what I needed to nudge me in the right direction. It started me on the Journey. The right one this time. It brought me into the light, which is what I needed.

God helps those who help themselves. So often I had heard this. And yet I never once found it in the Bible as people had claimed. Faith? What faith? All I saw around me was religion. Man reaching out to God. I saw corrupt churches. I saw hate. I saw lots of religion. I saw a lot of evil. I saw no faith. But what was faith? I did not know. I have always been a pragmatist, even before I knew what the word was or meant. I turned to that part of me for answers. I found a few. One should always work as though all of the results depended on himself. (Or herself) And yet, one should have faith as if all of the results depended on God. But what of Salvation Within Self? What of the things that Religion has taught us? Religion was wrong. The whole concept stunk. The Bible spoke of Grace and Grace alone. Not baptism, no clutter, no fuss, no kneeling down for hours scraping your self with potshards begging for release. Just Grace. Faith. So... Everything, and I mean everything I had been taught was a lie. All of it. Lies. Not works, not good deeds, not tithing, none of that mattered. Just Grace. Man and God. With nothing in between. I was more then the sum of my parts. Salvation did come from within, not from without.

So I chose the path of the most resistance. I found purpose, direction, and a sense of meaning. I became self aware... Or aware of self. I became aware of purpose. To live. More then exist.

I took a new direction after that. I put my own kind to the torch. Here is where the Iconoclast part comes in. Found out many of the churches where being used to gain new members for a force of hate. Money was being siphoned out to fund this hate. The Churches of the South Were ROTTEN. I became involved in a group and we put many of those churches to the torch. No, no act of arson. I attacked my own kind with no concept of mercy. A lot of churches and church sponsored schools lost their tax exempt status. A lot of pastors went to jail for fraud. I was busy burning down all their idols of worship. I flung rocks at the proverbial stained glass. Families were torn apart, whole communities, lives were ruined. Including my own. I was hated like few are. I had walked through the fire and ruin and had come out from the other side as a different creature.

I don't have the answers. I am still taking the journey. I have no idea where it will lead me. What do I know? I know we must face the very thing that we fear becoming. Or, at least that is how it was for me and so many others. This is still based on the individual, so, I reckon in some cases it could be very different. My existence is defined by who and what I am, which changes as I grow older. Have I become wiser or more foolish? Hopefully both, as there is balance in between.

Oddly enough, one of the first moments of my realization came while fishing. I was standing on two rocks. My toes curled around the wet stones for grip. The water tickled my toes. There were fish passing by below me in a creek. I was naked as the day God made me, standing in the sun, still as a statue holding a bow. Flies were biting my back and shoulders, but they were mere distractions that I ignored. I waited for the right fish, at the right time, waiting for the water to flow in just the right way so that the bright white reflections did not obscure my vision. This is going to sound very corny... But my mind drifted there for a moment and I realized that life was a lot like this. Time and water flowed. Each were a power unto their own. And life it self was a lot like the fish in the creek. They got bounced around and taken where ever the flow might take them. And occasionally, a fisherman might come along and end their existence to sustain his own. I then asked my self something which at the time, was a mind blowing revelation... Where did I fit in? Was I the Fish? Or the Fishermen? Or was I perhaps a force that caused the water to alter it's flow somehow? If I was a fish, I was doomed to face the fisherman some day. That did not apeal to me. If I was the fisherman, I was to dependent on just the right conditions to catch my prey. To much I could not control. Between the water and the fish, I was merely an outside force. Christians were to be fishers of men, or so the saying goes. But I was not content with those choices, I figured the better choice was being some sort of force that affected how the water flowed, thus effecting the fish, the water, and the fishermen. I dismissed it all as nonsense and went about catching my dinner.

I have spent my whole life still trying to figure this out.