Dennis Peacocke comments on the need for true radicals

Dennis Peacocke
Dennis Peacocke

"And the axe is already laid at the root of the trees..." Matthew 3:10

The world has always been changed by true radicals, that is, men and women who perceived the root issues of their times and forced others to deal with the implications. Most men live quiet lives of dealing in symptoms; true radicals are drawn to those unseen forces that underlie and shape the visual and transitory. Radicals deal with principles, while politicians and the like deal with sentiments, opinions, and achieving consensus.

"Radical" is a socially derogatory word. Few people concerned with effecting change want to be called one. This is a classic case of the general culture's ignorance of our English language, for the word - "radical" actually means nearly the exact opposite of what most people believe that it means. The word comes from the Latin root "radix" which literally means "root" or "root-issue." True radicals are not wild-eyed, long-haired, establishment-hating iconoclasts. Quite the contrary; true radicals lean far more back to the past and to their roots, for their passion is not the new and the progressive but the old and the eternal. Radicals may indeed be spectacularly innovative, but their innovation is to be found in applying root-structure truths in fresh ways, not by rejecting the past, in order to bring the future to pass. Radicals reaffirm stabilizing truths while dreamers and power-seekers simply don the garb of radicalism. These pretenders cruelly take us into the inevitable destruction produced by foolishly attempting to elevate symptoms and social foliage into the class of historical truths and the immutable root structures of life. Marx was a dreamer, Lenin a power-seeker, but Tolstoy, between the three, was the real radical. Solzhenitsyn is a true radical, while Gorbachev is a reforming politician. Jane Fonda and the 1960s gave us a massive rustling of the leaves, but few, if any, root-searching radicals.

John the Baptist was a radical, not because of his strange appearance and unusual lifestyle, but rather because of the reactionary message he embodied. He called men and women to radical love and radical moral and ethical consistency. Radicals can and have also worn expensive clothing rather than hair-suits and semi-nakedness, for radicalism is far more of a primordial sound than a primordial appearance. Radicals and radical messages grab our hearts and help us rediscover that we have roots amidst the dulling, numbing banality of the superficial, upon which society's "leaders" float and focus. Radicals inspire inward attentiveness and, in so doing, draw numbers of people to remember the ancient boundaries of time-proven truth. Faddists mimic the rebel; history pivots upon the radical. The "radicalism" of the 19th and 20th century Marxists, socialists, and reformers has already proven to be a hideously cruel period of consecutive social and political fads. They will not be remembered kindly.

The false radicalism of our century has led us to the doorstep of massive change. The imminent changes which we now face will indeed be historically radical, that is, their severity will take us back to buried truths from which we have departed. The former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe may lead the way if the Russian soul can somehow protect itself from the "success of the West." For much of our "success" will soon prove to be as transitory and ungrounded as any socialist nation's latest five-year plan.

What is coming is truly radical and remains as fresh as when it was first delivered and reapplied in history at those precise moments when other destabilizing civilizations tried to grow upside-down, back to their root structures. For so states the "Root Book" of them all:

"Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low..." (Isa. 40:4).

The root structures and the radicals are turning mountains into molehills so that life can reassert itself amidst the fruitless branches.

Reprinted by permission. This article is excerpted from Dennis Peacocke's book "The Emperor Has No Clothes" available at www.gostrategic.org CR

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.