This line of thought set me to wondering about people in general. And it occurred to me, that in small ways and sometimes great ways, we are all rebels.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a rebel as "one who rebels or participates in a rebellion". I think perhaps many (most?) of you might take exception to being called a rebel. You aren't, after all, participating in a rebellion. Or are you?
Most people think of rebellion in the social sense as going against the prevailing culture, or challenging the status quo. Certainly there have been fashion rebellions, think of the flappers of the 1920's, or the beehives and mini-skirts of the sixties, or even the ubiquitous bikini (once quite a scandalous outfit). There have been rebellions in music, with the Beatles, Elvis Presley, atonal and polytonal composition. Art had the abstract impressionists, and dada'ists.
Rebellion has had a darker side with drugs, gangs, and other criminal behaviors. And religion has been rife with rebellions since, well probably the dawn of man.
So what do all these things have in common? More particularly what do they have in common with you? I think for the most part rebellious behaviour can loosely be grouped into three categories, attempts to create something new, dissatisfaction with the current status quo and search for something different, and disagreement with the status quo and the attempt to destroy it and replace it with something new. Admittedly the last two are similar.
The first category, the attempt to create something new, is actually the oldest rebellion known. For really what it is, is an attempt to emulate God, the ultimate creator. Don't get me wrong, I am not down on the creative impulse, in fact, I rather favor it. Still creators are playing god in a sense, and the source of that impulse to create is what I am interested in here.
The next two categories roughly follow the same line, unhappiness with the current state of things. Something, some impulse, leads to a search for something new that will satisfy.
I would argue, that at the root, what all social rebellions have in common, is an impulse to seek something new, because what is currently available fails to satisfy. And I would argue that the impulse that drives us, in little ways, and sometimes great ways, to seek the new and part from the old, is the fingerprint of God on our hearts. We are created to seek God, and heaven is our intended destiny. We yearn for nearness to our Creator. And we realize, some of us consciously, and many unconsciously, that something is missing in our current state. So we seek the new. Those who don't know God, who haven't heard the Gospel, or who reject God and the Gospel, seek to fill the void in material ways, and are in fact impelled by the yearning within to seek something new.
The truly happiest people I know of are the Saints. They were the happiest in their lives precisely because of their closeness to their Creator. They understood what the impulse in their hearts meant, what its purpose was. And faithful to it, they rebelled against their contemporaries and their cultures and sought God. St. Francis was a rebel. So were the Apostles. St. Maximillian Kolbe. Mother Theresa.
We are all rebels. We are in a constant state of rebellion against the sins in our lives, the sins in our cultures, against our very flesh. Consider this from one of the New Testaments greatest rebels, "I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature. For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness for lawlessness, so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. But what profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit that you have leads to sanctification, and its end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord".(Romans 6:19-23)
It's all in how we express our rebellion.
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