"When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency."
Lately my mornings begin after Peg leaves for work with a few minutes in each of the books I'm reading these days. Tim Keller's marriage book flummoxes me, however. On a practical level his advice seems solid enough: Marriage is about service and not self-actualization. Don't get bogged down in whether the other person is devoted to serving you, but rather try to keep your own side of the street clean and things will work out over time. Don't make a spouse an idol.
All good stuff. And yet, the evangelical Christianity that provides the framework for his analysis leaves me flat. I can't touch it, can't feel it, not only can't comprehend it at a rational level but can't emotionally connect with what he's saying. I guess this is why I was a flop as a priest--I could mouth the words about Jesus and salvation and God's love and grace embodied in this servant-deity, but I couldn't convey the light and joy of all that because I couldn't feel it. And trying to "understand" the premise only makes it more inscrutable. "The heart has its reasons that reason cannot comprehend," Pascal observed. It's an antenna of mine that I never managed to point in the right direction, apparently.
Which is not to say that religion has no role in my life, or that it cannot play an important, civilizing role in human society. I mouth the words--every morning in fact; I find solace and continuity in the ritual and the connectedness it brings. Losing all that would be a loss indeed for me. It's certainly been a loss for our society on this last day of May, 2023.
This morning's news feed overflows with evidence of what a foul group of folks we've become without the civilizing effects of a religion that espouses kindness over power, and treating others as we'd like to be treated ourselves. Three young Marines at the beach near Camp Pendleton in California, a place I've visited many times with my grandparents on runs to the PX, were jumped by dozens of people who beat them senseless for having the temerity to suggest the mob stop lighting fireworks.
And if you were thinking of going on a weekend getaway to Las Vegas, you'd better bring your brass knuckles because unruly tourists apparently are brawling in the streets there, as well.
Meanwhile, closer to home if home is Florida, another mass shooting sent nine folks to the hospital in Hollywood, including a one-year-old.
And still closer to home, one of our neighbors outside of Tallahassee has a message on the sign in front of his business, letting all of us know the depths of his bigotry and stupidity.
I had to link the article in the Advocate because the Tallahassee Democrat blotted out the slur, lest someone might be offended.
There's more--a digital sign in Alabama along the side of the interstate programmed to display a Memorial Day message, hacked instead to confront motorists with a white supremacist slogan. "Christian" parents burning a pride flag at their kids' school. I could go on.
Can we survive as a country, when this is how we treat each other? Tom Edsall in the NYT this morning wrote at length regarding the scholarship illuminating the obvious fact that we no longer consider the folks on the other side of the political aisle to be truly human, and assume their beliefs are an existential threat to the nation.
Our politics aren't an aberration: they reflect who we are at this moment in history, just as the mobs fighting out West and the bigot out on Highway 90 outside of Monticello. What's happened to us?
Man, if I could answer that one I wouldn't be here at Tara typing in my PJs. But what seems fundamental, the attribute that brings together the whole picture, is our loss of empathy, our cruelty to one another brought on not by hubris but by the insecurities of a world that seems to have made so many of us strangers in a strange land. We lash out when we're afraid, and by the looks of things we are very, very afraid.
Is the decline of religion part of what's gone wrong? It seems like religious observance among the masses can be a force for good, or for evil, a very human institution in that regard. At its best, it provides hope and standards of behavior that make civilization possible. And every society requires its enforcers of civilized behavior, with religion being perhaps the most effective. Or women--I can't help thinking that when women quit using their natural power in any society to civilize the brutes among us, we lost something. Either way, without the guardrails that used to limit our ability to act on every uncivilized impulse, we find ourselves sliding further toward a Hobbesian dystopia.
Except in Corning, where the people are nice, the food is bland, and when Pride Month starts tomorrow there will be little rainbow flags along the sidewalks. An oasis, in so many ways. We'll enjoy it while we can.
I'll just say that Western Europe is less religious than America and does not have near the violence the US has - guns involved or not.
We've tried blaming video games, Rock n Roll, and Comic Books too. The fact is we are a militant, angry, country lead by a geriatric government that won't be around to see the end result of their disastrous policies.