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The Bionic Believer
By Vinnie MacIsaac
I want More! Yes, you read that right. I’ll say it again… I want more
. I mean, who said more was always a bad thing?
I am talking about who I am, or rather, more importantly, who I am becoming. What if we were all “more?” What if we could be better? What if we not only liked ourselves better, believed in ourselves more, but what if others did too! What if the person we could be was the person we were? I know, it sounds like idealistic mumbo-jumbo. But maybe that is because this world is so murky and overcast that we believe the fabrications it tells us and we think that this is all we could ever be? Maybe, when we believe that lie, it is like part of us succumbs to the status quo.
Is not every kid taught to dream about what they will be when they grow up? And everyone gathers around them; not just the parents, but all the uncles and aunts, and cousins and grandparents and they support them with endless affirmations that affirm their glorious future. Even when their dreams are, foreseeably, completely unattainable, they are bathed in endless and often foundationless platitudes of grandeur. Nobody wants to be “that guy,” who tells a sweet innocent kid he or she will likely never be President, colonize the moon, or be a world series baseball player. Thus, the endless hackneyed-verbiage kicks in: “Believe in yourself, kid!”, “If you set your mind to it, then anything is possible”’, “If you work hard it will happen!”
But the truth is, it may not occur. Look around you, is it happening for everybody? No, and yet those promises were made to everyone in their youth! Any and everything is not possible, nor attainable, nor going to happen for you. Yeah, I know I sound like “Debbie Downer.”(1) But come on folks, this is the cold hard facts of the real world. Just take a look around, the world is full of people who are inexhaustibly hard-working, self-sacrificing, and self-believing and they never make it to their dreams. The world is, in some ways, a mass graveyard of broken dreams. It is full of people who “settle.” Or another way of saying it is they “settle in” to the reality of the unforgiving and cruel nature of this world. Sure, some make it. But really isn’t that just playing the odds? A few of anyone doing anything will rise to the top. But most will fall below in various degrees of failure; it is the nature of the mathematics of success and failure. Where some succeed, it means others failed.
Then the opposite happens. Suddenly the same aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents who told you to believe in yourself, work hard, anything is possible, start saying rather odd and repudiatedly statements like, “What wrong with you?”, “You live in a dream world”, “When are you going to grow up?” Oh and let’s not forget the all important classic, “You’re living in a fairytale. Didn’t we raise you better than that?” The truth is, “No, you did not!” We sell fairytale dreams to kids, then chastise them when they dare believe us.
Which is it? Do I need to believe in myself or grow up? Do I need to settle in, or to seek out? Do I need to have faith or give up?
Modern folk singer Michael David Rosenberg perfectly captured my point this way,
Well if you can’t get what you love
You learn to love the things you’ve got
If you can’t be what you want
You learn to be the things you’re not
If you can’t get what you need
You learn to need the things that stop you dreaming
All the things that stop you dreaming (2)
You are never too old to dream!
Some days, I want to go on dreaming. Some days, I don’t want to accept the status quo. Some days, I want to believe there really is more. And some days, are actually, as it turns out, usually my best days; the days I am more alive, better able to function, and filled with more complete grace for others around me.
I don’t believe in this World! Yes, I know it is real; I am not succumbing to the ramifications of platonic dualism, or that we are all just shadows on the cave wall. What I am saying is, I as a result of this reject the false messages of this world. Today, I declare to you, I refuse to grow up if growing up means giving up, laying down, and waiting to die to spin around on a globe of 6 billion broken dreams. Sorry, I will not go quietly to that fate because I know there is more!
Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” John 10:10 (3)
Who are the thieves in your life? Who is it that is stealing your dreams, who are the people and forces in your life who are killing you and destroying all your hope? This is the work of the devil in this world, and he comes to us in the voices of many well-meaning people. Listen to me, for heaven’s sake, listen to me! Don’t let them kill you! Even more to my point, don’t let them kill, who it is Christ means you to be! Jesus is fighting the whole world for you! (4) He is fighting the whole world, so you don’t become just another spiritual zombie out there in “la la land” living out the number of rotations afforded to you on this rock. You mean more than that. You were created for more, so much more, than that! Search your heart, your mind, your soul, and your very essence, does it not tell you there is more? Jesus, the Warrior of Revelation 12, is fighting the demons who were cast out of Heaven that they may not cast you out of heaven, also!
I want more! I want more from this life than it is currently giving me. And I know that is not wrong. The reason I want more is because deep down inside, whether I have admitted it or not, Jesus created me for more. Jesus created me for more than this world offers. I was not born for this life that I now live. I was not born just to live and then die. I was not born to grow up and to learn how to give up. I was born for the abundant life. I was born for dreams so good they surpass and eclipse even the best of dreams I have had for myself.
The dreams of Jesus for me are more brilliant and possible, than all the combined dreams of my uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents for me. They are backed by the One who is the foundation of my world, not this world. I don’t fully know who it is I am becoming; but I, also, don’t care. Because I know it is greater, even than the failed dreams of my youth, my family, and this world. All I can tell you is that as this mystery unfolds, it becomes clearer that I cannot lose, no matter what dark patches I hit along the path as long as I let God’s dreams live in me!
In short, I want to be,– I so badly want to be,– and am becoming who it is, an eternity ago, God dreamed up in his mind that I would become. I want more. And I am becoming more. What about you?
Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:3 (5)
And I say to you, no matter your age, young, old, or like myself, stuck in the dreaded mid-age zone, don’t let this world “steal and kill and destroy” you! Be like a little child who believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and bears all things (including the confusing rhetoric of your uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents) that you may finally know who it is you are, and better yet, who you are becoming. Perhaps, Peter Pan was right after all, “Never grow up, once you have grown up, you can never come back!”(6) Maybe that is the core truth as to why Jesus told Nicodemus(7) to be born again, old St. Nick grew up too fast and believed, as truth, the status quo of the Pharisees, and it robbed him of the liberty of Truth in Jesus!
I remember from my youth these words on the TV every week;
“Steve Austin, Astronaut, a man barely alive. Gentleman, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the worlds first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster ….” (8)
Never stop wanting more! Your very nature itself tells you there is more to be had! Keep seeking more; more of who you were meant to be and are becoming. I want it, do you? I want to be better, I want to be more complete, I want to live a life that matters, I want to impact the world, I want to break down these broken systems that hold us all back, I want to play by a new set of rules, I want to cast off the stupidity of the “wisdom” of this world. I am hungry for change not bland status quo. God is rebuilding us all. Join the revolution! Won’t you join me in becoming a Bionic Christian?
Join the revolution! Won’t you join me in becoming a Bionic Christian?
Video Appendix:
Warning: Contains some language
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Footnotes:
[1]Debbie Downer is a pop cultural expression to label those who’s negativity becomes toxic based on a fictional skit series from SNL
[2]From the song “Things That Stop You Dreaming” by Passenger. Michael David Rosenberg is the solo member, performing, and writer for this one member fold act.
[3]ESV English Standard Version
[4] Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
(1 John 4:4 ESV)
[5] ESV
[6] Peter Pan has appeared in many forms over the years, but all verses owe their origins to the famous play written by the Scottish playwright J. M. Barrie. The basic concept is a boy who refused to grow up because it would kill his dreams.
[7] John 3:1-8
[8] Theme voice-over form the 70’s massive hit TV show “The Six Million Dollar Man” also known as The “Bionic Man” during syndication.
