it's been a long, time comin'

Once upon a time, a wise soul suggested to me that one way to discern God's will l involved the witness of Scripture, the confluence of insights from time-tested mentors, encounters with synchronicity, and the possibility of actually accomplishing something. The overarching metaphor was nautical, in which a sailor aligns markers on the horizon to guide the boat safely to shore. And while I am a land lover par excellence who gets seasick with the mere mention of boating, this notion has been useful for decades. Not only does it offer a corrective to my inclination towards spontaneity, but it also broadens the lens through which I conduct my evaluations. In an era defined by chaos, the abandonment of ethical norms, and the quest for individual freedom, G.K. Chesterton's quote about tradition rings true:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. (Orthodoxy)

So, color me surprised but attentive when last week I came across a meme on Facebook quoting a comparable insight from C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man that not only mirrors Chesterton's sagacity but resonates with a portion of Charles Taylor's masterwork, A Secular Age, and echoes the acuity of Robert Pirsig's second novel, Lilia: An Inquiry into Morals. Lewis states that as contemporary society continues to confuse ethics and morality with being "nice," culture does not become more tolerant:

It becomes manipulable... (or what Lewis poetically describes) as men without chests. People with appetites and intellects, but no courage, no honor, no trained moral instincts. They can calculate everything and defend nothing... for once we reject inherited moral law, we don’t become free. We become raw material… easily shaped by propaganda, pleasure, and fear. Modern man prides himself on compassion while quietly surrendering every standard that once gave compassion meaning... a civilization that educates clever cowards who will eventually be ruled by tyrants or technicians. Because when nothing is worth dying for, every-thing becomes negotiable… including human dignity. (The Abolition of Man)

How did St. Bob Dylan put it in "Ballad of a Thin Man?" Something's going on all around you, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? (Take a listen to one of the most scalding screeds of the bard's life works here: 

https://youtu.be/63ucJmVonAc?si=t50IEgkj13V-vgIk) Well, something is starting to line up for me from these varied yet time-trusted mentors. And while our current moral confusion is different from the decadence of the Weimar Republic and its later descent into the evils of Nazi Germany, there are cautionary parallels. Currently, the United States is flirting dangerously with a pseudo-theocracy that looks backward to the good old days of a sanitized Christianity, much as the Nazis harkened back romantically to a restored Aryan paganism. Both are nostalgic for purity, both consciously and creatively seek to ignore and deny our shadows, and both promise a restoration to stability and grandeur. 

Taylor writes that in the US, this has incrementally taken place by elevating science as our new god, viewing nature as autonomous, "thing that doesn’t just exist as a means for God to act in this world, as a tool in God’s toolbelt. Nor was nature to be understood as occupied by, acted upon, or the playground of various extra-human powers. So, nature could be spoken of without reference to God, or any of the other powers previously imagined." He adds that the triumph of individualism as the goal of life, and the rejection of stories of morality rooted in faith, are married.
In the days when the entire culture was viewed as being informed by God, when all of life was ordered in line with divine revelation, the task was to align ourselves with those externally provided moral sources. But new ways of knowing developed as we began to understand we could know things by the application of thought, independent of external revelation from God, gods, or the cosmological order. From Christianity, our Western ancestors had been deeply formed by the concept of benevolence and justice. When, though, the old religious, meta-physical beliefs are discarded, when God’s role in the social order is diminished, new explanations must be produced to account for those values of benevolence and justice, and the motivation to act in those ways. The way to do that was to explain them as inherent characteristics of human beings; there all along, not dependent on the old religious mythologies for their justification.

And therein is the linkage: without an objective, shared moral compass, we each become our own deity. A slippery slope, as Niebuhr would put it, where we not only fail to recognize our own selfishness but also refuse to anticipate the unintended consequences of even our most noble activities. Pirsig spoke to this in Lilia when he observed that early-20th-century free-thinkers like Bertrand Russell were schooled, trained, and conscientized by traditional morality. Their rebellion was guided by time-tested ethics. When the next generation rebelled, however, there was no moral consensus to oppose - and all hell broke loose. This continued same in the 50s and 60s where free thinkers like Ginsberg could write: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. Wikipedia correctly observes that Pirsig concluded:

That until the end of the Victorian era, social patterns dominated the conduct of members of American culture. In the aftermath of World War I, intellectual patterns and the scientific method acceded to that position, becoming responsible for directing the nation's goals and actions. The later occurrences of fascism are seen as an anti-intellectual struggle to return social patterns to the dominant position. The hippie movement, having perceived the flaws inherent in both social and intellectual patterns, sought to transcend them, but failed to provide a stable replacement, degenerating instead into lower level biological patterns as noted in its calls for free love.

So here we are: longing for a non-existent past, afraid and righteously angry with the limitations and defects of organized religion and government, uncertain about the spiritual emptiness of our souls and culture, and addicted to distractions. Neil Postman's prescient Amusing Ourselves to Death continues to cry out for a wider audience. Nevertheless, I refuse to see this moment only as a time of despair, but rather as one where small and tender acts of compassion, born of Christ's love and God's grace, hold an alternative to the status quo. Not in any obviously heroic way, but softly, quietly, and humbly.  Small wonder that I've found solace and support in the words of Fr. Jon Swales:

I don’t want to be a Christian who forgets how to feel—
who hides behind answers, quotes verses like shields,
and silences sorrow with a song.
I don’t want a faith of romanticized abstraction,
where resurrection is polished and the cross is theory.
Give me something real—flesh and blood, grief and grace.
I want to weep with eyes wide open. Tears that speak truth.
Tears that rise from the ground of compassion,
from the jagged knowledge that the world is not
as it was meant to be.
I have seen it—the wounded souls, the haunted eyes,
the bruises beneath the surface.
I have felt the weight of injustice that crushes and isolates,
while the world looks away.
These are not tears of despair—but of resistance, of aching love,
of holding the pain when no one else will.
I want a hope that isn’t saccharine. Not hopium.
Not denial in disguise. But a defiant, dirt-under-the-fingernails
kind of hope—the kind that walks through the valley, sits in the ashes,
and still whispers, “Even here… God.”
I want a gospel that holds the wound.
A Christ who draws close, a Spirit who groans,
a God who gathers every tear in a bottle,
holds every sorrow like a fragile flame,
and knows what it is to break.
I want to believe—not cheaply, not loudly—
but with trembling trust, that one day, every tear
will be wiped away. Not erased, but remembered,
redeemed, and transfigured.
Until then, let me be the kind who weeps.
Who walks in holy realism.
Who holds vigil in the shadow of the cross
and waits, with aching hope,
for the dawn.