Last night I watched the final scene in the Shawshank Redemption.
The character played by Morgan Freeman; ‘Red’, has been released from prison and while he is at his job bagging groceries, he catches the attention of the store manager and asks, “Personal break boss?”
The character played by Morgan Freeman; ‘Red’, has been released from prison and while he is at his job bagging groceries, he catches the attention of the store manager and asks, “Personal break boss?”
The manager beckons him over and says, “You don’t need to ask me every time you need to go take a piss… just go…Understand?
Afterwards, Red reflects,
Afterwards, Red reflects,
“40 years I’ve been asking permission to piss. I can’t squeeze a drop without say so. There’s a harsh truth to face, no way am I going to make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole so maybe they’d send me back. Terrible thing to live in fear, Brooks Hatlin knew it, knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense where I won’t have to be afraid all the time…”
The thing with my traditional religious upbringing is that I became as institutionalised as Red. For so long I’d been told what to believe, how to pray, how to please God, even more so, how to anger God. Everything was structured, predictable...
Becoming a Christian broke my neatly ordered world. This should be a good thing right? But then why do I feel that I am in a kind of free fall with no parachute. Or like a surfer caught in a rip tide, drifting out to sea, helpless against the strong currents
Nothing is black and white. Issues like homosexuality, faith, healing are still grey areas and open to personal interpretation. I cannot rely anymore on unchallenged liturgies, catechisms, and sacraments to tell me what to believe.
There are no formulas because...
“God is not a vending machine”,
"God is not tame",
"He cannot be manipulated".
With no rosaries or books of common prayers to help me, I find it difficult to even find the ‘right’ words with which to pray. I struggle to have faith in a God who may or may not choose to heal or save people; or to be a witness to the boundless love of this God in the face of human… even Christian... suffering. I cannot in all honesty testify that the Holy Spirit can transform your life, when mine, 18 years down the line, is still unchanged, selfish and rotten to the core.
And I am afraid because I don’t know how I can claim to be Christian and yet have such treacherous thoughts. I’m like the Israelites, who having escaped slavery, longed to go back to Egypt, the place of their captivity.
And I am afraid because I don’t know how I can claim to be Christian and yet have such treacherous thoughts. I’m like the Israelites, who having escaped slavery, longed to go back to Egypt, the place of their captivity.
Or as more recently portrayed in the movie, the Matrix, by Cypher, who having become disillusioned with the grim existence in the real world, betrays Neo to the Agents because he prefers his old life of ignorance within the matrix.
"Ignorance is bliss" , he says
But is it?
I recognise that ‘religion’ was a kind of prison, and I broke away from it because I felt it was lacking something. But it was easy and the rules of engagement were clearly defined. You didn't have to think for yourself because others did it for you
Religion = safe, secure, predictable
Christianity= dangerous, uncertain, unpredictable, SCARY!
I'm torn because, as Red said in the movie, I want to be back where things make sense where I won’t have to be afraid all the time.
Yet, I don’t want to miss out! I don’t even know what it is I don’t want to miss out on. I don't want to go back to the emptiness, hollowness of religion, and yet I don't want to keep on feeling...unstable
