I thought I'd bring one out from the drawer. Enjoy the dust-off.
Fixing the whole world can start with your toaster.
Do you ever feel that without our devices we’d have very few vices at all? Put all of us together; all the people, places, gadgets, stuff and things that make up the living machine that is our society. Picture this big, sloppy engine turning in its inefficiently perpetual manner. As a mechanism, no one will argue we are need of a tune-up, but who can perform such a therapeutic and mechanical wonder? In what capacity are we in need of this alteration, in our hardwiring or in our software?
Who among us is qualified to deliver this devised diagnosis?
We come home from televisions to televisions and images of images we seek to obtain and ridicule, that our ancestors would have never have dreamt of seeing, or believed in needing, and would not have missed. The more we get plugged in the more detached we become, from the earth, from our neighbor, and even from the devices designed to keep us connected.
If the outlet you are currently plugged into ceased its outlay, if the power went out, the mechanics went on leave, if the doctors weren’t on call and the helplines weren’t online, where would you be? What could you contribute to your own survival? What about the survival of the community you depend on?
We’ve constructed our incubators and sit happily in our fake wombs, but have become unfamiliar with the sources of our warmth and security. The Japanese use the same word for crisis and opportunity; we should adopt a similar moniker for convenience and encumbrance.
Perhaps we need to forget Encumvenience and devise a de-vice.
There is no debate that our automobiles and televisions are in charge, but it’s staggering how little we know about the keepers of our mojo constructed for us by our brothers and our sisters.
The problem therefore being not that we have the conveniences, but that we have so easily relinquished the ignition keys to those conveniences. Look around the room at the vices that surround you. How much do you know about them? I mean, you know their function, you know their brand name and perhaps the part of the world from which they came. You know that it needs batteries or an outlet to function, and that if you drop it from too high that it will cease to function. Most importantly, you know that your life is a little bit better because of that device and the service it provides you. You know you enjoy that service, but you likely don’t question how that service is performed.
Why do we have no desire to learn how these services are mechanically conjured for us? Why are we so easily satisfied and contented with warm food and entertainment just provided for us like infants? Doesn’t this eagerly pawed warm nippled bottle represent a regression from the motivation and relentless innovation that got is this far?
We’ve asked ‘how’ and ‘why’ so many times before. We have religion and philosophy and competition and war because of our compelling need to question, but for some reason when that mystery comes in the form of convenience we stop asking those questions. On the surface we have a device-addicted culture. A population more concerned about creature comforts than creatures. We have identities that are established through packaging and a society that is smarter, but older, fatter, and increasingly more helpless.
In very simple terms, we don’t know how the devices we depend on function. Though this may seem trivial in our neon world, it creates a fundamental problem as a worldwide organism. As individuals, generally speaking, we no longer have a symbiotic relationship with the machines and devices and structures we depend on. We feel detached from them, though the umbilical cord is fiber optic and as strong as titanium.
There are about as many solutions to our detachment as there are items in your sharper self-image catalogue, but more often than not they involve a leap of faith that as a race of humans we simply aren’t capable of. At least not without an escalator.
Don’t think for a minute that I will be putting down my remote and unplugging my… well… anything. Let me take you for a moment to a world of my design.
Imagine a place where you knew how everything worked. You understood how the pictures came through the magic box in the living room, how things got sucked into your vacuum, how the fridge kept your food cold, and what that fourth sound was when your started your car. Even further, you knew what made the paint in your den brown, what made concrete hard, what made your chicken fingers crunchy, and what happened to them after you swallowed them.
In this world you can actually picture the anatomy of these devices clearly in your mind; you understand their structures as accurately as the spelling of your own name. There is no mystery to how they perform the services you count on them for. Moreover, this knowledge is common knowledge. Understanding the mechanics of everyday devices is everyone’s business. Everyone around you is familiar with the gadgets that make up the structure of modern life, how a signal travels through a wire to a modem and into a computer to become e-mail, how the same signal can travel to a satellite and appear on someone’s phone, and how they get caramel inside those chocolate squares.
