Pledge of Allegiance

Perusing some friends Facebook profiles, I am happy to say that I have friends on both extremes of the political spectrum. The truth is, there is room for gray areas more than the most outspoken critics liberals and conservatives are willing to declare. Disregardless of one’s political opinions, there are significant problems with the viewpoint most Christians employ when describing their allegiances. Derek Webb’s “King and a Kingdom” assists with this issue:

The truth is, I am both an American and a member of God’s Kingdom. I am not an American Christian, I am an American and and a Christian. The difference in one conjunction is massive, as my first allegiance is not to patriotism, stars and stripes, a Constitution, or elected officials. This system of government, however dazzling its foundation may or not be, is secondary.

By opting to be a Christian first, my ethics, political opinions, and viewpoints of current events should be subjected to the ethics, opinions, and viewpoints presented by the Church and Scripture. I am not a Republican, a Democrat, a Whig, a Reformer, a Libertarian, or any other flavor of platform. These each have platforms that, while each including some measure of truth, are not the expressed opinion of Christendom. Liberalism and conservativism are not necessary (though are not sin) for the Christian. These are both worldviews just as much as Christianity is a worldview, and therefore, are not necessarily a requirement to be a Christian. It is acceptable to study Scripture thoroughly and have views that are the same as another worldview, but any resemblance to a particular party or worldview are a coincidence.

Many Christians find their worldviews by following various entities, but border on making these their Gospel. Radio personalities like Hannity, Limbaugh, and Maddow should not be our only source of truth. Television entertainers such as O’Reilly, Cooper, and Olbermann can be consulted for opinions, but are not to be viewed as truth. Bloggers such as Huffington, American Thinker, or Savage are entities that, if they are not primarily pushing God’s Kingdom instead of a particular worldview, are not our only source of truth. Politicians such as Obama, McCain, Pelosi, Palin, and Gingrich will never be the saviors, gatekeepers, or builders of God’s Kingdom regardless of their rhetoric. Most of them are running for re-election more than their beliefs, anyways.

The ethics of the Kingdom are often in direct opposition to what we initially want them to be. We are conditioned from birth to have a certain worldview about economics, war, and other areas by our environment. This conditioning makes it difficult to truly allow God’s ethics to penetrate what we believe to be truth. Issues like torture, privacy, pregancy, are all subject to the Kingdom of God (though with room for gray in a lot of situations).

America is not the Kingdom of God. In fact, 96% of God’s good Earth is comprised of non-Americans. God is building a global Kingdom of people whose allegiance is not to Britain, Israel, Palestine, Russia, Brazil or America. This nation, this Jesus nation, wants to restore God’s creation to its original goodness, from people to planet. And my first allegiance is to this Kingdom, now and forever.

The New Dark Age

A simple Google search for the term “new dark age” yields several results from Bad Religion’s “New Dark Ages” to right wing politicos fearing Obama, to fears of Europe being engulfed by Islam. But another less popular (and noisy) group emerges with news that (in my opinion) is more alarming than the others. Here’s a sample text from one source:

 Some leading thinkers and scholars have postulated that for all the convenience and expediency that society gets from the Internet, we may actually be surfing ourselves into a new Dark Age.

Another source on the subject remarked:

The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, “Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient.” But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver.

Hopefully, you’re still with me. What does all this have to do with anything? I’ve addressed illiteracy in previous posts like this one, but I’m convinced that it goes deeper than I first imagined. The Dark Ages, a historical period between the collapse of Rome and the Enlightenment, came to a close as at least partially as a result of Gutengerg’s printing press becoming mainstream. Until that point, only the upper echelon of society and religion were able to read, making the haves and have nots of society separated largely by this divide. Gutenberg made written text more accessible, and thus, led to people having the ability to greater process new thoughts, ideas, and perspectives.

