YeKengalé

Being still fixated on describing the Beloved Community, my ‘Hephzibah’, (one generally does not deliberately arrive at a destiny that has not first been identified and articulated) … and this generation no longer resonates with the dreams of their ancestors, whether Garvey or M.L. King, Isaiah or St Augustine, no longer having an appreciation of their context. Still, the Beloved Community must be envisioned in each generation, or we are doomed to inhabit the waste-places of the sojourns of our predecessors when most of the wells dug from their times have run dry.

‘Church’ no longer serves as a viable metaphor for the Beloved Community, The Israel of God, the Mountain of His Holiness or whatever theological concept once housed the collective dreaming of generations.

The theological metaphors themselves have lost their potency and appeal. This generation does not approach the concept of church from a high theological plane, but from a sociological or ecclesiastic plane. Church represents whatever belief system or tradition one has been born into, or chosen through conversion. Church is a ritual practice required by adherents to a particular system of faith as requirement for their spiritual growth or admission to promised paradise. Church is part of the social order or cultural practices of a certain set of people, part of their cultural identity.

For many millennials, church is mundane, systemic. The heightened sentiment, lofty idealism, the ecstatic expectations evoked in the metaphors of the ‘Bride of Christ’ of John the Revelator, or the ‘Beloved Community’ of King’s dreams are lost upon them. The church building, or likely the reconditioned shop-space or temporarily redecorated school hall that happen to be the focal center of ‘worship’ for whichever religious group is hardly evocative of the lofty inspiration that moved Solomon to invest half the wealth of his generation, or motivated Europe’s greatest architects and artisans to collaborate in construction projects often spanning over 100 years. All that fervor has been replaced by a school or shop’s monthly rent for a hall and storeroom for sound equipment and religious paraphernalia – a pulpit here, a table with pretty cloth there, offering buckets and communion ware, and of course, a shouting megalomaniac, the central figure of it all.

Shopping Malls are by far much more meaningful spaces to this generation. But they hardly serve as lightning rods for the highest and most noble ideals and aspirations of preceding generations. The modern miracles of internet and promising deep space exploration etc. hardly engage the creative potentials of more than a relatively few tech elites, and in net, drain rather than replenish the energy of the mass consumers of their provided services – which replicates where we have been rather than what we are commonly aspiring to become. Our beloved community has to be built around greater ideals than the impressive collective achievements or high philosophy of a few.

So pardon me if I do two unthinkable things for both today’s religionists and secular humanists as well: That is to return to the lofty theological metaphors that have been used to invoke the highest human ideals for centuries, as well as to sidestep any direct reference to ‘church’ or religion as necessary instrument or agency in effecting those ideals, [not because I think religion is irrelevant (clearly not), but maybe … just perhaps, it has gotten in its own way].

To put it in theological terms, the Divine Plan to bless humanity may have included but does not require (if Paul is to believed in his reconstruction of Jesus’ Olive Vine and Branch Metaphor) either an Israel or a church, if either or both in their distorted self importance have misconstrued their original purpose – that all mankind indeed be blessed through their faithful covenantal witness.

So, back to soteriological basics. The Beloved Community is a healing community, because life fragments. Love heals. Divine love restores function, mends and fixes what has been broken. The kind of doctrinal salvation that introduces a problem (like the conception of ‘original sin’ to people groups living more in harmony with nature than their presumptuous ‘evangelizers’) in order to ‘fix’ it is great as a tool of cultural conquest, but real good news comes with real solutions – sight to the blind, liberty to the bound, restoration of health to the sick and don’t forget – prosperity to the poor… that kind of stuff.

Where there is real guilt, forgiveness becomes a real solution, but if you have to preach someone there, perhaps you have not understood the Jesus’ story or message … or may have confused him with his cousin, or have never taken the time to look at your sacred book for yourself, minus the lens of church teachings. The Jesus of scripture is Solver before Savior, whichever community representing his mission is authenticated by the same motivation and power – to heal, to liberate, to ennoble and empower.

Today’s Caribbean civilization is desperately in need of divine solutions. Among the greatest abominations of our time is our own self-defilement … not through fornications and adulteries, (‘God’ found it fit to prosper the European slave trade and colonial project for centuries in the midst of its own very rapacious whoredoms – we need not fear prophets out of sync with historical reality, they probably are just as inept at constructing viable futures). The present civilization is being threatened by its own perverse habits of eating. CNCD’s (chronic non communicable diseases – cancer, liver, kidney and heart diseases i.e. diet and lifestyle diseases) are now responsible for 4 out of five deaths in Barbados. That is positively alarming! The last three generations are reaping the consequences of something worse than climate change\ – diet change.

Gone are the healthy mineral and vitamin-rich diets of our grandparents. Welcome to fast, fried and constantly famished. Obesity is actually a sign of malnutrition. Welcome also to hypertension, diabetes, stroke, Alzheimer’s and a dozen other CNCD’s that will take out more people than any climate-induced disaster can.

Where is the community demonstrating the Healthy and Heavenly lifestyle and diet? Show us the way to Zion.