| Today starts a new adventure in a new book. A section of Walter Brueggemann's book "Texts that Linger, Words that Explode, called 'Always in the Shadow of Empire." The reasons why our time is now commonly judged to be a season of tension are not difficult to detect. It seems evident that technological individualism coupled with unlimited and unbridled corporate power and corporate wealth that appear to be beyond the governance of nation-states has created a set of cultural values that are aggressively antihuman. There are times when church and cultural context can live in some kind of mutuality; but this is not one of those times, for gospel rootage requires resistance to such aggressive antihumanism. Such resistance in turn requires great intentionality, embodied in concrete disciplines of body, mind and heart. For without such disciplines, it is evident that the church community will either be massaged and seduced until it is co-opted, or it will end in the powerlessness of despair. For an opening thought at the beginning of a chapter, I've been sucked in. There are not enough words being spoken or written about how a counter-cultural reality like the church is to live in, with, and under the culture of the day. Even the movement that deal primarily with how we worship or the setting of worship or the setting of study do not address the character of the body of Christ in a culture that has written itself all over us. Counter-cultural has become nothing more than putting another face - maybe a age appropriate or community appropriate face - on the same old antihuman practices of society as we have it. I'm not a very disciplined person and yet I realize that if I do not have a way to remind me of what is the life of the Reign of God I will be a part of the whole system. That is not to say that I am not a part of the whole system. Geez, I'm so much a part of it - I must, absolutely must, be aware of how easy it is to slip into the subtle ways of culture that can eventually overwhelm me and turn me away from the way of Jesus. What will stick with me - at least for today - will be these words "technological individualism coupled with unlimited and unbridled corporate power and corporate wealth. They will stick because they need to stick - like a warning light so that I move in another direction or treat it all as an alien power. Connection: How hard is it to re-view everything about the day? The church is a people who re-view things together. In that way, we do not lose ourselves or become too easily seduced. Already, O God, you take us by the hand and tell us to hold on. We need to hold on because there are so many other things that attempt to win our hearts and our lives. By the power of your Spirit, inspire our vision and our actions. Amen. | 
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