It has been a long time, hasn't it since my last newsletter, hasn't it? Frankly, I just didn't know what to say, plus, we have been without proper domicile for about a year, and just finally settled down in Alberta, Canada. That would take something out of you... Today, with deep concerns that have followed me for a couple years already, have come to the surface again. The wrestling has been emotionally charged and somewhat confusing. Tonight, I'm writing out of a need to express myself with words, rather than art. Because my art is keeping some things hidden from others, ideas that I may one day find artwords for, but tonight, I'm bursting with words, so I will just open the valve and let them flow. I pray and ask for your grace, because I will be touching issues that may sound offensive and sectarian for some, yet for others it will articulate similar mindsets and rejoin their own questions.
I am awakening to this inescapable truth: I am witnessing the emergence of a breed of Christians I am having a hard time reconciling with what I have been able to surmise so far after 30 years of discipleship. I'm referring to the grungy rough looking gansta cool extreme prophetic end-time tattooed pierced screamo heavy metal signs and wonders believers who populate sites like MySpace and who flaunt what would normally repel children and tender hearts as if it was the true fire of the Holy Spirit carrying the new generation across the Jordan of contemporary Christianity.
I have never been one to back off from the strange manifestations of clashes between light and darkness. I've usually been pretty opened as to the weird extremes that faith takes us as I walked the path of a disciple of Christ. I've hanged out in some of the most sordid environments you can imagine in my dark years. Witnessed things untold, been standing upon the ledge of death a few inches from the knife-edge of a crazed out criminal, walked into situations with faith and as much naivete a trusting believer can muster.
I have befriended drug dealers, murderers, thieves, prostitutes, homeless youth, yet, I needed to have a common ground with them in order to belong, and sadly, I was enslaved to drugs and other things I won't mention. I've seen piercings before they were even starting to emerge in the pop culture: baby diaper pins bloodily stabbed through nostrils and ear lobes. The soundtrack to these environments was, at best, punk-rock, and I have no idea what's the worst would be called. Tribal vampire zombie music? Night of the living-dead screaming harpies? Your skin would crawl as the "music" oozed out insinuating itself through your pores, deafening, life itself was a silent movie where you saw enacted gruesome acts stemming from the cesspool of the basest human animality.
I have seen death walking the crowded stalls of human decadence, like a cop on the beat, smiling, pleased with itself, hollering before the abuse young people would inflict themselves, magnificently choreographed by the greed of ruthless murderers of generations and whipped to frenzy by the ever-escaping fading horizon of sought relief deceived.
For the past few months, since I registered on MySpace, I have discovered an underground stream of believers who have been groomed since the Renewal in Toronto, to expect "more" of God. A newfound freedom was short-circuiting the traditional frames that had dealt death to many believers and impaled them on a shish-kebab of religious duties, ever giving their lives and finances away in support to local visions extolling the destinies of leaders who had no business being shepherds. We discovered the Father's heart of God, and millions upon millions were "saved-again", while even more were being born-again, this time not into church, but into the kingdom.
Decades had passed since Pentecostal renewals, the Jesus movement, the hyper-Faith movement, and now finally, we had a movement that could not be labeled anything but revolutionary. It was as if we finally walked past the doors of Wittenberg and St.Peter's into the promised kingdom of God. BEING church, walking with the supernatural power of God being dispensed through the laying on of hands in conferences after conferences. Now that God finally could hold us in His arms, we wanted to run all over the world and play in the river of His bountiful blessings. And we lost sight of Him... our faces to the water for so long, we were gazing into our own beauty, grooming this destiny of ours to be THE final generation, the remnant, the glorified Bride, the Joel generation, the Joshua generation, the Elijah generation, etc.
Once again, it became all about us. Our doctrines started sounding humanistic, romantic, mystical, spurred by a gradual awakening to the artistic works coming at us through movies, music, cultural happenings. Gazing into the pool of human creativity, a generation has grown, educated more deeply by countless hypnotic hours of video games, the new cultural anchors being heralded by media-savvy icons pushing gangsta attitude, tough, violent, defiant, lawless, rave-skateboarding-surfing-pot-smoking college kids finding inspiration and justification for their forays into the occult through cult movies and programs, daring, always daring, all of this on the backdrop of our old friend, rebellion. Don't blame the kids. Blame the quest for power in each of us, that survival, animal instinct to belong and be different. What an oxymoron. A tragic truth nonetheless.
We have forgotten the centrality of the cross of Christ, death to self, and replaced it by a seeker-friendly commercial for God's signs and wonders, yet we forget to deeply muse the words of Jesus to those who had achieved such pinnacles of spiritual powers, all done in His name: "I never knew you."
Our societies have now succeeded in suiting us into the straightjacket of intolerable conflicts. Our world is being raped and abused, mutilated, and that's the type of school our children are going to. Leaders shape our minds We live as if we could waste, yet we are bombarded by messages that we are wasting resources and destroying our planet. We are allowing our children to be visually molested by magazine covers in grocery stores after grocery stores: managers are only doing their job and they have no say. So they don't' say anything. Yet, their silence screams in favor of precociously sexualized children. Because actions speak louder. And inaction too. Whose agenda is this serving?
