Has a certain segment of Christianity numbed you?

Numb is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as:

1 : devoid of sensation especially as a result of cold or anesthesia
2 : devoid of emotion : indifferent

Reading the Internet Monk’s article entitled Curious Minds Want To Know: Does the IM Audience REALLY Exist?, leaving a comment, sleeping on the thoughts it produced in my mind, and thinking about those same thoughts during the long drive to and from ‘the work’ today, I realized something about the tensions between the “post-evangelicals” (like I am becoming more and more every day) and the “religious right status-quo”

The “tensions”, “wilderness”, “world”, and “conflict” seem to exist only in the minds of the post-evangelical.

The “positivanity”, “Americanity”, “bunker”, and “resolution” seem to exist only in the minds of the religious right status-quo.

In other words

The post-evangelical knows that they and the card carrying religious right status-quo members exist.

The card carrying religious right status-quo members see us as either “non-existent” or “heretic”. If they do recognize us, we are deemed “bitter” or “Disenchanted”, or as Spencer stated “…the whimperings and whinings of people who can’t get over some aspect of their fundamentalist past or can’t see the glory of the evangelical present and future.”

What really heightened my senses of all those thoughts was playing the “seek-and-scan” game with the car stereo while driving back from lunch. I came across a station that was playing the song “Numb” by Linkin Park which has the following lyrics

Numb
Linkin Park

I’m tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless lost under the surface
Don’t know what you’re expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)

[Chorus]
I’ve become so numb I can’t feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I’m becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

Can’t you see that you’re smothering me
Holding too tightly afraid to lose control
Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
And every second I waste is more than I can take

[Chorus]
I’ve become so numb I can’t feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I’m becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

And I know
I may end up failing too
But I know
You were just like me with someone disappointed in you

[Chorus]
I’ve become so numb I can’t feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I’m becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

[Chorus]
I’ve become so numb I can’t feel you there
I’m tired of being what you want me to be
I’ve become so numb I can’t feel you there
I’m tired of being what you want me to be

I can’t see the present glory of the “evangelical” future because of the fact that we have re-defined evangelical from the original meaning of “reaching the lost” to the new meaning of “legislating the lost”. I can’t see the present glory of the “evangelical” future because I have seen the formation of the two-fold pattern.

(1): We did not stop the “DEMONcrats” in the 1990′s from their “actions” constantly presented in Christian media with the condemming and condescending “alerts” in the name of “ministries” providing for us an “information and analysis feature”.

(2): The ‘religious right’ in the new millennium did not legislate the country back to Jesus, give school vouchers only to the home-schoolers, overtax the singles, and overturn Roe vs. Wade like they promised.

and we are back at step one again with the election of Obama… and we are hearing the same Christian media with the same condemning and condescending “alerts”.

Ladies and gentlemen of the “Jesus Jury”

I’m Here…. I’m Real…

Been diagnosed as “rebellious”, shuttled off to the back lot (or was it “pew” or the balcony) with all the other wimps, savants, cranks, “embittered” (their term for those who disagree), and troubled kids who won’t behave, won’t accept the status quo, won’t carry the membership card, won’t wear the t-shirt along with the name-tag, won’t believe the hype, and won’t fight the culture war by voting, holding up picket signs, or boycotting. Been disposed with harsh words, holy hexes, and swishes of the rhetorical wand. Refused to become the Ned Flanders clone that evangelicallism tried to shove on me.

I’m post-evangelical, post-political, but still Christian and a child of God! And I am not bitter, angry, or disillusioned.

Just “numbed”……

Numbed by the seeing the same new “old” methods that didn’t work the first time. Numbed by the fervor of an call to action when the church of Acts went out and fulfilled the Great Commission. Numbed by seeing the war against flesh and blood with the carnal weapons being fought from the political action committees and ministries residing in either Washington, DC or Colorado Springs instead of the fight on our knees. Numbed from all the mega-fasts, hyper-conventions, holding abortion signs the first Sunday in October, and those 2 Chronicles 7:14 rallies. Numbed at how we elevate and idolize the next ‘culture warrior’ that will ‘tip the scale’ in our favor but deny their existence when their “implants and sex tapes sins” are exposed because we want a perfect leader and the existence of their Christianity is on the line and refuse to disciple and correct them in the name of love.

Numbed not because I am supposed to fit your Ned Flanders mold of what a ‘real Christian’ is supposed to live but because I feel as if I am a long ways away from being the man God has called me to me. Numbed not because my definition of freedom doesn’t coincide with your definition of ‘control’ but because I feel as if I have not mastered the art of surrender to Christ. Numbed not because I refused to be your clone, your two-dimensional mass-produced widget, and your agenda army but because I feel that I am the most inadequate ‘disciple’ of Christ. Numbed not because I fail the ‘official Christian husband material’ list because I do not drive a Lexus, work in the real estate, stockbroker, sales, banking, or finance industry, or possess good looks, a skinny body and the best clothes, but because I am so introverted and shy and have burned out of the rejection of “no”. Numbed not because everyone is disappointed in me, but because I am more disappointed in myself feeling like I have to spend more time being someone else besides you and someone else besides me. Numbed not because I haven’t “sold out” to God in your eyes, but because I feel that I haven’t freely given Christ all that I am and all that I have.

Maybe Janis Joplin was right when she stated that “freedom is another word for nothing left to lose”…..

Numbed not because I haven’t embraced their pathway to “freedom” because I see it as just another legalism and bondage, but because I still can not understand nor fathom the Scriptures of John 8:36 and 2 Corinthians 3:17 in the midst of my shortcomings (that their re-legalisms only further enhance). Numbed not because I can not embrace their Latter Reign and dominionism, but because I feel more and more defeated everyday by the everyday storms of life. Neil Peart of Rush said in the song “The Speed of Love”

One night we are bathed in light….
One day carried away in the storms….

The storms that cause the wars of:

The ivory tower versus the city life
The paradise versus the WILDerness
The culture war versus the Great Commission
Butterfly Kissing Ned Flanders versus Temple Clearing Jesus Christ
Cable News Networks versus the Good News of the Gospel
“them” versus “us”
“me” versus “He”

Is it I who is really numbed or has the numbness in a weird sort of way made me….

more alert…

more alert of my surroundings, my environment, my life, my assurance, my stability. more alert of the fact that my salvation is only through Christ alone, more alert of my righteous is made by faith, more alert of the Scriptures as the only inspired and authoritative word of God, more alert that my salvation comes by God’s grace only, and more alert that all glory is to be given to God alone; which in turn, makes me more alert and sensitive to the Great Commission and to my mission field…..

I think I am about to find out sooner than later as I now face the battle of

Inert (lacking the power to move and react) vs. Alert (quick to perceive and act)

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