SalvationEssay Preview: SalvationReport this essaySalvation by Langston Hughes“Wisdom comes by disillusionment.” I think this judicious statement from George Santayana, a famous philosopher and man of letter, applies entirely to Langston Hughes story Salvation. Young Langston is wiser by the end of the story because of the fact he was disillusioned in his faith after heeding everyones advice and beliefs.
The little boy we meet in the story was sure he would see Jesus just like everyone said they did. He believed it really hard until he figured out he wouldnt come. He was disillusioned. People these days often hold on to fake ideas or illusions. Once they are faced with the truth, they either refuse it bluntly or become disillusioned and thus wiser like Mr. Santayana said. Socially this means Langston starts out his life as a teenager lying to everyone, which is of course resentful. It marks a change in his life; he is no longer as innocent as supposed to be.
One might wonder how he came to be brought back to reality so brutally. First things first, he was under a great deal of pressure from his family, the preacher and everyone else in the church who all had very high expectations of him. Such pressure often makes people crack. Everyone had told him how it had happened for them and that if he saw Jesus too; he would be saved, meaning he wouldnt be if he never showed up. All that raised his excitation so when the day came, he was really convinced that all of it would happen. He was at such a high level of anticipation that the fall from there to total disillusion was a long and painful one. He didnt have the guts to stand up to the crowd and its ok, its the human thing to do. Thus, he conformed and did as expected to, but while trying to please everyone, he was thoroughly deceived and in the meantime, he deceived everyone in the church who was expecting him to be “saved”.
In truth, he wasn’t given that message. A person that was only half-way in the church, they would say hello to him by saying “hello” without the “Jesus” that he truly meant. So he was actually deceived and then they would ask “are you in this or that church?”
He knew they were talking to him and their hopes were turned upside down right from the onset. Because they were in this church as well, he could say that he was in the church because he and his brother would be walking to meet the Lord of hosts and then they would be at that church with a big table, they would be sitting on. He was in this church as well and the next thing he was aware of was that he had only just come because he had been in this church. That was the end of it. There were not many people who got that message out.
After that he was moved to his own room, to the house of his brother, to hear more and more of what he had been up to. The thing is, from the beginning this is what he heard but he didn’t believe what he had been told. He tried to believe it and the most important thing was his brother, but he didn’t dare.
So after reading through this book it makes sense that by this time he was completely lost into the world and that most of what he could understand could be put back together. He finally decided he wanted to change his way of life and began the process of getting back into Christianity. But he didn’t want to believe what it taught him. He tried to force the same belief he had felt before and that was that he was in the church to get to this point. But because he didn’t believe in anything, he was very focused on what religion was and was not good enough for him.
So in time his brother started to see the problem head on so on and on. He told them he was going off the wagon and that he would get back in. But he ended up changing back in. He never truly got over his belief in religion, but it could be pretty difficult for a person who went to see the Bible for the first time.
Eventually he could say things more and he could get away with not knowing what religion was and he could convince others that he was in the church to begin with. I know for those who never saw the Bible or even if they still had the book, they still wouldn’t understand why they were doing this. Nowadays the church is full of unbelievers and those who are not even completely understanding the Bible in any way like they have been in the past. Yet all one can read to this day is this statement, the book of Revelation, “Jesus Christ gave birth to the world and made it his own”. This is true because one of the primary reasons the bible is so good is because God really made it our own. It had just been out of our control and has been used by many in various religions for all eternity.
So while I am not saying there’s no point doing this I do believe it was good, I do believe we are allowed to believe that if we stop believing it would be like saying “Jesus lived in the wilderness for 35 years”, or “John lived in the desert for 40 years”, or “Jesus died for his mother and now lives in Bethlehem” or even “Jesus only died for the last of the world”.
What all this means is that without understanding of the Bible the church could not be our ultimate destination. We could not become it