COMMUNICATION FROM ARKAY OF KORENDOR
Date of reception: 18 June 1989
Love and light, my Terran friends. This is being composed in the aftermath of a severe shock to my psychological stability. It involves a challenge to me by one of our agents, and three days of visiting the streets of the cities of New York and Los Angeles.
I came away from this experience with a profound horror, indeed almost a sense of helplessness for your people.
I was not prepared.
Several days ago, during a staff conference in MassCom, Larin-Metak of our New York section took me aside and, knowing of my work with your people, asked whether I had in fact ever been amongst you in an intimate fashion.
In reply, I said that my visits to your world involved many locations, but were typically brief and avoided any direct contact with the average people. He then suggested that without engaging in an extended personal presence, I would be less than qualified to speak on your conditions of life.
His logic was inescapable, and for the following two days I pondered upon his comments, almost to the exclusion of all else. Was I being fair in my observations? I decided that I was not, and he arranged for me to be given the opportunity to live as you do.
On the morning of June 14 of this year of 1989, I was provided with a form and garments that would enable me to "blend in" with your people, and was delivered to the city of New York, to begin in earnest my tour of learning.
Dear Terran friends, my years of being one of the Korendian team on your world had in no way educated me in what I found in that sad, anguished place. My eyes were opened as never before.
As I walked those streets and looked about me, the depth of despair and sadness clawed at me like a living thing, like a tormented beast slashing out at all who dared approach it. Few smiles met my glances, and many turned away as I approached, as if in fear of making eye contact with another.
I sensed in their minds and hearts a deep, abiding uneasiness, an awareness that each corner, each doorway, each passing vehicle represented potential danger. Most went about their business quickly, their eyes constantly alert to the movements of every passing stranger.
Their thoughts revealed their eagerness to retreat from the streets to the comparative safety of their homes or workplaces. As the evening faded into the darkness of the night, the terror of the streets enveloped all who remained there.
The city of New York is not a fit place for human habitation in the hours of the evening. This point was driven home most forcefully as I made my way through the dirty, neon-lighted streets.
Violence was a way of life. I saw helpless citizens assailed by marauding groups of young people, children made corrupt and dangerous by exposure to the ugliness of urban amorality. They robbed with impunity, laughing as they visited their criminality upon their victims, inflicting physical abuse as if to gain pleasure from pain.
I witnessed open sales of drugs and weapons on the streets. I sadly observed young women of remarkable natural beauty selling sexual favors to men whose relationship with humanity seemed at best coincidental.
Homeless men and women lay about the streets, their minds numbed by an utter hopelessness, many contemplating death as a welcome release, or content to nurse the remaining drops of liquor from filthy, uncapped bottles.
Vermin infested the streets. I saw rats that from a distance might be mistaken for cats. I watched in sheer revulsion as a newly-deceased derelict became the latest meal for a group of the rapacious rodents.
As might be expected, and at the sage advice of Larin-Metak, I did not venture into this nightmarish world unarmed. The rats vanished in flashes of disruptor fire, with the hope that the corpse might be found and removed before others took their place.
As I also learned, what you call the "law of the jungle" applies in the streets of the city. At one point I found myself the prey of eight young savages, their minds destroyed by the use of drugs, intent on robbing me of whatever items of value I possessed.
The weaponry they carried would indeed have stricken panic into the heart of a victim. They made cold jokes about how I was their tenth "mark" of the night, and that perhaps I ought to be "cut" as a memento of their record of achievement.
I sensed not the merest trace of human compassion and decency in their thoughts. These eight young men were no more than predators in human form, and I found in my probing of their ruined brains no hope for recovery from the damage inflicted by their "habits".
It then became only a matter of my survival, and although I as a Korendian have been taught to abhor violence, New York City gave me no alternative. They died instantly, without pain. For the rest of that evening, I prayed to God for mercy and walked on in sorrow.
The remainder of my days in New York and Los Angeles became a blur. The streets seemed an endless profusion of ugliness and agony. Human identities were lost in the squalor and despair. There seemed to be no respite from the horror, although the trappings of great wealth in some sections of these two great cities contrasted brashly, almost cynically.
