Now is The Winter of Our Discontent
Who we freely serve makes all the difference
I have always resented people who are content. The contented are insufferable individuals who wake up each morning knowing who they are, what to do and where to go. Grand questions of ontology and eschatology as well as lesser distractions of politics and counting calories never seem to bother them. The contented seem to start each day with purpose and do not get distracted from life's challenges and superfluities. In society, those who seem content are standard barriers of socially engineered educational and political success. The contented hyper-focus on their tasks at hand. Whether it be installing tires on an auto assembly line or performing the volume calculation of a parabola rotating about an x-axis, they focus keenly on their endeavors without external induced anxieties of meaning, purpose, or destiny. Of course, resentment is just a form of jealousy, hence I am truly envious of those who lead contented lives.
The state of contentment is Divine and what I imagine an eternal seat at His table in heaven will feel like. But I believe earning that seat begins with confronting discontent here on earth. On this earthly plane, contentment is the playground of scoundrels. A fundamental condition of God’s creation on that fifth day was free will. Since that fateful day, we will always (by Intelligent design) be confronted with a choice between right and wrong - good or evil. We are made in His image, and from that very first day of existence, were endowed with the freedom to choose. So powerful is choice as a prerequisite of freedom, that the angel cast from heaven uses it as his primary weapon to seduce God’s children into fiery servitude. Thus, living in a state of contentment blindly gives undue power to belly-crawling manipulators of free will.
It is the malcontents that shape our world. From the arts, the pulpit, the classroom, and the halls of congress, it is those individuals that are unsatisfied with the status quo that influence our society. Personally, that is why I believe comedy is so important, because comedians point out the fallacies of living a contented life with barrages of humorous bullets instead of hurling actual ones. It is the malcontents that see the atrocities of our world and wish to do something about. In my country, the United States of America, fifty-six malcontents signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and staged a righteous coop against the contented English Crown dominated status quo. Thirteen years later, French malcontents lead a revolution that had a far different outcome for both France and her people.
As history teaches us, those who are in states of discontent wield great influence on the course of events. It is upon these malcontented individuals that the forces of good and evil propound their influence. Who one serves determines the direction of discontentment. Those who serve God, as the founders of the United States, parlay discontent into a positive result for both individual and country. And those who served a lessor being, as the instigators of the French revolution, yield entirely and disastrously different results.
There are many discontented people within our societies today. You cannot swing a dead cat on a college campus without bowling down a couple dozen of them. Discovering the validity of their ire is as simple as finding out who they serve. If they wear a Che Guevara T-shirt and carry pictures of Chairman Mao, one may quickly discern that Lucifer is the influencer and whatever solution the malcontent concocts will have no positive impact on individuals or society.
Often, picking the right malcontent to support is as easy as witnessing who they serve. Following the malcontent who, in righteous indignation, overturns the money changers tables will have a far greater impact on one’s soul then following the discontented Pharisees of status quo. True liberty, especially expressed in the exercise of free will, is only possible when we pick the right malcontents. Discontentment is good when it drives one to contemplate positive worldviews. And the one that is undefeated is the worldview of eternal Love and Forgiveness.