Creative Team Building and Leadership Resources - In our Elements

Appetite for Destruction

Friday, October 14th, 2011

Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (I Corinthians 15:20-28) transports me to my adolescent years of the mid 70s, when fantasies of destruction came in the form of heavy metal music and mid-Atlantic championship wrestling matches. It was the era of KISS’ Destroyer album and the fearsome threats of the masked Super Destroyer in the squared circle. I was right up at the stage when the Destroyer tour brought KISS to the Civic Center; I even got some of Gene Simmons’ fake blood on my t-shirt, as he belted out God of Thunder. My school notebooks that year were filled with doodling attempts at drawing the KISS faces. And while I don’t remember Don Jardine’s masked Super Destroyer being at the Civic Center any of the times I went to cheer on Johnny Valentine and Rick Flair, I saw him plenty on the Saturday afternoon tv. He amazed even the fans who hated him whenever he would walk across the top rope, and he instilled fear in his opponents with the dreaded Iron Claw. His feuds with Paul Jones, Wahoo McDaniels, and Jack Brisco were the stuff of legend. So, between the heavy metal influences of the Destroyer album and the menacing influences of wrestling’s Super Destroyer, it’s quite a wonder that I maintained faith in the gospel of peace and love.

It’s quite a wonder that Paul maintained faith in the gospel of love, with all the persecution and beating and jailing he endured at the hands of the powers that be. All because he preached Christ crucified and gave hope of resurrection life. And yet, I think it’s fair to say that Paul had his own fantasies of destruction swimming around in his head, alongside the gospel words of grace and mercy and reconciliation. Here in his letter to the Corinthian church, he envisions an end to all the persecution, a day when Christ will destroy every ruler and every authority and every power and then hand the Kingdom over to God. All his enemies will be under his feet, including the last enemy, death itself. Every ruler. Every power. Was Paul speaking spiritually here, of the principalities and powers of the air, or was he envisioning an end to all flesh and blood rulers and authorities? Or both?

Much is made these days of the menacing “Dominion” theology that is supposedly behind the masks of many religious politicians. There is quite a bit of wailing and teeth gnashing over the prospects of a particular strain of Christianity taking over all the seats of power in government, exercising dominion over the earth. I don’t bother too much with all the efforts to “unmask” the politicians who are influenced by this theology. I figure most everybody who has an interest in governance has some kind of dominion theology going on; everybody wants their particular world view to occupy the seats of power. The problem I have with the Dominionist folks is that their brand of Christianity doesn’t seem to have much Christ in it. But if I’m to take Paul seriously, I don’t have to worry about that, either. The hope is that one day the power of love really will take over. Grace and mercy really will triumph. And every power that compels us to hate, every authority that inspires us to fear, every ruler that influences us to engage in violence, all these spirits of destruction will themselves be utterly destroyed by the ultimate Super Destroyer. By love. Through grace. And that’s when we’ll see the hope we sing about in Handel’s Messiah fully realized – and the government will be upon his shoulders. When the true God of Thunder takes the stage, Paul’s vision will be complete – every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. Love rules. Shout it, shout it, shout it out loud.

How about you? Where does this Pastoral Passage take you on your journey of faith? Feel free to comment.

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  • I Corinthians 15:20-28

    Daily Passages

    This Week's Theme:
    "End Times"

    "Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death."
    -I Corinthians 15:24-26

    *I love how we call snippets of scripture “passages,” and I love imagining these words as actual passageways that transport us to all sorts of places in our journeys of faith. Daily Passages is a weekday trek through scripture, connecting the ancient sacred words with everyday human words from personal history and culture: music, art, film, politics, literature, religion.

    As a part of In Our Elements, the blog most closely associates with the element of Fire. Think about how the Bible speaks of God’s word as a fire, and how it also describes the human tongue as a fire, for good and ill. These fiery passages connecting the sacred text with human experience remind me of the “floo network” in the Harry Potter series. This means of transportation in J.K. Rowling's wizarding world uses the fireplace and some “floo powder” to quickly get folks from one place to another. Unlike the Harry Potter floo network, though, the destination of Daily Passages is not known until we take the plunge into the fire.

    My hope in this blog is that a daily adventure through scripture and experience will provide a different starting point for our everyday conversations. What would happen if we took our cues for what we talk about each day from a passage of sacred text, instead of the set agendas we carry around with us each day? What if our talking points came from a story of Jesus, or a Psalm, instead of the talking heads on radio or reality tv? I’m not sure where that kind of shift would take us as a culture, but I’m betting that it would head us in a better direction than our present course. So join me in the fire, join me in the floo network of faith. Join me in the Daily Passage to God knows where. And if you find these passages useful or meaningful, please pass them on and share them with your networks of family and friends.