NeoZine

It's a jailbreak!

It’s all about Change.

If nothing changes, there is no Revolution, of course. Presidents win elections promising Change, and revolutionaries are committed to Change. But what Revolution promises to maintain the status quo? It’s a silly Revolution!

Silly Things

People chuckle about silly Christians and their silly faith all the time–especially when their silly lives never change!

There is no Joy without change!

The Status Quo is nothing but the dead and dying, the Bible says: “Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.” (Romans 5:12 NLT) It’s a joyless world, a bleak world interrupted by reminders that virtue exists somewhere.  It’s a slave’s world of frantic repetition and meaninglessness. Stedman put it well:

If there is anything our society is characterized by today, it is permeated with a kind of living death: a death that is part of our daily existence and manifests itself in a sense of despair, of depression, of emptiness, of the futility of living. It is seen in the humdrum of existence, in boredom and the frustration of lives that are longing for a sense of satisfaction and do not know where to turn in the restlessness of our age…There is a sick world around us, a world that is desperately in need, and the symptoms of that sickness are apparent on every side!¹

Change brings Joy! Revolution is a nuclear furnace burning for change in this vast ocean of death. When Revolution wins and spreads and overcomes obstacles and persecution, Joy kicks in like only winners know.

Christians try to manufacture Joy by pushing a spiritual button—finding the right Worship Service, a “better church experience”, or if that fails, perhaps we might “experience the divine” in a new Spiritual Discipline—and what a restless life it produces! This is a primary cause for the Great Christian Migration from church to church, as proven statistically by Willow Creek and George Barna’s research.²

Happiness alone only produces restlessness, because happiness disappears so easily. Happiness is tied to “happenings”, and it appears quickly and leaves quickly, like magic.

One advertising campaign struck a chord among Americans by promising to solve everything with a big, red Easy-button. Unfortunately, the Great Christian Migration is in pursuit of spiritual life the same way: a quick burst on Sunday morning, another shot with “morning devotions”, and another from mid-week “Prayer meeting”. But going back to the work-a-day world, it’s gone. So it is with circumstance.

The spiritual Easy-button might produce happiness or stimulation or elation, but not Joy.

The Power to Revolt

Joy settles deep in a Christian and leaps from one person to another because it isn’t momentary, and it’s contagious. Joy means, “We’re winning!” That’s how Joy is carried from day-to-day, from person-to-person, from place-to-place, despite great opposition: “Change is here, now!”

Revolt. It’s that simple.

People are groaning for Change everywhere, especially in America where disillusion is intensifying. The American Revolution was fueled by “the pursuit of happiness” promised by the Declaration of Independence, and the American Dream still promises happiness. But people are sick of the lies from Wall Street and fat Corps and their commercials feeding our quest for happiness: “Buy one more thing…!”

You can’t buy Change. Don’t listen!

Change doesn’t materialize either, like I thought back in my youth. It isn’t mystical. I was bewildered by the gap between myself and older, more-powerful Christians with rock-solid confidence. They knew what they wanted, and they knew how to get it. I thought it came with age, but I know this isn’t true because I know what it’s like to be older and grow less-confident and bewildered. And I see it in other Christians my age: shrinking, failing, and stuck.

Change means having the power to win. This is what God gives to anyone willing to revolt. It produces a Revolution of Joy:

Joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son. Colossians 1:11-13 (NASB)

Christians snigger at my crazy “Revolution talk” sometimes, and that’s OK. I can take it (and dish it out).

But if anyone can read Colossians 1:11-13 without stepping back in awe at the majesty and scope of The Revolution, then nothing I say will help. Some people don’t want Revolution, maybe. It doesn’t matter, because God is leading a Revolution anyway.

It’s a Jailbreak!

“He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son” — it means revolt, sedition, mutiny, rebellion, defiance, war, and every other word that could possibly conceive to describe Revolution. It means His Kingdom versus that fake kingdom. One wins, another loses. His Kingdom is a real kingdom with a real King, and He’s pulling people out of a fake kingdom, headed by a usurper and a pretender.

It’s a jailbreak, as God describes it:

That is why the Scriptures say, “When he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people.” Ephesians 4:8 (NLT)

He “gave gifts to his people,” which are spiritual gifts, and they aren’t toys: they’re weapons. That’s right:

He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-12 (NASB)

All these gifts are for “building up the body of Christ,” which means to win, grow and spread Revolution: “He rescued us from the kingdom of darkness,” and we’re busy rattling cages with sleepy prisoners trapped inside.

A jailbreak ignites Revolution when the prisoners get armed, so “He led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people.”

I think this video says it better than I could…(warning: not for the fainthearted.)

That’s cool.

Seasoned Killers–or Lambs?

But wait, we can’t repeat the same mistake Spartacus made.

Spartacus is famous for leading a slave revolt against the Roman Empire. Like Jesus, he too freed a “crowd of captives”, and his army almost toppled Rome. But not quite. Unfortunately, the Roman generals outsmarted the ex-slaves, even though outnumbered. So 6,000 surviving rebels were crucified up and down the Appian Way in miles of writhing, screaming bodies. Too bad.

Spartacus was a gladiator and trained to fight, but he threw a mob of untrained, runaway slaves against legions of seasoned Roman soldiers, who were professional killers. That was the problem.

Coming fresh out of our prison cells, Christians are freed slaves as well, dominated by years of deceit, brainwashing and submission; we simply aren’t the strongest revolutionaries.

