Are you saved?
That must be one of the most irritating questions one can ask another on any day of the week. But especially on a lazy Sunday such as this. The Maker’s friends warn him never to ask anyone this question. Leave conversion to the missionaries, they order. And take note, the best of them never appear to ask the question.
The Maker wonders if this is good advice. After all, his work as a writer of opinions and other things require him to rate himself by the quality of the questions he asks. This means he must be open to every and all questions irritating or not.
But he does understand why his closest friends take the trouble of warning him specifically about this. He admits to a messianic complex which he must try very hard to put under wraps and under control. This aberration works especially in the art that he does including the writing. His personal ethics prevent him from doing things which are easy to sell to everyone. Leave that to the designers. Haha! He resolves to himself only to sell to “history.” He claims he does not want to hostage himself to fame and the market. But is he being truthful? After all, doesn’t that sound also like a selling proposition? But rest assured, he does not believe at all that selling is an ethically bad thing to do. He claims however this is a recourse best left to the young and those who really need to do it for one reason or another. He cannot of course sufficiently explain this to himself. Why does he feel this way? It must be a “complex,” a sort of neurosis.
Imagine, yourself with him riding down screaming in a roller-coaster. He is bound to ask you out of the blue: Are you having fun? He can make you want to scream. He can get quite sophomoric, as one particular friend put it. The Maker accepts these things. His friends are his mirror: How do I look? You look okay. Let’s go party. The Maker is forewarned. But from time to time, he will regress and feel the need to irritate. Still he accepts, his higher obligation is to amuse. To amuse is at least one notch better than to irritate.
Are you saved? Now, after they finally shot Bin Laden? What? They should have just captured him and given him a fair trial? But that would only encourage fanatics to once again capture an airliner and/or blow up something. How can Bin Ladin ever really get a fair trial? And by whom would he be given a fair trial? Did they give Saddam a fair trial? And what if he is found not-guilty? Wasn’t it better just to kill him that way? And how will they ever prove it was him? Did they cut off his head and bring it home with them like the Russians allegedly did with Hitler? Did they take blood samples for DNA testing? Did they secretly film the whole thing? They must have? They film everything now. Do we feel better? Do we feel saved? And after everything, do the fanatics have lesser reason to once again turn an airplane full of passengers into a weapon of mass destruction?
And what about the RH Bill? What if it is passed? Will we have fewer children? Will they suffer less? Will there be less women dying from the mere act of childbirth? Will they make better use of the condom and the pill? Will the country become better? Uh, the poverty will go away? And what about the inequality?
And what if it is defeated? Will the children stop having sex outside of wedlock? Will people stop using the condom and the pill? Uh, will there be more children born into the world? Will they be better off? Will God be more pleased with us? Or are we talking here only of priests and bishops? What will they do about the inequality? Will they make the poverty go away? Abracadabra and phooof? And the rich? Will they have more children now?
Are you saved? How come it seems as if these things do not really matter in the true scheme of things? And why does it seem as if we are giving them more importance than they deserve?
And why does it seem as if salvation finally rests in the head of the one person who finally holds the trigger and decides whether or not to fire, or sign or not sign the document?
The Maker knows even less than you about these things but still he recalls something he must have read from someone he forgets. It might have been Kurt Vonnegut: There is hardly any cause worth dying for and absolutely none that is worth killing for. He only hopes his enemies know this and believe. He prays also they are already saved, or if not that, then at least a bit ahead of him.
