It's funny how things happen that remind us of something we had wanted to remember and yet had somehow lost in the jumbled mess that is often our minds. Yesterday I had a conversation with a client about our children and the shrinking grace period the world allows them and then how it continues in their lives/our lives as adults through the methods used in an attempt to create cohesion among the population. Somehow I had forgotten about the content of that conversation until this morning when I logged onto The Shack forum and someone had asked what the title of the chapter In The Belly Of The Beast meant. My memory was jogged and the log jam created by all the other conversations of yesterday broke free and the conversation came flooding back in.
We really do live in the belly of a beast. The system might be beneficial (I even wonder about that these days) for civil society but I get the sense that it actually perpetuates the mess humanity finds herself in. The system/systems are oppressive and the more civil the society is the more subtle the oppression is which makes recognising it for what it is more difficult. Recognising it is the beginning of learning to live free of it's influences. Living free of it's influences creates enough space to where the important things begin to come into view.
I love how Jacques Ellul describes living in it but not being of it.
"It is not a question of getting rid of it, but, by an act of freedom, of transcending it. How is this to be done?"
"The first step in the quest, the first act of freedom, is to become aware of the necessity. The very fact that man can see, measure, and analyze the determinisms that press on him means that he can face them, and by so doing, act as a free man."
Everything about the beast has to do with fear. And it's impossible for anyone to convince others of this reality. Until they "see" it for themselves they just can't see it. Instead, what they see is a system that provides them safety and protection when in actuality it has never produced security for anyone. It crushed them and imprisons them and tries to keep them there by the use of language and offering just enough of a good feeling or at least the hope for one that makes them think it is something that it is not.
Jesus shows us how and gives us the ability to be in it and not of it, and the way he lives through us as love and grace and sacrificial service really is how the beast is overcome. That life is a violation of the system.
2 comments:
Just thinking out loud. I wonder how much of the beast's survival depends on scapegoating?
What do you think it takes for people to "see" for themselves? I wonder if it is partially something God must do, partially something we must be willing to do/see?
I would love to hear what you are thinking as far as the question about scapegoating.
I think the seeing does have to do mostly with God opening our eyes. I think much of it also has to do with fear being displaced in our lives.
People look to it for their survival...necessity and protection and because of that have much invested in it. It takes a lot of courage even when one's eyes begin to be opened. But the more they do and the more the pearl of great price comes into view, the choice really gets put into perspective.
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