Sitting on the table of a restaurant was an advert for ‘Brewdog – beer for punks’. Its part of the ‘Craft Beer Revolution’ – the small, authentic, independent beers fighting the good fight against the big corporate anodyne and inauthentic beer barons.
Here’s a flavour of the ‘call to arms’ to join the Brewdog revolution:
Would you class yourself as unique? An individual? More than just a cog in the corporate machine? The chances are the beer you’re drinking will be able to answer that question for you.
You see we at Brewdog want to give you the power back – the power to decide what actually goes into your glass regardless of what those monolithic brands, billboards ads or flashy TV commericals want you to buy.
Brewdog drinkers are people who have freed themselves from the soulless, Dawn of the Dead style haze inflicted by mass-produced watered down and all too familiar mainstream beers.
IT’S TIME TO RECLAIM YOUR FREEDOM. LET BREWDOG BE YOUR WEAPON OF CHOICE
Here is the consumer as freedom fighter. The consumer as courageous counter-cultural individual. The consumer as seeker for authenticity. The consumer as visionary and participant in a new community within an ‘upside down’ social order. The consumer with an ethical conscience. The consumer as revolutionary (the picture has a Brewdog bottle with executioner’s hood standing beside a Stella Artois bottle with its neck in a guillotine).
A new kingdom ushering in an era of ‘freedom’ (and nice profit along the way if all goes well).
A kingdom vision where we, the consumers, are king.
Which all brings to mind another kingdom – another revolutionary kingdom; another counter-cultural community; another kingdom that will overthrow its enemies; another kingdom of justice and ethics and liberation.
But keep pressing and these two kingdoms begin to part ways.
This second kingdom includes the weak and the marginalised who don’t get to rule their own lives
In this second kingdom the self itself is called to die
And in this second kingdom money don’t get you far.
In this second kingdom, the consumer is not king, but a disciple of the resurrected servant-Messiah who is the king of kings, and Lord of Lords.
And maybe the biggest choice we can face in our lives is to answer these questions; Which kingdom? Which king?
FaithinIreland 