When the chaos of a culture reaches the point that it feels like the world has been knocked off its axis, and the natural order of things has been run through a shredder, only to be put back together again by a room full of monkeys attempting to rearrange all of the pieces into a Shakespearian tragedy – I think it’s fair to say something needs to change. But the question is, how will it be done, and who will do it? Because some will want to seize the opportunity to impose a questionable agenda on the rest of us, while most people just want everything to return to the way it was before it all went crazy . . . if only we could all agree on when exactly that was.
But that’s just the thing – whether dreaming of a utopic past or a utopic future, either way, we’re inevitably allowing our discontent to define the present. There’s an odd assumption at work here – we’re either assuming our recollection of the past hasn’t been carefully sanitized and redacted of exactly how broken the past actually was, or we pretend that our theories about a better future aren’t rife with naiveté and chock-full of the landmines of unintended consequences. I’m not saying we’re not having a bad experience of the present – I’m saying, we’ve always experienced the world as fallen . . . even when we pretended we weren’t.
I’ve lived long enough to have witnessed several iterations of both Christian and secular political groups vying for power over who and how the culture should be judged for its past and present sins – each seeking the unquestioned authority to set the agenda for the future. But as I look back over all of those years, I can see now how the fog of emotional sanctimony tends to skew our expectations of what our political opinions will accomplish. In this regard, such power struggles are able to create a perverse sense of urgency, seducing us into believing that seizing control of the cultural narrative is more important than . . . simply being a person who seeks to live out what is true, and good, and beautiful.
It’s not so much that I have a laissez-faire attitude about the brokenness of the world as it is that I humbly recognize the role I play in that brokenness – but not because of some absurd secular notion of morality or because of some religiously legalistic moralizing. But rather as an essential starting place of admitting my own need for forgiveness, so that I might learn the true nature of forgiveness – in hopes that I might experience what is true, and good, and beautiful . . . and then act accordingly. For this is the way of my Christian confession – Christ didn’t seek political power but rather gave himself in an act of self-emptying love so that we might know true forgiveness.
For this is the shameless mercy of God on full display, embodying the true, the good, and the beautiful – ever wooing us unto himself. This is the Kingdom of God vibrating with life, entreating all to let go of the chaos of thinking our self-involved opinions could ever make the world a better place. So that we might begin to see the world through the eyes of faith and know the heart of God, to love what he loves — in the way that he loves and forgive as he forgives.
. . . so let us follow him.
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