More than Kool-aid

I have been pondering many things this morning. Jim and I were talking last night about the parts of the Kingdom that we miss. There are many. The Sabbath, the Feasts, the tradition, the infinite extended family. We agreed that we both still feel loss even though we would never go back to the way things were.

Yes, I chafed under the rules. I never quite fit, but I belonged. My feet always had a place to stand. And I guess I do miss the sense of purpose. The connection to something more.

A few months ago someone left the television on in the other room. From where I was in the house, I could hear the voice of a faith healer calling through the screen.

"Repeat after me out loud. OUT LOUD," he commands.

"Lord, Jesus..."

And the crowd obeys.

"Come into my life right now."

And the crowd mumbles back and then everyone cheers.

What is it about spiritual authority that so attracts and repels? What missing pieces keeps us searching for something more? How do people get taken in?

Remember George Orwell's Animal Farm?

From the moment Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer stepped out from between the pages of Orwell's novella, Animal Farm, into my imagination, I was reminded of the Kingdom structure. Not unlike the elite class on Orwell's Animal Farm, certain Kingdom leaders manipulated information to exploit the others in the name of truth for their own purposes.

Orwell's porcine princes set out to form a utopian society. They constructed fair rules by which all would live. They posted the rules. And, then told others what the rules said. What they meant. How they should be lived. In the final chapter of the book, if you remember, all rules are broken save the last which has been modified to read: "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Even principled people are corrupted by power.

The human condition requires the hope of something more. C.S. Lewis talks about the "eternal weight of glory." Lewis recognized it is that very longing that motivates us toward heaven or hell, to becoming a child of God or of the Devil. He also understands that we do not journey alone instead we intertwine with our fellow sojourners. No action of ours is neutral; each holds eternal consequences for us and for those whose lives we touch.

And people have been drawn by this through the ages. Purpose. Community. Understanding. Interconnectedness. More often this longing inspires someone take a yoga class, join a reading group, take a creative writing class, study enlightenment, or eat chocolate.

But the intrinsic longing for utopist ideals sometimes causes people sell their homes and move their families half way across the country to join religious movements. Young zealots, fresh from college, are seduced by charismatic men of God and fall into the rigid strictures of "community." And, manic depressive leaders build their vision on the backs of those who want to believe.

Sometimes they do drink the Kool-aid. And sometimes they die in fires when the government storms their compound. Sometimes they build spaceships and lie down to die in hopes of reaching The Kingdom Level Above Human.

Sometimes I think those may be the lucky ones. Lucky because they died believing instead of living to learn the truth.