Gimme Shelter

I made the remark to several friends recently that in the last decade, my walk with God has alternated between something resembling the Bataan Death March and visits to Chuck E. Cheese. I feel as if I’m wandering a Dali-esque landscape – this North-East American evangelicalism – stumbling past crumbling monuments to long-lost vitality, inbred enclaves hunkered in their private Alamo, and crowds of junk-food thrill-seekers queuing up for the next Big Top show.

A Post-Modern spirituality? How about Post-Apocalyptic? This is The Road. The Book of Eli.

There must be a reactor leak, or virus running rampant, because I keep encountering strange life forms, mutant creatures: ambulatory dessicated husks, cynical survivors, the feral, the frivolous, the freakish. And everywhere, everywhere, everywhere I’m surrounded by the spiritually dead and dying.

I’m threading through the wreckage of friends’ lives. Ignored. Discarded. Wounded and left for dead because they can’t further an agenda any longer. I’m seeing congregations adrift in the doldrums, ministers commiserating, reminiscing, or hallucinating.

Grace and Truth? The weightier matters of Justice, Mercy and Faith? Sin, Faith, Repentance? No, squander and squabble are the order of the day. The treasure of Scripture is ransacked for chapter and verse to polish the latest fool’s gold of Church-growth programs.

And here I thought Jesus would build His Church, founded on the simple, powerful revelation of Himself as Savior.

Selfish shepherds. Shallow services. Starving sheep.

People asked me why I write fiction. Because sometimes it makes more sense than real life.