What if the problem is us? Sixty years ago a goatee beard would have gotten you beat up in a lot of places. Chin fuzz was the symbol of the Beats or Beatniks, a mid-century, marginal group who pioneered a new kind of lifestyle. Their approach to life was hedonistic, experiential, fluid, and individualistic. Their contradictory approach to spirituality combined a search for God with a search for 'kicks'.
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In 1947, these Beatnik heroes set out on a road trip across America re-writing the "life-script"; of all future generations. Theirs was a new kind of lifestyle for a secular age. Their lives then (like so many of our lives now) were built upon experience, pleasure, mobility and self-discovery. They would also model a new approach to faith: desiring Christ, while still pursuing a laundry list of vices. Yet this dream would turn into a nightmare and the open road would lead back to an ancient half-forgotten path.
This was a path trodden by millions of feet over thousands of years. It was a path that began with a single step of faith as a pilgrim named Abraham stepped away from a cynical culture. A path of devotion that would lead to a cross on a hill named Golgotha.
