I posted this on mySpace and wanted (and was encouraged) to post it where people might care and even react and respond. So here goes.....
Pop culture frustrates me daily
Everyday I am reminded how much our society has lost it's f-ing mind as a whole. Even my very own friends irritate me with their ignorance to the world sometimes. I even irritate myself. We all sit around and shoot the shit and talk politics and world affairs. Some seem to care, some don't. But those of us that do, get all heated about it and then proceed with our lives and do nothing. And I become frustrated because with what little I do to do the things I feel I should be, seems never to be enough to counter the disgusting mounting pop-culture God that is marketed everday in our homes, on the streets and to our youth. So many are taught of this spiteful God who does not tolerate the"filth" of our world. The message of loving in faith has been buried with those who once taught it. Occasionally I come across an individual or community that seems to have their shit straight. It pleases me pink to find others in this world that feel our love and care for folks is our duty as a community of faith. I was driving past a rather large church the other day and their flashing billboard showing their message of the week said, "Who invented sex?" Where have we (as a church) gone wrong when people stop searching for true community and start going for a catchy-little-poppy message for an hour every Sunday. That is not what Christ taught. Then the argument comes up that Christ taught in parables. But his message was not some cutsey life lesson to better yourself and find happiness. It was about living together in faith during our time here and getting the heck out there and loving on others and showing the purest of pure loves to all, not just those who seem to deserve it. We were not taught to pick and choose. We were taught to love all, even those it is our human desire to hate. So, as I sit frustrated with discussion after discussion that shows that so many around me do not see what I do, I am also left reminding myself that all I can do is try to tell them and to love them even if they do not listen or care to hear. Some of the greatest lovers of people I have met are not "of faith" and some of the most lost have claimed the Lord as their guide. I am just trying to do the best I can to love the way He did, though I fail miserably sometimes.
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Much of what you're saying leads back to self-preservation and self-agrandizing short-sightedness. We should love sacrificially, and we know it. But when we see images of children in Africa or South and Central America on our TVs we are either compelled to change the change out of fear of being duped or we view it as on par with any other commercial. The same could be said about our avoidance of aiding the homeless and destitute in our own cities and neighborhoods. I like the way that De La Soul put it about ten years ago, there aren't neighborhoods any more just hoods filled with animals, with animal behavior.
But unfortunately even this is an inadequate representation of our situation. One animal's consumption of another is not out of any malevolence toward the other. They're usually preserving some balance within the ecosystem. But when a corporation deliberately sets out to increase their profits through destructive means, whether that's building bombs or exploitinging the "nag factor" in children to force parents to purchase superfluous things, their disregard for both human life and the relationship between parent and child is a calculated form of wickedness that persists because we pigs love wallowing in our own filth.
In short, I agree with you. The appropriate response (not answer but response, answer implies an immediate solution) to abusive, dehumanizing evil in the world is self-less, unconditional, communal love. And to create that someone has to live an alternative story to the one that's pervasive in a specific culture.
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