The Jesus Revolution

“You say you want a revolution, we…ell, you knoooww…we all want to change the world…”

Recently, my daughter and I went to see the “Jesus Revolution” movie and it made me think back to when I first discovered who Jesus really was..

From as far back as I can remember, I had a dream to do something big in life. Really BIG. Something that would change the world. You know what I’m talking about…write all the wrongs, fix the broken things, and swoop in like the underdog for the weak. It was like there was this hard-wiring inside me compelling me to go out and discover some way or some thing that would be life-changing…REVOLUTIONARY.

Growing up, when an opportunity to help the weak and under-represented presented itself, I usually dove right in. Sometimes, it was something small like in third grade at the Hebrew Academy, when I helped my classmate, Serena, (who was an identical twin to her sister Miriam, but due to a rare health condition, was significantly smaller) reach the bathroom sink to wash her hands. It wasn’t much, but Serena would look at me through her thick, round glasses, smile so big and squeak out, “Thanks, Allison.” It made me feel so good inside.

As I got older, I became more aware of all the injustices that plague this world. I’ll never forget the first time I watched, “Roots” with my mother and realized there were people who mistreated others and viewed them as property, all because of the color of their skin. I felt a knot form in my throat and tears well up in my eyes as I realized the world could be a dark place, and people could be terribly evil. I didn’t know what I could do, if anything at all, about this realization.

In middle school, I developed a love for writing. I was going through a tough time after experiencing an injury that kept me from participating in swimming, diving, dance, and other activities that were my life for years. I needed an outlet to express my emotions when a friend suggested I write them down. That was the beginning of a love-hate relationship with writing. I loved the way I could take words and create something that could inspire or comfort someone else, but I hated when the blank page stared back at me, and the words just wouldn’t come. But, with the encouragement of my father and a high school English teacher, I stuck with it. I wrote poetry and essays, and journaled about everything, always reaching for something higher that could change the world, in some small way. When my English teacher asked if she could enter one of my poems into a regional contest, I was surprised, but even more so when I won a place in the contest and was published for the first time.

In high school, my love for justice was still just as strong as ever but mostly centered around my own desires. My dad thought I should go to law school because of my keen ability to argue and debate and, in his words, “convince people of just about anything”. (Most of the time, my argument had to do with whether I should be able to go out on Saturday night even though I had a D in math). At that point in life, I still wanted to do something to change the world, but at the peak of my teenage years, my focus was pretty self-centered.

By the time I entered college, I decided I would go for a degree in Journalism. I thought it would be great to be an investigative journalist who uncovers and exposes corruption and catches the “good” guys who were really the bad guys red-handed. Oh, what fun!

One afternoon, an opportunity to take justice into my own hands proved too tempting to pass up. I was driving a black Jeep Wrangler at the time, which was the ultimate expression of my youthful sense of adventure and rebel personality. I had an appointment at an office building and in my usual style, I was running late. I pulled into the small parking lot which contained no more than 10 or 12 parking spots and quickly discovered all of them were taken. The building stood completely isolated from anything else… except for one other business. There were no other parking lots anywhere near by, EXCEPT the four spots reserved for the other business. I circled around the lot another time, hoping for a spot to open. Nothing. I was already late for the appointment and knowing it would take weeks to get another one, I made a snap decision to take one of the four open spots in front of the other business. I’ll only be in there for 10 or 15 minutes…and there’s FOUR spots open, I reasoned. Surely, that won’t be a problem.

Twenty-five minutes later, I came out to find my Jeep had been towed. What! I thought. No way! I went back into the building where my appointment was and told the lady at the front desk where I had to park and that my car was gone. She nodded with a knowing look on her face and said, “Oh, yeah, they’re real sticklers about people parking in their spots. They use their own towing company.”

I went next door to the neighboring business and found the guy who owned the shop. I told him how there was no other place to park and he looked at me with a not-so-nice expression and said, “Take it up with the towing company, lady.” Arrrgh!

I called my friend, who had her friend drive us to the “towing company”, which turned out to be a little house in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of cars parked on the grass around the house. I went in and found the guy who ran the place…along with his dad, his mom, and his two brothers.

So, this is a family affair I thought. Oh, boy.

I asked him how much it would be to get my car back. “A hundred dollars,” he shot back.

