Puck on... Politics pt.3

And do you see now the error of your ways?

Educate me.

Gladly.  You, your kind, your people have the truth, correct?  The unequivocal, irrevocable truth of the universe.  Isn’t that what you believe?

Yes.

And this truth, it is timeless, correct?  Beyond the scope of individual ages, ever-present, constant, ever-meaningful, continuously applicable.  Yes?

That’s what we believe.

And you don’t think it’s a bit contradictory, even hypocritical to tie this truth to a system that is, by its very nature, as changeable and timely and fickle as anything else?  You don’t think it represents a conflict of interests to have something that claims to be older than time itself connected with something that changes with the winds?

You do begin to see my point, though, don’t you?  You talk of civics, of responsibility, we’ll get to that later.  Explain this.  Explain what business the meaning of life has with parties, with factions, with capricious platforms that shift with opinion.  Go on.

I suppose, some would say, that the point is not to engage the system but to change it.

But can you?  Your faith speaks of new creations, of new heavens and new earths and new men to fill them.  Different men.  Men changed from the sloppy, sinful things they are.  But politics, where’s the redeeming quality?  It is a system that is built, founded on man as he is, no better, because it does see men as better, it does not expect men to be.  It can’t.  You want to redeem it?  Would you redeem backbiting and gossip and inconstancy?  Are these not politics?  Mudslinging and the breaking of vows?  Because you must take it all.  We are not in a world of ideals, my boy; these are the realities. 

It is a beast.  You can defeat it or accept it.  But if you wish to talk about redeeming it, you may as well talk about redeeming sin itself.  Even I can see such things are nonsense.  Can’t you?

But forgive me my rough speech; I am only trying to educate you as requested.  You were actually quite accurate in your statement.  That’s the trick, you see.  The worst thing you can do to truth, especially universal truth, is not to deny it but to act like it is less than it is.  Oh, wasn’t there some line, about “pearls before swine”?

And don’t you wonder, where you learned that trick?