DIVINE PEACE INSURGENCY

"To address the global security crisis, Jesus might speak of the divine peace insurgency. When a nation is conquered and occupied by another nation, insurgent movements seek to expel the occupiers. The insurgents see themselves not as criminals or rebels fighting a legitimate authority, but rather as a resistance movement fighting occupiers of injustice. They are freedom fighters seeking liberation from tyranny; they are legitimate power seeking to expel an illegitimate one. If this world is indeed the creation of a good, holy, compassionate, wise, and just God, and if it has been conquered and occupied by this destructive, unholy, merciless, tyrannical, stupid, and devious system we are calling the suicide machine, then Jesus came to launch an insurgency to throw that occupying regime. Its goal is to resist the occupation, liberate the planet, and retrain and restore humanity to its original vocation and potential. This renewed humanity can return to its role as caretakers of creation and one another so the planet and all it contains can be restored to the healthy and fruitful harmony that God desires.

"But this insurgency can never use the weapons of the occupying regime; otherwise, it simply becomes another manifestation of it. So it is a merciful insurgency, a wisdom insurgency, a hope insurgency, a generous insurgency, a courage insurgency, a compassion insurgency, a faith insurgency, a peace insurgency.

GOD'S UNTERROR MOVEMENT

"To confront the global equity crisis, Jesus might speak of God's unterror movement.The societal machine becomes suicidal when humanity trades God's original creative narrative for a selfish and destructive framing story of its own. Driven by this alien story, some seek profit that will make others poor. They seek security that will make others insecure. They seek equity for themselves but are insensitive to the plight of others. Their pleasure inflicts pain on others. Their gain means loss for others. They seek and use power and freedom in ways that will injure, dehumanize, reduce, or oppress others. The impoverished, oppressed, reduced, and aggrieved respond by seeking revenge, redress, and opportunity, often through crime, immigration (legal or illegal), and acts of terrorism — adding to the growing toxins of pain and destruction, distorting God's beautiful dream further and further into a terrifying nightmare.

"The equity gap that separates rich from poor renders them enemies rather than neighbors, so everyone is caught up in the ultimate vicious cycle of terror and counterterror, violence and counter-violence, hate and counterhate. We can only escape by defecting from this whole vicious, suicidal system . . . walking away from the king in Rome, walking away from the armed rebels who dream of overthrowing him, and following a weaponless prophet in Galilee.

"When groups of seemingly disparate people defect and band together in the way of Jesus, they form what we might call unterror cells. They secretly plot detonations of hope. They quietly conspire to set off explosions of spontaneous kindness. They plan gentle coup d' etats to replace regimes of domination and oppression with movements of empowerment and service. In a complete overthrow of violent terrorism, they fly airplanes of generosity into towers of need and plant improvised encouragement devices by roadsides and in neighborhoods everywhere, seeking God's kingdom and God's equity.

NEW GLOBAL LOVE ECONOMY

"Jesus might confront the global prosperity crisis by announcing the new global love economy. The divine insurgency and unterror movement prepare the way for the construction of a new love economy to fulfill God's creative dream. Our current prosperity system, as we shall see, is amazingly powerful — growing more so every day yet it is unsustainable long-term, an example of self-delusion and denial about our creaturely limits that may be one of the most striking characteristics of modern times. As part of this insane and suicidal economy, we act as though the resources we consume are infinite and the wastes we deposit are invisible. Just as our bodies consume food and produce excrement, in this economy we consume trees and produce smoke, consume clean air and produce smog, consume clean water and produce sewage and toxic waste, consume rock and produce radiation, consume oil and coal and produce gases that turn our planet into an overheating oven in which storms boil and oceans rise and deserts spread and forests whither. Our prosperity system thus becomes an excrement factory.

"Socially, in this economy we consume time and produce fatigue, consume art and talent and produce entertainment and amusement, consume work and leisure and produce paychecks and heart attacks. And ultimately we consume communities and produce extended families, consume extended families and produce nuclear families, consume nuclear families and produce individuals, consume individuals and produce consumers, and finally consume consumers themselves and produce disembodied fragmemts called 'wants' and 'needs' and 'markets' and 'segments' and 'anxieties' and 'drives' that the economy consumes and excretes and reconsumes in a kind of cannibalistic ferment or rot. In the process, we commonly produce successful mega-consumers of unimaginable wealth who are more or less bankrupt compassion for their poor neighbors. And in a stroke of suicidal genius, we simultaneously produce poor people whose greatest dream like those megaconsumers who don't care at all about them.

"Politically, we produce and sell weapons in unimaginable numbers and then tax the profits to build defenses against those to whom we sold the weapons. We build an economy of war in hopes that it will produce for us a world of peace.

"That's why if Jesus were here today, I imagine he would speak frequently of the new global love economy of God — not an industrial economy, and not an information economy, and not even an experience economy, but a wise relational economy that measures success in terms of gross national affection and global community, that seeks to amass the appreciating capital of wise judgment, profound fore-thought, and deepening virtue for the sake of rich relationships."