Thursday, April 24, 2014

"You Are Special!"

Dear Friends,
                On the “Kelly File” this week they had an interview with the author of the “You’re Not Special” commencement speech at Wellesley High School, MA, two years ago.  In the light  of that fact, and considering that this message was aired so close to Holy Week and Easter, I’ve decided to re-publish the following blog written the summer following that speech. It’s the “You Are Special!” message that especially youth need to hear today, and a message that is more and more being blocked out by our contemporary secular society. Our culture and society are more and more shutting down the music of the message of human dignity, and locking the door that leads to the “Good News!” which follows:     

“YOU ARE SPECIAL”

Please! No more speeches that tell people – and especially young people – that “You are not special!” Not only because the statement is not true, but also because it is the last message our society needs to hear. All around us we continually see the assault on the dignity of human life. The Aurora theater, the Sikh killings in Wisconsin are only the latest episodes of humanity being treated as cheap and readily disposable. The same unnerving phenomenon has been with us ever since the advent of abortion. The trashing of human life made its ugly presence dramatically felt on 9-11, in the Oklahoma bombing, and in the disgraceful treatment of the poor and elderly in the aftermath of Katrina. Media, movies, and violent video games encourage the assault on human dignity. Rape, torture, and mass killings like those in the “Dark Night Rises” make for top box office entertainment today. Is it any wonder that the Boston Herald headline yesterday (Aug. 14th, 2012) reports on the fear which lurks on the streets of our cities today?
So no more speeches which tell people – and especially young people – that “You are not special!” I don’t care how literary the speech may be, or how artfully written – and the “Commencement” speech at Wellesley High last June was one such speech. Truly a literary gem, a work of literary art worthy of being studied and emulated in a course on writing. Yet its message is unfortunate, the last message people need to hear whether in Aurora, Oak Creek Wisconsin, or anywhere in America for that matter.
All the more so since the message is not true. Biblical teaching makes that quite clear. Each and every person has inestimable value as a child of God made in His image. (Gen. 1:26-27) How special each person is as His child, as flesh of His flesh, life from His life, heart of His heart. Even further, the human soul made in His image knows no limit. There is no limit to how high that soul can reach or how far that soul can go with the help of our Father on a journey to excellence in the service of Love.
But how would a public high school in America today know any of this; or, for that matter, how would our secular society, when they exclude from the public forum any word from God – especially any word that addresses the issue of human dignity? The result? A graduating class of American youth get to hear a three typed page message hammering home the reasons why they are not special; and even more tragic, a message like that all-pervasive in media and movies today – one that presents a vision of life and a view of people totally divorced from the context of the Gospel and God’s Word. Sad to say, though unfortunate and tragic, that commencement speech and the media messages like it are an all too common “sign of our times” – not to be surprised then when the news reports stories where “life is not special”, where human life is trashed, cheapened, or in the case of abortion and mass killings, readily disposable.
There are so many better purposes that a graduation speech can and should serve rather than subjecting and pummeling a graduating class of promising teens to three pages of “put down” rhetoric. Why not instead make the case for why you are special based on the core Gospel concept of Christian dignity – the infinite worth and value of each and every human being made in God’s image? Go even further, and cite how that worth was ratified and validated by the suffering and death of Jesus, by the price He paid to bring humanity back home to the heart of their Father.
You want to say something worthwhile to a graduating class of high school seniors? Tell them who they are in the eyes of God. Tell them that Jesus died with their names upon His lips. Tell them that as a child of God made in His image their “…immortal soul is beyond all price. There is no trouble too great, no humiliation too deep, no suffering too severe, no love too strong, no labor too hard, no expense too large, but that it is worth it, if it is spent in the effort to save a human soul…” in any and every sense that a human soul can be and needs to be saved.

-       Doug Michaud
Published August 15, 2012

Doug’s Contact Info:
Email: spiritsounds777@aol.com; modedsys@aol.com
Web: trinitycorministries777.net; trinity-cor.blogspot.com/; also, modedsys-nereg.com       
  

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