So now, in 2009, the trend myself and others are observing is that postmodernism is leading to a new way in which youth are viewing information. Knowledge is no longer a journey of exploration, but a commodity that is so easily accessible, it is passe. Perhaps the thought could be bullhorned:

Everything is already known, and I can find it in a matter of minutes.

This makes knowledge no longer power, but robotic. Reading in high school is no longer a journey, but a chore. Huck Finn has no pictures. Rather than reading (even blogs, commentaries, and newspapers), students today consume media only that involves imagery and sound. The parallels to the hundreds of years in the Dark Ages are enormous. In those days, the real way education took place was spoken word and paintings or other artwork.

Some will call Harry Potter, Twilight, and other novels encouraging. But these pail in comparison to the number of youth who have consumed High School Musical. I’m not in favor or against any of these, but seek to make a point that the best selling novels influence minds very little compared to other media. Film, YouTube, television, video games, text messaging, and other media are the books of today. Imagination long ago left the cutting room floor, as lights and sounds have replaced it. Only the great thinkers of today have creativity and imagination (and some of them are still just following the media others are giving them). High School Musical is a standard example of the power of media: 37 million views as of today for this music video alone on YouTube doesn’t lie.

 

IMPACT
The impact of this movement on Christianity is massive. Gone are the days of assuming Christians have/are reading the Bible. Instead, we must assume that upcoming (and perhaps current) Christians know very little of Scripture, the Creeds, the Parables, and more. This presents opportunities to shape Christianity in new ways, but also makes the work of those who are sharing the faith much more burdensome.

Most Christians over the centuries have been aware that the Apostles’ Creed is the benchmark for someone being a Christian or not. But in this new, illiterate generation, this concept is foreign. When teaching students about it this week, one who has undoubtedly been in church her whole life, asked, “I don’t even know what it is? What if I don’t agree with something in it?”

We must not approach these Americans as if they are lazy. We must approach them as an opportunity. The New Dark Age has arrived.

Empire (Part Five)

Since the tragic fall of humanity at the Garden of Eden, humanity has been the stage for a battle that is so spiritual, its physical. The Bible chronicles incredible encounters within an invisible realm where odd things happen, showing this at work:

• Michael, an uber-angel argued with Satan (leader of darker spiritual forces) over the dead body of a great follower of God, Moses
• In a showdown between Moses & prophets of another religous system, a friend of Moses named Aaron threw a staff on the ground that turned into a snake. The other prophets did the same thing for the other side!
• Satan once had a bet with God, himself, over what’d happen if God stopped blessing and helping one of his followers, named Job (pronounced “Jobe”)
• A person named Judas, who betrayed Jesus at one point, had Satan enter into him. That’s a pretty rough thing to have Satan at the joystick of your life’s controller.

These and other reasons in Scripture show this battle is at hand.  Even within society, the forces of anti-Kingdom have been at work to steal from God’s plan for peoples lives, kill their dreams and destinies, and destroy their hope for God to intervene.

Some people propose that this war is overtly obvious and dedicate their lives to praying for victory for God’s side. The truth is, this conflict is fought in a more subtle way: person-to-person. But that person-to-person battle, when played out, becomes bigger. It then becomes family-to-family, generation-to-generation, and more.

Christians often make a tragic mistake by attempting to turn the conflict into a bordered conflict between nations, labeling one as right and one as wrong. Even within their own borders, Christians will proclaim a certain political movement to be God’s Kingdom at work. This process has been played out again and again (and is happening in America), but never leads to the results promised. Jesus Kingdom is political in its conflict, but not to be engaged politically. It is a spiritual movement to reclaim a lost humanity.

 

Lord Vader

The conflict between the sides of Kingdom and anti-Kingdom sets the stage for the real conflct of Empires. Its not as simple as Darth Vader against his son, but instead takes the guise of two great empires on Earth constantly ebbing and flowing – the Empire of Christ and the Empire that opposes Christ. It is a conflict that is fought in battlefields rarely involving bloodshed, but rather, for brainpower, creativity, and household recovery.

