The MOTs of Life

I've been thinking today about how I'm conscious at times of how we humans have a desire to look good, successful and respectable without actually wanting to be good, successful and respectable, usually because there's so much hassle, expense and effort.

Take the car's MOT. I've spent hundreds of pounds in the past so that my car can be counted as roadworthy for one day. As long as my car is good for that day, I'm good. I never stopped to think about the fact if my car needed new brakes, it's because I've been driving around in a death trap, a car with bad brakes. All I want is to have that certificate that says I'm good to go for another year.

The same applies to the driving test; how many people drive their cars with the care and attention with which they drove their cars on their driving test? Don't lie now!

As long as we can have the piece of paper or the 'trapping' that suggests we're good people doing good things in good ways for good reasons, we don't care if that's what we're actually doing.

I've worked for a company (not where I work now - in case by boss is reading this) where in order to earn an 'Investors in People' badge, everything had to be 'just so' for a couple of weeks. Once the award was given, everything went back to normal until the time to renew came along and we went through it all again.

Whether we're talking about tidy desk policies, appraisals, church efforts, big houses and posh cars or even politics, we all seem to want the gestures of greatness that show us in the best light possible.

But what about the little things?

If I made the effort to put my car through an MOT every week or month, it would cost time and money but I'd know that my car really was safe to drive. Ok, so that's a crazy illustration, but let's take it out a bit; A company that works for three weeks a year to get Investors In People isn't really an investor in people. A company that does daily everything that's needed for the certificate and therefore doesn't need the three weeks of frantic activity is a true investor in people.

So is it enough to do something every day? Not really, because if a company's idea of investing in people was to regularly put posters up to say that they're investing in people when in reality, they're just investing in the managers' golf fund, then they're not really investors in people. Are they?

What about 'churches' that want to be mega-churches and do it by playing rock music with bland lyrics, play DVDs recorded in churches half way across the world and invite self-help authors who also do shouty preaching (and every good Christian knows that the further a preacher has travelled, the better he is ;-)? After all, if you act like a mega-church, you'll become a mega-church. So if a whale acts like a cat, it will become a cat?

(I never did understand how these 'culturally relevant' churches can think they're addressing the culture needs of South Wales communities by becoming more American). Let's just say that ten people in a church that cares, loves, shares and worships from the heart is what I call a 'Mega-Church'.

Sure, go ahead and look like whatever you want, but the things that actually make you are the things that nobody sees. Pulling books out to make your mates think you're brainy won't make you brainy, reading them will.

Ok, sermon over ;-)

Living By Revelation

All sane, reasonable people live by revelation. They may not think it, but they do. Whether it is the revelation of the mundane (for example, what day you wash clothes and in what order - dark or light clothes first) to the not-so-mundane (for example, your religion or reasons for not having a religion at all).

The whole spectrum of our lives between these two are the silent revelations by which we live and they define us. But there are two types of people who don't get the most out of life because of a diseased and blocked revelation.

The first is the person who doesn't have a revelation at all and acts on purely animal instincts. These are the Don't Care or Whatever generation who would sooner smash up a bus stop that think about what it is that makes them want to smash up the bus stop. If they have any revelation, it's that it's best not to have a revelation since they see people who care about things as uncool, unchilled and old fashioned.

The other kind faces a different kind of destruction. Whereas the first kind has never really had a revelation (thus a personality) to destroy apart from that which they themselves have destroyed, this second is struggling to find a revelation but cannot because they are constantly having someone else's revelation put onto and into them.

When this second kind of person gets up in the morning, they have to try and live their life in the way that they imagine someone else would want them to live it. They will have breakfast in breakfast bowls and tea in the cups designated for tea but if they have visitors, they must use different cups. These people are as empty as the first type, but for them the emptiness is despite their efforts. These people are dead and have no avenue or means to express the person they are.

The common ground between these two types is that they are allowing themselves to be crushed under the pressure of something or someone that wants to wipe them out. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything and if you allow yourself to live by someone else's values, then when that person is absent or has departed, you will be as good as dead yourself because you allowed your soul to be wrapped up in them.

Revelation is something by which you know yourself and know others. There's no shame in knowing yourself, you have to know who you are, what you are, what you like and what you don't like. You will have been influenced and shaped by situation, parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers and friends but at the end of the day, you must call the shots. If you want to drink hot tea out of a glass then go ahead and do that.

A person's revelation can change, but it must change from inside. You can't allow yourself to go through a 'forced conversion' to please someone else and expect to be alive in your own heart and mind. You're going to destroy yourself and fail to be anything or anyone (and when I say 'fail to be anything', I'm not talking about getting rich and powerful, I'm talking about being a whole person). You can't start going to church and doing the 'church' thing and expect to become a Christian for the acts, the change comes inside. Likewise, you can't be expected to become an atheist just because someone told you that your experience is nonsense and you must abandon it. If you abandon your faith, it must be an abandonment from within else it's not real and you are only allowing someone else to govern your body and put another layer of complexity onto your mind.

Simplicity dictates that you can only live by your own revelation and if you allow anybody to try and change or destroy that revelation, then it is up to you to stand your ground and live, or cave in and die trying to please others.

Don't be afraid to say no to something or someone, especially if they're trying to control you.