Manifesto

Babylon is dead.

We divorced ourselves from God & became gods ourselves . . .
Our culture has divorced itself from God. We are told that we have out-grown Him. We are told that we would be happier without Him.
We have arrived at a time and a place where to talk about God is a curse. It's weird and socially reprehensible. On the other hand, to use God's name as a curse is as natural to us as breathing.
We divorced God in a flurry of ideas and dreams, and now we have made ourselves the centre of all things.
Our parents used to tell us "the world doesn't revolve around you…" Then we grew up and Foucault, Usher and Ikea told us that, actually the world does revolve around us. The world revolves around me - what I think, what I want, what I choose. Was Galileo wrong?
We rejected God's morality, so that we could build our own moralities that suited us.
We rejected God's authority, so that we would be answerable to none but ourselves.
We rejected God's paternity and love, so that we could be free of the responsibility to love Him back.
We divorced ourselves from God and became gods ourselves . . . 
 
We erased our value and identity . . .
We divorced ourselves from God and became gods ourselves.
It’s survival of the fittest. It’s every man for himself. Let the weak fall by the wayside, because we are now only worth as much as we are rich, or beautiful, or useful. We no longer have any innate value or identity.
We used to be equals. We all came from the same intelligence; from the same love.
Then we left God and became disconnected from each other - relative to one another. There is no basis for equality here. We left God and there are no absolute morals. Morality is relative, and so there is no basis for basic human rights (or wrongs, or right and wrong). We have no particular value. We are the illegitimate children of nothing, with nothing to do but try to prove our worth . . .

We became slaves to each other and to badness . .
(Macrocosm)
We became gods, and so we please ourselves. Selfishness has become the foundation of our society. We reassure each other; “You have to look out for number One…” “Follow your heart…” “Be true to yourself…”
It’s weird then, that we all live like slaves, doing whatever we are told to do, wanting whatever we’re told to want, chasing whatever we’re told to chase...
What are we chasing?
“Religion is the opium of the people” says Marx, and ours is a religious society. Idols are set up everywhere we go: on every page, on every channel, on every street, in every shop, in every home, and ultimately in every heart. TV, pay rise, alcohol, new car, Friday night, younger flesh, weed, porn, bigger breasts, clearer skin, property ladder, 50% extra free, and so on. Here in the middle of a million idols and anaesthetics we have become pacified and completely apathetic. You could take every bit of dignity and reason from us and we wouldn’t even notice, because we are too busy chasing the desires that other people hang in front of us.
Why are we chasing these things?
In a society where self-centredness is the ultimate principle, those who can gain from others’ loss, will do so. It’s a game… it’s monopoly… it’s the economy… its illegitimate gods fighting for significance.
So drink more and think less - it’s good for the economy.
Retain the body of a sixteen year old girl at all costs - it’s good for the economy.
Spend yourself into the red with credit cards - good for the economy. Sue somebody because you fell off your ladder - good for the economy.
We chase these things because we’re told to. We are slaves - Chasing fallacies, so that those who can will make money. We do whatever we’re told, and somehow we still believe that we’re the masters of our own lives.  

(Microcosm)
Society based on selfishness naturally leads to the enslavement of the many by the few. Worse than this though, the pattern is carried out on every level. There is no ‘us and them’ here. We each enslave one another.  
We became gods. Every man for himself. We’re not givers, we’re takers. We’re not lovers, we’re consumers.
Sex is like food to us - pure sensory pleasure, divorced from all human relational significance.
People are like disposable cameras to us - we take nice memories and we throw away the carcass.
We use each other to prove our worth - our desirability as a product, or our prowess as a consumer - because, since we divorced ourselves from God we have no innate worth.
And we use each other for our own enjoyment, like we would any other product, because since we divorced ourselves from God other people have no innate worth either.
Love has become consumerism. Human beings are a commodity for social, emotional and physical satisfaction. Sometimes we are the consumer, and sometimes the product. Sometimes the slave, sometimes the master. And generally we are both at once.
We say we define our own relational moralities, but then we all end up doing the same thing anyway. Sexual roles have been defined by the media in the interest of the economy, and power, and the selfish desires of people. We are told what to do and we passively decide to obey. Yet, we still believe that we are masters of our own existence.

Jesus did something else . . .
We divorced ourselves from God and became selfish. But all the while God has shown us selfless love. Jesus is the opposite of selfishness. All wrong is rooted in simple selfishness, but God squashed it with the opposite - selflessness. While we live as though we were gods that will never die, God has shown Himself as a human, and died. For us.
When all is done, the selfishness that crushes us will not survive.

Decision, or default.

God, or self.

God, or Babylon.

God is alive.

Babylon is dead.