Footloose Updated (Origionally posted in Jan. 2011 on now abandoned blog.)

This woman currently embodies in my mind the current stated of the church and  our culture of Post-Modernity.  She wants to dance.  It doesn’t matter that she’s outside, she wants to dance.  It doesn’t matter if other people are watching, she wants to dance.  It doesn’t matter that she’s in traffic, she wants to dance.  Even as the invisible preacher declares the End of Days and the might of God, she wants to dance.  Ever and ever closer to the FIRE written on the road.   She wants to, she does.
The church is hollering out to people who want nothing more to be left alone to do their own thing.  If this woman hears the preacher, she has no interest in what he has to say.  Before I’d have called this silly or indulgent.  But for the Post-Modernist, this woman is life.  She has no shackles of social NAY personal responsibility.  In Post Modernity, she is doing exactly what is right, whatever she feels like doing.
And how about the preacher?  Yelling destruction through a megaphone!  When is the last time anyone listened to the guy yelling through the megaphone?  When I was in college, there was a preacher who’d come to the quad and preach at the students.  He’d speak of their sin and his sinless-ness. (I assume he could claim sinless-ness by the washing of the blood.)  Did the revival break out? No. How about the revelry? Yep.  They laughed at him.  Christians argued with him…but most ignored him.  I wonder if he went to bed satisfied with his witness. Did he say John 15:18 to himself,  “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” Did he thank God for the hecklers?  Was he like John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way for the Lord!”?
 
And where am I?  I’m the kid watching; half amused and dumbstruck.  “Now’s not the time to dance,” I say. And the Post-Modern dancer says, “Then don’t dance, but watch me do the mashed potato.”

UPDATE - 2/17/2013:  I am no longer amused nor dumbstruck. 2 Corinthians 4:7 reads, "But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."  I may never seems strong in the eyes of the culture, but I will not longer be rendered dumbstruck.  Because I do not need to be socially strong because the power belongs to God anyway.  All this earthen vessel needs to do is be faithful in loving, preaching, and reaching out. It is because of the might and majesty of God that now I dance with all my might.  But rather than leave the culture dumbstruck...I'm going to invite them to dance with me.