Month: May 2024

I saw a writing prompt that asked what having it all means, and questioned is having it all attainable?  It reminded me of another question that has come up recently in casual conversation: What is happiness?  Being happy seems to be something people want to be but experience not often enough. The other day scrolling through Youtube, I spotted someone purporting to know the path to a better quality of life, one that brought true happiness. It involved making enough discretionary money to eat out more often, attend more concerts, take more time off from work, and travel to more places to expand one’s horizons with new adventures in new places. 

The “more of everything” was consistent with advertising assuring us that owning more of the right things, drinking more of the right brew, owning the right car, and being seen in the right places will makes us sophisticated, more sexually attractive, and envied by others: the very epitome of happiness.  Could that be true?  Only in your dreams, and maybe not even then.  Remember the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald? It was populated by characters seeking happiness in just that way. Gatsby was a mobster of sorts who invented a past for himself to make him appear a war hero, daring adventurer and a party host without equal.   He took every opportunity to show off the stuff he owned as a way to give the impression he was a happy man.  He died an ignominious death.  Daisy, Gatsby’s old flame, and her Husband Tom were old money rich living only for the pleasure of parties, illicit sex, and conspicuous consumption.  The tale ends with  them continuing their meaningless ways in reckless disregard for others.  Their purposeless lives left trails of tragedy while destroying relationships and leading to death. 

Whatever happiness is, it cannot be found merely with more money, leisure, and adventure. It’s not a new discovery.  The writer of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes explored the theme from one end to the other 2,500 years ago.  So did the Buddha. Voltaire made the same points in his story of Candide.  

So where does happiness lie?  Happiness is not unjustified optimism or pretended joyfulness, nor is it a bulwark against misfortune or cruel conditions of life.  Happiness may be found in the happiness of others to which you and I contribute.  Your good lives in the good of the other.  Your prosperity is found in the prosperity of others. It’s found in a certain contentment with who one is.  It’s also found in striving to do the best one can in what one does, to be a person of integrity, to laugh joyfully with others, to share the burdens of grief with others, to truly love others – some as acquaintances and others as friends held in platonic affection. In other words, it is to live in harmonious relationship with others for the good of all.  Happiness can only be found in healthy relationships. 

If good fortune also provides abundant leisure time and the money to enjoy it, so much the better.  It can enrich happiness for some people, but it can’t create it.  American individualism and worship of cutthroat competition works against happiness when it dismisses the value of relationships in community, when competition is defined as winning by demolishing others.  Every society has its own obstacles to happiness: heavy demands to conform, class consciousness, harsh honor codes, dictatorial rule, etc.  I cannot speak about other faith traditions, but following in the way of Jesus Christ is, among other things, a sure and certain way to happiness no matter what surrounding conditions may be. Following Christ has the curious effect of spreading some measure of happiness into the lives of others who have experienced little of it.  It does it by expressing love of self and neighbor in the way Jesus demonstrated.

That does not mean one has to be a Christian to find happiness.  There are other faith traditions and a number of secular societies that appear to have high measures of happiness.  Sadly, there are professed Christians who will never find happiness.  I suspect it’s because they have subordinated love of self and neighbor to other values used to condemn non conformers.  At worst, they boldly tell God what God should do, unwilling to listen to what God is saying in new ways.  Nevertheless, following in the way of Jesus Christ without  demanding the same of others is the way to happiness.  Inviting others to join in a happy life shared with others can only make life better for all. 

Behavioral studies over many decades have demonstrated that students and employees live up to and surpass expectations when teachers and bosses create environments with high expectations, the right tools and training, and display sincere confidence in the ability of students and employees to succeed. 

 On the other hand, it takes only squelching  confidence in the ability of subordinates to succeed for morale and performance to plummet. A child who constantly hears that they are stupid or useless will likely live into that image.  Adults raised on stories of their sickly childhood are likewise influenced to live accordingly.  There are exceptions, but people tend to live up to or down to the expectations others impose on them.

The same principles apply in news reporting and public opinion polling. Major media tells the public over and over again that they are not feeling good about the state of the economy or the track the nation is on.  Listening to the media’s bombardment of bad news, a person whose own financial condition is OK or possibly  improving, can be induced to doubt themselves and become certain life is much worse for others.. Having been fed by major media’s insistence upon a bad economy, the public will give pollsters answers they’ve been programmed to give.  It’s a feedback loop that becomes convincing even to the exclusion of hard data showing otherwise.

Propaganda master Joseph Goebbels used the dynamic of telling “Big Lies” constantly and convincingly enough to effect an entire nation to accept Fascist dictatorship and condemnation of Jews.  With less proficiency but equal intent, today’s MAGA movement is now trying to do the same thing in our country.  Major news media feeds into Goebbels’ propaganda method by constantly telling the public how bad they feel about the way things are, then soliciting polls to confirm their reporting.  Why? “Ain’t it awful” news sells. I wonder if the media recognizes they’ve been instrumental in creating a gloomy outlook in the face of reality checks showing more hopeful trends and policy successes benefitting average Americans?

