simulacra-kklesia (part 10): Subvert it by being really fake or falsely real?

simulacra-kklesia (part 10):



Perhaps the only ways and means of
breaking the back of the spirit of Simulacra is to
(mixing the metaphor here)
enter the belly of the beast,
and convert/subvert it;
plundering it asunder.

No incarnation without redemption;
no buying back without going back..

back to Simulacra-city;
not back to Egypt
(or are they the same thing?).

I might have to risk putting on and pulling off an entire and entirely slick (seeker-sensitive, of course!) simulacra
"worship service"
to prove the point.

Not (just) to critique more institutional, programmed megachurches;
but (just?) to critique me:

the "really" fake one..

..like the real rest of us.

A new Christian magazine came (unsolicited) in the mail today.
The cover photo--of a female Christian celebrity---reminded me of a Playboy Magazine cover
(not that I have seen one....recently!);
the airbrushed and hairbrushed model had been posed and poised that way.

I still harken back to Tschetter's article about the "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit issue as a projection (in both senses of the term) and sexualization
of an image:

Aphrodite.

Maybe aka Simulacra.

Maybe I'll have to dress up in a speedo (I did preach in a swimsuit once) Sunday (:


I don't really want to sexualize and seduce/reduce the sheep.
I long to be a sheep-whisperer shepherd, but I don't want to whisper hyperreal sweet nothings of simulacrap in their ears.

I'd rather promise them that I promise that I will really try to try to be be really real...really.

The Alarm sang about "Absolute Reality,"
MacPhisto prophesied about our virtual plight,
and many have called us back into real reality,
which has been virtually, and really, hijacked.
The Matrix is even wrapped around us"when we go to church" (see 2:24ff below):



But I was pleasantly surprised to find an unexpected older (but newly relevant..again) source
speaking into this mess: E. Stanley Jones (not usually mentioned alongside The Alarm, MacPhisto, and The Matrix..just look at him..he'd never don a mullet or horns, and he would probably not have watched R -rated and (Holy) Ghost0 writtenfilms like the Matrix). But thank God that Mark Sayers, in his excellent new book, knows how much we need to read or re-read him:

E. Stanley Jones...noted that Jesus told his primary critis, the Pharisees,
that the Kingdom of God was within them. Jones said that Jesus was referring to the fact that he Kingdom of God was a reality that operated in our world just as concretely as the reality of gravity,....and that God's kingom was inside them. Therefore, if they acted in sin, the consequences would be felt in this life, not just the next.

Jones says:

."...The laws of the Kingdom are not something imposed on the siuation, but are written into the very structure of our being, into our tissues, our blood cells..into the total organization of life.They are the way we were made to live...God has stamped within the structure of our being His Kingdom"
(Mark Sayers,

"The Trouble With Paris: Following Jesus in a World of Plastic Promises"

p. 172)

Real reality, Kingdomness, absoutute reality, unplugged from matrix-simulcara,
is fundamentally and wildly natural.

Jones often said that if we live Kingdomly, the universe will back us.

So maybe I don't have to do the full blown spoof Sunday.

Maybe I can subvert simulcara by merely modelling the real.

Nah, who knows where that might lead;
we might actually get honest in our gatherings. (;
Hand me the devil horns and the dress. (:
Can I comb my hair first?

the more deeply we attempt to engage our culture through the projected world, the more vulnerable we are ourselves to idolatry, because the essence of the projected world is made images. Both roots of idolatry are at work in the formation of images for the projected world. Our making of images to present our work in ministry is not invulnerable to idolatry
-Tschetter

.

There came a point in most U2 shows where MacPhisto showed up that Bono said,
(after blasting virtual simulacra with a sermon and crank phone call as in the intro of video below)
"Off with the (devil) horns, and on with the show.." ( see 8:13ff below):



The catch is he knew that even when he shunned the costume,
the rest of the concert was inevitably part show..

Even though it was also and always church.

Maybe if we just start by admitting that,
we can take off the horns.

On the Vertigo tour, a hornless Bono was heard to say:

"We got the show,
We do the business.
But this is not show business."
(4:48ff below):


Okay, If church has to be at least part "show,"
maybe I can sneak in a little simulacra this Sunday.

I might even be as radical as to use a microphone.

Just don't watch for me on TBN.
Or the Sports Illustrated, or Christianity Today, centerfold.
---

I'd rather read..and write... a really good book, like
the Mark Sayers book
we already quoted:

"These are great tools for everyone trying to find the Way, the Truth, and the Life in a world of shortcuts, deception, and death. Amid the noise and seductions of our culture, may Mark's work help us to be both relevant and peculiar to this chaotic world. May we raise up a generation of radical nonconformists with everything that is wrong in the world, a generation that turns the world upside down so that it aligns with the Kingdom of God”.

-Shane Claiborne, Author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.

“Mark Sayers is something of a spiritual genius who is able to both name and diagnose the angst of an entire generation caught up in the web of consumerism and hyperreality. This book is laced with the kind of wise and prophetic insights that take the reader to the heart of some of the most important issues of our age. Nothing less than a clue to the spiritual healing of a generation lies hidden in the pages of this book”.

-Alan Hirsch, Author of The Forgotten Ways and author (with Michael Frost) of The Shaping of Things To Come. Alan is founding director of Forge Mission Training Network.