Bonfire of the Vanities - for Ted Haggard

Sherman McCoy, the leading character in Tom Wolf’s bestselling novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, is a prisoner of the Wall Street world where he makes millions of dollars as a high profile bonds broker. His ‘lifestyle of the rich and famous’ collides with the life of the sleazy and desperate in the New York City justice system when he accidentally runs over a young, black youth while returning from the airport with his mistress. As the story unfolds, multiple characters find their lives dictated by the larger stories in which they live: journalists sell their souls for a headline, real estate brokers for a sale, attorneys for a fee or favor, and drug dealers for a reduced sentence. For nearly 700 pages we are exposed to the lives of people who are trying to navigate systems that appear out to destroy them, all the while seeking to stimulate (or medicate) their lives by having affairs, making obscene amounts of money, displaying their male machismo or female sensuality, climbing the power structures, or flaunting their fame. It doesn’t seem to matter whether one is at the top of the social circle or low-life street scum. Everyone is a prisoner of their environment. Everyone is hiding who they really are.

McCoy thinks he is losing control of his life as a local tabloid exploits his misery by publishing details of his affairs, his wealth, and his negligence at leaving the scene of an accident in an impoverished neighborhood of the Bronx. Local politicians seem less concerned with justice than they are with placating the racial tensions in order to protect their political ambitions. McCoy himself is desperate to keep his income, his image, and his family in tact. As everything around him collapses, he discovers that he had been a prisoner to all these forces. After a year of navigating the judicial system, reporters questioned McCoy about the contrast between his Park Avenue life and surviving the political and legal nightmare of the Bronx. McCoy responds, ‘I have nothing to do with Wall Street or Park Avenue.’ Ironically, as the world he knew collapsed around him, he found liberation and his true self. The old Sherman McCoy died, and a new one – not a nice, pretty McCoy, but a McCoy who could live with himself – was born. Though he is the one most likely going to jail, he also becomes the one most at peace with his life. At some level, McCoy rose above the controlling narratives of his social obligations, business demands, and the complex political and judicial systems of New York City. He was freed.

In similar fashion, the evangelical church in America is facing a crisis of identity. As we seek to defend our way of life, our cultural values and our influence in society we are finding things fall apart around us. 500 billion dollars has been spent on domestic ministries over the past decade, yet less people are involved in the institutional church than before. Political and religious leaders attempt to rally the troops be scaring us with threats of moral decay, liberal legislation and dying churches. But Jesus said, ‘I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.’ We are commanded to make disciples. He will build the church. I believe that crisis in the western church is that we have the roles reversed. We are trying to build big, strong, relevant churches and hoping that people will somehow get discipled in the process. I suggest that if we focused on planting churches by making disciples rather than planting churches in order to make disciples we might discover once again what it means to live with God and to be the people of God.