There is nothing special about this world, nothing in the water that makes people smarter, nothing in their genetics that makes them more curious, or more tools in their pockets that allow them to tinker. It’s a level of responsibility that compels them. With the advent of their industrial revolution, a different convenience was born, one that lived hand in hand with the thirst for knowledge that had steered them that far. They considered the knowledge that designed their luxury to be public domain.
In part, they saw the self-preserving value of understanding organisms both of flesh and of fiberglass, knowing ‘thyself’ more and more as the information became realized. Also, the idea of License spanned farther than just cars and guns, and further than merely operating the mechanism without causing the death of another. If one were to operate a machine, why wouldn’t that operator want to know everything about what they’re operating and how it accomplishes that operation? Any less would seem as foolish to them as using a chainsaw as a toothbrush.
Naturally one immediately wonders about this world’s unfortunate specialist sector; the doctors, mechanics, tree surgeons, cobblers and undertakers. Would the specialist go the way of the dinosaur in this world? It might be easy to assume that the need for someone who has studied and apprenticed a certain field would fossilize and petrify. Photo-mat technicians, Subway sandwich artists, vascular surgeons; why would these people exist in this Utopia?
You needn’t fear for them, their role is merely different. As much as awareness is prevalent in this world, its utopian perfection does not include a longer day, free hardware, or knowledge of undiscovered symptoms that are cutting edge before they are common. The knowledgeable public of this miraculous land still require the services of people with lifts for their vehicles and x-rays for their broken bones to perform the general maintenance required to keep our world’s mechanical heart pumping.
On a quantitative level, consider how the knowledge to fix and maintain the mechanisms of our lives would immediately affect our world. Think of the condition of a planet where disposal isn't the first thing its inhabitants consider to deal with a problem. Consider how convenience would expand to include terms like longevity while excluding the need for warranty and obsolescence.
On a level of far grander quality, consider how every public dynamic would function if the understanding of function wasn’t limited to a narrow faction. What happens when everyone can contribute when something that we count on ceases to function? Contribution: Surgeons standing over a patient, grease monkeys gathered around a ’64 Mustang, four kids getting your order at Wendy’s. Every quandary, every calamity, every injury would potentially be surrounded by people who could offer a solution, who could combine their knowledge gathered through their understanding of License and fix the problem.
Everyone around every table offers a knowledgeable answer rather than waiting for their number to be called.
On the surface, we have smaller junkyards and an underpopulation of old car parts and broken toasters. Closer to the center of the onion, we have a population of Mr. and Mrs. John Q Fixits who have the knowledge to offer repair. We have people in places that have their things and understand that ownership includes a responsibility to the things that pop, call, comfort and govern.
Sometimes I think that we are going to figure it ALL out about 6 hours before our poor planet crumbles. Anyone know where we put the warranty card for our planet?
As for your toaster: Fix it yourself, then offer to fix your neighbor’s.
As for me, I’m waiting for a toast.
Patrick
The Devil That Delivered Del: Part Two
It has now been three months since I entered Del Iverson’s life. It’s not hard to create an interest in humans that can be manipulated into friendship. Doing so with Del was not difficult. Del made friends with your devil far faster than even I could have imagined, could I imagine.
Though my time here has been comparatively short, considering all the time that I have seen, I feel sometimes I’m about as close to figuring out those around me as I am to getting back the keys to the gates I once called home, while other times I feel this planet is administered by the simplest living devices ever manufactured. By and large, though I do hate to generalize, they are motivated by simple rewards, short-term gains, limited by their ignorance, their inventions of convenience, methods of distraction, and ruled by time.
In Heaven, good and evil are separated by a well-defined line, but on Earth the distinction is muddled by shades and perspectives. The more time I spend in this activity of human life, the more I find that these beings around me define themselves by orbiting both sides of a line that is constantly changing, between their own definitions and those set upon them by their community. I suppose that contrast, between my kind and the choatic nature of my new peers, provide an element of balance in itself. If my maker and my kind are defined by balance, humans must be defined somewhere in the opposite. If the ultimate is balance I should be accustomed to having no conclusion. What does it mean that I now find myself seeking answers?