All the global empires discussed in depth over the course of this series have been expressions of anti-Kingdom, that is, this world system, attempting to oppress Christ’s movement. Rome sought to execute Christians to put down the love revolution. Egypt opposed Israel leaving oppression to form a society of Christians. Even America’s political system, while more subtle (and perhaps less severe), is a system designed to get people to dedicate their lives to wealth accumulation, entertainment at all times, finding security through military, indebtedness, materialism, revenge, pride, and more.

The belief that a certain political movement, military conquest, political party, financial system, or individual can rescue a people in peril or crisis is a system of anti-Kingdom. Consider:

• Military conquests alone cannot bring Christ’s Kingdom without people who desire to seek Christ
• No financial bailout from a government system will bring happiness to people. Our source is not the government, for we are to put the government of our lives on the shoulders of Christ.
• No president, king, congress, justice, or politician, can bring the sort of change humans really desire. The change humans desire is a return to God’s original intent for humanity. This can’t be found through wealth redistribution, a contract with America, a radio show host’s opinions, or a stuffed ballot box for one candidate or the other.
• The Church’s biggest political movement ever was a disaster that is still providing advances to anti-Kingdom. Quite simply, the Crusades are perhaps the biggest scar on the Church ever beheld.

Christians really executed Jews and Muslims?!?

Christians must devote themselves to bringing the restoration of the Empire of God through the teachings of Christ. His message can and will repair Creation through the processes of discipleship, salvation, and love. Christians are called to spread Jesus message not through billboards, t-shirts, campaign promises, military conquest, or wealth transfer. We have a better banner. Our Kingdom doesn’t come by brute force like other religions propose. Christians have a banner that is appealing and unique. I like the trend in Minnesota bumper stickers to put it best:

Empire (Part One)

I never much liked reading the book of Exodus. Can I say that? Yes – I just did. I knew it was important, what with all the miracles and leaving Pharaoh. But what does that really have to do with a modern boy in Nowheresville, USA?

In the last several years, some key Christian thinkers have been releasing books and speeches that re-position Exodus in a way that screams something else. Something fresh. Something – modern.

One of the more prominent books is Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination, written in 2001. Walter speaking with authority and power, defines the term “empire” in ways that would make politicians cringe, history professors dance, and everyday people’s eyebrows stand at attention. It isn’t that he explicitly spells out what the empire “is,” but the applications are violently intense.

Imagine that I went to Epypt or Rome at the height of their rule as a journalist and returned home to compose an article about the things I saw. I would think it could look something like this:

I went to the empire everyone’s been talking about for a visit and saw sights of great majesty the likes of which mere mortals could not have constructed on their own. The buildings were massive, constructed by men with great wisdom, though the people I saw building them were not very wealthy. They had other nations craving to meet their political leader, who had great charisma and was revered almost like a deity, himself. At his crowning, they held a lavish festival with music, dancing, dining, and speeches that heaped praise upon him. This empire had a story of their history, where they were once an oppressed people, but fought off their enemies, gained independence, and built a better way of life. They were proud of their way of government, even willing to conquer distant countries in the name of spreading their government and renown. On their currency, images of their historic leaders, revered forever for their infinite wisdom in laying the foundation for such a great empire. Their people turned the country, itself, into what amounted to a religious system, where they believed their system was one that brought peace to the world, and from every mountside to shining sea, it let freedom ring.

But there is a darker side to this empire. People are born into poverty with little ability to climb out of it because those in power have the wealth to educate their children, while those on the underside of society have little hope to bring their kids to wealth. War is an expensive side-effect of this system where battles are fought in the name of security of empire, but are really designed to expand its borders. Immorality is rampant. Leaders are trusted with their power, but distrusted to wield it with integrity. The empire consumes resources at will, even to the detriment of other nations who have not yet joined. Children are trained to think like the empire, and scolded for questioning it. Battles are fought in public places to progress people to an ideal empire, either one with unlimited empire rule, or one that mirrors the ideals of its founders, who themselves were more godless than we thought.