It was with immense relief that I ended my stay in your cities. I came away with an appreciation of the evils that have overtaken your world, and a new understanding of the incredible dangers that you face in your daily lives in your great metropolises.
More than that, I feel an abiding astonishment that most of your people seem to be totally oblivious to these conditions in your society.
It is understandable that you would rather not be made aware of such things. The human mind is flexible, but when confronted with such unrelenting evil and horror, it recoils, retreats into its own familiar world and shuts out the offending knowledge.
Yet, if you are to take your place in the interstellar community, these conditions must be corrected. Your nation and your world are in a crisis situation at this time. By our best estimates, without rectification, the human race has perhaps thirty years of life left before perishing in a orgy of amoral self-destruction.
You have that long to "clean up your act", my Terran friends.
The one factor that was glaringly and universally absent in those areas of the cities that I visited was a sense of moral righteousness. I scanned in futility for any indication of a mind truly attuned to God.
There were a few of the typical "storefront missions" manned by people doing their best to minister to the needs of the desperate men and women who sought shelter and solace within their walls. However, even the thoughts of these good people spoke of sadness and resignation, of a feeling that they were accomplishing nothing.
Though they delivered God's word to the people in their care, they did not fully accept God or believe that He was with them in their works. In their minds, He was remote and unattainable. A personal God did not exist for them.
I was made more than ever aware of the tragedy that has befallen your people in your futile quest to go into your future alone, without God's help and guidance. With stark clarity I saw the effects of your race's fascination with the secular, humanistic approach to societal advancement.
In rejecting God, you have opened yourself to the evils that befall every race that abandons Him in their foolish attempts at maturity. Although such a thing has never been seen on my world, I know of all too many planets where a period of darkness and despair followed the decision to "grow up" and leave God in the superstitious past.
Most returned in the end to His ways and prospered. Some few did not. Those races perished.
As I noted earlier, every analysis of your present condition indicates that within two decades, your nation (and perhaps your world) will reach the "point of no return" and will very soon thereafter fade or blast itself into oblivion. These studies assume that you continue in your present direction, but we see no indication that a necessary change of your ways is forthcoming.
Much of this negativism may be attributed to the ministrations of the Omegan forces, but your own people seem all too willing to adopt this lifestyle of freedom without responsibility, to abandon every ancient moral imperative. The great wisdom found in your Bible is viewed as "passe" and antiquated, and the concept of sin is rejected as being contrary to the "modern" way of life, as being oppressive to human liberty.
As you have been told often by your own philosophers, freedom without limit is anarchy. The unfettered right of the individual to pursue his wants without consequence or concern is neither in his nor society's best interests. For the good of the whole, the freedom of the one must oftentimes be restricted.
This is the foundation of law and the basis for civilization. This is the understanding of God's way. The entire universe exists because laws of nature control it. Without them there would be chaos. From the greatest of galaxies to the merest of subatomic particles, all things operate within the laws of God and nature.
Should man of Earth then expect to be exempt from them? What arrogance!
Your society is in crisis because of your attempt to ignore the immutable and eternal laws of God. Cities are becoming war zones, with illicit drugs bringing violence beyond measure. Many die each day because your people have not responded to the dangers posed by narcotic addiction and the soulless, greedy men and women who visit this misery upon you for profit.
Your children are subjected to influences that demonstrate little or no concern for their welfare. Even the lowest of animals protects its young with far greater devotion than you show your own children. Again the motivation is "the almighty dollar". Products that are dangerous to them both physically and psychologically are sold without the slightest concern for the damage they are causing.
Their entertainment is little more than proselytizing for hedonism. Music, films, television, all glorify a "free" lifestyle devoid of moral principles, and indeed actively ridicule those who attempt to instill moral character into the nation's youth.
Religion is made the target of crude, tasteless humor designed to create disrespect. A few television "evangelists" seem as parodies of the true preachers of God's word, and their antics provide ready fodder for the cannons of religion's critics.