Answers are the very thing I can provide in abundance, to the humans in my human disguise. The ability to read their minds makes everything transparent to me. All but the forward progress of time is an utterly open book to me. By most human standards appearance I have chosen is plain and forgettable, perhaps even unattractive, but knowing every thought around me allows for an effortless charm. It is also amazing how astute one appears when the desires of his employer come to my lips as quickly as they enter his frontal lobe. I have availed myself as the ultimate political strategist for my ultimately doomed political candidate subject. Entering his life in this function, gaining access as a council he will seek out took a mere matter of hours.
I was his best friend in less than three days.
I chose the name John. People seem impassionate when they say it.
In the three months that have past I have looked for the distraction that would force him to confront the path he is on. I have been looking for the spark of regret that will inspire atonement. Epiphany is arguably humanity’s greatest gift, and I’m beginning to believe they do all that is possible to avoid it.
What is infinitely even more astounding, aside from one of my kind experiencing astounding, is my own discovery of distraction. The entirety of their modern world is designed not for the food, but for the flavor. I have found myself, in growing frequency, permitting distraction, noticing beauty, entraced in entertainment, engaging in debate, researching parts of human history that fell beneath my awareness, accepting invitations, using colloquialisms, gorging on fiction, and finding myself uncertain about my success and uncertain about what to do with my uncertainty.
Time has passed faster than I ever thought it possibly could. So many sunrises have come and gone that I have lost track of how many I've missed. Time has run right through me, and the reality that I may now not have enough to redirect Del’s path exhilarates me with the passionate flavor of my failure.
I feel a sympathetic comfort and peace when people eat, so I choose one of our midday lunch outings to shatter all I've built with Del.
“There is something you should know Del. You’re going to die.”
“Is there something wrong with your latte? I can have the waitress…”
“No, it’s not the coffee. I can’t…”
“You’ve been acting strange all morning, John.”
“I don’t think you heard me.”
“I heard you, John, and you’re not going to play me. I know this is some motivational strategy. You’re getting me psyched for that debate this afternoon, aren’t you?”
“In truth, I’m getting you psyched for something far different. Del, you must listen to me carefully. Listen to me as though you don’t know what it means to lie.”
“What is this? Get serious.”
"I understand how this must sound to you, Del, but there is nothing more serious than the ultimate destination."
My words crack something in Del’s consciousness. This combination of words and tone has never passed between us before. The weight falling around us stirs in me a moment of distraction.
“Can you imagine the discussions that must occur in coffee shops? Think of how lives are changed by what originates in these places. The lives of relationships together begin and end, deals that alter the course of infinite paths to follow are made and broken. Thousands of rooms like these around this planet are designed for conversations between people who share little more than a circumstance and a warm beverage that connects them.”
“John?”
”I’ve considered more ways to tell you the following than there are words in your language. I am a messenger. I come from a place made up entirely of messengers, and I’ve been sent to bring you truth.”
“Oh God…”
“So interesting…”
“What?”
“Your choice of words is interesting.”
“Yeah… I’ve gotta go.”
“Also peculiar.”
“What is?”
“Regardless of what you believe or how define your reality or our relationship, don’t you want to hear the message? Aren’t you curious?”
“Okay fine, but if you try anything weird…”
“The truth is: The end of your life is approaching. The message is this: You don’t have a great deal of time left. You have a decision to make.”
“Are you going to hurt me? Is this a ransom thing?”
“I would have nothing to gain from hurting you, Del.”
“…And what is that supposed to mean, you’re a messenger? Who do you work for? Do you think that gets you off somehow?”
“I am not directly involved, but to be certain, the end of your life is imminent.”
“Why, how?”
I can see despair and bargaining in Del's eyes as for a final moment he looks on me with eyes that perceive me as a friend. I like it, but as I thought I would.
“Focus for a moment. Think beyond your preoccupation with the tangible and consider the greater consequence that awaits you at the end of this mortal life.”
“What the fu… What do you expect me...”
“Think of your life so far as a story and think, if you can, as someone with nothing to lose thinks, about what the end of your story is going to require to garner you peace beyond that ending, and not the alternative.”
“What do you mean by alternative?”
“Damnation. Unrest. A lack of peace.”
"John..."
"My name is not John. We'll speak again soon."
I am certain to get up and leave first, to hopefully make it clear that I want nothing from him. In a conversation like ours, the advantage of reason always seems to fall to the less desperate.
