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| The Beast is not a Legend |
-A friend
I'll warn you at outset that there is a ranty kinda flavour to this blog. As always, I invite people to offer their input, and I know I don't speak from any real place of authority. I'm just a guy with some questions and very few answers.
Over the last few months, there has been a growing frustration within me at the state of the Church. When I look at the Church (and I appreciate there is some generalization here) I see an organisation that has failed to grasp the core concepts of it's founder. We might ask what the fundamentals might be (and again I appreciate there may be some diversity of opinion here). However, at it's core I think we can make a few simple statements about what the Church should be, what it should be saying, and where it should be going.
I am sure we can agree on a number of common denominators. First and foremost in my mind are the words of Jesus in Matthew 22. When asked what the greatest commandment was, he responded that to love God is the first and greatest, but the second was also to love others. All the law and prophets (namely all our religion/faith) hang on these two points (I did paraphrase the passage, but feel free to look it up for yourself). I use Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan to also back up this point. When asked who our neighbour was, Jesus told this story, which I am sure we are all familiar with and doesn’t need repeating (but you can find it in Luke 10). What am I saying then; basically in order to reflect Christ, we must love the Father, and also love other people. I also use John 15:13 to take this further-that loving other people is about laying down one’s life for others. I think we can add grace and compassion into the mix, as well as the understanding (taken from James 2) that whilst good works won’t save us, our faith will naturally work itself out in ways where we show kindness and love in what we do to those around us. We may even want to label this as evangelism; however this makes me uncomfortable, as it implies we may only do good works in order to get people to join us. I would rather prefer a way that is entirely unconditional, and requires no response from people if they chose not to.
All seems pretty simple (and feel free to add suggestions if you feel there are glaring omissions). What then is so difficult about all this? Why does it seem so difficult to love God and other people. Where, I ask, was the love for other people over the whole Chick-Fil-A debacle. Even closer to home, in what way do we show love as a Church to those who are homosexual? Setting aside for a moment the discussion about the rights and wrongs around homosexuality, the one thought that pounds through my mind is that we are all sinful? What do we get out of judging and condemning others, and how does that ever show them God's love. If all God's people are good at is condemnation and hurt, then it does not present a great picture of God.
Another issue that needs addressing is the addiction to materialism that seems to permeate the West. I am as guilty of this as anyone else, and this is said as much to me as anyone else! For many people, their theology dictates that in the end times, the Beast shall rise and control the Earth. The Beast will be a personification of evil (anti-Christ?) and will persecute all us 'good guys'. It is said that economics will become difficult for those who refuse to take on the Number of the Beast. And yet I am left wondering if the Beast will be some external force waiting for us in the mists of time? I wonder if by our actions we are not acting like (or at least enabling) that Spirit of Anti-Christ? Why do we find it so easy to buy endless amounts of shit that provide no lasting happiness. How can we so easily throw away things, without thought of where it goes? Why do we allow ourselves to get fat and lazy on the efforts of others far removed from us, when there are people in the world literally struggling for their lives every day, from the moment they wake, until the moment they go to sleep. This was so forcefully rammed home to me the other day when I was watching Gordon Ramsey's 'Hell's Kitchen USA'. One of the challenges the chefs had to perform was an eating contest and they were pitted against Joey 'Jaws' Chestnut, who was a competitive eater. Doing some minor research into this, because I was incredulous (especially at how quick and how much he could eat, and he wasn't even fat!), it turns out there is 'Major League Eating'. They have managed to make a sport out of eating hot dogs and chicken wings, and people get paid to do this stuff. I nearly cried! Now I have had my own problems with eating (namely that I like to eat, and boy does it stay on) but it broke my heart that in one part of the world we make entertainment out of people who can eat lots quickly, and yet in other parts of the world people are literally starving to death! Where is the Church in all this? What are we saying or doing to stand against the evil and darkness of the world...sometimes it seems like nothing!
We are so addicted to mind (and body) numbing tripe, that we have become desensitized to the needs and injustices in the world around us. In many ways, the Church IS Anti-Christ. We have set ourselves opposed to those foundational (and simple) teachings of Christ, that we are literally the opposite of Jesus. Jesus said 'Love God', and we are so in love with ourselves we see little of God around us. He extolled us to 'Love Others', and yet we get so caught up in excess that we forget that someone somewhere has to pay the price. We get so caught up in telling people what they are doing wrong, that we don't realise WE are the ones who are getting it wrong by our lack of love towards others. We have taken to setting up celebrities as our idols, just like the Israelites when Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments. Even in the Church we have created the cult of Christian celebrity, following this speaker or that band as if every word or song was the sum totality of what it meant to follow Christ. And in all is this is the quiet voice of Christ enjoining us to 'follow'. I wonder if we will ever get over the sense of our own importance that we might hear him? I wonder if we could ever forget about condemning others, that we might realise we are all broken and need to draw near?!
At the beginning, I quoted a friend of mine. He is nobody important, and yet he is special and important to God and totally valued by me, perhaps the best kind of person to quote! But he said something to me that was very profound, and I think he is right. Until we actually get back to being Followers of Christ, I think that in the world, the Church will act as the Beast! I think that until we can get over our addiction to things (and to idols), then the Church will be diametrically opposed to Christ. Unless we learn to 'live simply so that others might simply live', then we will be like a plague on the Earth. It would be easy for us to say that it's not our fault, that we didn't start capitalism, or the Major League Eating competition. It would be easy to say that we can change little. However, in the words of Edmund Burke;
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
We cannot, must not, excuse ourselves from the tragedies of this world by saying it's nothing to do with us. If we are to be like Christ, then we must act like Christ, in all that we do. It is a challenge, but it is what the Church is called to. If we do not, then we are allowing the Kingdom of Darkness to reign free and unchallenged. We are like the people who crossed to the other side of the road, and not like the 'Good Samaritan' Christ calls us to be. In short, we are the Beast! Our challenge then is to find those places in which we can radically, humbly and powerfully live out the teachings of Christ, loving God and doing something the Church has not been entirely good at over her long life-Loving Others!
