The other day the Republican candidate for vice-president of the U.S. understandably and accurately observed that it is the most partisan atmosphere he’s “ever seen.” It is also the most rancorous. Fully nasty and sometimes profane and vicious e-mails twit about. Protesters spit at rallying politicos. Verbal abuse rides the airwaves. There are false accusations in political ads. (One does not fight evil with hatred.) It is also a time of irrationality: So strident and divided is the United States that one can follow the position of the bishops or Pope on certain societal issues and be treated as anti-capitalist or un-Christian for doing so (if these are not the positions of one’s favorite media outlet or candidate). When feelings have hardened to the point where one must accept the lingo and likes and dislikes and every single preference with nuance of any particular group or commentator or risk being cast as a renegade, one is dealing, no matter the original intent, with a cultic atmosphere.
So it is these days on all sides. Christ frowns. Even the hierarchy is attacked if it doesn’t do the bidding of (less-than-Christian) commentators. When you hear someone who is harsh, distrust the discernment. There is no discourse. To blog is to vilipend. In many ways it’s understandable: there are searing, defining, incredible issues such as abortion; no one who supports abortion can be supported. The scourge unleashed by Margaret Sanger must be exorcised. This is pure evil; don’t use it just for politics. Protest at clinics. The same with homosexual marriage (and Hollywood). There are issues of religious freedom: these must be guarded, jealously. There are other pro-life matters: it would be interesting if we could tally the invisible number of people who die around the world each year due to industrial pollution, cancer from what is now in our foods, chemicals in human mother’s milk (or the umbilical cord), genetically-altered foods, radiation, poverty, lack of clean drinking water, and poor prenatal and general medical care and add those numbers in a column alongside abortion (and euthanasia). The figures might be startling but are not addressed because the evil one has caused so much division and confusion and in some cases outright hatred which tends to blindness that those who claim to be “humanitarians” support the inhumanities of Planned Parenthood and in some cases even late-term abortion and rally behind obscene entertainers while others who label themselves as conservative Christians are following the precepts (perhaps unknowingly) of a decidedly anti-Christian and in fact atheistic author named Ayn Rand (who championed the ultimate “good” of total libertarianism and selfishness).
The solution is to turn off the television or radio or internet and instead of listening to constant prattle and diatribes, spend that time in prayer or reading Scripture, starting with the Sermon on the Mount, before you listen to another thing.
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The timeliness of this post is much-needed, as the country, the world…and even the Church falls into deception.