Stepping out of systems and artificial standards

I make it my business to avoid the systems of this culture and this world as much as I am able to see those systems and recognize them for what they are. If you’ve never seen The Matrix, then maybe you’ve never thought about the systems of this world and how they conceal true freedom and spirituality with a deceptive sheen of “the good life,” or “social norms,” or “what is best for us.”

Think about all the routines and activities we are expected to participate in. Dress, political systems, homes,  educational and medical systems, transportation, medical care, religious structures, careers, what we eat, what we feed our animals, what we allow others to shoot into our veins.

If you’ve never thought about these things before you may wonder what in the hell I am talking about.

Let’s choose just one item from the above list: our educational system. Did you know that human children learn and grow without much interference from us? If we love them, feed them, and give them shelter, their minds naturally grab hold of the information in their environments and they process it and learn. This is how God made them. They learn how to talk and walk and control their bladder. If exposed to reading material and people reading, they learn how to read. These things happen on individual timetables, depending on the individual. Did you know that the schedules for learning these things that we impose on our children are artificial?

Many people will tell you it is crazy and unnatural to simply let children learn as they will, on their own timetable. But have you ever thought about how crazy and unnatural it is to put 30 children all the same age into a room together and expect them all to process information the same way, at the same time?

Many people will tell you that children must “be educated properly” in order to have the best opportunities in life. Do you know how many people get college degrees in all sorts of carefully calculated arenas and never do anything with them? Perhaps even more important, do you know how many people never even graduated from high school and are highly “successful” (according to the systems of this world) in fields that many people think you could never get a job in without a college degree?

Many people will tell you that parents are not qualified to educate their children properly. Properly, meaning according to the artificially created standards of the systems of this world. Do you know how many children in public schools cannot read? Perhaps even more important, do you know how many children are “unschooled” who can read circles around their public-school educated peers?

All of these “rules” about educating our children exist simply to disguise the fact that we are wonderfully fashioned by our loving God, who created us as learning machines. Our humanistic society tells us instead that children must be subjected to the system, whether that system is public school or its imitators, private school and school at home, in order to learn properly. A God-denying culture says that unless we “play the game” we cannot function in society and we will never succeed at anything “important.”

The truth is that people who have not been submerged in societal norms for education can still participate in traditional career paths. For example, someone in my immediate family who was “unschooled” at home through high school and does not have a college degree, was just promoted to Assistant Vice President of a local bank. Not only that, but I myself dropped out of high school and never went to a day of journalism school, yet I manage to make a good living reporting and writing.

Even so, who says that being an officer of a bank or a journalist is a measure of success? These too are artificially created standards of success. If you’re raising your children with the idea that you must provide them with just the right education and pay their way through college, you’re missing it. If you think that making enough money to have a good mortgage, nice car, and plenty of insurance is success, you’re totally bought into the matrix.

There is so much more to this idea of systems. It truly is a case of the emperor’s new clothes. The more one delves into this and spends time thinking about it, the more disturbing it becomes. If you read this blog, you’ve already read some of my thoughts about the religious systems and you know that my family has stepped out of those systems with great joy and growth in our spiritual life and, yes, even in our fellowship with other believers, despite those who claim we are “lone rangers.”

If you spend some quality time thinking about what the world expects from us, and how much we automatically participate in those things without even realizing that there is another way, you might start asking why. And if you start asking why, your world will never be the same. Or you could just take the blue pill and keep right on with your nice little existence.

Morpheus: Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes…. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more….