Pondering on books I have read

I listened to the first several chapters of a book called Slumdog Millionaire. It was very disturbing and had some people doing really vile things to other people. What do you do in a world steeped with such degradation?

This morning, in church, singing the first hymn, some of the filth from the book finally fell away from my spirit. I still wondered about it, though. I read another book some time ago called Elantris. In it, whenever a person came down with a certain sickness, they were thrown within a walled city and not allowed out. The city inside the wall was covered with muck and slime. Mostly, once people were thrown inside, they quickly got covered with muck and slime as well, acted abominably and waited to die. One man, though decided it didn't need to be that way. He found a spot inside the city and started to clean it. Once the building was completely clear of muck and slime, in order to enter it, you had to take off your shoes and change your clothes. Gradually more people came to the man to live clean. They worked together and cleaned more space outward from where they started.

This is such a great allegory for how we should live. We can start where we are and make our home a place where people are safe and respected and God is the highest moral authority. Then we can work outward and spread our spot of cleanliness to the neighbors and community in which we live. Instead of accepting the slime that surrounds us, we fight back and increase the area that is clean.

In Slumdog Millionaire, Father Tim's mistake was in letting the slime into his parish in the form of Father John. He knew he was slime he should not have allowed it. Kick the man out. Send him far away. In Elantris, the clean area was kept clean not only by cleaning, but also by refusing entrance to any person who would not take the slime from their own clothes. You must be adamant about keeping the filth out. Because Father Timothy didn't do anything about Father John, the filth spread to both his sons.

Horrible. But not random and not inevitable. Father Timothy's heaven he created for Raam would have lasted if he had defended it the way he should have. Instead, his patch of "clean" got swallowed back up by the slime.