I took my faith to the
marketplace of ideas and wanted to sell it to the highest bidder. I stepped up
to the stage and stood behind the lectern and projected my faith and its meta-narrative before my potential buyers. The projection tells a story of
creation, the beginning of all. I shared the myth of a loving creator and how
his life was interwoven with ours.
History had no better
companion than a supernatural love that shadowed a natural order. His
hiddenness was never an issue with those who worshipped him even until their
destined death. The chaos of history was made more tolerable, even more
inspiring, with the hope of an eternity planted in the universal imagination of
men.
This metanarrative was far
more generous than any mortal king or conqueror can ever match. We cry for a
savior to show us the way to a social utopia, a new heaven and earth, and this
creator deemed it most fitting to offer himself to our corrupt system of
justice after living with us for 33 years. In 3 short days, we tortured him and
killed him. But being our creator, what
is death but one of his many creations? He who invented it also held the
master key of life.
He survived the lynching and
rose in bejeweled glory into his bejeweled abode. And to ensure we are not
alone, he has sent his ghostly equal to console and empower us and this divine
incarnate now shares a lock-down cell with the worst of human excesses and lust
- hoping to effect deep changes. That
cell is the human heart where all issues of life flow.
That was how I presented my
faith at the marketplace of ideas and I waited for the first bid to come. Many
bids came on that day. They were eager to buy my faith.
Communism wanted my faith
because he wanted to keep it from the masses. He wanted to hide it for
good; to deprive it of any exposure. Faith to them hampers their plans. It
gives the people an alternative hope and distracts the laborers from the goals
of the exalted leader.
Capitalism wanted my faith
too. He has been eyeing it for a long time. He said that my faith is what he
needs to generate more wealth for himself. He said he can use my faith to
promise the people more prosperity provided they give more of their own
prosperity to him. It was a trade off of bejeweled promises for donations,
contributions and offerings.
Not wanting to be left out,
atheism raised a bid for my faith too. It was no doubt a half-hearted bid but
atheism had plans of his own. He wanted to discredit my faith. He wanted to
unravel it for all the delusion that it was, is, and will ever be. He said that
my faith is to reality what bloodletting is to medicine and what geo-centrism
is to astronomy. Atheism wanted to make the quick purchase not for the value of
my faith but for what it is not. His purpose is to ultimately replace it with
rationality and reason.
From where I stood, I saw
many other bidders. Humanism, socialism, secular utopianism, and new age
syncretism, to name just a few. All of them had their hands raised. They were
all eager purchasers with their own agenda to boot.
But something caught my
attention at this time. It was a raised hand from the back of the room. I saw a
boy struggling to be seen. His offer was way below the reserve price. I was not
contracted to sell my faith to him. But he made the best pitch for my faith. He
kept me thinking much more and far deeper than the rest of the bidders have
provoked.
In fact, some of the
bidders' drive to buy my faith saddened and disgusted me. I then hit the
auction hammer down without regrets and sold my faith to the boy at the back.
As he approached the front,
he introduced himself as a younger me decades back. He told me he has never
forgotten his first love, that is, how that passion gave him hope and meaning.
He begged for my faith and told me how transforming it was and has been. He has
shown me the most enduring conviction, and he was the sincerest buyer of them
all. The choice couldn't have been clearer for me.
And as I handed him the
receipt for his token payment and my wrapped-up faith, I realized that this is
the best sale ever because I can start all over. Cheerz
No comments:
Post a Comment