{"id":16645,"date":"2018-02-22T01:53:34","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T09:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=16645"},"modified":"2018-02-22T21:43:14","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T05:43:14","slug":"all-you-need-is-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/all-you-need-is-love\/","title":{"rendered":"All You Need is Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew up in the 60\u2019s when radio broadcasts came out of a large stereo console and the nightly news from a black-and-white TV that filled our living room with sounds and images about Vietnam and the Beatles.\u00a0 I was a young boy then but still remember\"\"<\/a> feeling lonely when my dad went away on a remote military assignment leaving me, my mom, and three sisters at home for over a year.\u00a0 Our authors say that this is when the American counterculture began.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Looking back after all these years, I wonder if the Beatles were right, \u201cAll you need is love.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter\u2019s, The Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture, <\/em>exposes the American\u2019s need for love in their oxymoronic \u201cI need it all, I can have it all\u201d phenomenon that rages between consumerism and anti-consumerism. \u00a0They conclude that the counterculture movement from the 60\u2019s is a failure, an illusion, and the negative source of energy that actually feeds the Matrix, <\/em>which in turn drives us to consume more out of deception and fear rather than actual need and desire.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 This post will examine the authors work and look for connections to my dissertation research on the North American problem with spiritual warfare.<\/p>\n

Even though I did not start my law enforcement career until 1978, the countercultural movement and the responses needed by public safety to keep the peace was in full swing.\u00a0 University protests, sit-ins, eco-terrorism, and abortion clinic violence comes to mind when I reflect on the countercultural events that impacted my early public safety career.\u00a0 In a type of reverse effect, Heath and Potter reveal how the \u201cfalse media\u201d of counterculuralism has nearly \u201creplaced socialism as the basis of radical political thought.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 According to Openshaw\u2019s review, the crucial social repair strategy of this book it to \u201creject the emphases countercultures place on liberation and self-realization, and to begin realigning social incentives.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 This is where my research on spiritual warfare connects with these popular authors.<\/p>\n

I must say, I am so glad someone called out Freud!\u00a0 My fist degree was in psychology and I remember trying to apply what I learned into the lived social experiment I found in public safety, and to tell the truth, most of what I learned from Freud was rubbish.\u00a0 It was not until the Holy Spirit gave me some preliminary wisdom and discernment on the idea of spiritual warfare that I was able to see where the seeds of social problems really come from.\u00a0 Heath and Potter describe the countercultural condition as the phenomenon where freedom is achieved by \u201cviolating the symbolic codes and breaking the behavioral norms that constitute our everyday lives.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 I can attest, from 27 years in public safety, that the authors prophecy about the global impact of consumerism is already here.<\/p>\n

Fast forward 40 years and the counterculture movement continues in popular movies like the Matrix Trilogy<\/em>.\u00a0 I am not much of a movie watcher by practice anymore due to the uncensored nature of most films.\u00a0 However, I did connect with Reeves in the Matrix as the Christlike image who battles evil in a post-apocalyptic style presentation that depicts the world after being fully overrun by the system, evil, death, and destruction of globalized consumerism.\u00a0 The authors of The Rebel Sell<\/em> challenge their \"\"<\/a>readers \u201cdare to be the same\u201d instead of always daring to oppose, reject, and fight against the system.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 While their challenge has merit, it does not have lasting substance. Dare to be the same with what?\u00a0 Instead, I would encourage them to name the structures and worldviews that point people to the life changing substance found in a social spiritualism that is established on the foundation and salvation through Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

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Reading around Rebel Sell<\/em>, as Bayard would suggest, I found an interesting commentary that cited Heath and Potter\u2019s work and went on to describe how they see consumption in their \u201cneo-liberal\u201d consumer marketplace.[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Askegaard describes consumption as not only a metaphor, but a \u201cperspective\u2026that at least potentially reveals rather than conceals\u201d the consumers social practices.[9]<\/a>\u00a0 I liken the Biblical parable of we reap what we sow principle to Askegaard\u2019s description of the consumer condition.[10]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0The authors describe how \u201ccountercultural rebels have been pumping out subversive\u201d music, art, literature, clothing, and ideas for generations.[11]<\/a> Now, society is experiencing the principle of reaping what they sow.\u00a0 The countercultural seeds of the past are being harvested in the present with devastating global results that are driving these authors to call for positive action that reforms and improves the existing social structures that have not yet been overtaken by consumerism.<\/p>\n

Overall, I like this book.\u00a0 It is out there theologically speaking, but I could still find underlying Biblical themes and principles that surfaced from the countercultural suffering and ruin described by our authors.\u00a0 What is the solution then?\u00a0 Consuming Christ as Cavanaugh suggests.\u00a0 Salvation then is the answer.\u00a0 A personal relationship with the incarnate son, redeemer, and savior Jesus Christ is the first step in reconciling the world to our creator God. Yes, the Beatles were onto something when they sang “All you need is love”, which lines up with the 2nd Commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[12]<\/p>\n