Mr. Fixit

there was once a group of several friends in the church who began to grow wary of a popular new rising leader. he was using the church as a springboard to gain further votes in following elections. people who had called themselves christians were losing sight of Christ's true nature and were applying strong feelings of nationalism to Biblical precepts.

this small group of friends spoke out for years against this man's use of the church to gain power and strip the Messiah of his true identity, warping the image of a "good christian" into something drenched in propaganda and illusions of grandeur, power and economic rehabilitation.

this small group of friends were right.

the leader withdrew his support for anything left of the real church.

the state fell under control of a man and his secret police who no longer valued human life that was anything less than Aryan.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and 14 of the other 15 conspirators who had tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler in order to commit the lesser of two evils were executed in the final months of the European war in the 1940's.

some of these men had spoken out since the late 1920's when Adolf Hitler began making promises of national recovery.

the cult of personality took over and his face was an icon of positive change for years and slowly became an unstoppable symbolic effigy of both a failing nation and a crumbling church.


the cult of personality is a very dangerous thing, especially when the person being admired so violently is still living, and still very powerful.

we must be careful, as people from all walks of life, particularly those of us from within the church, to avoid fawning over a leader because of the change they promise.

i may get criticized for this. but i voted for him, too. and i'm totally psyched that he won the election.

...but a pox on me and my hands and my tongue if i do not state that i am concerned with an overwhelming adoration of a new leader.

i am guilty of bowing to the cult of personality in many ways. i violently adore writers and philosophers like Bonhoeffer, King, Dyson, Niebuhr, Lewis, Bell, and several others.

i also used to believe so strongly in the persona of the man known as El Che. i've since learned that it is the ideals he stood for that i love, and that he was a fallen and failed human in many respects, though certainly not all.

please, sisters and brothers, let us not get so wrapped up in an iconic and impressive speaker and leader at the cost of our search for peace, justice, and most importantly truth.