This sort of article would be blasted by those in power for being incoherent and irrelevant. The results of the empire’s prosperity would be heralded, while the darker side of empire would be hidden. The writer, perhaps better labeled a prophet, would be cast into a prison for speaking out against empire, or, at the very least, lose credibility.

What if this empire isn’t just history that we can’t see and touch?

To be continued…

The Religious Right (A Critique)

This past week, while I’ve been reading Jesus for President, the Religious Right received the shock they feared most: a landslide victory for Barack Obama. The Republican party was punched in the chin like Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, watching their stranglehold on American politics smashed like a shattered glass jaw. Instantly, cries echoed from Christians that abortion would live to see another day, America would pull out of Iraq, and socialism would engulf America’s economic system.

The funny thing is, I really didn’t see the Republican Party (spearheaded by a McCain-Palin ticket) bringing about what they sought, either. We’ve seen the Republican’s pack the government (see George W. Bush term one). A Republican House, Senate, Court, and Presidency have all happened. Its not like McCain was a staunch supporter of killing all abortion (he actually supported it in some cases). Its not like war is bringing the literal Kingdom of God to the Islamic world (when did Jesus say they’d know we’re Christians by our bunker busters?).

Perhaps its time for Christians to re-examine what it is we’ve spent the last several decades attempting to do. God and country as one. Perhaps the pledge of allegiance could be paraphrased with what Christians have sought:

I pledge allegiance
To the flag
Of God’s United States of America.
And to His republic,
That stands entirely under God,
One nation, as His Kingdom,
Not dividing itself from Him,
With freedom to only worship Jesus,
And justice brought against those who don’t.

Along the way, it hasn’t been a very good PR move. Consider the methods:

• Picket signs at courthouses
• Abortion clinics blown to rubble
• Gossipping about leadership to belittle them as people
• Proclaiming “enemies” as “anti-christs”
• Standing by while 100,000 people are blown up a world away in their hospitals, schools, and homes of Iraq
• Praying for the assassination of people who “oppose God’s way”

Its no wonder that the rest of society know more about what Chrisitans are against than what we are for. We spend more time protesting than helping. We are pro-life in hospitals, but pro-death in Afghanistan. We burn every ounce of prophetic capitol we have with phone calls to Senators proclaiming troubling times for America if immigrants cross the border without completing a tiresome paperwork process.

Andrew Peterson seemed to have the same problem when penning his song “Come, Lord Jesus”

Tonight in the line of the merchandise store 
While they were packing up my bags 
I saw the pictures of the prophets of the picket signs 
Screaming, “God hates fags” 

But what of this Scripturally?

Jesus never sided with any political system. He had ample opportunity and plenty of movements to join:
– The Essenes – A hippie/monastic group that created an alternative community outside culture
– The Pharisees – An popular order of individuals who sought to bring cultural change through a movement of piety and strict religious observance to bring about a coming of the Messiah to rescue them from the world
– The Herodians – Those directly involved in government, who supported the system
– Sadducees – Strict adherants to Torah, anti-Pharisees

There were many other movements, all who would have loved to have gotten this popular Nazerene prophet named Jesus to endorse their policies. They even asked him questions to corner Him into siding with their point-of-view. Anything to sway His voters (followers) their way.

He didn’t.

Jesus preached a different Kingdom than the world system. A radical way of viewing earth. The Roman Empire had what they called “The Gospel,” which traveled throughout the world bringing peace by forcing other governments to surrender militarily to their system of government and rule (not unlike present times).  Jesus brought a different message of good news – this Gospel (the Beatitudes) would be proclaimed across the Earth.

• The poor are now powerful
• Those who have been crying can find comfort
• The weakest and least of society are now at the top of the heap
• Those who have wanted God’s real justice will be satisfied
• Those who forgive and give others what they don’t deserve are given the same
• Those who have the right motives  will see God
• Those who come with real peace are the offspring of God
• Those who bring this alternative Gospel will be beaten for it, but gain even more

This message was offensive. It was against the grain. Empire can’t sustain people who proclaim its ills. Who see its ability to crush the poor in decades of debt with no way out. Who gasp at the sight of other Christians desiring the death of other humans.

