Was I a revolutionary?

 

            I was talking with a person where I work today, and I drifted on the subject of being a college student during the 1970’s.  Just before a break ended, this person asked about my attitude at the time, “Did you consider yourself a revolutionary?”  I can remember thinking through this exact question when I was in college, and I can say that, in opposition to what many of my fellow students have gone through, my point of view on this question hasn’t changed, in large part due to my having already been a believer in Jesus for a few years at that point.

            I would say that, both then and now, counterrevolutionary would be a better description, on (at least) two different levels.

            First, since, during that time, the Cold War was still going on, let me consider the attitude of persons in the governments, Communist Parties, and police/secret police forces of such countries.  Without regard to how long or short the Party had been in power, they overtly described their cause as a revolution, because they saw their point of view as being something for not just their country, but eventually for the world.  As a believer in Jesus, I would have been considered someone connected with the point of view that they had overthrown. They, in turn, either did not understand or did not want to understand the difference between true followers of Jesus, and a political status quo that gave lip service to Christianity as being the status quo belief (this clearly fits European, Central American, and South American countries, and not Asian ones).

            Here in the U. S., as in much of the western world, the revolution was with regard to the social status quo.  Most western countries have heritages, legal and voluntary ethical systems which were, to varying degrees, connected to Judeo-Christian ethics (with the Christian part having greater practical influence), the Magna Carta, English Common Law, and in the U.S., the influence of the east coast being originally settled by persons looking for freedom to worship the Christian faith according to their conscience, be it Puritan, Anglican, Catholic, or whatever (with extremely little emphasis on whatever).  Over the centuries, this tradition has eroded within popular culture due to individual’s personal choices over generations, with particular effect from our soldiers’ contact with European secularism during World Wars I and II, the choice of public universities to overtly avoid recommending and enforcing any kind or moral values beginning in (approximately) the 1950’s, in part due to an affiliation with something called Darwinianism (that was beginning to be distorted in ways Darwin, I believe, would have disagreed with) and then the rise of a non-system of moral values that had some public face with the beatnik movement and its sloppy form of eastern philosophy infecting pop culture, and carried to the masses of youth more effectively with the swing to rock music being the dominant form in approximately 1962 (not that it was the style of music, but the ideas of persons most influential in that business, whether for reasons of actual personal belief, or merely marketing). Therefore, the revolution, when I was in college, was built around rejecting the values of the previous generation, which was connected to a different style of music, sexual morality, and acceptance of whatever the government and big business told us as being true, and, lastly, truth itself.  As a follower of Jesus, believing, not by blind faith (which ties to eastern beliefs’ not making any claim to being ultimately true), but by believing that there is one God which communicated his ways via the Bible, and that this way of living is consistently defensible historically and scientifically, and that sexual morality, how I treat my body, i.e., recreational drug use,  and the existence of truth and Truth, I stood in a position of being contrary to both this social revolution and the status quo.  Therefore, I was and am a counterrevolutionary.  The original status quo was God before the introduction to the world, and the revolution is against God and toward any of a smorgasboard of sins.

            Today, the world has continued.  People have joked that Marxism has lost respect except in Berkeley, CA.  Certainly, Jihadism, a small but highly influential branch within Islam (that, admitted, many of its adherents disavow) has replaces the Communist countries as the #1 enemy of the U.S.  The Koran is 1/6 the size of the Bible, whereas the complete writings of Marx must be 30 times larger (I am guessing; I saw the set once, but size is also a matter of type style).  Western society has moved on from the counterculture to postmodernism.  I maintain that God, truth, and each man’s desire to do things his own way hasn’t changed.  I am still a counterrevolutionary.

on Christmas--Mary's bravery

            In John 15:16, Jesus says to the disciples, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you…”  This is part of a section, John 15:9-17, where Jesus makes a number of statements to the disciples which we commonly quote out of context, in the sense that they mean something different to us being able to look back on what we who are believers have seen and experienced by living in the New Covenant, and having the Holy Spirit indwelling us and guiding us. Usually, though, the quotes are in a manner consistent with the way Jesus meant them.  I am doing that with this reference. 

            When I came to faith in Jesus, the immediate occurrence was the Holy Spirit speaking into my spirit while I was mowing the front lawn.  The few words impressed into me was a burden until, later that evening, I laid down on my bed, and cried a prayer of repentance.  The notable thing to me is that it felt, to me, like I was making a choice to follow God’s way.  When I read this passage, I know that God is telling me the truth by faith.  I cannot prove to anyone that God chose me.  It felt at the time like I was choosing to follow God, but I know God is far bigger than I.  Like that, I cannot understand how some very intelligent persons who know a lot about theology do not ever become a believer in Jesus, and others do become believers.  The same can be said about persons with average and below average intelligence. 

            I say that in that, in this Christmas season, many are drawn to the Christmas story.

While the beginning of the story comes before creation of the universe, the immediate story starts in Luke 1:26 and following with the angel Gabriel coming to Mary.  We live in a culture, both the Christian subculture and western culture at large, that takes a less than optimal view of girls getting pregnant below the age of 18.  There are good moral and economic reasons for this.  In that culture, which, of course, was before birth control and high in manual labor, which made boys more worthwhile for fathers than girls, the norm in both Jewish and Gentile cultures, girls were married off at an age around the time they began having sexual feelings, which was 12 to 16, and probably 12 to 14.  In Judiasm, the punishment for getting pregnant outside of marriage could be stoning.  When the angel told Mary that she would give birth to the Christ, she would have known that that was an honor that would go to someone, and that there were reasons in Tanak for expecting that to happen at any time.  Still, how the angel was presenting it ran counter to all kinds of cultural norms.  To say, as recorded in Luke 1:38, “ Let it be to me according to your word” comes across to me as simultaneously totally normal for a person who desires to serve God, and shocking act of faith for a person so young. 

            It is effectively an act of saying, effectively, “I’m going to do your will even if it brings all of society down on my head.”  We read that her betrothed, Joseph, was going to allow the betrothal to just never be finished, but the angel speaks to him to go ahead and marry her, but to not consummate the marriage until the child is born.  One must note that the Jewish wedding reception ritual had the marriage consummated during the reception.  To not do so signaled that they had violated Jewish law about sexual activity.  I would imagine that, if Joseph and Mary told their parents the why behind this, they wouldn’t have been believed.  It is generally taught that Joseph was a carpenter, but I have heard at least one theologian state that the word the Bible uses to describe his trade is better translated “one who works with his hands” which meant that he probably worked with stone, a cheaper material, more than wood. A teknon was socially lower than a carpenter. Mary had a socially ruined reputation.  From this comes a child on the social bottom rung, in a poor area of a region on the fringe of the Roman Empire. 

            When it comes to the Christmas season, the thing that strikes me the most is the bravery of Mary.  Yes, I know that she didn’t and couldn’t have known what she was getting into, just the same as each of us when we answer God’s call to go a direction from salvation on through whatever.  To have that kind of faith, at an age possibly as young as 12, puts me in awe of what kind of power the kind of faith only God can give