Disclaimer
Before I say anything, I should make it clear that I'm not referring to you underdeveloped, whining, self-nominated "rebels" who like to become angry and smash things, throwing tantrums all over society's floor, only to later receive a bottle, get burped, and gently be rocked to sleep while being told that everything's going to be alright.
This is about true rebels, the ones who know that this world is seriously messed up and that the only way to exist is in defiance of it—and for the ones who have truly graduated from even this level of thinking to realize that true defiance is love.
Why We Feel the Need to Defy
It seems to me that many of us in society own a rebel's heart and soul.
I remember when I was much younger, my friends and I encouraged one another to break the rules, and then we heartily praised each other when we did so. It was like we innately saw the irony of setting rules when, on a much more profound plane, there existed the crooked values of humanity, and so we broke them satisfyingly knowing that we were against such skewed notions of justice. And then we laughed about it; for, really, how else can we react to such despairingly ubiquitous and heavy lawlessness?
But here's the real question: why do we possess such a rebellious heart and soul?
I believe it's because it's only natural to oppose the world. It's as if we're all inclined to recognize the world for being the unjust, inconsiderate, and discriminating place that it is, and we become angry about it at a ripe young age when we are just young enough to behold the world with untainted eyes while we're just old enough to understand its intrusion. Alas, that was the basis for much of the anger that my friends and I felt against the rest of society. We are all designed to know what is fair and real.
Now, it's all a matter of whether or not we succumb and acquiesce to this unmoving world. Or--do we continue to fight, continue to struggle, until we're rewarded for our defiance?
Because this is what I see—many of us have a period of rebellion early in their youths, but rather than compromising our anger, we compromise our defiance.
Goodness gracious, our dissatisfaction is JUSTIFIED; why in the world do we close our eyes, breathe deep, and SWALLOW IT?? It's time to man up.
We let go of our loftier ideals because it's easier to accept the tipped standards of the world and learn to function by them. But really, the "world" is just a bunch of people who themselves are confused about what justice truly is. And shouldn't it be up to us, the rebelling souls, to show them what is compassionate and just? The souls of the very people who "make the rules" desperately need us to persevere in our defiance, to rage on the battle against them—which, ironically, becomes for them in the end—and convey a deeper truth through our struggle, for the very people who are most sure of their lives are, by our definition anyway, the most lost.
Views to Carefully Consider Before Rebelling
Now, in my opinion, there are just two ways to view the world. When regarding the world, one may either want to control it or to save it. There may be a third, but it involves being either ignorant or indifferent to the general population, and so there's no consequence in skipping it at this point.
There are those who simply just want to control the world. This is a simple exercise of power. Either they want to outright flex their will and have their desires become done or, when this isn't a viable option because of a lack of resource or credibility, manipulation becomes the satiating choice. Napoleon Bonaparte fits this description well. He was obsessed with gaining supremacy, but, as we all know, his hubris was his downfall in his attempt to overtake Russia and its geography.
And then there are those who wish to save the world but ended up trying to control it instead. The English Church, The Holy Wars, and the "White Man's Struggle" all come to mind. So does Adolf Hitler. While people gathered behind Napoleon for his power, people supported Hitler for his ideals, namely that the world could only become a better place by eradicating all impurities. Unfortunately, however, he had a severely simple and crippling notion of what an impurity was.
So how do we truly save the world from its moral plunders? We can try and save it by our own ideals, but then we must coerce our ideals to those who oppose it, thus committing the terrible transgression of desiring power to control. It seems to me that the process must rather be an inductive approach, starting from specific cases to a generalized idea of how to save ourselves. We must start with the people; only then can we truly progress. But even then, many people lack the capacity, or even the desire, to begin change. And we've learned that we can't force it, or else we begin oppression, a thing to be avoided for the very fact that we'd like to save people from it.
Democracy was a great example of this. The American government was by the people for the people. But this inductive approach to politics gave way to a deductive perspective and a desire for control of a centralized generalization of how to govern the people—a formidable and respectable beginning gone awry.
How To Rebel Against Society
And thus comes the realization. We can neither force a revolution from the head, for there is always the danger of seeking power to further our own progression in the world, nor can our rebelling hearts watch from the side. Well, isn't it obvious? We must use ourselves as the very pawns. We cannot tell people how to act, we must become the act. We're not forcing an idea, but we are exemplifying one, and thus, if they desire to emulate it, then we've done our part. And if we perish, we perish.
Think of love; when you unexpectedly act lovingly to an absolute stranger who looks to have met with hard times so very often and recently, there's always this confused silence and frown as he sits and considers the rarity of such an act of love; but I think what confuses him the most is how it makes perfect sense, a direct contradiction to how he's learned to live until now.
After a group of people rejected a homeless man I met, I walked the ten minutes with him to the nearest MARTA station to buy him a ticket. I respectfully declined his request for money to go buy the tickets himself, but I told him I'd go to buy it for him myself, and he looked at me with a confused but glad face and said, "Now that's real." For the next forty-five minutes, he told me about his life, and there was more than one time that he hugged me and laughed. He even went out of his way to keep two other men we met on the street from coercing me for money. His name was Adrien.
I learned an important lesson from Andy Stanley in Atlanta's 2011 Catalyst Conference, a movement for young leaders and aspiring world changers, when he said, "Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone."
Thus, we must become strong and steady rebels. If the world is diseased, then we must remain the cure. Never through coercion or manipulation. We must keep ourselves credible so that our ideals may be considered, mulled over, and then finally either accepted or rejected, but it should never be rejected because they see that we can't meet our own standards.
And so, the only true answer to this lies in the notion of free will. It must be exercised for there to be any real salvation. One must choose to be saved, or else it becomes an exercise of control by the savior, thus rendering him not a savior at all, but an oppressor. This is the kind of God we have, a true savior for the fact that he doesn't force his hand but rather sent his son—who else could he trust with such a profound role?—to defy the world freely as an exemplification of the rebellious life we must lead.
Because if we sympathize with the world's plight; if we are tired of the power hunger and manipulation; if we are angry, then why would you add to the world's list of maladies by being stoic, rioting, or becoming bitter?
Man up.
Become counter-cultural; become a cure; become a rebel.
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