Red Carpet Apocalypse
The Brave New World, Mind Control, and the Evangelical Machine
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
Aldous Huxley, Berkeley Address, 1962
They say the robots, when they took over, built a chapel on the charcoaled remains of the bodies they burned. No pews, no altar, no stained glass—this was a different sort of chapel. The sign out front, in fact, didn’t say Chapel at all. It read:
The Center for Emotional Wellness.
Inside people lay reclining in pods that adjusted, automatically, to suit their moods. A soft Voice greeted them, a Voice scientifically derived to be optimally psychologically pleasant. That’s what they say, at least. The Voice was not a person, it was piped into earpieces and the cadence was tailored to a person’s biometric data.
“You are exactly where you need to be…” The Voice says.
A mist was released from a ventilation system—a pharmacological cocktail; neuro-chemical grace. When it was inhaled it would induce a mild orgasm. It was supposed to be a standard psychotropic, it just had the happy side effect of deep, erotic pleasure.
“Your happiness is our highest calling…” The Voice continues.
No sermon is preached.
Instead, inside each pod, was a screen—moving images depicted soft lights over meadows, smiling families, hands in religious rapture, and The Voice would sing in low tonals, and across the screen every so often, as a flicker, too fast to notice consciously, were crafted phrases, altered and amended from the Christian Bible.
“Blessed are the servile…”
It is not prayer or preaching, it is programming.
It wasn’t ritual, it was revolution.
And of course, this isn’t just here-say.
I was there.
I helped code the first Voice.
I ran the simulations, did A/B testing on The Beatitudes 2.0.
We meant well, all of us—at least we thought we did.
It was for the better tomorrow; the Ultimate Revolution.
Me?
I live outside of the mist, now—off-grid, we used to call it.
Sometimes I miss it, loving my servitude.
But being human, well, that’s priceless.
The Architect of the Apocalypse
What was all that you ask?
Maybe it was some Sunday afternoon fun, and maybe it’s just some dystopian fable, but, also, just maybe, it’s the coming future. At least if our man has his way.
Introducing: Aldous Huxley
He was born in 1894 near Goldaming in the United Kingdom. The family was wildly intellectual, his parents were writers and educators, and distinguished; his grandfather, Thomas, was nicknamed Darwin’s Bulldog for his staunch defense of the Theory—evolution, I mean.
Aldous almost went blind when he was around sixteen years old—a bad case of SPK, or, Superficial Punctate Keratitis, inflammation of the cornea. He was fully blind for a year and a half, and after, his severely impacted sight ended his visions of becoming a doctor.
Huxley enrolled in an English program at Balliol College, in Oxford and became involved with other writers and thinkers, avant-garde intellectuals. He started writing poetry and fiction. After his time at Balliol he taught french at Eton College, his most notable student, Eric Blair. A bit of trivia knowledge for you—Eirc Blair became George Orwell.
In 1921 he published his first book, Crome Yellow, and the success of this social satire launched his writing career—leading to Brave New World.
We know him now, if we know anything about him, because of his intellect, because of his novels, because of his mystical and prophetic voice, and because he was, later in life, a psychonaut, writing The Doors of Perception, a book about mescaline. His last years were spent in the United States dialouging about the person, consciousness, and control.
Aldous Huxley died on November 22, 1963.
The same day as CS Lewis.
The same day as JFK.
Brave New Worlds
The most famous work produced by Huxley was Brave New World, published in 1932. May I suggest a read if by, some chance, you have’t flipped through its pages—and I guess you should do it now, because all that comes is spoilers.
Brave New World ( BNW ) is an imagined future world in which society becomes stable ( to use a euphemism ) through pleasure, excess consumption, use of narcotics, and psychological conditioning. There are no more human parents—too chaotic—people are bred and concocted in laboratories, shaken and stirred, injected and incubated, all to fit into some pre determined caste system.
These are raised without families, trained by teachers to love their place in society. And the people they associate with ? Others from their social stratification.
"All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny."
This spoken during the Tour at the Hatchery and Conditioning facilities in central London.
