Month: November 2024

 

Excerpted from Neal V. Patel in the 11/18/24 NYT

“What a cynical way to think about life in this universe. Douglas Vakoch agrees. A researcher who specializes in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, he believes any intelligent aliens who might exist out there might be going through a similarly difficult adolescence as our species is. More likely, they are probably older — and have found a way to age out of that adolescence and mature into a civilization that is smarter and kinder. If we’re able to establish contact with them, maybe we can learn a thing or two about how to better our own civilization.”

Apparently today’s public would like to find a better way than the one it now follows. I’m not entirely certain what that means as it seems to go in two directions. One is the suspicion that the American public has lost its way and no longer knows what is good for itself. The other is the search by individuals for a source of greater wisdom and more reliable truth than it has been able to find so far.  It is a reasonable quest. 

Everything in society seems to be changing so fast that nothing can be relied on to have stability or permanence. New technologies invading every aspect of daily life quickly disrupt the  a sense of predictable regularity on which to rely. Normative social order appears to be collapsing. What can be believed and who can be trusted are questions making it difficult for the public to know what’s real.

Fear of the other and anxiety of an uncertain future have been marketed by news and social media with no regard to the moral virtue of integrity. There has to be a better way.  It cannot be found in the faint hope that a more mature alien will come to show us the way.  Artificial intelligence may be useful but can be no wiser than the people who create it. Authoritarian governments always produce darker more dangerous times. Better more efficient government may be needed, but it is not the better way we seek.

There is a better way. The unshakeable rock on which to build a better future is trust in what God who made us in love for love has said is the better way.  There is no higher authority.  Revealed in part through prophets and sages, it is most fully revealed in what Jesus taught.  It is an eternal truth sealed by his death and resurrection. 

Jesus said everything would pass away but his word would never pass away. We are obliged to proclaim his words from the pulpit but with fewer and fewer going to church, churches may not be the best place for that word to be proclaimed.  In too many places Jesus’ core teaching and commandments have been subordinated to social and political norms favored by congregations and their clergy. 

The better way must be heard more clearly outside the church. The usual forms of public evangelism are of limited value.  Jonah may have walked part way into Nineveh, muttered something about God and the whole city repented, but that isn’t how things work in the real world.

If it is to be heard, the generous orthodoxy of the better way revealed to us in Christ Jesus must be lived.  For the good news of a better way to be heard it must be demonstrated by the way average Christians lead their lives with the lived good news happening in the home, work place, social gatherings, and the ordinary things of everyday life. Besides, the average Christian is less interested in becoming an evangelist than even Jonah was. It means average Christians must become disciples who follow in Jesus’ path, learning as they go how to live into his teaching and commandments.

Jesus’ core teaching about how to live in the better way is summarized in the Sermon on the Mount  (Matt. 5-7).  The average Christian stumbling to make it their way of life will have far more influence on the general public than anything else. It is a way of life highly resistant to being twisted to serve social and political ends at odds with the way of Jesus.  To keep it simple, I suggest framing it as a way of life for ordinary Christians in which the gospel is proclaimed in word and deed inviting the curious to find out more.

1. Be humble in spirit and demeanor
2. Mourn for this fallen world and your role in it
3. Hunger and thirst for righteousness
4. Be merciful
5. Be pure in heart
6. Be a peacemaker
7. Be willing to be persecuted for righteousness sake
8. Be a person of integrity
9. Let your light so shine that others will give glory to God because of you
10. 10.Understand the spirit and depth of the Ten Commandments – not just their words
11. Seek reconciliation with those whom you have injured
12. 12.Let your yes be yes and your no be no
13. 13.Confront injustice in radically peaceful ways
14. 14.Love your enemies
15. 15.Pray for those who persecute you
16. 16.Don’t act too pious, especially in public
17. 17.Give anonymously and with generosity
18. 18.Pray with simple words
19. 19.Pray as Jesus has taught you
20. 20.Serve God and not wealth or earthly riches
21. 21.Trust God and don’t worry so much about this life
22. 22.Don’t be so quick to judge others; you are not very qualified to do it anyway
23. 23.Respect and honor that which is holy
24. 24.Ask, knock and seek; God who loves you will answer
25. 25.Aim for the narrow doorway – the wide one leads to destruction
26. 26.Beware of false prophets
27. 27.Build your life on the solid rock of faith in God through Christ

The election post mortem has been conducted by hundreds of pundits, each certain of who to blame for what went wrong. Despite their differences, one thing connects them. They exhibit the human tendency to avoid accountability while accusing others of avoiding theirs. There is something in our human nature that wants to lay the ills that beset us on to a scapegoat that can be blamed and punished with the expectation that shifting the blame will somehow restore harmony and social order to society. It is nothing new. 