“A hundred dollars! For a parking violation?”

“That’s right,” he said with a sleezy smile. I looked at my friend. She looked at me. Neither of us had a hundred dollars.

“We’ll be right back,” I said. We went outside and stood outside my jeep.

“Wow,” she said. “Those guys are sleeeeezzzzy.”

“They’re totally operating outside of the law. They’re charging people ridiculous amounts that no court would even charge for a parking violation,” I declared.

“What are you gonna do?,” my friend asked.

“I’m not sure, but I’m not going to pay them $100 that I don’t have!”

I went back in and looked at the guy. “I’ll pay the fine, but I need to get into my Jeep first. I left a bag in there with my credit card.”

“Alright”, he said, “I’ll write up your receipt up for you.”

Receipt, I thought. Like they’re operating a legitimate business here. I went outside and unlocked the jeep. My friend thanked her roommate for driving us over and got in the passenger side. “So, how did you pay the fine,”? she asked.

“I didn’t.” I put the key in and started the jeep. “We’ve got to get out of here!” I said and steered the jeep onto the outer road as fast as I could maneuver. The towing company guy was already in his car trying to catch up with us. I put it into third gear and gunned it, and just like that, we were Thelma and Louise running from corruption and injustice. My methods were a bit mixed up to say the least, but my righteous indignation was driving me on, literally.

After a few blocks of the towing guy following behind, I was finally able to make a turn while he got stuck at a light and gave up. Needless to say, I never parked in the wrong spot again.

During College, I continued my pursuit of a unique path that would be different than the established, broken systems. Intrigued by the existential philosophers and writers, I thought I could find truth and justice through my own pursuits and by my own actions. However, as a young adult, I found myself more and more disillusioned with how life was actually turning out. I continued to search for a life of meaning by searching for truth in everything…the new age, relationships, nature, the arts. But, while some of those things brought a small measure of fulfillment, none of them had the overall ring of truth I was desperately searching for. Little did I know, while I was pursuing truth and meaning, there was someone pursuing me from the time I was a child, and even before that.

In the early Spring of 1995, just before Passover, I was confronted with a convergence of circumstances no one could have planned or made up, except God. One night, by “chance”, I was reunited with a childhood friend after twelve years of living separate lives. She had been out of state for several years and we had gone different ways at the end of high school. Her mother had been like a second mother to me when I was in grade school. I met her in fourth grade when I transferred from the Hebrew day school into public school. Everything about Bridgette was big, bold and bodacious. Her faith in Jesus and her ability to relate to other people made a dramatic impression on me. But, it wasn’t me Bridgette shared her faith with when I was a young girl. It was my mother.

Now, here I was twelve years later reunited with her daughter, my childhood friend, and dealing with my internal dilemma of pursuing truth no one else knew about. I had been trying my best to ignore all the “Jesus” people in my path recently but was struck by how they suddenly seemed to be everywhere. My neighbor and friend, Kim, who didn’t try to convince me of anything but just wanted to be my friend. The guy at the coffee shop who delivered our coffee beans every morning, who couldn’t stop beaming about how Jesus freed him from alcoholism. And, Bridgette, confronting me with a challenge to investigate who Jesus, or Yeshua, as she called him actually was. So, here I was searching for truth but so afraid to consider this Jesus, who up until that point in my life, I had always regarded as the enemy of my people. But, when I looked into the words of the New Testament, (albeit in secret), I discovered he wasn’t a Jew hater. No, completely opposite to that, he was a devout Jew who said he came for “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and wept over Jerusalem. His teachings were greater than anything I had heard before. His love and care for the weak and his passion against the corruption and wickedness of the religious leaders who trampled the poor exemplified the very cry of my heart.

I discovered that HE was the truth and the way I had been pursuing. And, it wasn’t what I brought to the world that would ultimately change it. No, it was what HE had done through his life, death and resurrection that would ultimately change my heart desperately in need of forgiveness and grace. And, it’s what HE can do through someone whose heart belongs to HIM.

It was a personal revolution and it’s still happening every day when I draw close to him and he offers me the same love, compassion, and healing he offered me that day, twenty-seven years ago. It’s a revolution any person can have, any time of the day or night, in any place no matter what the circumstances. It’s the JESUS REVOLUTION!