We’ve been in a conversation on spiritual gifts at the Bridge, and Sunday we had homework. I called it Project Mayhem because any time I can reference Fight Club, I do. In that film, the underground clubs (that we DO NOT TALK ABOUT) are the first step taken towards shaking individuals out of the familiar rut of modern life. Once that step is taken, once the culture is beaten out of them, once they see light in darkness, once they taste life, there is no returning to what they had mistakenly called life before and now have newly opened eyes to experience the big, beautiful gifts of their lives that these men had taken for grated for so long.

The film is just so great.

Anyway. Once they are transformed, there is a need to take this revelation out into the world to ‘infect’ the others who are still sleepwalking behind masks/images of their own creation. This is what they call Project Mayhem. (“I want you to start a fight…and I want you to lose.”)

Now before we go further, the characters in Fight Club are violent and are bent on destruction, both of which are decidedly not part of the homework assignment. But here’s the thing about this metaphor, doesn’t it sound familiar?

A person finds/meets/experiences something (or someOne) that changes them (us), transforms us, opens our eyes to a new way of life. This transformation exposes the superficiality of the previous sand that we had built upon. There is now meaning, significance. We are connected to each other and the world around us in ways we never acknowledged, never noticed. We start to care. We are loved and we fall in love. We are brand new.

If it stops here, it’s a cool thing that’s happened, but that isn’t where it ends, is it? We want to pass this beautiful new life on to others, because we know beyond reason that if others receive, it doesn’t decrease ours. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. The more who are awake and alive, the more the world crackles and hums with the energy and possibility of the Divine. So we take it out, and since telling isn’t always good enough, we show. We show with joy, peace, patience, life, love. The world changes, or rather, the world can change. It’s the only way it can change.

Yes, Fight Club uses violence and destruction to bring about the “complete destruction of civilization,” but listen to this: “SO THAT [we] can build something better.”

I know I talk too much about Fight Club sometimes, but I’m not sure the way it is is exactly what we want or what we dream it could be. Maybe we are also called to build something better…

Maybe not by using bombs or baseball bats, though. Maybe with hugs and prayers and meals and kindness and empathy and best of all, Jesus. Maybe that’s the mayhem that tears this whole silly facade apart and then it can finally be replaced with a Kingdom.