I feel for the moment that I’ve reached him as he continues to sit and stare at the far wall. I find myself in a similar state, staring into his expression. He is potentially considering his own death and a measure of consequence beyond the material. Though it is conceivable that through his mind passes anything from thoughts of my murder, to a regret of the trust he usually so sparingly instills, to a wager he placed on the baseball team losing on the far television, I choose not to invade what he is thinking. Among other things I am becoming addicted to the notion of challenge and somewhere in my soulless form I know I have planted a seed.
I have never had such a conversation. It was among the most gratifying of my existence.
I remember the messengers of my kind discussing this feeling, when delivering what they believed was enlightenment. There is exhilaration in having the power of such integral truth over someone, which is not entirely divine in nature. I feel guilty for the moment I spent enjoying that power, but understand the twinkle on the faces of the angels that were ingesting that very same indulgence.
Thank you for the moment of kinship, Del.
After a moment Del’s face pops back into it’s normalcy, as his conscious mask regains it’s composure. My face imitates his as I fade subtly from the human eyes around me. I watch him leave the coffee shop, continually and repeatedly look about, suspicious and uncertain. He is nowhere near peace, and by tomorrow he will convince himself that the substance of our exchange never happened. In my experience, the human ego, especially one as developed as Del's, will accept the most convenient version of truth.
It seems I will have to scratch at his denial. I have another meeting upcoming with Michael, I will have to probe with him the finer points of this wager's boundaries.
My time remaining is a matter of mere... mortality.
* * *
Thanks for tuning in. The next installment won't take a year.
Don't trust me.
Patrick
Though my time here has been comparatively short, considering all the time that I have seen, I feel sometimes I’m about as close to figuring out those around me as I am to getting back the keys to the gates I once called home, while other times I feel this planet is administered by the simplest living devices ever manufactured. By and large, though I do hate to generalize, they are motivated by simple rewards, short-term gains, limited by their ignorance, their inventions of convenience, methods of distraction, and ruled by time.
In Heaven, good and evil are separated by a well-defined line, but on Earth the distinction is muddled by shades and perspectives. The more time I spend in this activity of human life, the more I find that these beings around me define themselves by orbiting both sides of a line that is constantly changing, between their own definitions and those set upon them by their community. I suppose that contrast, between my kind and the choatic nature of my new peers, provide an element of balance in itself. If my maker and my kind are defined by balance, humans must be defined somewhere in the opposite. If the ultimate is balance I should be accustomed to having no conclusion. What does it mean that I now find myself seeking answers?
Answers are the very thing I can provide in abundance, to the humans in my human disguise. The ability to read their minds makes everything transparent to me. All but the forward progress of time is an utterly open book to me. By most human standards appearance I have chosen is plain and forgettable, perhaps even unattractive, but knowing every thought around me allows for an effortless charm. It is also amazing how astute one appears when the desires of his employer come to my lips as quickly as they enter his frontal lobe. I have availed myself as the ultimate political strategist for my ultimately doomed political candidate subject. Entering his life in this function, gaining access as a council he will seek out took a mere matter of hours.
I was his best friend in less than three days.
I chose the name John. People seem impassionate when they say it.
In the three months that have past I have looked for the distraction that would force him to confront the path he is on. I have been looking for the spark of regret that will inspire atonement. Epiphany is arguably humanity’s greatest gift, and I’m beginning to believe they do all that is possible to avoid it.
What is infinitely even more astounding, aside from one of my kind experiencing astounding, is my own discovery of distraction. The entirety of their modern world is designed not for the food, but for the flavor. I have found myself, in growing frequency, permitting distraction, noticing beauty, entraced in entertainment, engaging in debate, researching parts of human history that fell beneath my awareness, accepting invitations, using colloquialisms, gorging on fiction, and finding myself uncertain about my success and uncertain about what to do with my uncertainty.
Time has passed faster than I ever thought it possibly could. So many sunrises have come and gone that I have lost track of how many I've missed. Time has run right through me, and the reality that I may now not have enough to redirect Del’s path exhilarates me with the passionate flavor of my failure.
I feel a sympathetic comfort and peace when people eat, so I choose one of our midday lunch outings to shatter all I've built with Del.
