matrix theology

We are the age of the disenfranchised.  We have everything, so we have nothing.  We have no needs, so we are consumed by our wants.  We can choose any path, so we choose none.  We have every possible resource, so we take advantage of none of them.  Ours are the generations that have everything, but we possess little.

We are the book of Ecclesiastes.  We have known every pleasure, every entertainment, every possible source of happiness – and we find it all wanting.  The generations before us accuse of being wasteful, but we simply do not see the need to continue to expend energy trying to derive pleasure from empty shadows.  We are maniacally depressed because we are faced with a world that holds no challenges.

Distance
My grandfather took weeks to cross the Atlantic so he could be involved in Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa in 1942.  My friends and cousins were dispatched to Iraq and were there in hours.  They didn’t even need to wash up when they arrived.

I have another friend who helps people translate the Bible.  In the course of a year, he will be in at least five or six countries – separated by thousands of miles, and he travels there quicker than anything you’ve ever seen.

Determination
Out of this chaos, this constant lifestyle, many of us are beginning to refuse to tolerate the world as is.  Rather than letting our world make us, we are determining to change our world.  We are brash, unexpected and somtimes down right rude.  We are frustrated, complex and often come off as angry.  We are determined not to be forced into a mold of someone else’s making.

This expresses itself in many ways – we are often the most cliquish but there are a significant number of us who refuse to be pinned down.  We often are forced to live in the shadows of greatness but we are going to emerge from the shadows and loom large over those who came before us.

Politics
My American Generation X would have been the largest generation in the history of our nation, if our parents had not aborted our brothers and sisters.  We would have been the greatest generation if there had been any great accomplishments left for us to achieve.  We will still usher in the age of America’s greatness, because we are now old enough to hold office and make policy.

It probably frightens the establishment to see some of us coming.  There’s a majority of our generation, as in generations before, who are sheep.  But there are many more of us who are not going to be led to slaughter.  We refuse to be cornered as Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative.  We know what is right, and we speak our minds.

Barriers
Ours is the generation that says “To hell with culture!” and throws the boundaries away.  Some of us are standing up and screaming at the rest of us because we see them being manipulated by advertisement and propaganda.  Our generation is a generation that is filled with latent activism, and watch out of it is released.

We are the generation who is going to eradicate bigotry and learn that there is only one race.  We are the generation who will acknowledge that we are all the inferior race.

Our parents look at us and say we have no boundaries, no rules.  We look at them and ask how long they’ve been tied to the chair of ridiculous restriction.  We choose to re-invent ourselves, not simply follow the dictates of culture.

Religion
We are bringing a revolution to the churches because some of us refuse to be tied down and entangled in out-dated rhetoric and used up methodologies.  Church is morphing into real life, and the distinction between sacred and secular is disappearing as we embrace truth whereever we find it.

The church that is emerging is re-invented, not simply reformed.  We are learning that the Jesus-life is the only answer to the emptiness that fills the world our parents gave us.  We are learning that when you live like Jesus, you unleash love, joy and peace on a world that has none little of them.

We are discovering that Jesus did not wear a suit to church, that the religious minority is wrong about him.  We are gettig to know him for the first time.

The Tension
Of course, this brings us into conflict with the generations before us.  They fear that we will bring anarchy, sometimes because they have never known true freedom.  They fear that we reject absolute truth, when in reality, we are recklessly pursuing it.  They fear that we will give people license to become libertine – taking whatever they want, whenever they wnt; but all we really want is the liberty to let truth, morality and faith to stand on their own without the props and restrictions.

It is easy to accuse us of being many things right now because our full potential isn’t released yet.  We are still young – we range from forty to fourteen.  But we are coming.  You’ve been warned.