New Things.

Does our fetishizing change really work?

For my entire career in the Presbyterian Church, we heard a lot about change.  In particular we talked without ceasing about the "new paradigm," the "emerging church," the "next church," "adaptive change," and so on.  We have practically fetishized changed, even to the point of requiring churches to write about their enthusiasm for change on various documents and forms, even if they actually have no such enthusiasm.  

And we nearly always presented change as a very good thing.  How many sermons have I heard at various ecclesiastical gatherings about "Behold, I am doing a new thing; do you not perceive it?"  Most of those sermons seemed to indicate something good happening.  They don't mention that Isaiah here talks about the return of the people from exile in Babylon.  They do not appear to think about the Exile part.  

My generation, Boomers, always looked forward to "the revolution."  You can hear it in our music.  Like Thunderclap Newman's, "We got to get together sooner or later, Because the revolution's here, And you know it's right."  We always understood changing times as a good thing, in the end.  "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius," after all.  

In one presbytery I served, the Executive Presbyter advocated for closing a small congregation (against its will) by giddily offering, "Let's see what happens!"  This idea, that change, even when it means killing something, will always result in something good, as in the claim by an American officer in Vietnam that "we had to destroy the village in order to save it," pervades Modern thinking.  Yes, resurrection means death resolving in new life, but does this mean we start killing things for how much good it will do?  Do we call it good change when we reduce a mountain to wasteland in order to extract the coal from within it?  The attitude explains a lot of the history of Modernity, which has sacrificed untold millions of people, and the integrity of the planet's climate, to its to gratify its desires and fulfill its fantasies about the future. 

Change has always meant deterioration, decay, violence, depravity, and chaos... just not for the rich, white, men who invented, managed, and pushed Modernity.  We have always managed to fob the cost off on other, less privileged groups.  We still largely prattle on about change as some kind of inevitable "progress" and positive evolution.  Maybe that still works for us.  But most of the people on the planet still know that change usually means things getting even worse.  Hence, many of them embrace the nihilistic, "burn-it-all-down" solutions offered by wanna-be autocrats.  Indeed, who imagined a time when liberals would steadfastly defend the establishment against change... because the change comes in the form of reactionary maniacs?  Who ever thought white conservatives would storm the Capitol building?

 

We face no more profound and comprehensive change than the intensifying battery of climate crises we now endure and try to cope with.  Yet we seem to think we can turn even this catastrophic change into something purportedly good by using it as an excuse to re-configure our economy, as if technology and business have the capacity to save us even from this... even though these impulses got us into it.

  

I have read several good books forecasting Pentecostalism as the future of the church.  Harvey Cox, Phyllis Tickle, and perhaps James K. A. Smith suggest this.  Pentecostalism has many different forms, but it is the fastest growing branch of Christianity, by far.  How do we feel about this movement as our future?  Yes, the explosion of the Spirit at Azusa Street did express something radical, new, and good in its multi-racial, classless, inclusive character.  But the movement soon soured into exclusive racial segments, and tended to drift in pathological directions.  For one thing, the "prosperity gospel" pervades a lot of Pentecostalism.  And who foresaw anything as toxic as the New Apostolic Reformation coming out of this?  Much of Pentecostalism drips with White Nationalism, conspiracy theories, and the advocacy and perpetration of violence.

Whatever the next Christianity looks like, especially any movement trying to ride the Holy Spirit, the most essential reality we have to keep in the center of our consciousness remains "Jesus Christ as attested in Holy Scripture."  He must remain our grounding and our goal, the Source of our energy and the form that energy takes when flowing through us into the world.  Otherwise we will drift into the same kinds of atrocities that have characterized the Church in every age, when it sells out to the Empire, and starts doing whatever people want.

The book of the Bible that most concerns change and new things, of course, is Revelation.  Revelation depicts the violent and spectacular collapse of Empire, finally giving way to the emergence of a New Heaven and a New Earth.  We do not get to the latter without passage through the former.  Actual change will always mean traversing the proverbial nine miles of bad road.  It will mean disintegration and deconstruction, before the wonderful new thing can appear.  

Jesus Christ and his Kingdom/Commonwealth is always and only the new thing emerging in the world with, within, and among us.  Everything else is same old same old, even with revolutions.  In the words of Pete Townsend who knew that revolution means going around in a circle, they're just, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."  In the meantime we maintain a steadfast witness to Jesus Christ, the Lamb who was slain and yet who now reigns, by living his life of compassion, justice, equity, inclusion, forgiveness, humility, and joy.  He is always new, always present, and always real.  The Creator always wins in the end; but before that we suffer defeat after defeat.  Nevertheless we live in the light of that final victory which does still shine on us, even in the storm.

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