“There is something you should know Del. You’re going to die.”
“Is there something wrong with your latte? I can have the waitress…”
“No, it’s not the coffee. I can’t…”
“You’ve been acting strange all morning, John.”
“I don’t think you heard me.”
“I heard you, John, and you’re not going to play me. I know this is some motivational strategy. You’re getting me psyched for that debate this afternoon, aren’t you?”
“In truth, I’m getting you psyched for something far different. Del, you must listen to me carefully. Listen to me as though you don’t know what it means to lie.”
“What is this? Get serious.”
"I understand how this must sound to you, Del, but there is nothing more serious than the ultimate destination."
My words crack something in Del’s consciousness. This combination of words and tone has never passed between us before. The weight falling around us stirs in me a moment of distraction.
“Can you imagine the discussions that must occur in coffee shops? Think of how lives are changed by what originates in these places. The lives of relationships together begin and end, deals that alter the course of infinite paths to follow are made and broken. Thousands of rooms like these around this planet are designed for conversations between people who share little more than a circumstance and a warm beverage that connects them.”
“John?”
”I’ve considered more ways to tell you the following than there are words in your language. I am a messenger. I come from a place made up entirely of messengers, and I’ve been sent to bring you truth.”
“Oh God…”
“So interesting…”
“What?”
“Your choice of words is interesting.”
“Yeah… I’ve gotta go.”
“Also peculiar.”
“What is?”
“Regardless of what you believe or how define your reality or our relationship, don’t you want to hear the message? Aren’t you curious?”
“Okay fine, but if you try anything weird…”
“The truth is: The end of your life is approaching. The message is this: You don’t have a great deal of time left. You have a decision to make.”
“Are you going to hurt me? Is this a ransom thing?”
“I would have nothing to gain from hurting you, Del.”
“…And what is that supposed to mean, you’re a messenger? Who do you work for? Do you think that gets you off somehow?”
“I am not directly involved, but to be certain, the end of your life is imminent.”
“Why, how?”
I can see despair and bargaining in Del's eyes as for a final moment he looks on me with eyes that perceive me as a friend. I like it, but as I thought I would.
“Focus for a moment. Think beyond your preoccupation with the tangible and consider the greater consequence that awaits you at the end of this mortal life.”
“What the fu… What do you expect me...”
“Think of your life so far as a story and think, if you can, as someone with nothing to lose thinks, about what the end of your story is going to require to garner you peace beyond that ending, and not the alternative.”
“What do you mean by alternative?”
“Damnation. Unrest. A lack of peace.”
"John..."
"My name is not John. We'll speak again soon."
I am certain to get up and leave first, to hopefully make it clear that I want nothing from him. In a conversation like ours, the advantage of reason always seems to fall to the less desperate.
I feel for the moment that I’ve reached him as he continues to sit and stare at the far wall. I find myself in a similar state, staring into his expression. He is potentially considering his own death and a measure of consequence beyond the material. Though it is conceivable that through his mind passes anything from thoughts of my murder, to a regret of the trust he usually so sparingly instills, to a wager he placed on the baseball team losing on the far television, I choose not to invade what he is thinking. Among other things I am becoming addicted to the notion of challenge and somewhere in my soulless form I know I have planted a seed.
I have never had such a conversation. It was among the most gratifying of my existence.
I remember the messengers of my kind discussing this feeling, when delivering what they believed was enlightenment. There is exhilaration in having the power of such integral truth over someone, which is not entirely divine in nature. I feel guilty for the moment I spent enjoying that power, but understand the twinkle on the faces of the angels that were ingesting that very same indulgence.
Thank you for the moment of kinship, Del.
After a moment Del’s face pops back into it’s normalcy, as his conscious mask regains it’s composure. My face imitates his as I fade subtly from the human eyes around me. I watch him leave the coffee shop, continually and repeatedly look about, suspicious and uncertain. He is nowhere near peace, and by tomorrow he will convince himself that the substance of our exchange never happened. In my experience, the human ego, especially one as developed as Del's, will accept the most convenient version of truth.
It seems I will have to scratch at his denial. I have another meeting upcoming with Michael, I will have to probe with him the finer points of this wager's boundaries.
My time remaining is a matter of mere... mortality.
