Troublers and Clingers and Insane Clowns

When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, Is it you, you troubler of Israel? -- 1 Kings 18:17

It is not inevitable and not a hard and fast rule, but it is often the case that the accuser is guilty of the offense.  Elijah had come on the scene to prophesy three and a half years of drought and famine upon Israel.  The ten tribes had been apostate since breaking away from Rehoboam after the death of Solomon.  One golden calf with its altars stood in Bethel and another in the territory of the tribe of Dan, yet no king had been as depraved as Ahab son of Omri and husband of Jezebel.  Those who worshipped the one true God were pursued and persecuted and the prophets put to death.  They worshipped Baal and Asherah with dark and demonic rites, practicing witchcraft and wickedness, making gods of their own lusts.  They dredged hell for judgment to pour out on their own heads.  Then, when they began to gather in the harvest of their iniquity, they blamed God.        

In other words, there is nothing new under the sun.  We are having the troubles we have today because of the judgmental, narrow-minded, intolerant, right-wing Christians.  It’s all these people who don’t realize this is the modern world and times have changed, that we are all right no matter what we believe or what we do.  Traditional marriage and monogamy are conventions.  Marriage is kind of like Halloween, a time to dress up and put on a show.  It doesn’t matter if a man wants to marry another man or a woman wants to marry a Mercedes. 

The truth is dead.  Everybody lies.  Everybody cheats.  You just need to be able to do it with style.  It’s a matter of how good things sound and how we can make things look.  The only reality is perception.  We can have any kind of world we choose.  We can be like gods, deciding by popular vote what is right and what is wrong.  Morality is what we say it is.  Hell, sex is what we say it is.  Don’t want to be a man?  We’ll sprinkle some fairy dust, say, Shazam!, and, behold, woman, thou art loosed! 

And if anyone disagrees, they are the trouble.  If anyone tells the truth, they have to be silenced.  We can’t allow those bigoted, xenophobic clingers with their rules and traditions to dictate to us.  Life is sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.  Party hearty and die at thirty, er, seventy-five.  Don’t worry.  We have antibiotics and a vaccine for AIDS. 

Under the sun, it’s all been done, and the end is always the same.  The pendulum falls back in the dark of the moon.  That’s not to say it won’t get worse before it gets better.  It will get better, if it takes five years, fifty, or five thousand.  We have no guarantee our particular step on the ascension to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is all that close to the top.  My hope is in Christ and the kingdom of God; otherwise, I would have no hope.