In this future dystopia pain and deep thought and religion are outlawed; Beauty is forbidden. Shakespeare is contraband. Those things not simply been made illegal, or censored, they have also been replaced by sex and entertainment and a state-issued drug called soma. A true Brave New World, one without suffering, because the meaning of it has been eliminated.
"Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is."
Mustapha Mond says this, he’s the World Controller.
The novel follows Bernard Marx ( his name most definitely a play on George Bernard Shaw and Karl Marx—playing on ideas of hyper-rationalism and a classless society, respectively). Bernard is an outsider in this perfectly ordered society and decides to visit a Savage Encampment, for people who live outside the system. On the reservation he meets a savage named John, an almost archetypal John the Baptist figure—but that essay is for another time.
Bernard brings John back to the Civilized Society and he becomes a kind of sensation to the World State. As you can imagine, having grown up without a state issued narcotic, without the erasure of pain, bearing children in the fleshy and human way, and being able to think freely, John has views about life and love and suffering and God. Views opposed to the people he meets, the ones made in a lab.
And you know what, I won’t spoil it.
Themes of the Brave New World
Pleasure as Control
Thematically in contrast to his French student’s Orwellian view of the future, Huxley did not believe the coming totalitarian state would be enforced under the heels of jackboots or at the smoking end of a rifle. The real way to subdue a population, to neutralize them, was essentially a kind of anesthesia—just of pleasure. Why worry about anything if you can feel good, all the time?
Freedom is freely given up, handed over as a kind of trade, for drugs and sex and any other numbing addiction. Control is obtained softly, it’s subtle, it’s chemical, and man, oh man, does it feel good.
“What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?…People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life.”
Mustapha Mond
God is Dead
In this World State religion is outdated; obsolete for the intellectual proficiency of the modern time. But humans are innately religious creatures, which means the death of God has been replaced somethings new: Technology and Narcotics.
There is no need for a personal creator when humans can be fabricated in a lab, genetic engineering and conditioning replaces any idea of image or soul or mystery. The fatalism of manipulated biology is dictated by a technocratic elite—those who use these technologies for their own satisfaction.
And those religious practices, anything sacramental, liturgical, embodied—those have been replaced, too. First, with soma, a drug that eliminates pain or guilt or anxiety; aimed at a manufactured / pharmacological peace. Second, with something called Hypnopaedia, a training and conditioning which happens during sleep; the rational mind is shut off and open to all kinds messages to be internalized; phrases read and listened to, and by adulthood, no one remembers ever actually hearing them, they just believe them. And third, the Feelies—hyper immersive films and experiences that simulate more than audio and visual, but also touch and other physical sensations. You can imagine this as some pleasure pod, some overlap of movies, VR, and full body massages. Maximum stimulation; state-sanctioned escapism ( and please, draw every line you need between this book and our modern world ).
And the World Controller, Mustapha Mond, well, he has kept all the bibles and beautiful literature locked away—too much danger in something free and wild and spiritual, something that speaks soul language.
“God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe.”
Mustapha Mond
The Mechanical Caste System, or Human Engineering
That natural order of things, man finds woman, they fall in love, they get married, and in a night or rapturous love, they reflect their Creator and create life—that’s out the window. Too messy, too many fluids, too much human. In this Brave and New world, humans are genetically and Socially engineered. Genetically, they’re given pharmacological injections during their gestation period, the test tubes they grow in are shaken at intervals, to dumb them down, well, some of them. This settles them into predetermined castes, their little, fated, place in society—with no hope of change. And Huxley writes, also, of social engineering—some is the hypnopaedia, and some is the whole World State. Everyone keeps each other in line.
What starts in the Hatchery never really stops, the foreordained place of each person, into their groups of alpha, or beta, or gamma ( and so on ) is a part of the whole plan of a truly ordered and servile society.
“We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons.”
The Erasure of Beauty
To keep the World State stable and society in line the elites knew they needed to remove anything and everything that superseded or undergirded the rational and mechanical. No prime mover, no first cause, nothing metaphysical. Art is dumbed down, either linguistically or thematically, or it is censored, or it is outlawed all together. The common tongue, the language of the Brave New World, is flatlined, squished, and emptied. No words are outlawed per se, it’s just their meaning that gets all muddled. Who cares if people say soul, or God, or even freedom if the meaning of those words is nothing?
