Confusion can be a great starting point for enquiry, but it makes a terrible place to live.
Getting comfy with confusion means getting comfy with conflict that cannot be resolved.
Getting comfy with confusion means gradually acclimating to disorder and ultimately gearing up for entropy.
Getting comfy with confusion means giving up on clarity or comprehension… accepting chaos as a status quo condition… becoming blasé about any prospects for improvement.
How does the getting-comfy-with-confusion process happen?
Three steps:
- Forgetfulness.
- Revision.
- Revelatory Crisis.
Our present place of “comfort”
Our nation has deliberately forgotten the most important things about itself.
Our nation has under-taken a re-writing of history that features those forgotten, important things only as footnotes or punchlines.
And our nation, smack dab in the midst of forgetfulness and fictionalized history, has confronted a series of crises which have revealed the extent to which we are comfy with confusion.
Washington D.C., January 6, 2021. CHAOS.
Kabul, Afghanistan, August, 2021. EGREGIOUS ABANDONMENT OF ALLIES.
Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022. DEAD CHILDREN.
Our national failure to mitigate any of these three crises is matched only by our national failure to learn from any of these three crises / make a coherent plan for avoiding their repetition…
So, what do we do about it?
Begin at the Beginning
Is the Declaration of Independence an irrelevant relic?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
The American Declaration of Independence uses language and articulates ideas that are less and less comprehensible to contemporary America.
The Declaration begins by stating its premise: that there are self-evident truths, which derive from humanity’s unique position in Creation and are given to humanity by the Creator.
But American intelligentsia and popular culture have dismissed the possibility of “truth” as something fixed, stable, reliable.
There is “your truth.” There is “my truth.”
But there is no actual, objective, bigger-than-you-and-me “truth.”
In place of truth, there is endlessly malleable permutations of preference and opinion.
By the logic of the Declaration, no stable precepts can be “self-evident” without truth. By the logic of our time, there is no truth.
Chaos.
The Declaration describes Government as deriving its legitimacy from the governed, and being purposed to utilize its “just powers” in defending those self-evident inalienable rights.
But American academia and the government itself increasingly deny the possibility of “justice.”
In place of justice, they posit “equity” – a slippery, subjective notion that requires “injustice” as an ongoing dynamic against which to react.
How can Government be held to standards of “just powers” if there is no such thing as justice?
Further, why would Government exercise its just powers (if it had them) to defend the “rights” of its citizens – never mind the citizens of other countries – if human “rights” themselves undermine the assumptions of the new objective (“equity” )?
Egregious abandonment of allies.
For decades, Americans have parsed and politicked notions of who merits “Life” (for example, Black Lives Matter, but unborn children of all colors can be murdered at will).
Without consensus on whose life is actually valid / what being “alive” means, how can Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness be confidently assigned as “Rights” to anyone?
Indeed – if life is a matter of “choice” – and if truth varies according to the moment and the speaker – then defending lives other than one’s own comes down to how one feels about the potential costs to one’s self. The greater those potential costs, the greater the incentive to self-protect.
Dead children.
But the Biggest Problem is (no) God
At root, the dissonance between the world the Declaration assumes and the world in which today’s Americans believe centers in one Being (or nonentity) – God.
The framers’ assumed God’s presence and absolute sovereignty.
Today’s Americans assume God-lessness and the absolute sovereignty of the individual.
These starkly contradictory assumptions create the conditions for the confusion with which we are growing comfy.
How so?
As our collective consciousness and official histories have erased “the Creator”, the whole foundation of the American experiment as articulated in its founding documents has slip-slid into incoherence.
Without God, we may argue about the “constitutionality” of this or that legal question – but we increasingly see the Constitution itself as questionable.
Without God, we may debate election outcomes – but we increasingly dismiss the legitimacy of any outcome that does not validate our own predetermined result (regardless of the terms of debate).
Without God, we seek unity not through consensus or democratic process but through cancellation or “silencing” of opposing perspectives.
Without God, our confusion expands exponentially… arbitrary allegiances based on the expediency of the moment become the political norm by default… public cynicism about the political process grows as deep as it is logical…
This is where we live.
Ideas Matter
As details emerge about the massacre in Uvalde, it becomes clear that the murderer was actively aided and abetted in his evil effectiveness by law enforcement officers whose inaction bought him time – 60 whole minutes.
But isn’t it bizarre to read headlines excoriating these law enforcement officers for dereliction of duty – in newspapers which have been calling to “defund the police” for the last two years?
