How?!
How do we find ourselves, “land of the free” and “one nation under God,” watching a young black man named Ahmaud murdered in the daylight on a neighborhood street for no offense except for being black?
Make no mistake. This assault is not an aberration. Racist violence against people of color is a daily occurence in our country. COVID-19 has illuminated the tragic racial disparities and inequities woven into the fabric of our nation from its founding. Ibram X Kend writes, “From the beginning of the American project, the powerful individual has been battling for his constitutional freedom to harm, and the vulnerable community has been battling for its constitutional freedom from harm.” [What Freedom Means to Trump ] The Pulitzer Prize winning 1619 Project explores this reality. [A Project About The First Enslaved Africans On American Shores Wins A Pulitzer Prize ]
How did we get here?
In A Secular Age Charles Taylor uses two adjectives which are helpful: “enchanted” and “disenchanted.” These two adjectives can be used to describe the world we see. Taylor surveys how, in certain seasons, we have seen the world as enchanted–abounding in the divine, brimming with the supernatural, God or a god around every corner. This was the worldview in the 1,500’s.
In other seasons we have seen the world as disenchanted–the Almighty absent, the divine rarely disclosed, the mundane or the mess front and center rather than any miracles. This is the worldview today.
In Christian Scripture, the book of Esther reveals the world as disenchanted. The word translated “God” is never used in the book. Esther dwells in a world where the Divine is seemingly absent and evil is powerfully present.
In contrast, the book of Exodus reveals the world as enchanted. You can barely turn a page without bumping in a miracle from the Almighty. Justice from on High, parting of the Red Sea, and proclamations from a burning bush are par for the course.
The world we live in today is disenchanted. Only in a disenchanted world can deaths like Ahmaud’s happen.
But these two words are not merely descriptions of the world we see. They are descriptions of the world we shape. They are not merely adjectives to illustrate the way the world is. They are verbs to illustrate the way the world has become. The truth is that we disenchant the world around us. We can also re-enchant the world around us. Verbing these two words illuminates how we got where we are and what to do about where we are.
To disenchant our world is to believe and behave in ways that result in the world being less than what God desires, less than God envisioned. To cling to biases, prejudices, and stereotypes. To act selfishly to protect power and privilege. To foster sexism, racism, classism and other types of exclusion. To live unkindly and unjustly.
We watch this play out repeatedly in the Bible’s story of Esther. King Xerxes protects his power over women, and the power of all men in his kingdom over women, by vanquishing his queen Vashti when she refuses to perform for him and by writing legislature empowering men in the kingdom to further subjugate their wives (Est. 1). Xerxes disenchants the world.
King Xerxes then abducts and rapes the beautiful young women of his kingdom, satisfying his lust, enhancing his power, in an effort to find a new queen (Est. 2). He disenchants his world.
Haman, second in command, acts with racist violence toward the Jews in the land and persuades the king to write legislation that will result in the genocide of the Jews (Est. 3). He uses his power to make policy that harms the most marginalized. He disenchants his world.
Because of the beliefs and behaviors of just these two, the world ceases to be the one God dreamed and desired. Justice, solidarity, equality and equity, love and kindness are as absent as it seems God himself is.
What this week’s video showed are two men in Georgia disenchanting the world. What works like the 1619 Project show are not just individuals, but systems and governments disenchanting the world. It’s not simply that this world seems disenchanted. It’s that it’s been shaped into disenchantment by the beliefs and behaviors of individuals and institutions.
This is the truth Jesus points to in his prayer when he begs us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt. 6:10 ESV). The earth, Jesus acknowledged, was not yet a place where God’s rule and reign were fully expressed and experienced. What Jesus came to do was to more completely enact that reign–to bring love where there was hate, to bring equity where there was only power and privilege, to break down dividing walls and work for justice and union. And what Jesus invited us to do in the prayer was to pray for the same, and to work for the same. It was an acknowledgement that this is not the world God envisioned. It is disenchanted–because we have disenchanted it.
And what Jesus did was to re-enchant it. What Jesus did was to launch a revolution of re-enchantment. Every deaf ear he opened, every dim eye he restored, every abuse victim he healed, every injustice and unrighteousness he called out and stood against was an act of re-enchantment. Jesus was shaping the world to be more like the world God conceived and created.
It was this work of re-enchantment that resulted in his death. If there is anything true in a disenchanted world it’s this–those most responsible for the disenchantment and those reaping the rewards of the disenchantment will use any force, especially deadly force, to keep the disenchantment in place.
This is what we see in Esther. The disenchanted world of sorrow and suffering and marginalization introduced in Est. 1 becomes an enchanted world of joy and peace and equity in Est. 10. But this only happens because of the courageous and life-risking efforts at re-enchantment enacted by Esther and Mordecai. Through it all Haman continues to seek their death. But, in the end, the revolution of re-enchantment wins the day.
Esther and Mordecai act selflessly, even saving the life of King Xerxes, the same king threatening their own lives (Est. 2). Esther and Mordecai lament the suffering of others, standing in solidarity with them (Est. 4). Esther, at risk to her own life, and Mordecai call out the unjust actions and legislation of Haman and Xerxes (Est. 4-6). Esther and Mordecai re-write legislation, putting policy in place to project the vulnerable (Est. 9). Esther and all the Jews mark all of this as a mighty and merciful God at work through them, celebrating it all in the festival of Purim (Est. 9). Again, and again, and again–at great cost, and with unfathomable energy–they re-enchanted their world.
And this is the supreme summons of our God–to join him, his Son and his Spirit in this ongoing work of re-enchantment. Not to merely lament the disenchantment so abundant in our world. But to sign up for and play our part in the re-enchantment of this world. To do as Jesus does. To do as Esther does. To name the injustices and inequities in the world. To stand in solidarity with the suffering. To dismantle institutions and policies and those powerfully in control of them which marginalize and unmercifully treat others.
In an essay called “Talking About Bicycles,” C. S. Lewis writes about four “ages”–the final age being the age of “re-enchantment.” This is the age Jesus has ushered in. This is the age we must now usher in. If there is anything we’ve learned this week it’s the desperate need for re-enchantment, the absolute necessity of leaning all the more fully into a new age of re-enchantment. In fact, Paul Gould in Cultural Apologetics argues that re-enchantment may be the most persuasive form of Christian apologetic. The more we believers sacrifice for, prioritize, and unite in acts of re-enchantment, the more the unbelieving world will stand and take notice.
Will join God’s longstanding revolution of re-enchantment?
