My daughter took part in a school performance. They did a production of a musical version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears as retold through Roald Dahl’s nursery rhymes.
Although I have read one or two Dahl stuff I had not come across the rhymes. The production was enjoyable and my daughter did well thankfully.
Reflecting on it further, some of the things alluded to began to eat away at me.
The scenario sees Goldilocks helping herself to the goodies from the Bear Family. This naturally leads to a court case looking to prosecute Goldy for her porridge theft, wrecking a treasured toilet heirloom and then messing up a few beds. Despite the overwhelming evidence against in the court case, the emotional appeal of the defence sways the jury who return a verdict of not guilty. After all who can believe the sweet looking Goldilocks would do such hideous things? The bear family who are now bereft of their antique item, a place to sleep and most of all are now starving hungry because someone’s been eating in their porridge, decide to take matters into their own hands. Baby Bear literally helps himself to some Goldilocks.
I read, watch and hear some of the news and I often think it’s not fair. It’s not fair that in some strands of society thousands and millions of pounds are being pumped into initiatives of no relevance or value to the human condition at all. At the very same time people are out of work because the economy cannot be picked up because the same fat cats who run these irrelevant initiatives cannot afford to develop proper economic moves to allow people to get jobs.
I see situations, know people and have experienced some things and I often think it’s not fair. People who have spent forty, fifty and sixty years of their lives slogging away, investing in society are packaged off into homes that sometimes come across as waiting rooms of death. Males and females engage in sexual relations without caring about the consequences and subsequently express a ‘choice’ that means the end of a life. Young ones on the start of their voyage into adulthood are labelled as failures because they cannot pass exams conditioned for the minority to excel.
After exploiting and capitalising on the resources of other countries the same ‘first world’ countries that have done the manipulating and exploiting get upset that the countries they have pillaged look to them for help. The immigration debate is not framed around the need to do what’s right by those who are strangers and in need of help. It’s more about a self-preservation that often expresses itself is rather snide, antagonistic, xenophobic, proud, high-handed rhetoric. Ironic in those issues are some second and third generation immigrants also making a fuss over the ‘foreigners’ who come in and take ‘our’ jobs,
People stigmatised, isolated, alienated and mistreated because of a gender, sexual orientation, ability status, religious affiliation, economic and social class. Human beings created to love conditioned to be too frightened and self-absorbed to ever begin to express what they were always created to be in its fullness.
All this as a regular part of life and it is just not fair. The wicked seem to thrive as the poor suffer. Being a part of the in-crowd that cares not about any golden rules or great commandments seems to thrive and prosper more than those who seek to live a principled life.
It would be in some terms easy to understand the desire to take matters in your own hands. To somehow look to force home a different agenda. When the current system doesn’t work overthrow it by force and start a new one. Who better to run that than you yourselves?
It would be easy to do that, but God shows us a better way. The best way. One in which we revert to His original system. A system reflected in the mission and message of Jesus. One in which those who search for righteousness are satisfied, not through political moves, legislation, culture wars or social engineering. Those who search for it find it in the person of Jesus and the expression of the Kingdom of Heaven come to earth through the confessional, humble, loving community of Christ.
Taking matters into our hands, looking to work out justice by ourselves will be thwarted and frustrated. Putting matters into His hands gives us hope that for every wrong done, we can reflect the right path. We can be the light to treating people with the human dignity in which God created them.
And with every time we express this we indicate the fulfillment of the Kingdom where there really will be justice for all.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
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