What’s Wrong with Everyone Nowadays?
Into what estate did the fall bring mankind?
(Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 17)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but folks are acting pretty stressed out lately.
I’m not the first to observe that 2020 has been quite a year, and it’s not over yet. The coronavirus pandemic was bad enough by itself, but then people had to take sides over it (as though illness were a matter of political dispute). In Michigan, some were so upset that they took to wandering around the state capitol building openly carrying loaded weapons while the legislature was in session.[1] Then, after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, protests erupted around these United States. Most were peaceful, but some produced violence and even the short-lived takeover of a Seattle neighborhood.[2] Across the political spectrum, people were worked up.
And all that was before the presidential election really got going.
The nation seems more divided than at any time since the Civil War,[3] and almost entirely because people seem to be angrier than ever before. That political anger has spilled over into the Churches: depending on which evangelical congregation you attend on Sunday morning, either Trump voters or those against systemic racism must tread very lightly. It’s not just about politics, either. In the OPC, there currently appears no room for dialogue between those decrying institutional sexism and abuse of Church power and those warning that those who decry institutional sexism and abuse of Church power are destroying the Church. All around me I see pastor after pastor being eaten up by people who are mad that they’ve been asked to wear a mask or mad that others haven’t been forced to wear a mask. Everything, it seems, is a battle worth fighting, and fighting to the death. Moderation is capitulation, and even listening to an opposing point of view is a sign of weakness. There’s no place for patience, let alone charity.
In the words of Charles, Prince of Wales, “What’s wrong with everyone nowadays?”[4]
The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.
(Westminster Shorter Catechism, answer 17)
Actually, I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with anyone. Instead, what I think we’re witnessing is a nation suddenly waking up to the fact that it is in an estate of misery. Especially in these United States, very very few people can tolerate being miserable for very long. We live in an age of miracles and wonders, of which over-the-counter pain medications are not the least. Death is a stranger and a long life is expected. Discomfort is regarded as an unseemly intrusion into our lives of complacency, and misery seems downright unfair. In our cultural context, the perceived injustice is not simply government-directed public health measures: the perceived injustice is the coronavirus itself. In America, we have the right to be happy,[5] not miserable.
But misery is the universal condition of mankind since the Fall. Because of Adam’s first sin, we are all condemned to frustration and death, and no one can escape it (Genesis 3). The western world’s avoidance of misery can make one believe we have escaped it, but this is an illusion. Misery and death will catch up to every last one of us. If nothing else, the current coronavirus pandemic has made us all acutely aware of that reality.
Unremitting misery leads to frustration, and frustration, as Langston Hughes observed, tends to explode.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?[6]
The African-American dream of full inclusion into the American dream has dried up, festered, stunk, crusted over, and sagged until it has again exploded on the streets of many of our cities. An explosion is what happens when a people are kept down by racist societal structures. An explosion happens when oblivious people persistently confuse systemic racism with personal prejudice, when in fact the term describes the ways in which governmental and societal systems are structured to exclude those who have always been excluded from the opportunities others take for granted. An explosion happens when wealthy suburban kids who smoke weed are sent to rehab while impoverished urban kids who smoke weed are sent to lock-up. An explosion happens when the Law’s concern for the poor, emphasized from the Proverbs through the Prophets, is one of the most ignored themes in Scripture and the one most likely to be spiritualized away by reformed preachers.
Frustration tends to explode, and so those whose lives and livelihoods have been put on hold by stay-at-home orders and shuttered businesses take to the streets to demand that what they have lost be restored. Those who are giving the orders are ordering the rest of us to do what is relatively easy for them to do: stay home, work from a computer, and order in all one’s necessities. Others of us have to actually do the physical labor of producing and delivering the goods which make that lifestyle possible. Gestures of gratitude by public officials are much less significant than allowing us to go to worship services and sing praises to our Savior. Being denied that which is truly essential is frustrating, and frustration tends to explode.
All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.
(Westminster Shorter Catechism, answer 19)
Such frustration and such explosion are fitting in this world corrupted by the power of sin and death. Dylan Thomas rightly counseled:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.[7]
If we simply accept misery, then we affirm that this is the way the world should be. If we think that death is the natural end of life, then we deny the dark truths of Genesis 3. If we are not frustrated, if we do not explode, then God did not curse humanity and the ground on which we live; then death is not the last enemy; then there was no need for Christ to rise on the third day and our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.
The world was not made to be wracked by disease. We were not made to stay in our houses, divorced from our Churches and communities. We were not made to ignore the harms done to fellow man, to accept injustice, to be indifferent to mercy, or to walk in the pride of place. In this way, our times of pandemic are a merciful providence: our eyes have been opened to the way things truly are, and now is the time to rage against the dying of the light.
God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.
(Westminster Shorter Catechism, answer 20)
But of course, rage will not address the problem at the root of all the miseries of this life: mankind has lost communion with God and is under his wrath and curse. The God of wrath and love has addressed the curse already through the resurrection of the dead: because Christ is risen, we shall be raised (1 Corinthians 15:11-28). The last enemy to be destroyed is death, but that enemy will certainly be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26). God gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57).
Standing next to her dying father, a young woman once asked me whether I ever get angry at death. Anger at death is right and good, for that anger is ultimately hatred of sin, the dark power behind death (1 Corinthians 15:56). However, that anger must not be turned against other people because they are our fellow victims of the misery of this life. For them, we should love justice and do mercy (Micah 6:8). With them, we should walk humbly before our God, acknowledging that we are blind to our own sins and have no more wisdom than those who rule over us. Because we live in hope of the resurrection, we must love one another because love is what will characterize our life in the age to come (1 Corinthians 13:8-13).
Explode. Rage against the dying of the light. Rejoice that because of the love of God and through the Cross you have communion with God, and so the miseries of this life will certainly come to an end. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11).
[1] “Heavily Armed Protesters Gather Again At Michigan Capitol To Decry Stay-At-Home Order” (NPR.org, https://www.npr.org/2020/05/14/855918852/heavily-armed-protesters-gather-again-at-michigans-capitol-denouncing-home-order. Accessed October 26, 2020.)
[2] “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” Wikipedia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone. Accessed October 26, 2020.)
[3] And it’s pretty distressing, all by itself, that we have to use a civil war as a baseline for comparisons of levels of political strife.
[4] “Prince Charles Begs to Differ” (NBCNews.com, https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6560478. Accessed October 26, 2020.)
[5] “Everybody’s Got the Right” by Stephen Sondheim. (Assassins. Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman. Theatre Communications Group: New York. 1990.
[6] Langston Hughes, “Harlem,” 1951.(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46548/harlem. Accessed October 27, 2020. Italics original.)
[7] Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” 1951.(https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night. Accessed October 30, 2020.)