To be sure, there are people and places not doing well. They are neither forgotten nor ignored. Those who are working to create greater opportunities for them to enjoy a better life tend to want to do things for them, not with them.  It takes on the character of force feeding something that’s ‘good for them. It stokes resentment against elites no matter how well intended. MAGA leaders and others who want to use disadvantaged citizens for selfish gain try hard to show they are working with average people, but by no means are they working for them.  They work on them to strengthen a sense of discontent and alienation creating a cadre of angry people easily sold on the truth of big lies. It doesn’t work on everyone but it works on enough to turn a nation toward dictatorship. 

Which brings me back to my point, that major news media are complicit with the MAGA movement even as they defend their role as unbiased reporters.  The current practice of mixing journalism with editorializing complicates the matter further. 

©Steven E Woolley

Christians just celebrated Pentecost Sunday, the 50th day after Easter, when scripture records that God’s Holy Spirit was manifested for a hundred or so disciples with wind and light that looked like tongues of fire.  It was a moment that transformed them from a cowering and confused band hiding from the authorities into a bold, resilient force for the proclamation of God’s kingdom made known in Jesus, the Word of God made flesh.  

It seems that each year I feel compelled to write something about it because the idea of God’s spirit being anything of substance is hard to believe.  What we now call the Holy Spirit used to be called the Holy Ghost, which was even more problematic for modern humanity.  There are other words, none of them adequate: breath, wind, word, presence, logos, logic. We struggle for adequate words and find none satisfactory.  Nothing we can say is able to capture the fundamental reality of the Holy Spirit.  She, if you will permit me, is more real than the ground under our feet, more real than all the stars in the universe, more real than the smallest  and strangest sub atomic particle yet to be discovered.  Indeed, the Holy Spirit embraces all of creation all of the time.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t come to us from time to time or only in certain ways because she is always present, always with us.  One thing for certain is that among all other things one might say about the Holy Spirit, she is that of God who is for us and with us individually and collectively. She is literally and truly God with us. 

Three difficulties hamper accepting the real, tactile, imminent presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  One is the ease with which God is imagined as the largest, most powerful entity in the universe.  But God is not in the universe as a thing among other things.  The universe is in God.  God is not a thing but the presence by which all things exist. The second is that God loves humanity and each of us personally.  There is some mysterious way in which we are created in the image of God.  God is present always and everywhere so why God would have a particular interest in you personally is inconceivable.  What is impossible for humans to imagine is possible for God to be and do.  It’s why Jesus makes such a difference for the whole world.  He is God incarnate revealing in real time and real ways what God’s particular love for us looks like.  The Spirit of God that Christ embodied is the same spirit that remains with us and for us that we may be with and for others. The third obstacle is the placebo we offer when we tell someone we can’t be be at their event but will be with them in spirit.  It generally means I’ll give you a passing thought, if I remember.  Even more vacuous are the ubiquitous thoughts and prayers offered by public officials who could do something but won’t. 

The Holy Spirit is indeed a holy mystery, but not a spooky one.  Living in the presence of the Holy Spirit does not depend on being slain by the Spirit, speaking in tongues, or anything else like that.  The Spirit is actively engaged in the lives of those who allow it in ordinary ways of daily life, in every act of redeeming, reconciling, healing love shared as gift to and received from others.  What does that look like in practice?  It looks like Jesus when it’s done to perfection, and like Peter and Paul when it’s done as the best we humans can do. 

“The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis features Screwtape, a senior devil, writing to his nephew Wormwood offering guidance about how to confront the pestilence of Christianity that had become a plague threatening Hell’s future.  It’s an entertaining and instructive take on what is pestilence for whom.  It’s a story that makes an obvious point in the contest between good and evil in what pestilence is depends on which side one is on.

This year’s presidential election has something of that character.  Those of us who treasure American liberal democracy working to fulfill the promise of liberty and justice for all, recognize that the MAGA movement is a pestilence that, if allowed, will destroy it.  On the other hand, the MAGA movement sees liberal democracy and equality for all as a threatening pestilence that will kill the form of society and privileges they believe are exclusively theirs by right.

Who is in the right and who is in the wrong? Or to be more realistic, which side holds values that embrace the messiness and hope of liberal democracy, and which side embraces values that embrace strict order and severe limits on social freedom?  Both sides claim they will do the best at keeping the U.S. strong, prosperous and invincible. Can they both be right?

