The Rejection Syndrome
Today it's "hip" to reject. A scathing sneer, a helpless, quick laugh at the tired old hung-up establishment is heady wine for the ego. Deliberately mottled rags, Clorox-treated jeans, sandals (mostly in summer only), sloppy, baggy, "put-on" clothes are a prideful, glittering uniform beside the "straight" establishment with its nowhere scene.
The hair, hanging purses, huge scarves, and put-on red, white and blue are all part of the big scene, and it's labeled: "We reject society."
And it's worth rejecting, all right. Any society which could be so utterly insane as to bring mankind to the brink of literal Cosmocide has got to be a society worth rejecting. Any civilization which so entangled itself in the pursuit of worldly, materialistic goals that it looked around in decades-late bewilderment at its own impending annihilation has got to be a civilization worth plenty of rejection.
So we see youngsters sneering at the uniform of the "straight" scene, while they stand in their own uniform. We see youngsters who are turning off from the world and turning on to new things — drugs, sex and whatever is bizarre. Some of them even say, "turn on with Jesus." They say Christ had long hair. They say, "I march because Christ overturned the money tables." They say, "I demonstrate because Christ talked pretty straight to the Pharisees." They say, "Sure, I come head to head with the authorities because Jesus did." In finality, they say: "Jesus was the first hippie."
Recently at the Tournament of Roses Parade, a loud, public audio set was going up and down the parade route. Thousands heard it: "Turn on with Jesus. Sin is the problem. We've got to come out of sin. We've got to turn on with Jesus. That's the way to solve the problems of this world."
The "Jesus Freaks"
Or they say, "Freak out with Jesus," or "Jesus is a good trip."
The new subculture takes on blatant religious overtones. They talk of Jesus. But which Jesus?
The same one whose name adorned the barns and rocks of the '30's? The same "Jesus" who was adored by the perpetrators of the Spanish Inquisition? Do they speak of the Christ of the Crusades — the Jesus of the Jewish Persecutions — which Jesus?
Do they say the Jesus of the mainstream of Catholic, Coptic and Protestant faiths is the one to "trip" with — or do they speak of some other Jesus?
The one of whom they speak — the one with long hair, flowing robes, halo, sick expression, thin, aquiline nose, petulant lips; the one who supposedly died of a broken heart; the one who is represented as a dropout from dogma, a revolutionary, a lawbreaker, an establishment-hater — that "Jesus" is a pusillanimous pansy; a putrescent put-on; an historical hoax.
He never lived.
He's as fake as store-bought hippie uniforms — as fallacious as fairy godmothers, glass slippers, and Rudolph's red nose.
You reject society, you say?
Then why accept its Christ?
Why claim the only place society never erred — never made a mistake, was in its religious notions?
Why seize on the central figure of the professing "Christian" faiths with their history of crimes, sins, sickening barbarism and hideous wars?
Which Jesus?
Does it make sense to claim you're rejecting society when you accept the very focal point of the historical development of that society?
The older ones followed the kids in clothes, hair, and music. Old-time comedians can be seen sporting long hair; newscasters, television commentators, actors, sports figures, all inevitably cultivate curls, buy bellbottoms, and follow the youths into the "swimming pool pseudo-hip society."
Middle-aged men who deplored "mop tops" when the Beatles first waggled their hips and wowed the teeny hoppers can now barely see beneath the shaggy shock of hair they wear.
Keep leading, kids, and the older set will inevitably follow — slowly perhaps, reluctantly maybe — but they will finally follow. Until you stop degenerating.
The minute you stop doing that — society will call a halt.
Keep going down, and you'll be amazed at the compromises your own parents, and the middle-aged, middle-class, middle-Americans, will make. They will surely follow.
They'll follow everywhere but in one specific direction.
They will never follow you if you follow the true Christ. If you really "turn on with Jesus," the Jesus of the BIBLE — you'll look around behind you in vain.
No one will be there.
Want to know the way to become a complete, utter, total outcast?
Discover the TRUE Christ of the Bible.
The Real Christ
Take a look at the young man who looked like any average Jew of His day (that will make all the Jew-haters, witch-hunters, and racist bigots seethe with a hatred which would embarrass Hitler), who was so commonplace in His appearance that He escaped out of crowds time and time again, and whose betrayer had to be paid a huge sum to carefully single out which person He was.
Discover the Christ who was utterly unconcerned about saving the world then — who came to deliver a vital message, not to convert men's souls — and you'll succeed in turning off the broad majority of all religions who have ever professed the Jesus of decadent society.
Find the Jesus who studiously obeyed the laws, who paid His taxes, who lived in His own home, who helped the slaves of Roman officers, and who was brutally murdered in an illegal trial, and you'll find a Jesus Christ your parents never heard of.
Find the Christ who was subject to His parents, and who came to keep and MAGNIFY the laws of His Father, not destroy them; find the Jesus who commands His followers today to KEEP THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (Matt. 19:17); and you'll have discovered a Christ totally different from the historical fake professed by millions.
Discover the Jesus who was in a house when the wise men arrived, not the manger (Matt. 2:11); who said you can worship Him all you please and do it all IN VAIN (Matt. 15:9); who was not crucified on a Friday, and who did NOT rise on a Sunday; the Jesus who was NOT born anywhere near "Christmas."
Read about the Jesus whose mother had a large family (Matt. 13:55-56), who is Lord of the Sabbath, not Sunday (Mark 2:27), and who did NOT come to live a righteous life in your place (I John 2:4, 6; I Pet. 2:21), and you'll discover a Christ who will ENRAGE the establishment today, just as He did during His day!
Want to learn how to TURN OFF people, how to LOSE friends, and DISILLUSION people? Then follow the Jesus Christ of the BIBLE, instead of the Jesus Christ of society and history! Do that — and you'll REALLY reject society.
You'll be FORCED to reject it.
Because IT WILL REJECT YOU!
Make no mistake. The "turn on with Jesus" idea of the hip set is as false and meaningless as the values of the society they reject. They've got the wrong Christ. It's another "Christian cop-out." One man's religion is another's booze. One man's pot-induced daydream is another man's pseudo-religious, self-created sanctimoniousness.
The Christ of the Bible was no hippie.
And neither would He have fit into the "straight" society of this day.
When the youth reject society — the end product of a civilization led by the "Judeo-Christian ethic" and its Jesus — they are rightly rejecting "another Jesus" — not the Jesus of the Bible. But incredibly the youth, while rejecting that society, turns right around and assumes it is discovering a "new" thing, when in fact it is latching onto the same fictitious Christ of the Establishment.