* * *
Thanks for tuning in. The next installment won't take a year.
Don't trust me.
Patrick
A Question of Sacrifice
This is going to seem like a theological question, but I think of it as more of a philosophical one.
Did Jesus Christ know he was going to rise again?
Before retorts, debates, outrages and the like flood your mind and your guilty mortal soul, I would ask that reading eyes and mind’s eyes consider this question separate from a standpoint of moral or mortal or biblical responsibility. Don’t think of it as a challenge of faith or an attempt at gratuitous controversy. Let me make this plain: I am not challenging any religious affiliation or proclaiming my own.
If Jesus knew he was destined to rise, what does that do to the quality of his sacrifice?
Consider the good book as a great story. Think of the hallowed figures within as characters, creations with human motivations, that exist on a plane that can be questioned. After all, all the best questions have blasphemous answers. I am not by nature a controversial person, but I do think we’re at our best when we’re questioning the stuff we’re not supposed to ask about.
What is true sacrifice?
Heroes are defined by two aspects: accomplishment and sacrifice; what did they get and what did they give? We all have heroes that exist on one side of that contribution, and some of us have admiration for someone that has achieved on both. While we worship and praise the champions and the conquerors, their contribution is often found in the fleeting phenomenon known as fame.
It’s the sacrifices, the heroes that we celebrate not for their victories, but for their loss of something great that became something greater. Over the long term we praise the sacrifices more, perhaps because the difference between a victory and a sacrifice is marked by that we wish we all could do and that we quietly acknowledge we couldn’t do.
True sacrifice is comprised of multiple ingredients. The first of these spices in the recipe is free will. In order to be a sacrifice it has to be a voluntary act. The second is that the act is done for someone else. It is next to impossible to offer up your mortal vessel and your immortal soul for your own profit, and to find a way to do so can not quite be deemed heroic.
The last and most important of these elements is knowledge, which is of course the pertinent point we’re examining today. In order to be a true sacrifice the act then must involve a selfless gesture of free will, and the knowledge of the fate that lies ahead.
What if that fate was less than certain?
What if that fate was certain to be undone?
What happens to the quality of a sacrifice when the ultimate consequence is removed? In the case of history’s most famous crucifixion, how should we view the pain and torment endured on that fated Friday if the subject of that misguided punishment knew he was going to be alive again three days later?
There is no doubt of the significance of that day. Regardless of the knowledge or intention of those involved, whether or not it was correctly documented, or whether it happened at all, Christ’s Crucifixion will stand as one of the singular human examples of what a death can mean to the lives it touched, what a life given means to the souls it saves.
The real question becomes: What is the likelihood that Jesus had the knowledge of his purpose beyond his mortal life? How could such a thing ever truly be ascertained? How can any of us ever pretend to know what he knew?
Though he was born in a manger, built of blood and bone, subject to many of the failings and frailties of mortals, Jesus was clearly gifted in some manner. Whether he or not he had the skills that were recounted, or whether walking on water and promptly turning it to wine were the subjects of ancient hyperbole, he clearly had a deeper understanding about his path than the average carpenter. It is conceivable to think that he, being one with his father and the Holy Spirit, being clearly endowed with a divine enlightenment, would be aware of his ultimate demise or ultimately his lack thereof. Is it really reasonable to assume that this awareness that brought him so far, to such an astounding and timeless statement and left him in suspense over the twist ending?
Why not? Many of the readers of this particular scripture are at this moment thinking that very thing, which is entirely acceptable. Given a mortal form to bring the word of his father to the fallible earthlings, it is also acceptable to assume that he could have no knowledge of the path that lay beyond his thirty-third year and his last gift to his followers. Many have based a lifelong study and devoted all their given Sundays to that very fact and I don’t find fallacy in it. Granted that I don’t find proof in it either. Devotion in something that can’t be proven is what faith is all about. Sometimes antithesis serves only to strengthen the thesis. As I stated earlier, it is not my intention to build or deflate in asking this question, only to consider a new dimension.
I suppose that I enjoy that we live in a world where two sides of an argument can at times exist on the same plane, like a pair of linked circles without a beginning or end. Some debates can only be answered by the elements of our individuality.
