A Lone Thought

The Church is in strife. A lot of strife. It's well known that in our modern day and age people are becoming less and less religious, and more and more secular. Year 12 is a very important year as far as religious schools go. It's a last ditch attempt to get your agenda across to the students before they go off and cleanse their minds. Statistics show that the higher level of education people have, the less likely they are to be religious. This poses a serious threat to the Church - if the peons die out, they die out. The Church is a business; it wills to survive. But what to do when your audience doesn't want to listen to what you've got to say? They're just not interested in buying your product?

Well, you revamp its look and send it out as a new and different product.

Today was an event called BYTE. Indoctrination is the name of the game. Every school in the diocese came together at one central location to "share in the community and belong together" or something like that. 'Breaking boundaries' was the motto.

Not particularly great that we had to walk there from my school, but eventually we got there none the less. As we were sitting down waiting for all the other schools to arrive in the massive hall they had, I started wondering whether some schools where some friends of mine are at were coming. Yes, they were. I was pretty excited to hear this, some of these friends I hadn't seen in a very long time.

Eventually most of the schools had sat down, and so began a presentation from each of the schools telling all of the diocese what their school was about. In between was the odd lecture from a significant person or two. Our diocese's Youth Minister was one of those people.

"I want everyone to stand up," he began. "Oh no...oh no!!" I laughed to my atheist friend next to me. He shared similar sentiments. The Minister then said "I want you to say to the person next to you, 'God loves you but I'm his favourite'". "Oh no!!!!!" My friend and I began laughing. We wern't gonna say it. Eventually we said it jokingly to each other before the Minister continued. "God loves each and every one of you. But now I want to tell you something, I'm his favourite." He then rattled on about the point he was making, and then proceeded to tell us to "tell the person next to you that 'God loves me, and you're his favourite'". As soon as people started my friend and I burst out laughing again. I actively refused to partake in such nonsense. Maybe I'm just a party pooper, but I didn't like where he was getting at.

Standard proslytizing time now: "God created all of this - the entire universe!" before doing it in style and mentioning the unbelievers "some people don't believe in God. They don't understand so they don't believe." Oh I understand perfectly well. Better than you do you ignorant fuck. This guy had an agenda. A nasty insidious one: target youth; which was just what his job was. It was clear that this guy was making sure we pushed on as the next generation of Christians - flattering us with love and praise, shunning out the unbelievers as 'ignorant' and 'not understanding'. Little did I know this would set the tone for the rest of the day...

After the presentations, recess. I was eager to begin hunting down my friends from the other schools. One particular friend I couldn't find. It turned out she was at TAFE doing her work there. Had she known I was going she would've come here. That was a bit disappointing, as she was one of the ones I was really looking forward to seeing again. The day then became dull and boring. Just gotta sit through it now and wait for the end.

Our year had been split up in four, and then four groups were formed out of the various sub groups that had been created. Each of the four groups would visit one of four short presentations and then move onto the next one. After an hour we would've gone through all of them, and it would be time for lunch again. Simple enough.

I had been seeing lots of girls were dressed in black; some guys too. They were obviously the performers for the shows we were about to witness. The first show had a bunch of being bounding around to Kool & The Gang's 'Celebration'. Well it's a good song, people found it amusing, so whatever okay. When they were done however, things turned bad. Students on platforms were talking in low somber voices about glorifying God. Things turned really ugly when they started having students reading out excerpts about life, then having a chorus of performers saying "we are only alive when we glorify God. We are only alive when we glorify God." in a monotone voice. The message was subliminal. They were attacking our base instincts - our base emotions: destroying our self esteem then building it back up with the dogma in the centre, all without us even realizing it. To suggest someone is only alive when they are 'glorifying God' I find deeply appalling. It devalues all the wonders one can seek through life, encouraging the person to give up their dreams and become the next generation of peons to instruct their peon descendents. What made things even more sickening was this once again reminded me of Jesus Camp. It wasn't the first time I felt I was living what those poor children had to go through. Two more terms...

The performance was surprisingly brief. When we were done my friends were laughing about how silly it was. When one of them asked what I thought of it I replied "wicked and disgusting," and explained my position. it was indoctrination - brainwashing. My friend agreed, but didn't see how that made it evil. The fact they're using such sneaky perverted tactics perhaps?