Holy scripture tells the story of Adam blaming Eve and Eve blaming the serpent for all their problems. Never intended to be taken literally, the story illustrates our human tendency to blame others and deny our own faults when things go wrong. Maybe it isn’t so surprising that we have elected a man of lifelong corruption who has made an art out of avoiding accountability.

The current scapegoats are said to be educated urban professionals who use condescending language about working class people. They used to be called the coastal elite, until it was discovered that the majority of people living on the coast were not elite. The field has now been narrowed to educated urban professionals. There is one essential requirement for an effective scapegoat: it must be a minority that cannot easily defend itself. Urban professionals fit the bill nicely. It’s a generic label easy to slap on many who are said to be of the progressive leftish sort. So much the better if they can be accused of “Wokeness.”

Apparently they have caused us to fall into the pit of tribalism that did not exist in better times of national unity. We have been told that the growing cancer of tribalism eroded the unity that once symbolized the American way. That sense of national unity was based on postwar social norms of a mythical white middle class setting the standard for what it meant to be American. However well intended, marginalized  people fought for their right to be recognized as full Americans without surrendering their culture or heritage. In other words we have always been a tribal nation.  The American democratic promise of “unalienable rights” can be realized  only with cooperative tribal commitment to create cohesion, not unanimity. 

Fomenting intertribal conflict rather than cooperation seemed like a good idea to some influential public figures. It’s something I understand only partly. Public commentators, academics, columnists, and right wing radio hosts promoted intertribal conflict. They generated and provoked conflict with great success for several decades. The problem, and indeed it is a problem, is made worse by internet algorithms that confine us to bubbles of like-minded people where we enforce each others prejudices to the exclusion of civil exchanges with anyone else. 

I believe a great deal of inter tribal conflict has been intentionally engineered. Electoral politics has always been about how best to appeal to different kinds of voters who self identify as members of discernible groups, usually more than one. There is nothing new in that. What is new is the network of deliberately provocative, media outlets and internet algorithms that have deliberately stoked the fires of tribalism for nefarious purposes and personal gain.

There is no scapegoat to blame or punish that will restore social equilibrium.  We’ve done it to ourselves.  We allowed voices of malevolent dissension to seduce us into making irreconcilable enemies of one another. We could have chosen a better way, but we didn’t. If it is a lesson we needed to learn, we have not learned it yet. Perhaps our period of purgation will last for years before we see the futility of being angrily condescending about the others whom we accuse of being condescending toward us. In the meantime it looks like we have four years of an administration unlikely to act for the greater good of the nation. The majority of voters appear to think otherwise.  We shall see what happens.  

May it please God that we emerge as a chastised nation, less arrogant, more committed to democracy, more fully aware that we are all made in the image of God, and accountable to each other. May we have learned to listen when others speak, especially if they are not like us. There will always be those who are smugly, comfortable, and complacent. May they not be obstacles to our collective effort in making the nation a better place for all.

The voting public has spoken and will drink the libation they have poured, as will we all. MAGA is will not go down well.  The technique of the Big Lie that worked so well in the 1930s stunned the world with how easy it was to manipulate the course of a nation that had produced some of the most enlightened thinkers and leaders in western European history.  We were smugly confident that it could not happen in democratic America, but it nearly did then and appears to have succeeded in the 2024 election.

To write in this way invokes offended outrage from MAGA voters who respond with anger that it is exactly what they have been talking about – those uppity, better than thou elites who think they are the only ones who know and understand what’s really going on.  With the election behind them one would expect joyful celebration from MAGA leadership and those who voted for them, but what I heard on television this morning was more angry grievance from one and continued Big Lie assertions from another.   

The first was somebody angrily berating the media for being the mouthpiece of East Coast elites and Left Coast radicals who have looked down on, ignored, and trampled on the desires of real Americans for a better life. On the one hand it was a textbook case of projecting his own prejudices onto others who are, for the most part, ordinary people trying to get through life just like he is. On the other hand he implied a valid point.  The plans and programs of which he and others are in greatest need were announced, designed and implemented without engaging ordinary people in the process. No one likes being left out of decision making processes that affect them directly.  The result is rejection of the good in favor of greater ills out of nothing other than petulance on one side and unintended arrogance on the other. It’s an dynamic encouraged by decades of talk radio, podcasts, and cable news flooding the nation with misleading and false narratives pretending to be news.

