During the time of the Deuteronomic Old Testament prophets, the people who heard them had been blinded and deafened to God's presence in affluent and comfortable lives. Those people despised the word of God. It attacked their way of life, assaulted their comfort level, and afflicted their compliance with the ways of the world. They did not accept God's will as their way of life. Instead, they clung to empty religious practices that accomplished nothing for those in need but justified their own isolation and insulation from the suffering around them. The people rejected the prophets.
Jesus taught an awakening from the religious practices of his day. Jesus invited followers and authorities to move beyond simple adherence to laws, rules and regulations and invited them to embrace, instead, a new ethic for life. This ethic consisted of intentionally sacrificing one's own advantages and benefits in order that everything a person had may be used to exalt others, particularly those who struggled and suffered. The religious authorities of Jesus' day saw his teachings as attack on their long-held traditions and historical religious identity. Those who sought emancipation from the way life worked, by which they were victimized and because of which they suffered, understood Jesus as a source of liberation. But the typical religious practitioner of Jesus' day hated him and everything for which he stood. The people rejected Jesus.
In the Great Reformation, Luther and others led those who now had the Holy Bible translated into the vernacular to read and study for themselves, and to question the religious authority of their day. The permission created an alternative to authoritarian religious organizations and law-based Christian identity. That authority excluded many. The theology of grace, that Luther and others recovered in the Reformation, seemed like an attack on those who practiced religion from the moral perspective. They hated everything about the Reformation. They were told that it was a threat to their way of life. Those who had a stake in the authoritarian religious traditions rejected the Reformation. Even those who appreciated the theology of grace and the new attitudes toward acceptance and openness carried the Reformation spirit only as far as their organizational roots allowed. They fell beck into denominalism and offered only an alternative brand of orthodox practice. The people rejected the Reformation.
The great societal machine of post-WWII America chugged along fine. Most had a position to fill, a job to do, and roles to play. The roles were sometimes unjust, providing advantage to some while excluding others from its benefits. Then came a stream of literature than seemed to attack life as mid-century America had known it. Books like Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, A Clockwork Orange, etc., articulated dissatisfaction with the depersonalizing and unfairness of the great machine. The literature urged readers to dare to step outside of the control and authority, to question and demand the kind of equality and justice that challenged societal structure. Many saw the literature, and the resulting movements, as an attack on "right and proper" ways of living. We are just discovering the lengths to which protectors of 'the establishment' went in defending the systems from those who would dare challenge, question or reject them. Those in power or positions of authority, or those who had a stake in the system, rejected social change.
Since the 1960's, America has joined the rest of the world in what looked like a new cultural evolution. Culture began to move in the direction of acceptance, tolerance, grace, diversity and the rejection of systems and institutions that belonged to the antiquated notions of privilege and sectarian benefit. The world began to change. Black Americans, and others, found their civil rights protected, at least on paper. Equal rights for women have begun to be practiced and protected. Persons who love persons of the same gender were allowed to ratify their relationships in legal marriage. The culture began to work for the benefit of those who had been excluded, rejected or ignored. It began to focus attention on those who had been victimized, disadvantaged or invisible.
The shift has been seen as an attack on people's lives and the 'moral' existence that 'we used to live.' Pockets within religious culture have certainly seen the wider cultural evolutions as attack upon those religious cultures. So much so, in fact, that right wing religious culture, of whatever faith tradition, has tried to pull culture back into a previous articulation. Sometimes, those attempts have been subtle. Sometimes, they have been anything but subtle. Ask the teenage girl who was shot in the head for pursuing education for young girls, or those victimized by extremists. The acts of religious protectionism have been brutal, violent, angry and increasingly wide-spread. There is an increase in name-calling, hatred, and vitriol of every fashion, fueled by attempts to turn culture from the course of its current evolutionary process.
The fact is, we would be better off if we would listen to the Dueteronomic prophets. We would benefit from fully embracing Jesus. Our world would be a different place if we were to seek out the Reformation theology of grace. We would be wise to heed literature that assesses the depersonalization of the great societal machines. We would protect the well being of every person if we could give up the old segregationist practices of the past and press on to the greater virtues of acceptance, toleration, affirmation, compassion and love. If it all seems like an attack on our lives, then maybe we need to spend some time assessing how it is that we fit into the inevitability of cultural evolution, as we move toward the fulfillment of the promise of Jesus Christ as a way of life.
Change is never painless or easy. It is inevitable and positive, however. We are moving toward that kingdom. Let's 'keep on truckin'.'
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