Christianity seems so passive and non-revolutionary when our mob of ex-slaves are untrained and ill-equipped to fight. Perhaps even unwilling to fight! This is a valid complaint raised by Mark Driscoll against the Emergent Village and its flaccid “conversation” with Postmodernism.³  He calls it the “limp-wristed Jesus” view, which is probably accurate, because this new breed of Christianity is either afraid to fight for a cause (when dialoging with Postmodernism), or simply confused about what “the cause” might be.⁴

Fighting is considered very un-Christlike in the popular Christian Myth. Christians should assume respectable, non-threatening positions in the job world and witness silently by their lifestyle, according to the Christian Myth. (Don’t make a fuss, for goodness gracious!)⁵ Has anyone stopped to consider if maybe this passive mythology was placed on Christians by Hollywood? “Father McKenzie” is the epitome of a Christian minister, “Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear,” according to The Beatles.⁶ How did we ever allow “minister” get so tarnished by such a weak, detestable, and useless stereotype?

Why would any Christian conform to a gentle-lamb mold? How lame! How unbiblical! And it’s ungodly.

It’s time to revolt.

Revolutionary Change

Remember that our task is to transform ex-prisoners into revolutionaries. Like slaves, prisoners are passive and must conform to whoever is in-charge. Revolutionaries stand up, think smart, and fight terrifically. This is why revolutionaries are such a terrific threat, and why revolutions can succeed with very few, while the status quo requires large numbers of conscripts: draftees, slaves and prisoners make a poor  stand against against free-thinking revolutionaries fighting for a cause.

Revolutionary Change moves people out of conformity (slavery) into the realm of authentic humanity (god-like), and it’s a marvelous transformation:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.  Romans 12:2 (NASB)

Be conformed or transformed: the choice between surrender or Revolution.

1. Revolutionaries despise conformity and think independently.
2. Revolutionaries gladly pay the price of training and discipline required for transformation.

It’s really quite simple, and Romans 12:2 captures these two principles of Revolutionary Change in that one, sweet verse, above. Transformation simply means:

1. Mind-renewal.
2. Proving God’s Will to the watching world.

The World System mass-produces trashed lives, so it should be easy to “prove what the will of God is: that which is good and acceptable and even perfect!”

Once the word gets out, people race to join The Jesus Revolution: history proves it. This is certainly what happened when Paul carried The Revolution into Macedonia:

Now the word of the Lord is ringing out from you to people everywhere, even beyond Macedonia and Achaia, for wherever we go we find people telling us about your faith in God. We don’t need to tell them about it,  1 Thessalonians 1:8

Paul witnessed a Revolution of Joy breaking out across Macedonia and Achaia, the two halves of Greece, and what an amazing sight it was! This Revolution “is reverberating out from you people,” Paul exclaimed.⁷ This was not the result of Paul’s organizational skills or any “revival” campaign:

Apparently it was not through an organized evangelistic campaign that their witness went forth, though Paul’s preaching in Thessalonica and elsewhere illustrates this approach. But it was through the personal lives and testimonies of these transformed individuals that neighbors heard about their faith in God. As they went the gospel was heard everywhere, so an apostolic missionary campaign was not needed.–The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty.

Today the Chinese demonstrate the phenomena of “transformed individuals” that trigger Revolution. In the West, Christians are barely cognizant of the unprecedented growth underway in China, but it means America is no longer the leading Christian nation: our time is passing, it seems. How could any Christian in America instruct these new world leaders about Revolution? Is anyone from America asking the Chines how “to do church” or  how we can change our lethargy? Sadly, Americans largely ignore the Revolution in China, even though we desperately need to learn some lessons from these saints.

One thing is certain: when Christians grow from five to 100 million in China within 60 years, even though outlawed and persecuted, something exciting and very revolutionary is underway there: it’s a revolt against the grinding agony of Communism. God’s alternative truly seems “good and acceptable and perfect” for tens of millions of new Chinese Christians coming to meet Jesus.

The opposite is occurring here: people are racing away from Church, and they leave with a deep disdain for a weak and worthless Christianity–but they don’t realize Christianity is not Church.

We need something more spontaneous than Church: we need the “Spontaneous Expansion of the Church” as Roland Allen called it.

Footnotes:

1. Stedman, What is your gift? and How the Church Works [↩]
2. Source: Christian Post Reporter,  “Survey Examines America’s Megachurchgoers” and Stealing Sheep: The Church’s Hidden Problems of Transfer Growth, by William Chadwick. [↩]
3. See The Panel. “7 Big Questions“. Relevant Magazine issue 24 (Relevant Media Group). http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=7418. Retrieved on 2008-05-06. [↩]
4. Read McLarenism for a roundup of the Emergent Village and its efforts to accommodate Christianity with Postmodernism. [↩]
5. The “silent witness” approach is a distortion of “Lifestyle Evangelism” made famous in Joe Aldrich’s book of the same title. “Silent evangelism” goes back to the old Reformed Theology of John Calvin, in which Predestination, he reasoned, was evidenced by modesty, piety, and what we now call the “Protestant Work Ethic.” Since Calvinism was passive about evangelism and largely relegated it to God’s Predestined Plan, the Reformed tradition is focused on personal lifestyle, holiness, hard work, etc. This is not what Joe Aldrich taught. [↩]
6. From the song Eleanor Rigby. [↩]
7. The word exēchētai, translated rang out, could be rendered “reverberated.” Paul saw the Thessalonians as amplifiers or relay stations that not only received the gospel message but sent it farther on its way with increased power and scope–The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty. [↩]

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