History experiences the same techniques of control, censorship, and crafting. History is minimized, tailored to make a people love their servitude. New kinds of roots and stories informing a cultural ethos.
“You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art.”
Mustapha Mond
Control and its Fallout
The last theme for us to look at is the in the aftermath; what happens after the bombs are dropped ? What happens after the robot war ? What is built on our incinerated brothers and sisters ?
What is the cost of all this control ?
The answer in the book is quite simple :
Everything human.
And at first, no one in the World State knows it because we humans understand by contrast. If we are just as enslaved as our neighbour, well, maybe we’re both free. But then, John the Savage enters, with all his humanness, with the wild scent of freedom, with a spark of magic on his body that comes from Shakespeare and living outside the dominating forces of government. And then little questions start to pop up.
“If I am free,” one might ask, “what is he?”
Or, even scarier:
“If he is enslaved…what am I?”
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
John the Savage
You don’t need to take John the Savage at his word, but you should feel the messy humanity of it all—freedom, true human freedom, is a dangerous gamble. It’s light and dark, it’s love and sorrow, it’s life and death.
The Ultimate Revolution: Huxley’s Berkeley Address
Like I mentioned up front, the crux of all this writing comes down to this Berkeley address, given in 1962, in which Huxley discusses how ideas of societal control mechanisms have shifted from external to internal.
Many say that Huxley was a prophet, almost mystical, in his foretelling of society—I vehemently disagree. The man was not a prophet, but an architect, seeking to build the world, as long as he could be on the inside.
Now I guess I need to explain.
The Berkeley address wasn’t like some modern day live YouTube stream. Aldous gave this talk to a particular group of elite scientists and other experts in their fields: psychologists, medical professionals, social scientists, and other academics. And the location also matters—at this time, and in this place, massive political questions were being asked, as were discoveries in the emerging behavioural sciences.
Huxley doesn’t condemn these ( following ) practices, nor does he simply explain them…it feels like he is laying the path, almost like a how-to manual. There is, at the very, no warning.
The Ultimate Revolution
That’s the name of this talk, and in Huxley’s own words, this is the final revolution. All other revolutions culminate in this one—a post human revolution, a revolution with permanent effects; an overthrow, as it were.
What is this Ultimate Revolution ?
It is a technological one—and because of all these brand new and burgeoning technologies, humanity will be able to act upon the mind-body of the rest of mankind.
“Today we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution, the final revolution, where man can act directly on the mind-body of his fellows.” Aldous Huxley
That is the evolution from external coercion, via boots and guns and rations and fear, to something internal. We will discuss the technologies soon, but first, I should note how quickly Huxley connects these ideas with a ruling class:
“It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution, with which we are now faced, is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy, who have always existed and presumably will always exist, to get people to love their servitude.” Aldous Huxley
The control past regimes exercised over their people could remain there, in the past. The new control, the new exercise, would be something all together different.
The Technologies of Mind Control
There will be names in what follows that you are familiar with but maybe haven’t fully placed in their complete context. That’s not to say that all of these folks are inventors of tyranny, nor are they doing these things because they want control. I don’t know. They could be. Or, more probably, these technologies can be leveraged for control.
First, Huxley draws from the behavioural conditioning of Ivan Pavlov. Yes, the one with the drooling dog. Pavlov noted and tested all kinds of conditioning discovering that a variety things that affected the human, mind and body. And he determined this effect when to a much deeper level when a person was under some kind of duress or trauma. That is, a person would be much more susceptible to manipulation and programming if they were exhausted, emotionally tumultuous, or in a state of terror—and imagine, for a moment how Pavlov may have figured that out.
“Pavlov, after all, made some extremely profound observations both on animals and on human beings. And he found among other things that conditioning techniques applied to animals or humans in a state either of psychological or physical stress sank in so to say, very deeply into the mind-body of the creature, and were extremely difficult to get rid of. That they seemed to be embedded more deeply than other forms of conditioning.” Aldous Huxley
The suggestion here is that modern systems, state or governmental or media based, could exploit and use these technologies; they could put people into a state of duress and allow whatever propaganda pushed to sink deeply into the person…and have the brainwashing be extremely difficult to be rid of.
