Diane asks, “Are you writing a Minute today?” My answer today was, “I don’t know.” I’ve got all sorts of worries on my heart, but how do I process them with my mind? Maybe writing will help sort things out.
Watching TV this morning, a left-leaning opinion show castigated Republicans for trying to gloss over what happened January 6. Switching to a right-leaning program, we saw interviews of common people out of work because President Biden cancelled the Keystone pipeline. Next we turn to local news and hear everyone complaining about vaccine distribution. I’m picking up a thread, the little guy feels dumped on and angry. From an article I read this morning by Charles Cooke: “History is littered with examples of men who, when pressing their case in the public square, have thought solely about the interests of their land, tribe, religion, or self; but it is sprinkled only lightly with men who, in making their arguments, have taken care to respect the enduring principles that have served to break the old cycles of strife, faction, and war. In the United States today, we seem increasingly drawn to the tribalistic over the principled.”
I want to write something positive but….. While there’s plenty positive in the Gospel, how do we bring that to bear in our national life together? Maybe we can’t until all our factions, so confident they are right, are ground down to humility. Sin has been defined as turning inward, away from God and from others. Heather Choate Davis lists the consequences of turning in on ourselves: Anxiety, depression, chaos, narcissism, self-justification, distrust, retreating to our affinity groups, and much more. (“Man Turned in on Himself,” 44). St. Paul’s explanation is that God is letting us do our own thing, and the consequences are terrible, His wrath is being revealed in our American dysfunction (Romans 1:18-32).
My family and church take hope from the Gospel, but American society? In another article I read this morning, I’ve been up a long time, Robert Merry compares us to the slow slide of the Roman republic into dictatorship. “We’re on a dangerous path, and part of the danger lies in the reality that hardly anyone seems to understand the true nature of the crisis we’re in.” Writing this Minute has helped me sort things out. I’ll watch God’s wheels grind slowly, while all the time praying the present wrath leads us all to humble repentance before the One who died for all.
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