Still, our so-called free world is shifting into higher gear, and the followers of Jesus now swallow from the pulpit and the silver screen even more deception than ever. We dare not question, we assume God's endorsement, and fall asleep at the soothing sound of trigger words like "destiny to the nations" "prophetic" "emergent" "apostolic" as we covet the international leader's blessing as if he/she was an oracle of God. Flattery runs rampant and ensnares many. Yet, we are working hard at becoming relevant to our generation and culture. We forget that the Gospel, the true power of it, reaches for the demonic roots of cultures and hurls them into the fire of demarcation, still burning bright in the heart of the world's midnight hour.
Where do we stand? In the '70s, rockers wanted to have their personal savior Jesus and keep their Rock'n'roll. Today, armies of young believers rush to the stages of screamo bands, believers or not, being rained on by guttural singing and music of a quality that few secular screamo bands can attain to. You can accuse me of anything. I don't buy the rhetoric which seeks to always stretch God's character into one who loves to be surrounded by this type of cleverly designed hellish noise, sweeping both the churched and unchurched in a state of hormonal adolescence.
We have gone from scriptural to cryptural, from inner healing to inner seething, and the pride of life rides again, wearing an old mask, only this time the artists working on its make-up are of higher caliber. Believers can't even lift a finger to change TV channels when faced with lewdness, horror movies, sexual immorality and deviance. They relish in the exploits of movie-makers and the teams who crafted The Lord of the Rings, ignoring the implications of the satanic party they were having on day 666 of the final episode The Return of the King. Death and sexual deviance are now sexy and slick as depicted through TV shows like "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit", where sexual crimes are constantly exposing women, children and teenagers to crimes against their sexual integrity.
Teenagers and children are groomed to produce more and more sexually confused adults, thanks to the media and the law of equal opportunity: many law-makers are pedophiles and homosexual themselves, so you can't win against that. Not on the battlefield of the world. That's why we need to take a good look at what we are pursuing. Are we running after God, or after a modern manifestation of glorious magical powers? I can't judge the heart of anyone, and I don't intend to. However, I am questioning the Church's prophetic leadership wisdom and discernment as we witness the mudslide of values pushing the envelope of what was once much more valued: a sensitive conscience.
Some have intrinsequely lost the faith because their conscience is seared, their lifestyle relying on a self-congratulatory prophetic culture mixed in the world's dough. If you give them a "new age" Christianity, they will run for it and find power without the cross. A lethal combination. Because Jesus never denied we would have that power. That is a most serious test of our maturity: would we take the power and the glory, or embrace death as Christ did, and as the worthy Apostles did? Foundations of the Church, they were... The yeast of the Pharisees is self-righteousness, and burdens they can't carry themselves.
Do we relate to the image of leaders presented to us through glorious cyber-renditions, web design, clever communication skills and media prowess's designing a bigger-than-life portrait that always seems to bring home the fact that we still can't measure up... if only we could go to this or that conference and get an impartation from these super-apostles... and get the latest from on-the-site prophecies that anyone absent could not have partaken in. The sense of historicity of a "prophetic moment" can be spinned as a sign of God's unique blessing on us for bringing us to these events. And the reputation of the leaders bounce off the tribal drums into the distance, and they join together for another great event, having become "ingredients" to a supernatural happening.
I am sick with being silent for so long. My own artistic works don't even begin to express where I truly am yet. As if I'm expected to remain smoothly unabrasive, just because I so enjoy the creative flow of the quiet and soaking Presence I'm longing for. And I speak not a harsh word to the broken and shattered souls who toil daily in the forest of worldly churchianity. They suffer enough abuse already. I speak in order to appease my conscience and to disclose my true heart. Still, I'm afraid I'll fall short. Time, and many more words and thoughts, may offer me the opportunity to articulate through words or art, what I am seeing and sensing.
You may withdraw from our evolving friendship (I hope you won't). You may pinpoint my errors (I hope you do). But tonight I wrote this improvisational rant, pouring out my heart as I face the dark-sided trend that claims to be relevant and God-inspired. I just hope they would simply keep silent for a bit and listen to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit (holy), and see if they should not help to dial down the noise in the world, both visual and sonic, instead of raising the volume of their own megaphone.
I know nothing, but I've seen a lot. I'm still pondering and don't pretend to put judge anyone's heart, I repeat. Only invite to a deeper reflection, one that will allow God's circumcising blade to cut away our heart's fleshly appendix, which represents our state of being without God in this world. I think we all want to not be alone as we would run to the cross and be pierced by it. I share that concern. That's my humanity too. But I think I'd like to see this rant as an encouragement to press forward, through the silver screen in front of us and walk on toward the goal: to know Christ.
I long to see a mature generation who will, as soon as they become aware of it, cut away from using familiarity with God's anointing, apostolic and prophetic callings, the need to put five-fold titles on business cards and cash in on our talents in ways which disfigures God's intended purposes for giving them to us in the first place.
I'll end this here for now. This issue of my newsletter is meant to speak personal truths and reveal my own struggles with this world. It is a canvas for processing and expression. I hope it will have been a meaningful read for you.
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SOLI DEO GLORIA
Andre Lefebvre, September 5th, 2006
www.propheticunderground.com
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