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Religous: Don’t be too quick to delete
Pastor Eric J. Kregel
for South Peace News
Terri realized she could delete certain portions of her reality.
It came unexpectedly one day while she was updating her blog from her home’s computer. She was home for lunch, hurrying through her sandwich when a knock came at the door. She scrambled to see who it was, only to discover it was a traveling salesperson who wanted to notify her she had “won” a free trip along with a “brief” presentation.
Quickly, she closed her eyes. Out from nowhere, a big box appeared in her mind’s eye with an “X” in the centre. The box was selected. And silence followed.
The man vanished, she looked around and couldn’t find him. Figuring he left the moment he read the consternation on her face, she retreated back inside and finished her updates.
That night, she returned to her computer. As she scrolled through several of her unread messages, her husband’s voice called out for her. She ignored him, still clicking away. Again, he called for her. Again, she ignored him. He marched out of the kitchen and barged into the study.
“Terri,” he said. “I’m really mad. How could you?”
She closed her eyes and the box appeared again; she selected “X”. When she opened her eyes, he was gone. Fearing she had deleted her husband, she ran into the kitchen to find him cooking, unaware of anything that took place. After a few questions, she determined that all her mind did was delete the last thread of his thoughts, cutting him off right before he got angry.
Without ever wondering where this new power came from, Terri went full throttle deleting the portions of her reality that were tiresome, hurtful, annoying, or just slowed her down. She couldn’t delete time, but she could cut things that drug her speed (Ex. traffic lights, crowds, line-ups, etc.)
She could delete sticky situations. Four days after she obtained this power, her boss called her into his office to discuss her lack of productivity. With a blink of an eye, she deleted the whole meeting and for the rest of the day, her boss was in a pleasant mood.
One night, while watching TV, her husband went to change the station; Terri deleted this overture. She then deleted all the shows, commercials, and stations that weren’t of interest to her. The result was a show about the Internet and how it’s making people healthier and better each day.
“The breakthrough,” the commentator said, “is that we are beginning to build machines that think like people, so the operating systems function much like the human brain.”
Funny, she mused. The exact opposite has happened to me: I think more like a computer every day, deleting all that is of no purpose to my operations.
Everything changed for Terri one day when her mother sent a card. Her mother often sent her notes, often with religious sentiment and a quote from the Bible.
Terri hated when her mom’s cards came in the mail. Why couldn’t she just send an E-mail? And why was she always trying to cram religion down her throat? She was happy, believing whatever she wanted and wasn’t hurting too many people.
Terri found herself satisfied with your station in life with the exception of when her mother decided to send her a note. Out of duty, she opened the card but couldn’t finish reading it when she saw, at the bottom, was a Bible passage. She tried to delete the card. Her mother’s handwriting vanished. It was a blank card … all except the Scripture quoted at the bottom:
“The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of the Lord remains forever.” (Isaiah 40:8)
She tried to delete the passage again, but it remained. Quickly, she threw away the card and got out of her office and into her car. She scanned around her car and started deleting random things: billboards, signs, trees, etc. Yes, her powers still worked!
She then flipped on her XM station and scrolled it to a Christian station. A preacher’s voice intoned through her stereo. Delete. It was quiet … until he started quoting the Bible.
After an obscenity given, she shot out of her car and ran into her office, surfing the web for anything to delete. She deleted pages, a streaming video site, messages from her family … everything, until she got to an on-line Bible. It survived her attempts to delete the site.
Her phone rang. She picked it up. A cold, solid voice spoke on the other end.
“If you want to find out what is going on, meet me in the breakfast café down the street in 10 minutes.”
“Who is this? Why can’t I delete anything religious?”
“Meet me in 10 minutes.”
She did as she was told, excusing herself for an early lunch and waited in the café. After an exact wait of three minutes, a man sat down in her booth. He was older, wearing clothing not in style. He had an air about him that was foreign.
“Whenever you stumble upon something that is new, threatening, or uncomfortable, you delete it. For years, you have only done this in your mind. In the last 10 years, you did this, also, on-line. Now this habit has been projected upon your cosmos, a sort of an existential sanctioning with extreme prejudice.”
“Speak English,” she commanded.
“My point has just been proved. I used a term unfamiliar to you. Rather than getting to know what I mean or seeking to increase your vocabulary, you simply shut-down, and somehow turn it around so the burden is on me not to use so many big words.
“Something comes up in life that threatens, annoys, or confuses, you escape, closing your mind’s window to the source. In short, you turn off the moment life ‘pops up’ an inconvenient idea or insight.”
“Why can’t I delete Christianity?”
The old man laughed.
“You can delete Christians, church, and books that are written by Christians, certainly. But you cannot delete the Bible because it is truth: truth in written form. And truth, no matter how hard one works, cannot be sanctioned with extreme prejudice. Sometimes, truth arrives and there’s nothing one can do about it but believe. One does not chose to hear from a doctor they have cancer, one cannot delete the reality that they are 13 or 77, and one cannot escape the knowledge, despite how hard they work to do so, that there is a God and He wants to be known.”
“So if the Bible is so full of truth, why is it so painful for me to come near it, so I’m hitting delete every time it shows up?”
Possibly because you’ve deleted so many other things that has their threads connected to the Bible. You cannot, in other words, deal with the truth of the Bible because you are not used to dealing with truth.
“The human mind is all about decisions, Terri. ‘Accept’ or ‘Ignore’ has been with us from the dawn of time, certainly before computers. The question is, are you ignoring truth for the purpose of only accepting that which comforts, affirms, and makes you feel happy about yourself?”
“So what? I should no longer delete or ignore things? Drink in everything?”
“Truth seems to always interrupt us, being outside of our own little spheres and circles. Next time there’s opportunity to accept truth, don’t be quick to delete. Listen. Learn. Receive. That’s all.”
The old man left her and her powers to delete reality were gone.
Soon, her fear of the Bible also left her. Her mom’s notes were read. And, after a year’s time, she found herself less and less on-line. When asked why, she would simply say that her brain couldn’t work well with computers anymore.
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