It tends not to be the answers I’m interested in, but the questions. After all, it’s the journey not the destination:
Right Jesus?
P
Did Jesus Christ know he was going to rise again?
Before retorts, debates, outrages and the like flood your mind and your guilty mortal soul, I would ask that reading eyes and mind’s eyes consider this question separate from a standpoint of moral or mortal or biblical responsibility. Don’t think of it as a challenge of faith or an attempt at gratuitous controversy. Let me make this plain: I am not challenging any religious affiliation or proclaiming my own.
If Jesus knew he was destined to rise, what does that do to the quality of his sacrifice?
Consider the good book as a great story. Think of the hallowed figures within as characters, creations with human motivations, that exist on a plane that can be questioned. After all, all the best questions have blasphemous answers. I am not by nature a controversial person, but I do think we’re at our best when we’re questioning the stuff we’re not supposed to ask about.
What is true sacrifice?
Heroes are defined by two aspects: accomplishment and sacrifice; what did they get and what did they give? We all have heroes that exist on one side of that contribution, and some of us have admiration for someone that has achieved on both. While we worship and praise the champions and the conquerors, their contribution is often found in the fleeting phenomenon known as fame.
It’s the sacrifices, the heroes that we celebrate not for their victories, but for their loss of something great that became something greater. Over the long term we praise the sacrifices more, perhaps because the difference between a victory and a sacrifice is marked by that we wish we all could do and that we quietly acknowledge we couldn’t do.
True sacrifice is comprised of multiple ingredients. The first of these spices in the recipe is free will. In order to be a sacrifice it has to be a voluntary act. The second is that the act is done for someone else. It is next to impossible to offer up your mortal vessel and your immortal soul for your own profit, and to find a way to do so can not quite be deemed heroic.
The last and most important of these elements is knowledge, which is of course the pertinent point we’re examining today. In order to be a true sacrifice the act then must involve a selfless gesture of free will, and the knowledge of the fate that lies ahead.
What if that fate was less than certain?
What if that fate was certain to be undone?
What happens to the quality of a sacrifice when the ultimate consequence is removed? In the case of history’s most famous crucifixion, how should we view the pain and torment endured on that fated Friday if the subject of that misguided punishment knew he was going to be alive again three days later?
There is no doubt of the significance of that day. Regardless of the knowledge or intention of those involved, whether or not it was correctly documented, or whether it happened at all, Christ’s Crucifixion will stand as one of the singular human examples of what a death can mean to the lives it touched, what a life given means to the souls it saves.
The real question becomes: What is the likelihood that Jesus had the knowledge of his purpose beyond his mortal life? How could such a thing ever truly be ascertained? How can any of us ever pretend to know what he knew?
Though he was born in a manger, built of blood and bone, subject to many of the failings and frailties of mortals, Jesus was clearly gifted in some manner. Whether he or not he had the skills that were recounted, or whether walking on water and promptly turning it to wine were the subjects of ancient hyperbole, he clearly had a deeper understanding about his path than the average carpenter. It is conceivable to think that he, being one with his father and the Holy Spirit, being clearly endowed with a divine enlightenment, would be aware of his ultimate demise or ultimately his lack thereof. Is it really reasonable to assume that this awareness that brought him so far, to such an astounding and timeless statement and left him in suspense over the twist ending?
Why not? Many of the readers of this particular scripture are at this moment thinking that very thing, which is entirely acceptable. Given a mortal form to bring the word of his father to the fallible earthlings, it is also acceptable to assume that he could have no knowledge of the path that lay beyond his thirty-third year and his last gift to his followers. Many have based a lifelong study and devoted all their given Sundays to that very fact and I don’t find fallacy in it. Granted that I don’t find proof in it either. Devotion in something that can’t be proven is what faith is all about. Sometimes antithesis serves only to strengthen the thesis. As I stated earlier, it is not my intention to build or deflate in asking this question, only to consider a new dimension.
I suppose that I enjoy that we live in a world where two sides of an argument can at times exist on the same plane, like a pair of linked circles without a beginning or end. Some debates can only be answered by the elements of our individuality.
It tends not to be the answers I’m interested in, but the questions. After all, it’s the journey not the destination:
Right Jesus?
P
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