Culture vultures, who “have enough religion to hate others but not enough to love one another,” varnish nonsense with charms of distortions. They know how to play with the people “with crooked counsel and dark politics”. They wield their hypnotically magic wand of money and make people abandon home-grown traditions and accept unfamiliar customs. Their words of cruel wisdom, becomes music in the ears of their listeners whose moods and colour changes in a jiffy.
The seed-idea of seducers which ripens into fruits in the minds of those who lend the ear, are the following: (a) anti-social elements who hang around doing nothing; just standing and staring at most trivial of things; hoping to witness some ‘tamasha’ which is of no concern to them whatsoever; (b) daydreamers, jobless youths manufactured by our universities; (c) drunkards and former convicts, who are like driftwood that have been cast aside by the sea of life, in our towns or city streets; (d) lazy employees in offices, who waste precious time with their numerous tea breaks and cross table gossip causing delay in the completion of work and inconveniencing the public by their callous behaviour; (e) gossip mongers, who take pleasure in juiciest trivial gossip at the market place and Church Square; (f) local police, who allow crime to slip through their hands, some say and feel, that there is a nexus between the police and the accused; and lastly; (g) jumping Jack politicians, who, many say and a few believe, are hardened manipulators for petty gains; are like the “silly goose that comes to the fox’s sermon.”
So, just like the Odysseus’ mariners who accepted the flowers and fruits offered to them by the Lotus eaters and concluded that “slumber is more sweet than toil,” and settled on the Lotus land, similarly, all these half-baked, and muddy-brained individuals come to a decision to spend the rest of their lives with easy money to carry out the hidden motives of evil doer, doing Devil’s work with God’s name.
Acceptance of cash from culture vultures is dishonest money which turns into addiction to do illegal things. No doubt unfair money makes one live an easy life, free from toil and responsibility, a life to pass time in laziness, but behind ‘the innocent looking flower lies the serpent under’. It is like accepting 30 pieces of silver by Judas Iscariot. Honesty starts from our conscience. Acquaintance with evil money blinds us to its dangers.
The first man from the Bible, Adam, was condemned to labour by the sweat of his brow after yielding to the temptation and sharing the prohibited fruit. Through Adam we are born to cross hurdles rejecting idleness and easy money. “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together,” said William Shakespeare. So, if somewhere, through our journey of life, we have been corrupt by losing our conscience, we have to act now, before we lose our souls in our journey to the Father’s Home in Heaven. In conclusion, I quote: “Actions are changed by our hearts, our hearts are changed by our minds; and our minds are changed by the Word of God.” Life is a long road with sharp bends and bumps.
