Challenging Authority: Speaking Freely

I sat in the back of the classroom and tried to concentrate on the words coming out of the substitute teacher's mouth. He needed to regain control of the room. It was like something out of a movie about bad kids in an urban classrooms. But instead of giving the kids marshal arts lessons or showing them how to make soup, like in a couple of films I'd seen about this very thing, he decided to scare them into silence.

"Do you know what a nuclear winter is?" he said.

Suddenly the room got quiet. Everyone knew that the Russians were trying to blow us up any day now.

"It's when radioactive dust covers the sky and the sun doesn't shine.  Everything will be dead in just a few months," he said. "Think about it. Your mama and your daddy, your brother and your sister and YOU dead. The earth itself will die."

A few girls started to whimper in the back.

A nervous boy in the front row mumbled, "The whole world would be blown to bits."

"That's not possible," I spoke up.

"The little lady in the back row wants to add something," the substitute teacher said.

I didn't want to tell the room that I was studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses. They were very unpopular. At 13 being popular was like breathing, everyone wanted it. But I knew I had to use my FREEDOM to speak. 

So, I said, "Psalm 104:5 tells us, 'He has founded the earth upon its established places; It will not be mad to totter to time indefinite or forever.'"

"What's that from? What are you a priest?" the substitute said."No, I'm studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses, and they have taught me to speak from scripture, and not rely on my own understanding or yours," I said.