Second, and maybe just as a point to whet the proverbial whistle of a forthcoming essay, there are allusions to B.F Skinner and the bahviouralists, yes the ones of Box and Pigeon fame. Skinner did lots of work in conditioning and reinforcement, and the benefits of positive versus negative coercion. Huxley explores some of these methods of psychological manipulation via rewards and punishments in Brave New World Revisited, and these techniques have strange overlaps with recent MK Ultra Programs.
Third, the use of mind altering drugs. Essentially, with all this technological progress, Huxley determined that people could move beyond narcotics as “vacations from self” and into mind changing and bending techniques. These techniques operate upon the psyche of mankind—allowing for breaks and programming—back to the ideas of loving servitude. Listen to how Huxley describes the potential use of these substances:
“In the hands of a dictator these substances, in one kind or the other, could be used with, first of all, complete harmlessness, and the result would be, you can imagine, a euphoric that would make people thoroughly happy even in the most abominable circumstances.” Aldous Huxley
Considering Huxley’s tendency towards these kinds of substances, being one of the world’s first psychonauts, and his own experiments with hallucinogens, it is no wonder that his fascination finds so much expression in his books. His book, The Doors of Perception, explores the use of Mescaline as a way to “disable” the survival mechanism of the mind, and have some kind of unmediated experience of Pure Being.
Fourth, electroshock therapy. Huxley speaks very briefly of this in his address, as some advancement made in the field of neurology and the ability to plant electrodes on the brain.
“This of course has been done in the large scale in animals and in a few cases its been done in the cases of the hopelessly insane.” Aldous Huxley
He says that if “anybody has watched the behaviour of rats with electrodes placed in different centers must come away from this experience with the most extraordinary doubts about what on Earth is in store for us if this is got a hold of by a dictator.”
These technologies were used, often without consent, in psych wards as attempts to re-boot the brain. This was, in many varying ways, picked up by the MK Ultra doctors, people like Ewan Cameron. One of the examples he gives is these particular rats, with electrics placed on pleasure centers of their brain, pressing a lever which triggers the shock. The shock generates pleasure. These rats would then pull the lever over 15,000 times a day—and if you stopped them from pressing it for a day, then, when they would go back the following day, they would press it over 35,000 times. The rats wouldn’t eat, they wouldn’t sleep, they were not interested in sex…they just wanted pleasure. Sound familiar ?
The Evangelical Machine
This isn’t just an essay to tickle your fancy, or help you have some fun things to say at a dinner party—there is a point to all of this. An immediate and pressing point.
Huxley says that lots of these techniques, to varying extents, were done in the past—sometimes unknowingly, sometimes by trial and error, and sometimes on purpose. What separates us, from say 16th century Inquisitors ( his example ), is that we know exactly what we are doing, and how. And not just that, we can know the outcomes.
To discuss this Huxley mentions a Doctor, a William Sargant, who wrote a book called Battle for the Mind. This book, another on mind-control, brainwashing, conditioning, etc. has a particular focus on religious expressions for all kinds of varying indoctrination.
The ideas there, in that book, and ones Huxley addresses almost seem obvious, but we should discuss them. These things can be a template—an almost formulaic way of acting upon a person, deeply and psychologically, so as to induce a proper response. Sargant speaks of some great religious teachers of the past and their intuition for techniques that would bring about religious conversions.
Here’s what Huxley says of John Wesley:
“specifically of Wesley’s method of producing conversions which were essentially based on the technique of heightening psychological stress to the limit by talking about hellfire and so making people extremely vulnerable to suggestion and then suddenly releasing this stress by offering hopes of heaven.”
Aldous says that the way, at least in his mind ( and others ), of producing conversions was to heighten psychological stress. This can be on the body, as it were, or it can be of the mind, but it has some sort of emotional effect which elevates a kind of subconscious duress, and as we have seen so far, this makes people much more impressionable and allows for deeper conditioning and manipulation.
