Winter Wonderland

Winter is at high tide in Madison. After last week's seven inches, this place is beautiful. I went out snowshoeing in a greenbelt south of town, and saw red-tailed hawks and whitetail deer.

It's tempting, when it's really cold and windy out, to spend the whole day indoors. But we really need to push ourselves to taste the season, and not just for the physical stimulation. Showshoeing is good for one's circulation, but seeking out beauty in a numbingly cold day is good for the soul. When the weather gets bad - and the weather gets very, very bad in these parts - and one hasn't learned how to live and laugh with the season, one could easily grow bitter about life in Wisconsin.

When my family moved here, while I was in high school, I was unhappy about the prospect. "Wisconsin?!" I said, "there's nothing to do in Wisconsin." My dad told me something that has changed my life: "When we get to Wisconsin," he said, "You're going to find people living there, who've lived there for a while. Most of them have had the option to move away, but they've chosen to stay.

"Your job is to find out why."

I've now been here for twelve years. My parents eventually had the option to move away, back to Idaho, but I've remained, trying to answer my dad's question. Why do people live here? The sight of that red-tail, floating across a winter wonderland, is part of the answer. It's just a small answer to the question of land, culture and belonging.

Religion Kills

According to a church in Atlanta, “Religion Kills.” That’s the message they’ve emblazoned on t-shirts for sale on their website.

But this is a church, after all. They have pastors and Bibles, and they preach about Jesus Christ. If that’s not religion, we’re merely quibbling over semantics. "Religion is death,” the reasoning must go, “and we’re about life. Therefore we must not be affiliated with religion.”

The folks at GetReligion quote the NY Times, which ran a profile of the church:

Revolution is one of several thousand alternative ministries that have emerged in the last decade, meeting in warehouses, bars, skate parks, punk clubs, private homes or other spaces, in a generational rumble to rebrand the faith outside of what we think of as church.

So far so good. With clean-cut preachers and non-offensive worship services, the evangelical subculture in the United States is inaccessible to many down-and-outers. Revolution and similar churches provide that change. But then it gets ugly:

To travel among them is to feel returned to the alternative-rock scene of 15 years ago, just before Nirvana and Lollapalooza put it on the map. Instead of criticizing major record labels, these ministries criticize megachurches; instead of flattening the status of the rock star, they flatten the status of the pastor.

It's always a losing proposition to define yourself negatively – by what you aren’t. Revolution is a case in point. They're more afraid of looking like a “religion” than they are of spiritual immaturity. With their intentionally offensive “religion kills” campaign, they pronounce a radical gulf between themselves and the mainstream church. They are angered by the church, and with good reason: the church provides no home for these skater-punks.

But while it’s fine and good to give to the disenfranchised a Jesus who looks like them, it sure appears Jesus’ message of hope for the broken has taken a back seat to peer acceptance by those outside the church. After all, reconciliation and communion with the (embarrassingly conventional) Church would be “selling out.” In this twisted gospel, street credibility supersedes actual spiritual healing. And the appearance of freedom prevails over true freedom, because true power lies not in individual assertion, but in loving your enemies: just ask Martin Luther King.

Why does this matter? This is a blog about Home. Home is a place, but it’s also a state of belonging.

Revolution is preaching a gospel of individualism – a faith of alone. There is no belonging in their message, save in a metaphysical, “Jesus-is-my-home” sort of way.

But the gospel is not a story of individuals. It is a story of a community - one with dysfunctions, contradictions and major quarrels. God’s love, somehow, miraculously, manifests itself through this messed-up medium. Part of the miracle of salvation is the very existence of a community of eternal love and reconciliation. There is real peace, real well-being, real wholeness – in a word, shalom – in this message.

But the “good news” proclaimed by Revolution is partial good news: Yes, Jesus loves you, but you’re still alone. And your best hope at community remains the community you came from. You certainly don’t want to turn to the church for a home.

And the Revolutionaries are left with the same ghosts they came in with. They can’t grow up, and they’re not challenged to reconcile. It’s self-segregation and it’s ultimately unsustainable. After all, if we aren’t in community – if we don’t have a home - our souls will die.