Church of the Past
As society continues to break down and the Church around us continues to slowly disassemble itself the thought comes to mind of the meaning of Success in our Postmodern Society. It seems as though Success has become the underlying motivation—or lure—for nearly everything we do. Our decisions that we make in life seem to revolve around Success. Whether we think we can have Success or think that Success has evaded us and we are incapable of finding it—our lives are reflecting more and more just how core that value is in our hearts as a Postmodern Society.
This hasn’t always been the core value of humans however. The underlying mode of living has essentially always been survival for human communities. Kingdoms, empires, nations, people groups, tribes, clans, and families have always been drawn together for the sake of survival. There was never really a question of being in an evil and Dark World. It was a world no one could survive on his own. God in the Old Testament held special compassion for the sojourner, the abandoned, the orphan, the widows, and the like because they were the ones who were alone and on their own. But to be in such a state is not fitting for any human, because they will not last on their own—not in an evil, Dark World overtaken by spiritual wickedness, sin, and death.
Church itself originally began as such a community. It was formed as a kingdom among kingdoms. A place meant to be a refuge and beacon of light to all the lost in the Dark World. The New Testament consistently and effectively emphasized the need for its members to work together, to love one another, and to support one another. It was a community of sojourners and pilgrims bonding together as one family that they might be strong and mighty in the midst of a Dark World. It was commanded to do good to all, but especially to those of the Household of Faith. People came to seek salvation, healing, and protection because it was the only hope of survival for the meek, the lowly, the oppressed, and the downtrodden. It exuded a strength that could not ever be defeated though many of the Dark World tried to overcome it. Jesus had told that this was how it would be. He never promised the gates of hell would not touch it. He simply promised that they would never prevail against it. As a new and scattered community in the Dark World it was easy to bind together and strengthen one another to form a family that could resist and overcome the Dark World. And to help the Church out, God sent his greatest Gift to make it possible. The Church was a place of survival.
The Lure of Greatness
Going back to the beginning of the Holy Book we see a reminder of our worst enemy: our pride. It was how our first parents became slaves to the Dark World themselves. The tactic was clear and simple. Lure them with greatness, and the prospect of being glorious, like God even. What’s wrong with wanting to be great after all? What’s wrong with wanting to feel the glories of Success? Surely it is harmless. Go ahead, try it. You’ll like it. You’ll feel good. You deserve to feel good. Why, can’t you see? You’ll be letting others and God down if you don’t make the most of Yourself and reach your highest potential. You are supposed to be successful and awesome like God. You were after all created in His Image, weren’t you? And so has the disease plagued us ever since. All of us. Mankind has consistently been lured by Success.
Yet, for the most part, Success didn’t find a place to call home in too many communities or kingdoms of the world. The Dark World was a difficult place to live for everyone. In fact, it was the lure of Success that destroyed it and made it difficult to live in in the first place. Technology, medicine, education, and wealth hardly existed, except for a very few elite persons. War was always immanent. Kingdoms subduing kingdoms and land being taken and retaken. The way of life was a way of survival and the tribe, clan, family, and kingdom communities were the only hope. It was never a sure hope, but it was, for most of humankind, the only hope. And so the drive was to fortify the family, the clan, or the tribe, and to strengthen and support your kingdom because, even if there were things you didn’t like about it, it protected you as you sought to live in a Dark World. Protection and security was highly valued. Like any nuclear family, you would never split because of differences in interests or disagreements. You needed each other for the sake of survival as individuals in a Dark World. So Success had few occasions to do much damage on a wide scale.
Postmodern Society
With the arrival of a new kind of society in just the last hundred years everything changed. We began to believe our worst as humans. Somehow the Dark World became the Good World. We began to believe that we had the power to change it so. We discovered Technology, Medicine, Education, and Opportunity. We were led to believe that with these we could solve the problems of the world. It wasn’t a Dark World anyway—it was a Good World that just needs some fixing. No longer did we have to worry about survival. It was time to think about Success. Much of the world however remains in survival mode, yet for the Postmodern Society this is not a problem. With a little bit of work and a little bit of time they will be enlightened themselves and they will understand.