A long walk through the school (it's so big compared to ours...yet small compared to others) and we came to the next performance. We were given a piece of paper and a pencil as we walked out to sit down. This time the performers were standing on black square boxes. They were talking about the community, and how certain people have achieved great things in it. I thought I had grasped the message pretty early on: "Christianity breeds great community figures - isn't that something?" I was more or less correct, although it wasn't as direct as I thought it would be. We were told to write on the paper someone who we looked up to. Someone who inspired us. Hmm... who to write. Aha. I wrote the name down. I told my friends. We laughed. Some people were coming round with something to collect the papers with. We laughed again. I put my paper in the collector, and laughed once more. Someone would probably read all of these papers. They were probably looking for Christian leaders in the community. I wonder how they react when they see on the paper "Richard Dawkins".

More walking, we came to a nice shady spot under the trees on the grace. Such a beautiful scene. I'd love to go to that school and just lie down there at lunches...very peaceful. "50 bucks says they say 'oh look at nature isn't God something?'" I said to my friend.

I was surprisingly wrong. The presentation started off with Genesis. Oh no... however things suddenly swerved off into the theme for the presentation: potential. The odds of certain events (e.g. a black man becoming president) happening may of been exceedingly unlikely, but they happened none the less. Then it seemed as if they were making excuses for the problem of evil. Many different girls were speaking into microphones talking about how it's a 'sick old world', and though it may seem hard, we must try to repair it. How inconsistent of them - completely ignore the fact God created the world with its flaws but praise him for creating it none the less. I turned around and looked at my friend, "this is brainwashing," he said to me. I smiled. At least he could see where I was coming from now. Eventually all the performers just disappeared into the plants. They had just walked off. To the church we go for the final presentation!

Once again, happy vibrant enthusastic students. Praising God brings them joy. They proclaim it, and you can too! "We believe in a creator God *rainbow arms*, a merciful God, loving God". For one reason or another there was something to celebrate, and performers up the back of the church popped streamers and shiny party paper stuff all over us. My friend and I thought the ceiling was gonna fall in with the pop we heard. The overall agenda was clear. Making this sick disgusting cult more youth friendly, thereby continuing on their religion. Unfortunately I feel they succeeded...however speaking to some of my peers afterwards, many of them wern't even listening. I hope no-one heard anything anyone said today. It was just wrong, all of it. Horribly horribly wrong. I would've written more notes down to portray how wrong it was, however it was a bit difficult doing that whilst keeping the notes out of sight.

Lunchtime. We all went out on to the oval, and eventually Susie and her friend came up to me. She was aghast! "They're brainwasing us!" she said. I was a bit shocked at this...I couldn't beieve she agreed to me. I said to another friend of mine in a low voice "Susie's pretty religious...I can't believe she agrees we're being brainwashed!" Susies friend heard me and promptly told Susie what I had said. I then had to explain why I thought she wouldn't agree with me. That was a bit rude...

I began to explain the whole youth indoctrination thing when I was interupted - she didn't mean indoctrination of that, she meant brainwashing into feminism!! What?! How! "They're all very pro-woman fight the power." Apparently on the walls of the rooms we were in were a lot of WOO! WOMEN! motivational content. I asked Susie if she wanted my opinion on the matter (I'm clever enough to ask if people want my opinion when I'm going to talk about religion now). I told her how the Church has women as pretty insignificant, and so by having this they can tell themselves 'no, we're not insignificant we're awesome rah rah rah'. She agreed, so fair enough.

After lunch, mass. Pretty standard mass. One thing I picked up on was the Bishop saying "let us proclaim the mystery of faith". I had heard the Youth Minister call something a "mystery" earlier. I just don't get that nonsense. Ooo mysterious. Better worship it. Another thing was a hymn they were singing. It was asking Christ for mercy. A pretty standard hymn, sung in a pretty standard way. I think it's insane. I imagined Christ as the Emperor, and the people singing as a man at his knees begging for his life, asking the Emperor to have mercy on him. The man was screaming, crying. Not a pleasant sight. The Emperor was apathetic, and eventually the man just walked away without his answer - unfortunate, as I'd rather a real ending. Was this the same thing these people were doing? Pleading desperately for their lives to be spared? I considered that it might've been dependant on the tone it was being said, thus giving it a different sort of meaning. I couldn't think of any alternate meaning and so dropped it all together. An interesting thought none the less.

When I got home and mum asked how my day was, I had three words to say:

Disgusting. Insidious. Wicked.

...then proceeded to tell her how excited I was that I saw all my friends from other schools. Yay happy ending!