connecting with culture

the bourne-again identity

Can we escape our programming?

Can any of us really sail against the cultural tides that shape our minds, our hearts, our imaginations, our everyday decisions?

This is the question that lies behind the breathtaking car chases, visceral fight scenes and frenetic, Machiavellian machinations of Britain’s current number-one film, The Bourne Ultimatum.

Jason Bourne, the film’s central figure, may share initials with his rather more suave British forerunner James Bond, but he is altogether a different kind of secret agent. He is bereft of urbanity, eschews luxurious cars, forgoes casual carnality and has been neurologically reprogrammed to the point where he cannot remember his ‘real’ identity.

A ‘terminator’ of flesh and blood, conditioned to kill on demand. So, he kills. But conscience intervenes. Indeed, whoever Bourne may be, some residue of conscience, some smidgen of the noble patriotism that led him to volunteer for this extreme ‘black ops’ programme remain. He will kill for his country but not in a way that denies the principles his country stands for. Long before he rediscovers his real name, he has rediscovered his true self. He seeks forgiveness.

Redemption beckons.

Millions of people in our driven culture face similar, if less lethal, challenges. Can the real ‘us’ survive? Do we really have to work this way, buy this way, educate this way, pose this way to survive in 21st-century Western society? Can we escape the relentless programming of logo propaganda, the glorified idolatry of self, the genuflection to market forces, the enervating obsession with hollow celebrity, the dearth of enriching relationships? Can we really, as Paul instructs us in Romans 12, not be conformed to this world?

The short answer is ‘yes’. This is indeed the glory of the gospel of Christ. Paul, however, was under no illusions about the tenacity of old patterns of behaviour or the power of the dominant culture to continue to hold sway over our hearts and minds.

Or, indeed, about the cost of living the counter-cultural life. At best we will feel, as Peter puts it, like aliens and exiles (1 Peter 2:11). At worst we may lose our very lives. Being ‘born again’ is a wondrous beginning, but to flourish we need one another and we need ears ‘wifi’d’ to the voice of the Master and hearts filled, like tautened sails, with the Spirit’s breath.

May it be so for you today.

Mark Greene

do we really have to work this way, buy this way, pose this way to survive in 21st-century society?
we need ears ‘wifi’d’ to the voice of the master and hearts filled with the spirit’s breath

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