When the national narrative dictates that Police Are the Problem – that people with badges and guns are predators, not protectors – isn’t it disingenuous to shriek in shock when police stay out of the fray?
Take this line of argumentation a step further:
How can those who have so thoroughly denigrated the characters, impugned the motives, and vilified the actions of police officers whenever it came down to a shooting situation now hold police officers accountable for lacking courage to rush an active shooter?
It’s all very… confusing.
Do we still hold some truths to be self-evident?
Our disgust at the police officers in Uvalde offers an interesting peek under the scrim of politically-correct, woke dogma: at least for now, Americans still instinctively recoil from police officers who let a gunman mow down school children.
Our unified horror at the tragedy of Uvalde and our unanimous outrage at the injustice of police-neglect there suggests that, deep down, all of us still believe in something bigger and more substantive than our own opinions and preferences – something we might even call “truth.”
Our response to the lost children of Uvalde suggests that those unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness still make sense to us at gut-level, even if many of us can’t account for that gut-level response in terms that make sense.
That gut-level unity matters deeply in this present maelstrom.
Moving Forward Sometimes Means Looking Back
There is much talk at present about how we can’t let the children of Uvalde have died in vain – and that gun control legislation is the best way to honor their memories.
I don’t have anything against legislation that would keep assault rifles out of the hands of deranged teenagers. But I think the best way to honor the memories of the dead children of Uvalde is to choose to reject the confusion with which we’ve gotten comfy, and insist on a return to first principles in our public life.
Reclaiming America’s founding articles is not the same as claiming America’s founding fathers were perfect people. They weren’t – none of us are.
But the ideas and ideals to which they pointed were derived from a perfect source and remain a perfect beginning point for our own ongoing effort to a become better nation.
And the documents themselves, constructed on principles which predate and will outlast nations, remain a clear alternative to our chosen confusion.
Pretending that America is simply a composite of sins and systemic malice is willfully ignorant, self-defeating, and disrespectful to the millions of immigrants – past and present – who have worked tirelessly to become part of the American project.
Rather than repeating the circumstances of victims in an endless cycle of mostly meaningless admissions of past generations’ guilt, let’s name and celebrate those who refused to be defined by other people’s mistreatment – those who rose in spite of the odds against them – those whose example of industry, perseverance, and self-discipline will inspire and encourage us to do / be likewise!
(It’s a long list, by the way. And it includes a former President and a present Vice President, Supreme Court Judge, billionaire entertainment mogul, etc.)
Rather than endlessly lobbying for more handouts and subsidies and debt-remission from the Government, let’s identify, study, and emulate the example of the many millions who worked hard, accepted no excuses, and expected to sacrifice for the privilege of liberty.
(That’s a long list, too. And it’s a thrilling line-up of men and women from all backgrounds and education levels whose ingenuity and stick-to-it-iveness are hard to overstate. Visit “Frontier Texas” in Abilene if you need a reminder.)
Rather than persist in the obviously hollow pretense that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” means “comfort, ease, and the license to do whatever I want at all times”, let’s recall and recruit exemplars of public servanthood… people whose authentic joy in helping others is contagious; people whose long labors on behalf of their neighbors testifies to the noble in the human spirit.
(We cannot be too sophisticated for heroes and heroines. Mocking the possibility of goodness in people translates to a society in which badness is increasingly assumed, increasingly normative.)
Why Jesus
I can’t finish a post without pointing to the reason I write:
The Lordship of Christ is the only sufficient answer to the heart-breaking questions of a broken world.
And the example of Christ is the only sufficient template for navigating that world in such a way that our lives bring His light – rather than adding to the darkness.
Offering comfort and succor to the survivors of Uvalde must be at least as important to us as holding the criminally negligent police officers accountable.
Praying for those whose hateful rhetoric fuels and foments ongoing division, deception, and despair must be at least as important to us as correcting the rhetoric.
Holding ourselves accountable to the standards of compassion, humility, and diligence that Christ modeled must be at least as important to us as holding our government accountable to its actual mandate.
We live in a time of chaos, of egregious abandonment of allies, of dead children who should be alive today.
But we also live in a time of tremendous opportunity – tremendous possibility – tremendous urgency!
Christ’s day looked a lot like our own in terms of societal fracture, governmental over-reach, and apocalyptic mood… and Christ’s message of hope spread like wildfire perhaps because people were so desperate for it.
Conflicted confusion costs lives.
Christ – and the truth, order, and peace Christ offers – gives Life.
Getting comfy with confusion can’t be an option for Christians. We belong to the One who brings order from chaos and wholeness from brokenness. And we are called to do likewise, in His name.