Babylon is alive. The harlot thrives with a lavish lifestyle of gold, pearls, corporate buyouts, $700 billion bailouts, trillion dollar campaigns, and anti-christ sayings.

Country first?
No. Kingdom first.

Yes we can?
No. That tower was built in Genesis 11 in a city called Babel.

Christians can be Americans. They can also be children of Taliban fighters. People crossing borders. (I’m not sure that the Canaanites thought of Israel as “legal immigrants”). Christians can be Australians. Christians can be Iraqi mothers, with their only child on his deathbed thanks to “collateral damage.” Christians can be homosexuals, not yet reformed in their lifestyles.

But these are all secondary allegiances. I pledge allegiance to the Kingdom of God. The longest running nation on Earth. Sure its morphed over time. We are real. We read Scripture and disect its meaning. We are controversial. We are liberal. We are conservative. We are His.

This election will not bring the end of the world. If Christians handle it correctly, this can still be an era long desired. Christianity hasn’t changed, but we must.

Political Jesus

It doesn’t take much these days to feel a crushing burden of confusion as one looks at the political landscape. One need only look at the limited choices we have in our “representative” government, designed to have the will and opinions of all people voiced publicly. Yet, the more I try to study the issues and candidates, the more I’m baffled at what chipping away the varnish reveals: this is all pre-fabricated spin. I can’t just blindly choose to vote for one party or the other when I know that more than half the time, they’re both wrong. Is it really right to vote for the lesser of two evils (doesn’t that philosophy admit to voting for evil)?

Reading the Bible through the lense of politics reveals a dangerous problem: the Bible is very political. Consider these Old Testament occurrences:

• God orchestrated a political revolution with millions of workers walking out of government jobs and becoming immigrants (bailing out of their lifelong contracts)
• God had a group of millions of people march towards cities and declare a literal war on other humans to establish borders
• God warned the Jews to take care of the aliens in their borders (illegal immigration commentary, anyone?)
• God authorized humans being removed from their communities for sins of certain degrees
• God was against the election of one person to serve as a monarch

What about the New Testament. This one is worse.

• Mary’s song about her Son said things like “He put down those in the upper seats and lifted up those below,” and “he filled the hungry with good things and the rich he sent away empty” 
• There were four main political parties on the scene when Jesus emerged. Jesus chose sides with none of them.
• A woman faced capital punishment for being caught cheating on her husband sexually with another. Jesus opted not to bring about the punishment.
• A wealthy man asked Jesus what to do if he’s followed all of God’s commandments. Jesus told him to sell everything he has (his oxen, his house, his stock, his Hummer, his mansion, his condo) and give it to the poor.
• Some of Jesus’ opponents wanted to ask Jesus about paying taxes. He told them to give the government what it asks, but also give Him what He asks.
• The “Gospel” was a term the Roman government used to designate its success in fixing the world. Sort of like saying Rome was bring “Change.” The disciples hijacked this term and used it for themselves. Country first? How about “Kingdom First.”
• Jesus said its easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a person of great wealth to experience His Kingdom. It makes me wonder which Kingdom Wall Street lives in.
• Roman emperors were designated as “Saviors.” Proclaiming that a “Savior is born unto us” was like saying, “A new, better President has been born.”
• Caesar was known for riding a steed into town for a parade with people waving. Jesus did a similar action (with a smaller crowd) and on a humble donkey.
• King Jesus was assassinated for his admission that He believed he was the King of the Jews. This was a politically charged statement, like telling Fidel Castro that the real leader of Cuba is a plumber from a small village.
• Jesus was known to have crossed the border a few times to go talk to the wrong people and help them out. I wonder what he’d do for Mexicans these days.