Take Your Crusade and Shove It!
- Mike Gunn
- Nov 30, 2004
- Series: Other
Why is it that we seem to hate zealots? You know -- those nut jobs who stand outside ballgames with bullhorns shouting, “Turn or burn!” while wearing placards decrying everything from “pill poppers” to “Simpsons watchers.” Is it because we know for sure that these zealots are wrong, or because we don’t like what we hear? Or is it possible that we simply disdain those with a clear vision and focus in their lives? After all, these people seem to be so “narrow minded!” Where do they get off telling us what to do? How dare they turn opinion into some sort of ideal foisted upon our liberal (and, of course, open) minds?
I suggest that “tolerance” has made us sort of bored, and even boring. There is an old proverb, “If you don’t have anything to die for, then you don’t have anything to live for.” There is some truth to this proverb when moral outrage takes a back seat to niceties and a pluralism that has done more to create ethical confusion than any previous moral theory.
Ultimately, what gives anyone the right to express moral outrage? Or a better question: does the right to express moral outrage even exist? Because if the right to moral outrage exists, then some standard for morality or cultural superiority must also exist. Recently there have been three interesting incidents that have called my attention to these questions.
A few months back, I was reading one in of the local newspapers about a woman who had left a good paying job to become an evangelist for her cause. She became a “Born Again” Vegan and began her journey to preach the doctrine of a meatless diet. Substitute the word “Christian” for “Vegan,” and “gospel” for “meatless diet,” and the article would discuss the aforementioned whacko evangelists who litter our streets with tons of paper tracts. This woman had also dedicated her own life to her personal “good news,” her own moral crusade, and expected people to change when they heard the “truth” about animal cruelty, and meat/protein diets.
Then there’s the documentary I recently watched about Immaterial John, a crusader who lives on $3600 a year (yes, that’s a year), and who only creates one pound of garbage a year. His cause? Solid waste, and America’s propensity towards wasteful consumption. He is manic about his cause, and has the zealousness of a Pharisee on steroids.
Both of these people have connected to a purpose greater than themselves, and both live with a single-minded passion and evangelistic fervor that might embarrass our often idle and passionless Christianity. Many of us, however, find the “good intentions” of John and his Vegan sister wasted and misguided. Their causes seem either impossible or irrelevant, and their actions an attempt to “impose” their moral views on others -- which doesn’t sit too well with a culture that believes that all moral opinions are equally valid and relative.
A third incident occurred in a wealthy suburb of Seattle that has been dealing with the moral dilemma of whether or not to allow “Tent City” (a mobile community of homeless people) to roost in their community. Generally, the citizens have been outraged by the potential “danger” to their community, and sought legal action to bar Tent City from using public land. It was then that a local Catholic congregation stepped up, and gave Tent City permission to stay on their premises; but the locals are still seeking legal action against Tent City and the church.
This all caused me to reflect that, in a world of moral ambiguity and passionless living, there should be no real reason for moral outrage. Yet here these suburbanites were, passionately protesting care for the poor, disenfranchised and hopeless. Ironic. But still they protest, and still Immaterial John and that Vegan woman take moral stands based on their convictions.
I contend that any passionate protest, any crusade for morality, supports the existence of a moral lawgiver -- a righteous judge who demands justice. Historically, it has been the Church -- like the Catholic congregation that came to Tent City’s rescue -- that has, in all her resplendent beauty and ugliness, led us to care about those who are disenfranchised. And thank God for that! Moral change comes first from changed lives, which in turn come from a real, moral God working in those lives to change them. Our moral foundation comes from His very being -- not from an arbitrary opinion, or a vague “higher value.” Humans love because He loves; we are driven to act justly because He acts justly (whether or not we think He does, in our finite opinion); we find grace and forgiveness in our hearts because He first grants grace and forgiveness.
When any of us -- any of us -- acts in love, grace, justice, mercy or compassion, we act in the image by which we are created -- an image we cannot completely deny. We are hopelessly moral animals, because we are graciously created in God’s moral image.
That being the case, Immaterial John and the Vegan are acting in concert with the justice that God has imbedded in their hearts, no matter how misguided we feel their actions may be. I think we can embrace moral zeal. God knows there are many things that we need to be outraged about in the events of our times. Let’s do so in concert with word of the God whose very nature tells us there’s a difference between our culture’s values and those that move His heart..
Contributed by Pastor Mike Gunn from Harambee Church. An Acts 29 Church planted in South Seattle.
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