Are you worried about the state of democracy in the U.S.?
Forget about democracy. Worry about the state of our souls.
Souls reach out constantly toward God, longing to be united with the Divine. When guided well, they are the part of you that connects with Love. They stick to Love like really good duct tape.
Souls are sticky, but they’re also not very bright. Souls not only stick to Love, but to whatever comes between God and you. They’re like tape that is just as likely to stick to your long hair as the box you’re trying to close. Or like phone screen protectors that get covered in fingerprints and lint in the two seconds between your taking them out of the package and getting them onto your screen.
When something gets between your soul and God, your soul is going to stick to it. The more attractive the thing is, the more likely your soul is to get tangled in it.
Ugliness is attractive. Anger has a magnetic personality. Disdain and arrogance gain strength as they grow. So when your soul isn’t firmly attached to Love, it’s going to get stuck on ugliness, anger, disdain, arrogance—the icky sticky old-chewing-gum of the cosmos. That’s why people who use ugliness to advance their causes can be so very effective: our souls want to stick to whatever is near and filthy.
In our current social climate, Love is way over there, across a miry bog of ugliness. It takes a lot of effort and attention to keep your soul out of the muck.
Last night my ministry partner Benton and I were discussing kindness for an episode of our podcast, Cocktail Theology. Afterwards, I brought up a friend of ours whose indignation is in the righteous place, but who has passed from healthy and useful critique into constant cruel ad hominem attacks on those who disagree with him.
His mind can see the good and right, but his soul is stuck in the anger and bitterness of our culture.
I am really scared for the souls of our people. Not because they won’t “go to heaven” but because they’re sinking in the quicksand of hell on earth.
To be moral, soulfully healthy people, we must be able to 1) imagine a world in which we are wrong, 2) imagine the possibility of redemption of the other side, 3) have some vaguely enumerable criteria for recognizing the actions that would constitute that redemption, and 4) actually desire good for those we disagree with — even if they are horrible, conscienceless people.
Take the case of Humanity vs. Hitler, for example. To be a moral, soulfully healthy person, I must be able to:
1) imagine a world in which my beliefs about Hitler turn out to be wrong. I’m not sure what kind of proof I’d need, but I can imagine receiving enough of that proof to respond with, “Holy S—t! Have I had it wrong all these years?”
2) Imagine the possibility of Hitler’s redemption. I’m not sure what kind of restitution and remorse would be needed to convince me that Hitler was no longer a threat to each and every human being, but I can imagine that there is some set of actions Hitler could do that would incline me to trust him with a very tiny limited scope of freedom. Like, getting out of solitary confinement two hours a day instead of one.
3) Have a vaguely enumerable set of criteria for recognizing the actions that would demonstrate that redemption. I guess in Hitler’s case, it would be some combination of my having been wrong about the Holocaust, Mein Kampf, and WW2, plus some actions of restitution to survivors of whatever that was if it wasn’t the Holocaust, plus the remorse plus redemption of neo-Nazis everywhere. Sure: unmeetable criteria, but a somewhat clear picture of the terms.
4) Actually desire good for the ones we disagree with. That’s the hard one, right? When our souls get stuck in anger, bitterness, or fear, it’s really hard to want the bad guys to get what’s good for them. Yet moral and spiritual health depends upon our ability to do that—to not put up with the bad guys abusing us or others while still wanting what is truly best for them.
Desiring good for others, and being willing to act on that desire, is called love.
In our current situation, with a mentally ill and influenced-by-evil person in charge of our government, I am worried that we are all losing our sense of moral awareness. Our hurt and fear is inspiring us to respond with a zero-sum view of humanity. We seem to feel that we can determine whether someone is a bad guy or a good one, without admitting to any possibility of our being wrong, or allowing some path of repentance and redemption for the bad guys.
Look around at the individuals, authorities, or groups that scare you. Be honest with yourself: do you see them as bad guys, wearing the black hats? Can you imagine being wrong about your assessment? Can you picture a path of redemption? Do you want what is actually good for them, even a tiny little bit?
If not, your soul isn’t sticking to Love, but to the muck of ugliness.
So I’m worried for the state of our souls these days. When we clean the murky debris off them, the problems in our democracy will be a lot easier to solve.