1,200 students going down the staircase when the last bell rang.
No room at all for anyone at the bottom to go up.
This satire of schoolteachers, indignant students, and the political public school arena had its moment in this movie.
I can only draw one conclusion from the going “up the down staircase.”
Thousands and thousands of people who are without Christ as their Savior, are running, like those students, directly into hell and its darkness.
They do not know it, but the ones at the bottom of the staircase (let’s call them Christians), are trying to get to Heaven by means of trusting in their Salvation because of the Cross of Calvary.
Jesus died there, so they can make Heaven their eternal home.
They will face trials, like getting run over by the ones going to hell but will possibly enter Heaven with a few bumps and bruises.
Going up, the down staircase is really like living this difficult Christian life.
Always working against the grain of society.
Always fighting the good fight of faith in Christ around unbelievers and their mocking attitudes towards Jesus.
It is part of the flight up the stairs for all who call upon the Name of Jesus.
It is worth the steps we take to know Christ and Him crucified.
In 1970 we moved to a town called Columbia in Maryland.
Not far from Annapolis, about a thirty-minute drive from our townhouse, provided a completely different culture for me.
I was from Texas, and did not fit in.
(I do not know if I have ever “fit” in anywhere, especially after surrendering to Jesus back in 1977).
My first day in school started at the bus stop. We were bussed to a high school called Mt. Hebron.
Fifteen minutes from home was not a long bus ride, but it seemed so for me with all the stops in between to pick up all the long-haired freaks (I called them).
My hair was short, and their hair was down to the middle of their backs.
I am talking about the male students.
The era of Jimmi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison of the Doors.
All rock and roll stars, who all three died at age 27 from drugs or alcohol poisoning.
I am standing on the bus stop, waiting for the yellow bus, and listening to the “freaks” tease me about my short hair, dingo boots, and basic short sleeve shirt.
I didn’t look like them.
They had bell bottom jeans, tie-died shirts, and carried mini purses made from leather.
Cool Man. Cool.
They whispered to each other, “He is a head-burner.”
Talking about me.
I guess my hair looked so short that they thought it had been on fire. I don’t know.
I was just teased all day long at school about being a Texan and a head-burner.
Some of our classes involved bean-bag chairs instead of desks.
Especially in Shakespeare class, called Theater 101.
The only place on campus where we were allowed to smoke grass, weed, pot, or whatever you want to call Marijuana, was the boys’ restroom inside, and at the tennis courts, outside, during lunch.
The boys’ restroom.
Wow. I will never forget this place.
Standing room only.
Ash trays hanging from the ceiling, made with yarn, Macrame-style, to hold them in place; these ash trays swung from side to side.
The pot smokers needed a place to put their ashes.
If we left the restroom a mess, then we would have to clean and mop it up after school.
All the above-mentioned rock stars were plastered on the tile walls of the boy's room.
The “heads,” another name for stoners, replaced the light bulb in the restroom with a black light to highlight the black light posters of the future dead rock stars.
This was Mt. Hebron high school.
It was no wonder I would become a Dope addict not too long after these 8 months in Maryland.
Daddy and his job got finished early, so Mayflower Moving Company moved us back to Dallas within a year of when we arrived.
It was during our time in Maryland that Mom was diagnosed with liver cancer. It was only a matter of time, and she was gone.
I was going down the drug escalator, rather than up to sobriety.
I knew nothing about Jesus Christ and never went to church.
My lasting impression of school in Maryland was not a good one.
My brother came home from the University of California, Berkeley, when Mom was diagnosed.
He dodged the draft to Vietnam by being in college.
He was considered a draft dodger by default.
As a complete family now, we moved back to Texas.
The state Mom demanded to be buried in.
I remember her saying that as we packed our belongings.
“I do not want to die in this horrible place, Homer,” she said to Daddy.
Goodbye Maryland. Hello Texas.
By age 16, I was mainlining Meth and doing armed robberies just after we buried Mom.
My staircase had trip hazards in it.
The steps were rotten with sin.
Every step I took, was another one headed to death, hell and the grave.
The problem is you can’t scare a drug addict into quitting. It will take a catastrophe to stop me.
And I was about to find out, the hard way.
Part of this “Up the Down Staircase” issue is that we sometimes consider our individual sins and then write them off as “not too bad.”
Well, sin is sin in the eyes of God, and we would be amiss to think otherwise.
All sin needs to be put under the Blood of Jesus through repentance.
Can’t live holy and be anything like Jesus with unrepented sin in our hearts.
It took prison to bring me to my knees in repentance.
I am glad I did repent.
I am not glad I was in prison, but it was prison that saved my life.
Then, Jesus saved my wretched soul.
It is not about what we have done.
It is about what we have left undone.
Not loving God with our whole heart, not loving our neighbors as ourselves.
We sometimes see our neighbors as inconveniences.
Interruptions.
Time wasters in our busy lives.
This causes us to take a few steps forward.
Then a few steps back in our ignorance and complacency.
Human beings need human contact.
Not to be ignored, because our needs are more important to us at the time of leaving the Samaritan by the side of the road.
Half- dead.
Our ignoring someone's need, when we clearly see it and can help fix it, is like leaving that poor man on the side of the road.
The Good Samaritan was good, because he paid attention to someone else's pain.
Not his own.
This so-called staircase that we go down, instead of up, is like petting a tomcat backwards from tail to head.
He does not like that, and if you even make it to his head, you may find yourself scratched and bitten.
Hope he had his rabies shot.
