Brueggemann’s 19 Theses
Walter Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar who has spent so much time studying the Old Testament prophets that he seems to have turned into one. He scares me. He’s the Steven King of the authors I read. I remember reading The Prophetic Imagination on a flight from India and writing in the margin, “I wish I hadn’t read this…but I have and I am now responsible.” Walter Brueggemann scares because I think he’s right—that our society is far more distorted than we have supposed. But in this time of economic catastrophe, when Bel bows, Nebo stoops and the false gods of Babylon are shown to be incapable of providing the peace and security they promise, we may be open to a critique of our idols that could lead us to the truly radical alternative of hope in the living God. My prophetic declaration concerning 2009 has been that it is a year of falling idols and rising hope. May it come to pass. So without commentary, other than to say I agree with this prophetic perspective, I offer to you my adaptation and modification of Walter Brueggemann’s 19 Theses..
1. Everybody lives by a script—whether implicit or explicit.
2. We get scripted through the process of nurture, formation and socialization, and it happens without our knowing it.
3. The dominant script in our society is one of technological therapeutic military consumerism.
4. That script enacted through advertising, propaganda and ideology, especially in the liturgies of television, promises to keep us safe and happy.
5. That script has failed. The script of technological therapeutic military consumerism cannot make us safe or happy.
