A Sad State of Affairs?

I often wonder if I’m being too negative in these blogs. After all, I don’t want them to be downers, because my purpose is to help people who have given up on God and/or religion to find God. And if you’re trying to find God in the Christian tradition, it has to be with a sense of joy and wonder.

But you have to “call a spade, a spade,” like the prophets of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles do. I doubt that Isiah, Jeremiah and Micah, nor John the Baptist – nor Jesus himself – worried about being too negative.

So, we have to listen to modern-day prophets, who, though they may not consider themselves spokespersons for God like the early prophets did, want to tell it like it is. Knowing ourselves makes us better.

Not Necessarily Religious

Many of these modern prophets are not necessarily “religious,” though David Brooks – the prophet taking much of the space of the rest of this blog – is obviously highly influenced by the mix of Judaism and Christianity of his youth as well as by modern theologians and thinkers.

Brooks, 64, whose writing I’ve always admired, wrote “Time to Say Goodbye” in a recent issue of the New York Times, after 22 years of employment there. You can decide for yourselves whether he’s just a pessimist or a prophet, or both.

“…We have become a sadder, meaner and more pessimistic country,” Brooks writes. “…Large majorities say our country is in decline, that experts are not to be trusted, that elites don’t care about regular people. Only 13 percent of young adults believe America is heading in the right direction. Sixty-nine percent of Americans say they do not believe in the American dream.”

Nihilism Personified?

What does this loss of faith imply? It “produces a belief in nothing,” he writes. “Trump is nihilism personified, with his assumption that morality is for suckers, that life is about power, force, bullying and cruelty. Global populists seek to create a world in which only the ruthless can thrive. America is becoming the rabid wolf of nations.

“…Selfishness, egoism and the lust for power drive human affairs. Altruism, generosity, honor, integrity and hospitality are mirages. Ideals are shams that the selfish use to mask their greed.

“Disillusioned by life, the cynic gives himself permission to embrace brutality, saying: We won’t get fooled again. It’s dog eat dog. If we’re going to survive, we need to elect bullies to high places. In 2024, 77 million American voters looked at Trump and saw nothing morally disqualifying about the man.”

I don’t believe you can observe what has been happening since Trump began his political career without blaming him, but the problem is not all his.

Collapse of Values

“…The shredding of values from the top was preceded by a decades-long collapse of values from within. Four decades of hyper-individualism expanded individual choice but weakened the bonds between people. Multiple generations of students and their parents fled from the humanities and the liberal arts, driven by the belief that the prime purpose of education is to learn how to make money.”

Trying to end on a more positive note, Brooks quotes Reinhold Niebuhr, the American Protestant commentator on politics and public affairs, who died in 1971.

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”