Burning Man vs. Burning Bush

By Elizabeth Prata

Burning Man is coming up next month.

From Wikipedia: “Burning Man is a week-long large-scale desert event focused on “community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance” held annually in the western United States. The event’s name comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred to as the Man, that occurs on the penultimate night.” On the very last night they burn down “The Temple”.

A lot of people go.

When it’s described as ‘large scale’, they mean it. It’s huge. It is THE biggest festival not just in the US but in the world in terms of acreage. (Glastonbury is smaller in acreage but bigger in daily attendance.) Burning Man is the orange semicircle.

The event started at its current location in the Black Rock Desert in 1991. It is a free for all, free expression, art, ‘radical inclusion’ type of deal. There are art installations, dance, music, self-expression, and of course, a temple, because pagan man must worship something. The event lasts 9 days, and there is a blistering desert heat, lung killing dust, and a long walk to the portapotties. So why do upwards of 80,000 people attend?

They go for the self-expression. Some see it as a sanctuary from the constraining world with its rules and expectations. Some attend because they want to shed their persona and experiment with drugs or sex. The event IS clothing optional, after all. In the days before cell phones, more attendees appeared in various states of undress, but afterward when cell phone photography and video-ing became common, fewer people walk around exposed or totally naked. Go figure.

In other words, they go because of sin. Sin is attractive.

In 2001 or 2002 or so, I wanted to go. I wanted to go pretty bad. It was before I was saved. I thought that Burning Man was the epitome of a lifestyle of freedom that the world prevented. I wanted to see if an alternative lifestyle of ‘acceptance’ of any walk of life, race, lifestyle, art, music, or expression was possible. I was looking for freedom, freedom from what, I didn’t know. Yet.

What I was looking for was Burning Bush, not Burning Man.

Then the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not being consumed. (Exodus 3:2).

Then He said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”  (Exodus 3:5).

King Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes to show us that pursuits, lifestyles, and worship is pointless (futility, vanity) if God isn’t at the center of it. Any pursuit of anything- music, art, self-expression, without God is vain. Same with any kind of worship or reverence. What is one reverencing if they go to the Burning Man festival’s “Temple”? One’s self. And a “free lifestyle” just usually means sexuality of one kind or another. The pursuit of the ‘something’ is never satisfied. Why? It’s all circular. You come back to yourself, and the self is unholy, unrighteous, and unfulfilled without God.

To be satisfied in life, to attain freedom, we must transcend self. The only way to do that is through Jesus.

Burning Man is a sacrificial ritual concocted by man, for man, and in the end, futile. Such rituals have been a part of the sinful world since the beginning, starting with The Golden Calf. Asherah. Nehushtan. Celtic Fire Festivals. Slavic ritual Marzanna. Portuguese Caretos Festival. Et cetera and so on ad nauseum.

All things are wearisome; No one can tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor is the ear filled with hearing. (Ecclesiastes 1:8)

In December 2002/January 2003, I became saved. What I had been looking for was holiness, purity, righteousness, and justice. In Exodus 3:5 it is the first time holy or holiness is referenced in relation to God. God told Moses to remove his sandals and not to approach closer, because the Bush was holy ground. By contrast, Moses was not holy and neither was the ground, apart from the bush.

Fire is used throughout the Bible to represent God’s purifying effect. At Burning Man they light the man and the temple to consume it. But with God He IS the fire and HE consumes.

for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:29).

I’m grateful that Jesus decided to save me. Through His grace, I am being purified, refined by the holy fire of His word, daily. It was a good trade, the Burning Man for Burning Bush. The Man is burned every year to cinders and must be rebuilt. With God, his love, and care is eternal and His flame never goes out.