Gratitude.
It's not an easy virtue, even on a good day.
Far easier is an attitude of entitlement--that sniveling and singularly unattractive presumption that what's yours is yours by virtue of merit or morality or some other human achievement or distinctive.
While I've not seen any hard data to support the following claim, I feel confident in saying that gratitude has been, for most of us, an especially elusive virtue in the Year of Our Lord, 2020.
While we are still awaiting the final results of this week’s election, one thing has become clear. The divisions we have experienced in the United States in recent years are deep and real. They will be with us for awhile. As Ronald Brownstein writes in The Atlantic, “The clearest message of this week’s complicated election results is that the trench is deepening between red and blue America.”
Martin Luther once said: “If the doctrine of justification is lost, the whole of Christian doctrine is lost.” That might be a slight exaggeration, but it suggests how vital this doctrine really was for the Reformers and remains for the churches of the Reformation today.
Any attempt to return to Christendom requires syncretism: a marriage between the church and ruling power. A power that is in direct contradiction to allegiance to the sovereign rule of Jesus over all things. Newbigin was clear throughout his writings, there can be no return to Christendom, nor should there be.
As pastors, we are called to lead our flocks through the age of anger, to lead them to resist conformity to the forces at work in our world that are creating this age. To do so, it is critical that we understand the dynamics that are creating the age of anger, and to counter these dynamics with faithful preaching and discipleship, being used by the Lord to form communities of peace in a time of rage. It will come as no surprise to pastors that the anger of our era has infiltrated the church. We have witnessed this anger as members of our church battle it out on social media. In order to shepherd well during this time, it is important for pastors to understand the dynamics that are at work globally, and to see how these dynamics are playing out in our local fellowship. As pastors, we must ask: How do we shepherd our flock in this volatile time? How can we counter the anger of our age that is flooding the church?
It’s not news: We Americans live in a country divided by political conflicts, class struggles, and culture wars. Divisions are dangerous, but they don’t have to be fatal. To survive and flourish, societies need institutional and intellectual resources to counteract the centrifugal forces of diversity and conflict. A married couple can reconcile after adultery if their love for themselves and for one another is ordered toward the higher good of their marriage and family. A city or nation can survive a contested election if most are committed to the good of common life. A church survives scandal or tragedy or a petty squabble if everyone recalls they’re members of one another, called to subordinate their desires to the health of the body.
In our political moment, the way of wisdom requires us to appraise our values and determine which to prioritize—and the courage to prioritize some at the expense of others—as we engage the public square in faithfulness to Jesus Christ and out of love for our neighbors.
The political tension of the past four years has polarized our country in ways not seen in recent history. One need only spend a few minutes on social media to acquire “participative knowledge” (to use a phrase from St. Maximus) of just how vitriolic American political discourse has become. The terms “conservative” and “liberal”, which formerly served as descriptors of one’s political leanings, now more frequently function as terms of slander. The political right views the political left as elitist, soft on law, enabling, amoral, and too preoccupied with the world at the expense of America. Likewise, many political liberals view their conservative counterparts as racist, ignorant, narrow minded, lacking compassion, too preoccupied with martial power, oppressively moralistic, and fixated on an idealized (and non-existent) past.
We live in a world that loves power, especially political power. Christians are not immune to this. In fact, conservative Christians—particularly evangelicals—have honed their political influence just as much, if not more, than other demographics in America. Billy Graham advised Presidents, evangelicals anchored the ‘Moral Majority’ for Ronald Reagan, and now most white evangelicals are propping up Donald Trump’s re-election chances.
Over the last two decades, the trend away from deliberative discourse toward a kind of scorched earth politics on both ends of the spectrum has accelerated at a staggering pace: virtue signaling and performative moral posturing, the outrage cycle and the politics of grievance, cancel culture—all exacerbated by our consumption of media carefully curated by algorithms explicitly devised to confirm the views we already hold.
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