by Simon
•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at [email protected]
A prominent Bahamian religious leader liked to say that he was in the business of selling hope. Apparently, hope is a marketable service and bankable commodity.
Quite often, hope is promoted as a gift dispensed by time-bound reverends; rather than as a gift grounded in an eternal source.
To ensure that your slickly packaged brand of hope doesn’t lose market share, your product constantly needs to be hyped as new and improved. Or at least better than the hope-charmers’ next door.
Like food and energy prices, the cost of hope continues to escalate. It seems that markets can be manipulated in both the material and the non-material realms.
Spiritual hope is a genuine article of faith, suffused with healing wellsprings of renewal and restoration, replenishment and recovery, and redemption and release. Hope reminds us that, “There is a balm in Gilead. To make the wounded whole” and “To heal the sin sick soul.”
But like counterfeit money and designer knock-offs, there is always a marketplace bustling with false hope, the illusion of hope and the audacity of hopelessness, masquerading as the genuine article.
Just as bogus hope can be designed, marketed and sold; so too a related product line -- fear. Mass advertising and mass hope/fear mongering often attempt to manipulate our individual anxieties, insecurities and inadequacies as well as our social fears and prejudices.
Our desire for economic security is rewired as a spiritual materialism which suggests that God’s favour is often best manifested in the person who dies with the most toys.
Our desire for spiritual growth is often rewired as a spirituality more comfortable with theatrics, superficiality and material success.
Likewise, our desire for order and certainty, in an uncertain world, often comes at the expense of those whom we conveniently blame for our own moral failings.
For easy reference, the catalogue of fear is organized by broader categories such as Hysteria, Moral Panic, and Scapegoating et al. Listed under each section is a diet of poisonous options, such as xenophobia, homophobia, racism and a hornet’s nest of other us versus them targets.
Asked his thoughts regarding Western Civilization, Mohandas Gandhi retorted that it would be a good idea. A Bahamian Gandhi, asked for his or her thoughts about a Christian Bahamas, might reply similarly.
For many of us, Christianity is an adornment, decoration or accessory: easily purchased and worn on our sleeves; exchangeable, depending on fashion and circumstance; or used like a superstition – as an amulet to ward off evil spirits or as a lottery ticket to gain material success.
These brands of cheapened Christianity, fixated with heavenly revenue streams that flow from an ocean of blue marlins, promote saccharine, shallow and simplistic hope. They luxuriate in fear.
Hope, like love, can not simply be a state of perpetual rapture. Rather, it is an enduring commitment to human and spiritual truths beyond our own personal desires, comfort zones, private rewards and self-help schemes.
A more authentic version of hope is often found among those public sinners, courageous enough to enter ironically named Anonymous programmes dealing with alcohol, drugs, sex, food, gambling and a tribe of addictions.
They know that hope is not quick and easy, that genuine conversion begins with at least a dozen steps and that hope should not be confused with simplistic optimism or positive thinking. If it were only that easy.
They have few illusions regarding how difficult it is to put down a crack pipe or stop reaching for that morning hit of rum to get the day going. Few illusions, regarding how difficult it is to resist the high of just one more round of poker that slowly gambles away one’s future..
They know that they may be only one drink, one hit, or one-armed bandit away from falling. This fosters a steely brand of hope that is not self-righteous or self-absorbed or judgmental or sentimental.
They know that hope can not be purchased with dollar bills or hackneyed clichés. Everything doesn’t always happen for a reason. But amidst even life’s most difficult challenges, God’s goodness and mercy breathe hope.
Like individual journeys of hope and conversion, social transformation also requires the audacity of hope. But instead of the richness of hope upon which individual conversion and social justice are built, poor substitutes often stand in the gap.
One of these is what has often been called the Gospel of prosperity. In an inversion and subversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, an odd trinity of material success, fame and political power, has become synonymous with kingdom building. Do these temptations sound familiar?
A witness to such a Gospel in the United States is the Rev. Dr. Creflo A. Dollar Jr. who graced the front cover of the magazine “Hope Today” in 2007.
Rev. Dollar is reported to be personally quite wealthy. It seems that his “spiritual” wealth includes a luxury vehicle, expensive homes and access to a private jet. He notes that his wealth is proof of his teachings.
Here at home, if you failed to attend a recent seminar promoting wealth, you may have missed your chance to get on a yellow brick road inlaid with bling-bling.
The advertisement promoting the event included a luxury sports car, a private jet and a humongous house/crib with a four car garage. Perhaps one of the garages can be used to park the jet. That still leaves another garage for the yacht that’s still to come.
Nowhere in the ad was the ultimate symbol of Christianity -- the Cross. When did Versace, BMW, or a Lear jet become a substitute for the Cross?
Financial and economic stewardship and sharing in the world’s goods are things for which the Christian community must relentlessly advocate. Indeed this is a part of the work of social and economic justice.
But Christian existence must be amphibious. It must be able to live in two worlds at once; never too other-worldly or too caught up in our limited days.
Unfortunately, many people of the cloth, parading around in designer suits and ecclesiastical garb, are so busy dining at Pharaoh’s table and seeking handouts and appointments; that they have lost their ability to offer the dynamism of hope our country sorely needs.
While some stir up apathy, others are more comfortable stoking fears and obscuring the Good News with a vision of the Kingdom that is often perpetually dark.
Why do so many religious leaders seem more comfortable with Good Friday and intimidated by Easter Sunday?
To offer genuine hope, you have to stop repeating the tiresome cliché that everything is worse than it has ever been. Our slave ancestors may beg to differ. While many things are worse, many things continue to improve.
Next to Jesus at his crucifixion was Dismas, a condemned man, at the edge of his existence and tempted by despair. Even during one of the darkest moments in his, as well as in human history, Jesus supplanted fear with hope.
He brought salvation to a criminal stripped of everything, including the worldly goods chased after by many, who often morph this spiritual path into a for-profit business of selling hope.
Perhaps the symbol for this business should be the dollar, or because of its increasing value, the Euro. But it certainly shouldn’t be the cross. That is the kind of gimmickry that might make even Madison Avenue queasy.
Amen brother!
I am very tired of this faux Christianity... I am even more tired of its influence in Parliament.
Our drug policy, due to heavy Christian moralism, is retarded and locks up many people for minor offences. Our gambling and lottery policy is likewise retarded. Our policies on abortion and homosexuality are anachronistic. Our education system is completely deficient and a large part of it has to do with all the 'religious education' that they spend time on in school. Math, languages and science people! That is what students in the modern world need. It is why Asia is kicking our ass and the American's asses. All of these areas are held back by so called 'Christian morality'.
You show me a bonafide Christian in the Bahamas and I will show you a living Dodo bird!
Posted by: EB Christen | June 18, 2008 at 02:34 PM