Why should I fear when evil days come?

Why should I fear when evil days come,
    when wicked deceivers surround me ...
    those who trust in their wealth
    and boast of their great riches?

No one can redeem the life of another
    or give to God a ransom for them ...
    the ransom for a life is costly,
    no payment is ever enough ...
    so that they should live on forever
    and not see decay.

For all can see that the wise die,
    that the foolish and the senseless also perish,
    leaving their wealth to others.

Their tombs will remain their houses forever,
    their dwellings for endless generations,
    though they had named lands after themselves.

People, despite their wealth, do not endure;
    they are like the beasts that perish.

This is the fate of those who trust in themselves,
    and of their followers, who approve their sayings.

They are like sheep and are destined to die;
    death will be their shepherd
    (but the upright will prevail over them in the morning).

Their forms will decay in the grave,
    far from their princely mansions.

But God will redeem me from the realm of the dead;
    he will surely take me to himself.

Do not be overawed when others grow rich,
    when the splendor of their houses increases;
    for they will take nothing with them when they die,
    their splendor will not descend with them.

Though while they live they count themselves blessed ...
    and people praise you when you prosper ...
    they will join those who have gone before them,
    who will never again see the light of life.

People who have wealth but lack understanding
    are like the beasts that perish.

... the Land of the Free 2023

America, the land of opportunity; a noble nation setting the example of true freedom, God’s gift to the world ...

... or so many have said.  People in the United States now find themselves in a struggle, a scourge of irrationality, manufactured deceptions, and a contempt for truth that has been decades in the making. It follows the decline of an involved citizenry and an increasing distrust of government. We’ve watched as ideological extremes have brought hostility and division and a plague of disinformation. 

White nationalism has returned along with fear mongering, unchecked bigotry, and an emboldened culture war that violently looms over us. Our collapse into irrationality shocked the world, and it still watches, wondering what effect it might bring. Our mocked democracy weakened as our leadership moved on to language empty of any meaning. Our historical memory of governance, of ethics, of justice and responsibility, all discarded. With little opposition, power players took on the workings of a dis-information machine characterized by a disregard for the truth, often accompanied by primitive taunts and threats from the highest office. 

What we are witnessing is not simply a political project. Objective truth is viewed by many as a liability, and ignorance as a virtue. Common sense education is similarly regarded with disdain. Words are reduced to noise. Traces of critical thought persist only at the margins of the culture as anger becomes the primary organizing principle of American society. Moral values have been replaced by simple competition, division, and personal interests. 

We watched as false accusations were made by those knowing that the public would easily be seduced by emotional exhortation and sensationalism, all of which mimics the celebrity culture and reality television.  

State and federal courts dismissed as unproven more than 50 lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud presented by the president and his allies.  There was no evidence.  U.S. election security officials (representing the investigative work of thousands) have said the election was “the most secure in American history”, yet with our ever-increasing flood of information and our over-stimulated lives, it appears we no longer have the time to mature into informed thought. Half of us chose to accept the false claims while ignoring the reasoned analysis and evidence. 

Change continues. It has a price. Truth and objectivity are gone from public discourse. Quite simply, the US is a house divided and partisan disagreements run deeper than ever measured. At the personal level as well, we are unreasonably divided … willing to abandon decades of relationship.  Even the church finds itself wounded, broken ....

Can we live in this world without being shaped by it?  Must we allow ourselves to be dragged down in the quagmire?  How might we choose a higher standard than this which we've seen?  What specifically is the right goal?

Furious Freedom

What Do I Know/Hope/Believe?

Grappling with what we know and believe and with what we hope yet to understand ... well, it can be a difficult struggle.  

Fortunately, we have science and math and facts we can prove.  That only helps with the first part of the struggle, though.  

That first part, it's perhaps like cleaning up the house, organizing things into their proper place, each in an appropriate cabinet or drawer or closet.  We can sit and relax or gaze out the window at our sensible and predictable world.  We understand it, so we don't need to worry.