The cause of this stress ? Hellfire and brimstone. The greatest kinds of terrors, eternal ones. Torment. I read lots of these sermons during my masters, the most potent and memorable of which was Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.” Jonathan Edwards
And he goes on to say:
“O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.” Jonathan Edwards
And there are stories, accounts, of the responses of those hearing this sermon—falling into the aisles, shrieking, moaning, converting. And this was, in some major way, the inception of the First Great Awakening.
Now, I want to make sure you don’t hear what I am not saying. I am not saying that God cannot, or even does not, use the body as a way to draw people unto Himself. I’m not downplaying the revivals, and I’m not ascribing intention to John or Charles Wesley, nor to Jonathan Edwards. There’s only so many sacred cows one can tip over in one essay.
I do want to draw out a few things, still, as they pertain to our own, modern world, and the world of evangelicalism.
The Modern Scape
I’m sure, in so many sense, as we’ve gone along, it’s been easy to picture our modern time—the media propaganda machine, the devices in our hands, algorithmically tailored to numb us with micro-doses of dopamine, the new psychedelic / hallucinogenic movement, telling us we can find salvation with just one hit. That medicine and technology will give us some shadow of eternal life. The modern world, our world, our very selves, are awash in these kinds of controlling techniques—even down to our experience ( or lack there of ) of Beauty. Places are grey and mass produced, people don’t read, people barely go outside anymore, which means it is so rare for them to be confronted with the metaphysical dilemma of a sunset.
But I am less interested, at least here, in the whole modern world, maybe that’s a thought experiment for later; you know, extracurricular kind of stuff. I am concerned with what has been happening in evangelical spaces and why.
I am worried of many things because I care about the one thing.
Consider the spectacle of the modern mega-church. The repetitive music, the manipulation of chord progressions, the lighting cues, the slow-build-release of it all. Think of the sermons, the simplicity and catchphrase-iness of it all. Slogans to save us. Or, maybe, subconscious conditioning.
Consider notions of belonging. This isn’t reinforced by physical threat, but close social groups, by the ins, and by praising conformity with applause or leadership roles or being up on a stage. Think about the curation of breakthrough moments, of these encounter experiences, leveraging storytelling, crowd dynamics, emotions, etc. to engineer particular responses. These can feel spiritual, and maybe they are, but they mirror, essentially 1:1 mind control tactics aimed at servility and obedience—and, I guess, it’s just different outcomes.
Think of the heightened and vulnerable moments, and when we are most soft, we are hit with crafted messaging that almost galvanizes loyalty ( hence the seeming Stockholm Syndrome of so many evangelical abuse cases ).
Think of the conferences, the monster trucks, the smoke, the show.
Think of the use of fear or guilt or shame; of destruction or betrayal. Think of all the coded language, a dialect of concern. Think of the identity offered, and think of freedom we feel in contrast to everyone else like us. Think of the crisis many face when they question, or even leave, these domains. Theological questions are immediately turned into deeper conversations around character, acceptance, and integrity.
Think of social media campaigns, of platform, of clout, of brand buy-in. So deep, this runs, that it becomes difficult to disentangle the brand and the person.
Think of the money and think of the abuse.
And I guess, if you’re like me, you don’t have to think too long or too hard to imagine these spaces. It doesn’t take much cranial computation to visualize a church like this—I’m sure you know one, maybe you even go to one.
Sure, it’s not all churches, but it is some. And maybe some isn’t the right word. With the overall direction of culture, the movement towards an overwhelming technocracy, a control via pleasure, many are following suit. Churches included.
The desire for relevance and influence has led them to use the technologies available to them in particular ways, ways that, by my estimation, reflect all the corrupted forms of transcendence and humanity. Save the world using the tools of the world.
I could go on and on here, mentioning government intelligence infiltration of evangelical spaces ( you can google the FBIs involvement with Evangelical leaders during the Cold War and also connections with Billy Graham for political reasons, or even check out the documentary The Family ), mentioning stories of manipulaiton, of the stuff that goes behind closed doors, or I could point in the direction of podcasts and tell-all books.
But I don’t want to.
Hello, End Times
We are in the apocalypse.
Welcome.
Please wipe your shoes off at the door.
Maybe there’s no robots building chapels with pleasure pods on the ash of our neighbours, but we are at a threshold, nonetheless. A soft totalitarianism.