History declares that liberal democracy has been the only path to sustained prosperity and freedom for the greatest number of people.  Authoritarian regimes have provided extended periods of social political stability and prosperity, but only for a few, not the many.  In the ages before democracy, the more autocratic a regime, the more repressive and corrupt it became.  Each collapsed from internal rot.  The less autocratic authorities were the more inventive and prosperous their lands became, with incremental freedoms enjoyed by more people. Authoritarian regimes by their very nature invite violent competition for succession to power and position, so to be more or less free depended entirely on who had the power until death or violence ushered in a new ruler. 

England was the first of nascent democracies even if it was constrained by a rigid class structure.  Nevertheless an elected parliament that balanced the monarch’s power is what, I believe, enabled it to become the world’s first sustainable super power.   The U.S. followed with a new, improved form of republican democracy founded on principles of human freedom and a government for the people, by the people.  It began with a limited scope that made room for continual movement toward greater access to full freedom for more people with governments capable of putting limits on systemic abuses, protecting the viability of creation, and funding for the common good. As messy as it is, it is anchored by its commitment to the rule of law, not of autocratic personalities.  The pestilence of MAGA threatens everything liberal democracy holds dear and must be confronted boldly.

The MAGA movement sees things differently.  For them liberal democracy has become too open ended with no moral center.  A civil society is one in which people know their proper place in it, obey the rules set down for personal behavior, with greater rights reserved for the deserving for whom they are intended.  In MAGA’s case the deserving are mostly white, conservative evangelical Christian nationalists. Others may have rights but they will be allowed access to them as needed by MAGA leaders.  To redeem the messiness of liberal democracy, authority is better located in a central executive to whom the legislature and judiciary are subordinate. Businesses, oddly enough, will be free to be run with little governmental oversight on the grounds that they know best how to do what they do best and the market will be self correcting.  If you are unfamiliar with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, please look it up.  It’s a clear manifesto of MAGA intentions.

MAGA adherents believe liberal democracy has become a threat to order, civility, and personal morality, which for them centers on nationalism, patriarchy and an obsession with things sexual.  The MAGA movement has convinced millions that the reason their lives are so hard is the fault of immoral liberal democracy and that it must be dismantled for order and the good life to be restored.  The case has been strengthened by forty years of right wing claims that government is the enemy of the people and conservative evangelical claims that God condemns newly recognized rights for marginalized persons.

Advocates for liberal democracy have, I believe, been too complacent about the obvious moral value of the American way, the level of understanding people have of it, and the ease with which a nation can be misled. Classical Christian and Jewish denominations have been reluctant to publicly advocate for a greater, deeper public understanding of godly justice.  Their multitude of anti-racism and anti-hate  efforts have been an ineffective swatting at flies in their own houses, having little effect on public opinion. 

As for me, I believe the MAGA movement is a moral evil, a life threatening pestilence that must be confronted. There is nothing Christian in its Christian nationalism and orthodox Christians must say so.  As citizens, we must stand for liberal democracy.  As Christians we must stand for God as we know God in Christ Jesus.  If the forces of MAGA prevail, we must not surrender the centrality of the Triune God in our personal lives, the life of the church, and in our public behavior.  We must remain steadfast in trust in God and proclamation of the Good News of God in Christ Jesus.  Moreover, we must pursue godly justice for all in cooperation with people of other faiths who share similar values.

I posted the following on FB not long ago and not everyone understood the point.

“I think I understand something about Trump’s sense that the gag order has stripped him of his freedom to speak. Throughout his adult life he has had only two ways of responding to opposition or criticism. One is aggressive intimidation to assert control over others.  The other is to attack critics with humiliating insults. It’s his way of winning by making others look like humiliated, weak, ugly, stupid losers. Well, he is prohibited from trying to bully the judge with aggressive anger and he’s been barred from publicly attacking witnesses and jurors with abusive insults.  His only two tools have been taken away.  He has nothing left.  It’s really quite sad.”

A few thought I believed it was sad that his freedom of speech had been taken away from him.  What is sad is that a mature adult is limited to the conflict resolution skills of a four year old pre-schooler. More sad is that he was once president, wants to be again, and is adored by millions as a godlike figure to whom they pledge absolute loyalty. 

Lest I be accused of ridiculing him, it’s not ridicule to state the obvious.  Nor is it a contest of conservative against liberal.  There is nothing conservative about his intentions for a second term.  Speculation has it that the people behind Project 25 have established the agenda he will implement and it’s a frightening vision of an ultra-right Hungarian style state, but don’t be too sure about it.  Trump is loyal to no agenda but the one he thinks will keep him in power and out of jail.  His tight circle of loyalists will be loyal to him, however influential they might be at times, not an agenda thrust on them. 