It is no wonder that the people, young and old, find little to respect in the world of religion, that they turn away from it to a worldly, amoral life. The enemies of God have done their tasks well.
Without examples of righteousness from the adult world, the young have no guidance. If they turn to crime as a way to make a "fast buck", it is due to the lessons taught by their elders. If they engage in profligate, emotionless sex, it is because the adults have made it the preferred "indoor sport". What indeed is the word "adult" interpreted to mean other than violent or obscene?
You have failed your children most miserably, people of Earth. You have not only left them without morals or ethics, but have in truth instilled in them the belief that such things are the stuff of the past, and not at all applicable in the Twentieth Century.
When MTV becomes the new Bible for the young, then your society is in its last, gasping stage of life.
Your cities are decaying breeders of crime and poverty and violence and despair because they are not governed by Godly principles. What I witnessed, so I was told, was a typical few nights in the heart of these two cities, and no more or less than what occurs in every large city throughout the year.
Nor is it a phenomenon confined to America. Across the world the plagues of drugs and violence have lessened the quality of life and made fear the major emotion of humanity. Is this what it means to be a "modern" society? Is this what you are willing to acept in order to free yourselves from God's laws?
This, my Terran friends, is far too dear a price to pay for the foolish dream of freedom from antiquity.
What can be done to correct this descent into oblivion, to return to the ways of morality and righteousness that guided humanity through thousands of years of history?
The first step is to realize that the rejection of God is indeed at the root of your difficulties. This will be vigorously and volubly denied by those who are dedicated to ridding humanity of God for their own evil ends. Do not be influenced by their rhetoric.
They profit from human misery and decadence. They care nothing for the destruction of society that they are causing. They exist solely to further their evil gains. In an earlier time, they would have been called demons.
They can be recognized without effort. They speak glibly of mankind's ability to master his own destiny, and assure with unctuous smoothness that the religious beliefs of old have no place in the age of enlightenment.
God? An anachronism from a time of ignorance and superstition. The Bible? A collection of myths and fables. How can such things have any value when man has reached for the stars, conquered the atom, created computers of vast power? How can an ancient religion be of consequence in this technological world?
How indeed?
I speak now as one from a society that, to be blunt, is of a level of technology in comparison to which yours is not far removed from the stone age. Please do not take offense at that statement. We have been involved in the scientific pursuits thousands of years longer than you. Our superiority is purely a matter of our being "at it" longer.
The point that I wish to make has nothing to do with who is superior, but rather to the fact that for all of our vast technology, we remain creatures of God. You would find our religion very fundamental, with none of the trappings that characterize your own religions. In truth, by your standards, our faith would be considered quite primitive, very much like the simple religions of your ancestors. It suits us very well.
Why is there the impression that because your culture is maturing, your relationship with God must change, or disappear altogether? The truth is that the more a society advances, the more complex it becomes, the greater is its need for the ancient wisdom, for the eternal laws of the Creator of all law.
As you race madly into the next century, and your science expands at an almost logarithmic pace, you will find that such rapid change will severely test your mind's capacity to comprehend it. The need is ever greater for one unifying element, one welcome sanctuary of unchanging comfort to which you can turn when the world overwhelms you.
We of other worlds have long known that need. It is met by oneness in God.
New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, millions of people brought together in what should be wonderful communities of caring, loving human beings tending to each other's needs, and enjoying the warmth and companionship that such closeness should engender.
What are they now? I found that answer "the hard way", and the anguish that the knowledge brought will linger with me for a long time to come. My Terran friends, you have so much to do, and so little time, so very little.
We of the Alliance are doing what we can and must, but in the end it is by your efforts with the guidance of God that your world will be brought back to the path of light and love.
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." These twenty splendid words of advice, from Matthew 6:33, are the beginning of wisdom for your world. They represent the mandatory first step toward your future in the universe.
Your cities offer stark, fearsome testimony to the wrongness of your present course of action. Turn to the light while there is yet time.
Va i luce, and peace be yours.
I am ArKay.
© 2008 Robert P. Renaud -- all rights reserved