// The Real Thing

As I sit in front of my computer, trying to figure out what I should write and asking friends for ideas, I stopped to think for a moment. This essay, sorry, composition made me go out of my mind. I couldn’t think of anything. I couldn’t find anything in Fifth Business that related to my life or everyday occurrences. Was I not trying hard enough? Possibly, but this was not the case.

I, myself, am a Christian and have a strong faith, and in the handout we were given, it stated this: “The novel seems to contend that the modern world has largely abandoned faith and metaphor as ways of making sense of ourselves and our world”. This is pretty much true. The majority of the world has given up faith in religion and turned to science. A lot of us don’t believe in religion, and we don’t want to, so if a miracle does happen, we try to prove it that it is not a miracle.

In the novel Fifth Business Ramsay’s brother Willie is very sick. His condition becomes so crucial that his heart stops beating, and Ramsay believe his brother has died. He brought Mrs. Dempster to see if she could help his dead brother, and after she prayed, Willie started to move. A miracle! He came back to life because she prayed for him, so can this be called a miracle of God? Dunstan insisted that it was Mrs. Dempster who brought him back to life, but either way, it was a miracle.

However, how can someone come back to life? Dunstan tells Dr McCausland and he insists that Willie never died at all. He says:

Obviously he was not dead, if he had been dead I would not have been talking to him a few minutes ago. I think you may safely leave it to me to say when people are dead, Dunny. (p. 56-57)

Because this was impossible, he believed this was not true. Many things that were impossible happened in the Bible, so they think that this could not happen. People have a stronger belief in Science because they have an explanation for events. There is a reason for everything. But is there an explanation for Moses walking through the Red Sea? Or when Jesus turned water in to wine? No, so why should people believe this?

Anyways, I have gone a bit off topic. I just wanted to show how faith in science is much more popular then faith in religion, which relates to my following topic.

Show how an accepted fact or assumption is untrue, or how it means something other than what it is conventionally thought to mean. The examples I want to use for this are mainly based on faith in religion, not faith in science.

I could not think of any type of example to use. This had my mind boggled. However, the line that helped me out the most was “…or how it means something other than what it is conventionally thought to mean.” I decided to look for examples that had different meanings hundreds of years ago, and how society has changed there images. Maybe for better, or maybe for worse.

The first thing that popped into my head were hats! Today we use hats to keep our heads warm, dry, and they are also fashion statements. But way back when they didn’t even think of sewage or garbage systems, people would dump all there waste out the window. The odds of someone getting garbage or waste on you was very high, so they wore hats! So something that protects you from garbage developed into a fashionable item. That definitely was not its initial purpose when they first invented the hat, but the change is probably a good thing. I would rather wear a hat for fashion then wear it to protect myself from garbage! That’s pretty disgusting.

As I have explained, today’s world has a stronger belief in science over religion. Because of this, people are not educated on what something really is. For example, the cross. I think this is quite self explanatory, but I will mention it anyway. The cross is what Jesus died on. After being brutally beaten and tortured, Jesus had to carry a large wooden cross to where they would raise it. At the area where they would lift up the cross, they put nails through his hands and feet, so he would hang from the cross. After many hours of torture, he died in the cross, but came back to life. Jesus came back to the earth to show his disciples that he was still alive, and that he was the son of God. He died for one reason. He died for all of us, so that our sins would be forgiven and that we would know him. He died for our sins. Christians use the cross as a symbol. Why would a religions symbol be something that there Messiah died on? Because it wasn’t about Jesus dying, it was about him dying for our sins. Death is one of the biggest sacrifices you can make in life for someone you love. Jesus did that. So we use the cross as a symbol to remind us that Jesus died on the cross for us, because he loves you and me.


Today, the cross is not looked at as a symbol of love. It’s not looked at as something Jesus died on. It’s looked at as jewelry now. I look around at teenagers, adults, and kids who have the cross around there neck. Were they Christians? Small amounts are, but I look at them and see them smoking drugs, and they swear at me. I listen to some of their conversations and they talk about how they just had sex with a girl or a guy last night. Is that someone who represents God? Obviously not. The Bible tells us not to smoke, to drink, to have pre-marital sex. The Bible tells us how to represent him. So people wearing crosses around there necks aren’t really wearing them for the right reason. They are wearing them because maybe their girlfriend said that it looks nice on them or because maybe it makes them look really cool. The cross isn’t a symbol for Christians anymore. People have turned it into jewelry. In the eyes of society the cross is just as good as an earring or necklace. How can this be? How have we turned such an important symbol into just jewelry? What does the cross represent now? For many believers it still means the love of God. For the large majority though it represents jewelry.

What other things have we seemed to forget the real meaning of? Well, there’s always Christmas. Even I must admit that when you first say Christmas the first thing that I think of is a Christmas tree! Second would have to be good old Santa Clause. But is that what Christmas is all about? Of course not, it’s about quality time with family! Again, that’s not the real meaning of Christmas. We seem to always forget this and sometimes don’t even care, but Christmas was the day Jesus was born in the manger in Bethlehem. I’m sure we’ve all seen the story, or at least heard of it, but that means nothing to us. We don’t care about baby Jesus, we care about the presents.

Christmas is indeed a very special holiday, and I’m not saying that the lights, trees, and presents are a bad thing. I love the lights! I love the trees! And I love the presents!! It’s just we don’t want to bring up religion. We’ve seemed to box up the story of baby Jesus and gift wrapped it with A Charlie Brown Christmas. We have changed the image of Christmas a lot. There never used to be Santa Clause and there never used to be the lights. A lot of stuff is made for the soul purpose of companies getting extra money during the Christmas holiday. Christmas is a great holiday, but people seem to have ignored the real Christmas story. The real purpose of Christmas.

Another example that could be used is Easter. Easter is a holiday that was to remember Jesus dying on the cross, and now somehow there is an Easter bunny that represents the holiday? Again, we’ve covered over the real meaning of the holiday. You could say it’s like that for even non-religious holidays, but it’s not. We know the purpose of Remembrance Day. It’s a day where we honour those who fought and died for us in the wars.

Again, if it has to do with religion, we try to cover up the real meaning.

I’m sure there are many more examples that I haven’t even thought of. We could go into Natives and totem poles, but I don’t have enough knowledge to explain its original meaning. Totem poles today are looked at as art pieces, but are they? How do we know they don’t have some spiritual meaning? There are thousands, millions, billions of things that mean something other than what it is conventionally thought to mean. I probably will never know the majority of those things.

For now, people will believe what they want to believe. I believe there are miracles, that the cross is a symbol of God’s love, and that Christmas will always be about Jesus. I will always believe in my God, and I will always trust in my God.