We’ve been trained like dogs to the whistle.
And the whistle’s blown by men who’ve never cut sod, never gutted a fish, never put their back into a day’s work except to lift a pen and sign your freedom away.
They hand us poison in a polished glass and call it medicine. Not the bitter kind that burns the sickness out of you, but the sweet kind. The honeyed venom that seeps slow, inch by inch, into the bone. And while it works its way through your blood, they pat your hand and tell you you’re getting better.
We’ve been told programming is education. That the feeding of a script into your skull is the same as the opening of a mind. But the words are trimmed to fit you into a pen, and the fence posts are sunk deep. The old craft of critical thinking is gone; in its place is the smooth obedience of those who can quote the lesson but have no fire in their belly for the truth.
We’ve been told propaganda is news. It comes wrapped in music and headlines, read to you by a smiling face who might as well be chanting the day’s psalms for the Church of What’s Happening Now. They tell you what’s true, what’s false, what’s fit to feel, and the truth. The raw, awkward truth is rationed like war-time sugar, meted out by hands you’ll never see.
We’ve been told critical thinking is dangerous. And they’re right, but not for you. For them. For the keepers of the keys who need the flock quiet, the questions sealed, the eyes fixed on the flickering altar of the screen.
We’ve been told social engineering is entertainment. That the stories we’re given, the songs we hum in the shower, the flickering glow that tucks us in at night are harmless. But they shape the bones of the heart. They teach you what to laugh at, what to long for, what to hate, and they do it before you’ve ever had the chance to choose.
We’ve been told pedophiles are leaders. We’ve seen them dressed in the full costume of respectability: the tailored suit, the gilt pin, the flag draped behind the podium. And the world nods along, too frightened to name the smell in the room.
And over it all, the crowning lie: that Jesus is a fairy-tale for children and the dim-witted. A tale for the meek who can’t face the hard, bright steel of reality. But this so-called fairy-tale has stood in the smoking ruins of Rome, has watched empires rise and fall like sandcastles in the tide, has knelt at the graves of the men who mocked Him. He is not a myth for the weak. He is the stone that breaks the teeth of kings. He comes still, uninvited and unavoidable, to the deathbeds of the mighty and the lowly alike. And He does not bring fantasy. He brings resurrection.
So yes, we’ve been conditioned. We’ve been schooled to drink the poison, hum the jingles, nod at the lies. And most people will keep on nodding, because unlearning is harder than learning. But there’s a deeper schooling that’s older than empire, older than Eden’s exile, that’s calling us still.
It’s the schooling that teaches you to spit out the sweet rot. To name the lie for what it is. To stand barefoot on the soil and feel the tremor of the truth rising from beneath. It’s the schooling that teaches you not just to live, but to live awake.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ was never meant to make you safe. It was meant to make you free. And freedom’s not found in the approval of poisoned kings or smiling liars. It’s found in the man they crucified between two thieves. The man they couldn’t keep in the ground.
If you’re going to stand, stand there.
If you’re going to kneel, kneel there.
And if you’re going to rest, rest there, under the victory of the one who has already crushed the serpent’s head and cleared the air, even if only for a moment, so that the truth can breathe again in your lungs.