Salvaging the Oppressed

This post will focus on the relationship between disenfranchisement and salvation, but first I want to note that I have again- just a few minutes ago- updated the creative pieces It Flaps Over Heavy and A Brief Reprise. I suspect these will be the last updates on them for a while.

In any case, a couple of different conversations today made me consider the importance of salvation when talking about disenfranchisement. Then I remembered it was hinted at slightly in the post on Ask the Dust. I want to first look at this in the mythical or religious sense, and then explore how what we see there can be used in our being with others.

First, what does "salvation" mean? It is defined in several ways, and these are some:

1. the act of saving or protecting or saving from harm, risk, loss, destruction, etc.
2. the state of being saved or protected from harm, risk, etc.
3. a source, cause or means of being saved or protected from harm, risk, etc.
4. deliverance from the power and penalty of sin; redemption.

An interesting note in the definition is that the Cultural Dictionary section begins: Being "saved" among Christians; salvation is freedom from the effects of the fall of man.

This brings back the question of freedom, but I don't suspect I will get anywhere near answering much about that relationship here.

What is the etymology? It is rooted in "salvare" or "to save". This is related to the words "salvage" (the recycling of waste material) and "salver", which is from "salve" or a 'tray used for presenting objects to the king".

I think the relationship with "salvage" is interesting, in that when we salvage something, we reuse it, we recycle it, put it back in the cycle, rejuvenate it, we breath new life into it. Salvaging, though, brings with it the sense that the thing has already been destroyed - it almost seems to require a brokenness -, but also that it contains a potential. If we go to the salvage yard in search of an engine for a car, we may find one in a totalled vehicle, but when we put it in our car, the car runs perfectly.

In religion, of course, salvation is that essential thing that thrusts us for eternity into heaven, or if we fail to accept it, hell. Beyond the fire and brimstone, the heart-searing terror of hell lies in the complete and irrevocable denial of a human being by his creator; the one he wants the acceptance and approval of more than anything else. This is founded in the refusal on the part of the man to accept his creator's salvation. The man has refused to be saved. The man has refused to be saved from nothing more than himself and his natural condition, as molded by the very same creator he is to go to for salvation. Man requires salvation from himself for "freedom from the effects of the fall of man".

What is the fall of man? It is man's fall from grace, when he eats from the tree of knowledge against his creator's command and gains consciousness, which gains his banishment from paradise and his introduction to mortality. God's commentary on the matter consisted of, "For they have become like us, capable of knowing everything." There is no going back for man, and he is left, so he believes and so it appears, alone and heading towards his own obliteration.

So he learns to struggle and to gain for himself. In order to survive, he he has to do this, and in his community this is a virtue because hard work leads to prosperity. Yet, he is also taught that hard work gains only the things of the earth, while he must only go to his creator and ask forgiveness for being what he is in order to gain eternity.

This sounds like rambling to me, but hopefully something can be pulled from this.

What are we saved from? We are saved from, it seems like, two things; hell and ourselves.

What is the difference, really? If we remove the supernatural aspects of these stories and make them a purely human endeavour, then we end up with the story of a man who is born into sin, and who will gain consciousness of his sin and his mortality and will react in one of two ways, although they both might manifest themselves in a multitude of fashions I am both too lazy and too ignorant to explicate:

He will revert into himself and his thoughts from disgust or anger or fear of the world or culture he lives in - and who could blame him - possibly to the point that there is no going back, in which case he will recognize his independence and his limiting absolute freedom from and find himself completely seperated from what he was born into and wants the acceptance of more than anything else.

Or he will accept that he is human and that the virtue of hard work, when put to the task of gaining salvation gains him nothing but solipsism and loses everything. His pride, so necessary to his day-to-day living, only hinders his existence. It causes him to grow cold and absent of warmth. In his broken state he is able to, without hubris, acknowledge his position and go down to his knees, where he finds salvation in his defeat. His salvation comes without cost, brought to him as the fruits of his savior's labor as a token of her love.

I know, I know, it's filled with holes and entirely insufficient as a study of such back breaking work, but it's all I have.