The Postmodern Society then has brought an entirely new era to humankind–the way of life being built on the promise of Success and Greatness. There is no need for survival because all things and people are good. Tabula rasa. There is no evil here. Evil is something that can’t be corrected without God. So if you take evil out of the equation all that really remains is a lack of Technology, Medicine, Education, and Opportunity—and humans can fix these. We don’t need God. Subsequently, the opportunity for all of us as individuals to be Great has far exceeded the opportunity to humans in any other age. Meaning and significance in family, tribe, clan, or kingdom became outdated and obsolete. They are unnecessary for Success and Greatness and in fact are liable to hold you back from it. The Postmodern Society speaks to its children with a lure so powerful and a promise so great that Adam and Eve themselves would probably turn over in their graves if they saw it. It tells its children that not only is it possible for you as an individual to be Great, but it is your destiny to be Great. Hope was quickly dislodged from being firmly established in a family and was transplanted in self: I am the means to my own salvation, survival, and success. The first act of disobedience by our parents finally found a place for real revival but this time forget about taking a single apple from the tree and eating it—we’re gonna grow a whole damn orchard of apple trees, harvest them, and sell them for profit!
In addition, the daughters of Eve were to find themselves in a position that none of their mothers ever knew. Women everywhere have found the lure afforded to them just as much as to the men of the Postmodern Society. They could make their own way to Greatness and Success. No longer did women need men or men need women for survival. There was no Dark World and there was no need for survival. Brothers didn’t need each other. Sisters didn’t need each other. In the Postmodern Society, Success is the name of the Game and those things tend to get in the way anyway. There may be perhaps occasion to need them, but it is in a twisted way as to be expedient to the Success of the individual and not survival. The question is no longer Will they protect me? but rather, Will they make me Great and Successful? So women and men leave each other in droves lured and enticed away by the illusion of Success. Child bearing turned into a commodity to be bought only if you felt it made you feel Greater. Sex was made available to all as pacifier to escape the reality of the Dark World and turned it into a meritorious achievement to earn status among men. You were not as Successful and Great as those who had more of it than you.
The Breakdown
Suffice it to say, a reality has begun to emerge that is showing our repeated, fatal flaw of eating the Apple. More people here live alone than at any other time in history. Children have been killed, destroyed, and orphaned in the name of Success. We didn’t realize what all the divorce would really do to children. We figured for sometime they would be fine. After all, you didn’t need the family for survival anyway. We didn’t realize that sex apart from marriage would leave us feeling trashed, empty, diseased with many physical illnesses, and left with the very thing that we considered a hindrance to our Success and Greatness and in fact now makes even survival extremely difficult: fatherless and motherless children. We didn’t realize these children would end up committing mass murders in their schools, homicides on the streets, and suicides in their lonely houses—before they ever even grew up.
The Church, in its strong tendency to prostitute itself with the world—yes even the Dark World—was definitely not immune to the lure of Success and became itself a means to Success and Greatness for many. More churches have died and are dying than we probably realize because of this. Some die because they are not Great or Successful, so people abandon them and leave them for dead in pursuit of Greatness. Other churches die because we try to build them and make them in the name of Greatness and Success and we know that such churches can never last very long before we find ourselves disillusioned with what we thought was going to be…Great. Or we find ourselves numbed to the reality of the Dark World, entranced by the feeling of Success, and losing sight of the light of the Word of God which tells us we are sojourners and pilgrims in a Dark World which happens to be an enemy of God.
The Hope
God had destined a Family for his own possession–a Family of Hope and Salvation through the blood of his own dear family member—his Son. We as a his people have lost sight of the purpose of Church, the purpose of the family, and consequently our strength as a community to withstand the gates of hell. Being and meeting together as a Church, doing Church, leading Church should never been a means to Greatness or Success. It was intended to be a refuge in the darkness. A place where we could survive, but also thrive in the Dark World (a.k.a. survival abundantly). He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. If we have the right objectives in mind, we are a light that the darkness cannot comprehend. But as long as we give ourselves to the lure of Success, our churches, and our children, will suffer. We must learn to come together to find strength and healing, not to find Greatness. Church is not a commodity or anyone’s accomplishment. It will not work to lead Church, plant churches, start ministries, or open organizations with the idea of achievement and success in mind just as we cannot lead and build families with the idea of success in mind. It simply does not work—it never has, and only leaves things in ruin. We have to come back to the reality that the Way of Life is about endurance and perseverance, and not accomplishment or success. Endurance and perseverance is only possible with each other—we cannot make it alone. The sin of this lure is great, and we are all giving into it.