Okay, that's just the ground floor.  Upstairs, there are questions without such easy answers.
     --We know the universe began, but as best we can tell, it began from absolutely nothing. It sprang into existence without a cause or origin, and science has no answer.
     --It's the same with the origin of life. We know life covers the earth, and we understand many the processes. Science tells us it was just a coincidence that life began from the chemistry involved a few billion years ago, but the honest ones admit we have no idea how that happened.
     --Then there's our consciousness. We think, we choose, we learn and change, but neuroscience has struggled to find anything other than a deterministic process, like a computer and its program and its inputs. Science acknowledges no free will, no personal control, we're just a result of what was before.  The complexity of our awareness is far beyond what science can explain. That's where it ends.

Upstairs, there are things we know and much more that we don't.
     --We know we exist, that we have a choice in who we become despite what the science offers.
     --We know the rules of society, and we can see that those rules are imperfect.
     --We have moral awareness when we stop and think about it, but even then, we can stumble over our own imperfection.  

It gets harder. 
     --We've known since we were children that God is there, and we've held on to that, or we've pushed it away. 
     --When we heard about how he loves us, we almost understood.  When he offered us true freedom, we could see just the edges of it. 
     --We find ourselves walking uneasily, stepping from this rock of faith to that one as we make our way along. 
Science offers little help with such questions.

Every honest believer is at least partly agnostic, understanding that there are some things which cannot yet be known.  And there's perhaps a reason behind that.  What would we do if an audible alarm sounded every time we sinned, or if He regularly and visibly stepped into the room to instruct us?  If we were pressured like that, would there be any real virtue in our choice?  Would there be any genuine freedom to acquire our own identity, our own purpose, our own principles and values?  I think that we must turn to Him from an honest and open heart.

So, downstairs and up, science and faith, we're reminded that being a rational adult can be difficult.  Except we become like little children ....  the older I get, the more clearly I see why He would have said that.

One idea changed the world ...

  It was 1970 when economist Milton Friedman declared, “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” Company leaders, he argued, should be entirely concerned with making money for shareholders, not with their businesses’ environmental, social, or broader economic impacts. He wasn't alone in his thinking, and as influential players got on board, it changed the way the world's economies operate.

As our nation changed, few were concerned that the direction was opposite the one they'd heard in their hearts as children. Churches offered no counterpoint despite the clear words of their founder.

It has been an interesting fifty years. Corporations, particularly in the financial industries, had no interest in making the world a better place, and the cost has been stunning. For those of you who are new to this world, the trends you see are neither noble nor beneficial. The competition among nations is led by a powerful few, and our persistent global warfare is primarily economic with progressively less moral constraint.

The first purpose we were given was to steward this world. The second included instruction for us to care about others besides ourselves. To do so, we must consider each other in our decisions, our plans, and every path chosen. But ... do we?

The culture we face is harsh for many. We're living in a classist society that has had stunning impact on the lower economic strata and minorities. Our national economy and governance are an elitist venue.

20% of our children live in poverty today. Their parents struggle with having enough food, with health, with safety, with quality education for their kids.

Despite the good intent of many to defend the poor and oppressed, national trends have been problematic, and most of us, particularly on the far right, are unwilling to hear the cries of those who suffer and are abused.

The poor work harder than the rest. Two jobs are the norm for parents if they can find work, and none of them chose to live in such distress. It was and is done to them, and escape is unlikely.

We perhaps cannot change the world for all, but we can for some. We can speak for the unheard, we can speak the truth to those who have yet to see. We can do so from a different heart, one that considers others in our decisions, our plans, and every path chosen. As we should.

The Extraordinary Opportunity Ahead

Religious practices alone aren't a solution.

The 'moral' requirement is a heart issue,

not just simple rules.    No one is fully

constrained by rules, as we've seen,

and industry's play for profit has

no discernable moral standard.

John Adams wrote in 1798 about the extraordinary opportunity ahead of us as a nation. He added the caveat that if we became like other nations, soiled by iniquity and extravagance, "... this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world, because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion."

  

In his letter he warned that in the absence of such constraint, avarice, ambition, and revenge (or galantry) would "break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net."

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Where on our timeline might we find this tipping point?    

A More Dangerous Enemy

     Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

     If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. ... Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil....

     Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

     But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from ‘After Ten Years’ in Letters and Papers from Prison

Emphasis added.  Taken from a circular letter, addressing many topics, written to three friends and co-workers in the conspiracy against Hitler, on the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship of Germany… Bonhoeffer was hanged by Adolf Hitler in 1945.