A Call to Believers

            As I have stated before, I reserve the right to publish openly religious blogs from time to time. This is one of them. If this sort of thing offends you, leave now. If not, buckle up – I also refuse to pull any punches.

            When I was a kid, there was no fire in faith. Religion was a cut-and-dried, socially acceptable family activity. If you didn’t belong to a church (it didn’t matter whether or not you attended), you were seen as an outsider – a social misfit. Dutiful parents marched their squirming, resentful children into the pews every Sunday, so they could be seen as well as see who was there. It was a country club, really, but with lousy music and no alcohol. There was no faith to speak of – faith was worse than dead, it was passé. Then the Sixties happened.

            It was a time of ferment, of revolution, the breaking of old ideas and the growing of new ones. Among Christians, it was also a time of renewal and shaking off the stiff thought patterns we were used to. It was a violent and turbulent time – most older people were frightened, but the youth of the world were energized and empowered like never before. The Sixties saw the beginnings of the ecology movement, a step forward in the rights of women, the birth of Rock and Roll. In Christian circles, we saw the advent of Christian rock music, the beginnings of the Charismatic Movement, the creation of the first mega-churches, televangelism (a good thing at the beginning). It seemed real change was on the way, and anything was possible.

            But as the Sixties turned into the Seventies and the Seventies turned into the Eighties, the movement stalled, and then fell in on itself, like a loaf of bread that rises too quickly, only to collapse before it’s done. The student radicals of the Sixties became the disillusioned druggies of the Seventies. The wide-eyed children of the Seventies became the sly-eyed Yuppies of the Eighties. In Christian circles, the Charismatic Movement was quickly subsumed by the older Pentecostal church – with all its attendant rules and incantations. Televangelism quickly turned sour, producing some of the most vilified characters of that period. Christian rock was dumbed down until it became mere pabulum, leaving social and religious commentary in the dust. It became more important that believers ‘feel good about themselves’ than standing up for the Gospel. Rock music turned into Big Money music, turned (briefly) into Disco, then into Big Hair, Grunge, Alternative…and fractured into a thousand insignificant little pieces. Those of us who lived through these times were deeply disappointed by them, but feeling powerless to oppose the forces at work, slipped off individually to our own little worlds, there to lick our wounds and try to keep the big dreams alive, if only in memory.

            Now we find ourselves on the cusp of a revolution of such epic proportions that it literally takes the breath away, and dwarfs the narcotic-laced dreams of the Sixties. We now live in an era where the people can topple a consumer empire or a tyrannical government using just their cell phones – where musical and artistic tastes have a shelf life measured in minutes – a world where, contrary to the Big Brotherism fears of the Sixties, the individual is more powerful and more important than the State. Information technology has become so all-pervasive that it begins to be entirely invisible. Companies and governments rise and fall with the tides. The most important, powerful and far-reaching programs in existence are crowd-funded, open-sourced, and staffed largely by volunteers. Individuals with a good idea, a modest bankroll and a few hard-working friends are turning out the products that we will all be buying in the near future, usually from an online store. Mega-stores crumble and shopping malls stand empty, yet the economy improves. Contrary to public belief, there is more safety, more democracy, more spirituality and more literacy than ever before. But still, the unthinking, unknowing populace quakes in fear at the cyclone of change and looks to anyone who promises to ‘bring back the good old days’. How quickly they forget that the good old days sucked.

            We cannot and will not return to a world that holds human life cheap, that exaggerates our differences to keep us separate, to keep us powerless. A world dominated by unresponsive government oversight and corporate greed is no longer tolerable. We are rushing headlong into a world where the overwhelming concern is freedom of choice, where diversity and acceptance are law, where mediocrity is no longer celebrated, but discarded as useless. The Company Man is dead, because the corporation he served no longer exists. Change is now the only constant, and even change is changing rapidly.

            This, of course, frightens the living hell out of many people. ISIS, the Tea Party, fundamentalists of all flavors, the various neo-Luddite groups that are popping up like mushrooms on the rotting trunk of the Industrial Age, all indicate the panic reactions of those who cannot or will not accept change. We have news for you – there are no ‘Good Old Days’ to return to. Like it or not, Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock has come true with a vengeance. We cannot even slow the pace of change – we have not left ourselves that choice. But panic and despair are not the only options open to you. In fact, they are not even the best options.

            The power is in your hands, at last. Never before in the history of the planet have so many been connected, empowered, and unshackled as now. Go out and change the world – we need you to do so. Not to try to return to some half-remembered ‘America the Great’ (a country which never existed, by the way), but to create a New America – an America where everyone gets the chance to live in peace and freedom, safely beyond the hatred, the poverty and the wasted lives produced by the old regimes. Make this country, this world, into the beacon of life and hope it can be. Best of luck, because you’ll need help.

            Transforming the world starts with transformed people. And the only power I’ve encountered that can transform broken people is Christ. But not the Christ we have had shoved down our throats for all these years, the meek and mild skinny white man – the real Jesus Christ, the passionate radical who set out to turn the world upside down, and succeeded. He was brown, by the way – probably had a big nose, too. He was a Jew, after all. And not skinny. He was a carpenter in an age where the chief tools of the trade were a mallet, a chisel and an adze. Not a trade for wimps. It’s this driven, powerful, peaceful yet confrontational person we must all meet and follow. His words are the words of change, of healing that our damaged and confused humanity needs. And it was his death and resurrection that transformed the world, and made it possible for us to be healed of our brokenness. By the way, Christ actually began the transformation in society which resulted in our Western civilization. Granted, it’s gone horribly wrong in many ways, but the change he began continues to inform and change the world around us. It’s more than past time for his followers to pick up where he left off, and rather than fret and fume over their little problems, try to bring about the Kingdom he desired – not a hierarchy of religious stricture and blind obedience, but a wide-open world where everyone is loving and loved, where everyone is cared for. But up ‘til now, that is not the religion we’ve been handed. The words, deeds and vision of Christ have been consistently ignored by his own followers, and that, above all, must cease.

            We must have an end to ‘no-know-um’ Christianity. To the endless series of heated, sometimes violent clashes between members of the same faith over mere words – words that neither side truly understands. An end to magic and superstition dressed up as faith. An end of the bastardization of what was supposed to be a gospel of hope and acceptance into a rigid collection of rules and thinly veiled prejudices which support and protect the intolerant bigots that promulgate it. And finally, we must have an end to the ‘happy-happy’ crap which is shoveled out to the masses as a substitute for real joy. I call for nothing less than a complete housecleaning for the Christian Church – a tossing out of everything we have invented over the centuries to hide or ‘soften’ the Gospel, all the stage dressing we have put in place to hide the Truth – which is what we are truly scared of, isn’t it? This must happen now.

pax et ama

bcd