The second was Representative Stefanik. She venomously spewed the litany of Big Lie propaganda about the state of the economy, job creation, inflation and the like. She was triumphant in the success of the Big Lie that voters accepted as truth and there was nothing “radical elites” could have done to stop it. Joseph Goebbels could not have said it better. She is in my opinion the more dangerous because she knows the Big Lie is a lie but she has embraced it to the core of her being. For what?  As the way to unchallengeable power?  I suspect so. 

Various surveys, most of which I get from Pew Research, suggest that ordinary MAGA voters dislike Trump’s language and behavior but like his policies.  They are sure he doesn’t mean the worst of what he says; it’s just political hyperbole.  I’ve always been confused by what policies such followers have in mind.  The most common appears to be his promise to fix the broken economy which, by every measure, is the most robust in fifty years.   I am disappointed that so many of the voting public have not considered the effects of mass deportations, tariff walls, and prosecution of political enemies.  Trump plans to fill the government with persons loyal to him, not the constitution, and demolish programs we have taken for granted as part of the American way of life. 

The next four years are likely to become even more dangerous to our future because it’s obvious that the president-elect is mentally and emotionally challenged.  He has a limited repertoire of grievances and grandiose promises superimposed on whatever question or subject is put before him. His lack of knowledge about or interest in the ordinary things of ordinary life is mind boggling. Nevertheless, he will have the power of the presidency backed by a staff of toadies who will do whatever he asks of them. If Vance, Musk, Bannon, and Miller are in the inner circle, they will manipulate Trump to their own advantage.

Two things sustain my hope for a better future for the nation.  One is my conviction in the essential goodness and integrity of the American public. They will emerge from under the shadow of false promises that has been cast over them.  The other is my unshakable faith that God created our island home for our good, and for us to prosper in it.  We have freedom to choose for better or worse, and when we err on the side of worse, God will provide the means to choose the better way.  In the meantime we will have to endure difficult times.  Christians are reminded that all authority on earth is accountable to God. The godly word of accountability flows from our Lord Jesus Christ, the prophets, and the wisdom of the church. We who follow Christ are obligated to place our highest loyalty with him, and to live as faithfully as we are able as citizens of this republican democracy. That may require us to act peacefully and speak out boldly when injustice, triumphs over righteousness, and cruelty triumphs over mercy. We are to respect the dignity of every human being, and work to do good, even for those we dislike and distrust. 

I do not know what will happen on election night. We could wake up the next day with renewed hope for a better future. On the other hand, we could wake up with the America we have known and loved about to be extinguished. As important as this election is, something more important and far more powerful is in the offing. No matter who wins, in a few more weeks, we will begin the season of Advent as we prepare for the celebration of Christmas. It is a season of remembrance reflecting that none of the powers of this world, whether good or bad, have dominion over the power and purpose of God manifested by the birth of a vulnerable, fragile baby in Bethlehem. 

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus should have terrorized the powers of the world who believed they were the almighty ones. It should have but they were only mildly agitated.  The birth of a new born king of the Jews disturbed but did not frighten Herod.  He knew he was an illegitimate puppet king beholden to Rome, so he took the precaution of killing all the Bethlehem boys under two; but he couldn’t kill Jesus. 

Thirty some years later Jesus threatened the status of the temple authorities and power of Rome by declaring that every earthly authority was subordinate and accountable to God.  It seemed a simple enough move to destroy his outrageous claims by putting him to death as a criminal hung on a cross.  After all, that had worked with other rebellious pretend messiahs. Jesus’ Resurrection not only defeated them but revealed him to be who he said he was, the manifestation of God incarnate to whom they would be held accountable. 

What was true then is true now.  Earthly powers who claim to be almighty will be held accountable.Jesus warned us that agents of selfishness, greed, and lust for power will continue to do their evil best and gloat over their apparent victory, but they are already defeated in the greater power of the Resurrection. When the people of God remain stalwart in their faith, when they refuse to surrender, when they stand up to evil even apparent victory will prove to be an illusion. But even if the people of God fail in their courage, the purpose of God for the redemption of the world will not.