Interesting stuff.
Naomi Klein contrasts different responses to global crisis, and specifically uses this term- ‘Rapture rescue’- a kind of global economic secular event through which some get saved, and others get left behind.
We see this perhaps in the response to terrorism- there is in the West a longing for some kind of second coming to sweep aside the evil and leave us safe in our holy escape pods. Some used to believe that war would achieve this.
Or perhaps capitalism itself could be seen in this way- there are those who believe– who live well and play to the rules of the holy market, and the unfaithful. Some of these can be rescued- but only by becoming like us.
Then there is climate change, which Klein talks about a lot here. Those who still deny the science seem bound up in a defensive wall of self interest. The crisis is external doubt, and the possibility of a threat to a way of life.
The ‘Rapture’ image hit me hard, as it makes a lot of sense- religion is both the engine of our underlying assumptions about the world, and also the means through which we justify and apply a kind of sacred redemption to our actions and lifestyles.
This being true, how might our faith still be an engine, but rather an engine for grace– for us, our neighbours and our environment? How might this lead us to work for change NOW, not to wall ourselves away from the unfaithful, the undeserving, the already-lost?
Well I liked the simplicity of what Klein said, here-
“If we want the transformation, we can’t wait for it to happen in some massive jolt, we have to plan for it and model it…”
“Only a crisis, actual or perceived produces real change, and when that change occurs this depends on the ideas that are lying around. That is our function, to keep ideas alive until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
We Christians are carriers of perhaps the best ideas- contained within the life of Jesus. Our function is to keep these stories alive, and to try to live them out in our context.
Well our context is changing…