He is not to be underestimated.  As ignorant and uncouth as he is, he is as wiley as they come and has no sense of humor.  He wants to run the country the way he has run the Trump Organization.  As recent court testimony has made clear, that means he wants to run it as a private, tightly controlled operation in which everyone reports to him with unquestioning loyalty.  We have long suspected and now know that his track record running a big business is not a good one. It looks huge but teeters on a wobbly debt structure, exaggerated values, and uncounted lawsuits to keep creditors at bay. 

He is a clear and present danger not only to our democracy but  to every standard of moral behavior. He is incapable of knowing that he does not know and doesn’t understand that he doesn’t understand.  He is an antediluvian character.  It may seem odd, then, that I am sorry for the man.  He is empty of the full humanity God created for us. My hope is that he might yet surrender his emptiness to receive the fullness of life that is God’s to give.

Political reporters seem flummoxed about Latino voters, mostly men, encouraged by evangelical preachers and shifting toward the MAGA party.  Is it that mysterious?  Complicated perhaps, but probably not mysterious.

One hallmark of Latino culture is the ideal of hard working, honest men who take care of their families.  It’s an ethic to be proud of and the idea of family includes kinship to several degrees of remove.   Families gathered in communities of solidarity with one another is another hallmark. It has to be obvious to some of them that other communities, notably communities of affluent, educated Whites appear to flourish as they flaunt the virtues Latino men hold most dear. To whom can they turn?  Certain strands of conservative evangelical preaching celebrate virtues similar to their own, and they do it in everyday language that offers a straight forward, easily understood message said to be endorsed by God, and free of subordination to an authoritarian church. 

The same dynamic has been at work for decades among large portions of the American male public, especially in rural areas and poor urban neighborhoods.  There is a form of conservative evangelicalism that merged Jesus and what they call patriotic nationalism into a new religion they call Biblical. It promotes a patriarchal “macho” role for men that, to my mind, is a pale imitation of the virtues of hard work, honesty and caring for family. I try to observe from the edge of this crowd, so periodically I receive flyers promoting events calling for men to attend weekend retreats to recover the language that identifies  “real men,” with a dollop of Jesus to certify its legitimacy.  It sells well to a portion of the male population that has been told effete liberal society has emasculated them.  Only when they have recovered their manhood can society be put right again. 

Observations highly generalized as they are, they show the political effectiveness of conservative, nationalist evangelicalism.  If nothing else they have mastered the use of book publishing, church curricula, social media, and Youtube productions in ways that put more orthodox Christianity to shame. Take a look at the catalogues of Christian book sellers.  Surf the web.  Wander through Youtube.  They’ve hit ever nook and cranny with easy to consume, entertaining and understandable materials. They address major public issues with moral certainty and open hostility to the sins of “modernity,” whatever that means.  They assert that orthodox Christianity has sold out to liberal secularism wallowing in every form of wanton avarice. It’s all backed by a stable of well known, popular traveling preachers who ride the revival circuit.  They know exactly who their target audience is. They don’t aim too high; to use an old term – they go for middle and low brow prospects.  They do it all and it works enough of the time to flummox political reporters.

It explains, at least in part, why there is a measurable shift among Latino men, and why a significant population of White men have long found conservative evangelical nationalism to be attractive.  It’s a fascinating dynamic.  Conservative evangelical nationalism is focussed inward and seeks to circle the wagons and defend itself against feared modernity.  With Jesus bearing the flag, conservative evangelical Christian nationalists intend to be among the few saved, not the many damned. On the other hand, their media efforts, with well crafted materials, are focussed outward to appeal to a wide audience.

More orthodox Christians are focussed outward, seeking greater godly justice for all now and the salvation of all for eternity.  But their messaging is focussed inward appealing to those who are already part of the community of faith.  My denomination, Episcopalian, has committees that study issues and produce white papers. Our triennial Convention operates like a mini Congress.  We offer Christian study materials that require serious attention and probe for new understandings of what God is revealing today. Most of our public theologians are unknown on the well publicized speaking circuit.  Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, may be the only exception.  Others, my own favorite is Rowan Williams, are well known among theologians and others serious about deep thinking, but they have little appeal elsewhere. 

I may stand corrected, but it seems to me that orthodox Christian denominations have been labeled as liberal elites who care nothing for ordinary people and the struggles they face.  Yet they are committed in the name of Jesus Christ to do what they can to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ Jesus, make more of God’s kingdom manifested in the world, and to work toward the good life for all.   In the words of Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a failure to communicate.  Pentecost is drawing near.  On that day the Holy Spirit empowered the gathered assembly of Jesus’s followers to go into the streets proclaiming the Good News in words clearly, easily understood by people of many languages.  Maybe we have relied too much on our own intellectual prowess and not enough on the power of the Holy Spirit enabling us to speak boldly in plain language, with the cross, not the flag, leading us on.