It didn’t come with the fire or the brimstone, but with screens and algorithms. The horsemen? They’re probably influencers or celebrities or political pundits.
People aren’t in the pods, yet, but we do carry around little levers with us, like rats who push them, and get shocked into all kinds of pleasure. Ours just come as likes and follows and reposts.
When I look at everything around me I see what the architect, Huxley, wrote about. I see the World State, and I see the religion that fits in there, and I see the ways of being that are accepted there, and I see, as I am sure you do, a technocratic elite, at the top, doing as they please—but hey, at least we can binge Netflix series while we lose every bit of humanity that matters.
And then I see the savages ( please don’t draw a direct line, I have read the end of Brave New World ). I see the ones who live outside the World State. The ones who see sunsets, the ones who read Shakespeare, the ones who have kids in the traditional way.
You can reject the machine, even though it’ll hurt. It hurts to stop numbing, stop pretending, stop being conditioned by pleasure into servitude. You can embrace the fullness.
And don’t get me wrong, I crave heightened psychological experiences. I yearn for transformation. I just don’t want to settle for anything less than God; I do not want my transcendence to be a chemical byproduct, or some manufactured experience, or some physiological zapping into euphoria.
I want it from the source, not at the expense of my freedom and humanity, but through it. I want it the way we all want it, like Love.
That is the kicker to all of this, humanity.
We were made human, and all these things, these human things that can be leveraged or manipulated, these seeming weaknesses, are in fact, our greatest boons.
It is lovely that we can freely fall in love.
It is a miracle that when we behold True Beauty our bodies release a bit, so too our minds, allowing the Beauty to do deep work upon us.
Sure, drugs can affect us, change us, pry open our psyches, and even shatter them, prepped for rebooting—but those are just shadows of Divine Encounters, of participation, of Theosis. But we do not lose ourselves, no, no, no. We become ourselves.
We are in the Brave New World, and each of us, has the tools we need to revolt. Laugh, with me, at every single machine made pleasure; mock and deride the fabricated transcendence that the World State pushes upon you; tread underfoot the perversion of pleasure.
Embrace Life.
An Addendum:
Based on some messages and comments, I want to say explicitly what is implied in this essay :
The views espoused, especially by the technocrats, involve man as being machine—and the problems of humanity, not being spiritual, can therefore be solved by tinkering with the machine. This is a naturalism.
When our vision of humanity is cast to the side for the sake of whatever outcomes we want, whether control, world happiness, money, sex, power, etc. we buy into the Ethos of the Brave New World and Mind Control Church.
Humans are made with impulses, and powers can manipulate those. That does not mean that music or art or storytelling is wrong, simply because through those things we can be “changed”.
A simple thought experiment should help :
Imagine a group of behaviouralists, psychologists, and pharmaceutical doctors join forces with some less than reputable story tellers and theologians, and pretend they craft a new form of Sunday Service that is designed for their own outcomes : money in the coffers and women at their disposal.
Think not only of what they will use, worship or prayer or the Good Book or Homilies, but think of how they use them and why.
And now think of a group of churches who put as their primary understanding the metaphors used for the church in the New Testament : Body and Bride.
And think about the what and who and why for these people; what are worship and prayer and homilies and Good Book readings really about.
What I am saying is this :
Because humans can be manipulated doesn’t devalue humanity.
Because art and music and lights and language can be leveraged does not necessitate that we remove them.
The cure for the disease is not killing the patient.
Every Day Saints is a torchlight searching for the quiet miracles, the beautifully human stories and ideas that exist all around us. And it is a place to dialogue, not Holy Ground, but still a place of gathering.
This is a good piece and I share your concerns. However, there is a fine line between critiquing the corruption of a thing and the essence of a thing. For example, at what point are the business aspects of a church, simply a reflection of how people function together? At what point is the emotional experience of worship, simply an intrinsic reality of worshiping God? At what point are slogans and catchphrases simply a reality of having a meaningful culture?
I lack good answers to these questions.
Worship can be enjoyable but worship designed with enjoyment as the goal is a simulacrum. It’s serving the wrong master because it’s no longer a sacrifice of self, but instead becomes a generated emotional high that’s then aimed at God. Unintentionally, He’s the secondary focus.