Spiritual movement based on ancient Eastern texts sweeps Midwest! November 17, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri , trackbackJust judging from trips on planes in and out of Kansas City, my new home has got to be one of the most Bible-studying American cities. There’s always at least one wild looking hipster studying a heavily marked up bible. I’ll grant you, it’s an unscientific survey, but it’s been very consistent in my way-too-big sample size lately.
I’m writing this post on a plane. The guy across the isle and in front of me is reading Chronicles. The chapter is all marked up, lots of notes, highlighter marks, checks and underlines. He was just reading for a while, and now has his face in his hands. Now he’s looking at the ceiling. He’s thinking his brains out. The book is open again and he’s reading away again. Think of how many times he’s read this book in his life. But he’s going back, once again, to see something new. And obviously, he’s seeing it. He just jumped back to Kings 19. The first several paragraphs are highlighted in yellow, in addition to many notes and underlines.
I see this all the time. Walk into any hipster coffeeshop in Kansas City and you’ll see at least one kid doing this.
Step back and think about what is really going on here. This Kansas City guy—who fits many Midwestern red state stereotypes—is reading, and living by, 2,500 year-old Jewish texts. He believes these texts are guides for his own life. He believes God is speaking to humanity through these stories. The way to understand how amazing that is, is to imagine this probably conservative Kansas Citian reading Taoist or Buddhist texts, and really studying them, really trying to understand the roots and historical context of them. For some reason that sounds cool, right? But he’s just reading ancient Jewish texts instead of ancient Indian or Chinese texts. If I put it that way, doesn’t it sound a little cool as well? And keep in mind, he doesn’t just read this book. He’s probably read hundreds of books about the book—books that explain the cultural, political and economic context of the narrative of the book.
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More people in East Asia today are reading exotic mystical texts of the West (i.e. the Bible), and are adapting their lives to its message than ever before in history.