Well, what do you have to say, America? Are we proud of where we’re at politically and culturally, as a nation? Are you contributing positively or negatively to the present state of our country? The Jesus Way, the Way is not easy. It is extremely demanding, and when we say it’s the only way, we don’t mean the only religion or even the one true God, which is a separate theological matter, but the only way to live to realize heaven on earth.
As we do at church, let us start with an acknowledgement of our sinfulness: The Confiteor (I Confess).
“I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do;
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.”
When we heard of the assassination attempt, we weren’t shocked, angry or even saddened. It’s hard to feel much towards someone who has waged war on our sensibilities and values for approximately the past decade. Instead, we put it out of our minds as quickly as we could and went about our day. Perhaps we should have felt more, but the truth is that we didn’t. We also didn’t want to give it any more time than we had. This reflects, in part, the way politics has consumed too much of our lives, and our unwillingness to give it, especially certain people, any more time than we have to. There was an implicit insistence on our previous lives before a certain person came to dominate the political and cultural scene and a prioritization of our lives over him and over politics more generally.
Some might argue that he was the president, not an ordinary citizen, so his problems deserve more attention. That’s a job title. It’s not a relationship. Perhaps his life should matter more to us than the countless innocent Americans who are murdered by violence, but it doesn’t. There are people who we’ve never met, whose stories have broken our hearts and, in some cases, haunt us for the rest of our lives. We’re glad that he didn’t die, but had the assassination attempt been successful, would our reaction have been more intense? Probably. Would our hearts have been broken the way they are when we hear about parents torturing and murdering their own children? Probably not. The truth of the matter is that the innocence or guilt of the victim ends up as a considerable factor in our emotional response.
We all know that he is not innocent in inciting violence. We all know that he cheered the assassination attempt of his own Vice President. Also, is it fair to the Secret Service, who literally put their lives on the line, to protect someone who regularly traffics in violence and hate, effectively inviting violence in all of its manifestations? In fact, there is likely a strong positive correlation in his rhetoric and the general degradation of the body politic as well as the increase in political violence. We can’t and don’t want to unknow any of these things. We can’t and won’t pretend that they are negated by an assassination attempt.
When we heard about the identity of the assassin, our first thought was, he’s practically a kid. It wasn’t that he’s a monster, evil or anything along those lines, but in the description: white man, twenty-years-old, it was his age that was the most striking. I thought back to when I was twenty and the poor judgment I had, trying to be an adult but not really knowing how. There are a lot of people with mental health issues, especially young people, so who knows what was going on there. As someone who’s invested in the development of young people, it was also a painful reminder of how we’re failing as a nation in their moral and spiritual formation.
The temptation is to blame and to direct one’s thoughts to the external. As a spiritual matter, however, the responsibility is to direct one’s thoughts to the internal. The internal is what is actually important. As an examination of conscience, do I feel any guilt about not having a stronger emotional response regardless of the emotion? No, I don’t. My emotions are what they are. In the prayer above, we don’t confess our emotions. We confess our thoughts. Were all of my thoughts morally correct, constructive, kind, and such? No, they were not. There were many thoughts; some were kind and charitable; some were not. That’s the truth, and that’s an examination of conscience. I confess the thoughts that didn’t follow the Way, that didn’t live up to the high standards set by Jesus Christ.
However, ultimately, even if I had felt great sadness or some other strong emotion, the response would have been the same: a call for restraint, reflection, and spiritual centering. The response was effectively independent of the emotions. The thoughts, which were broad and conflicting, somehow reconciled through God’s grace to a more spiritually centered place. This process doesn’t happen automatically. It takes effort. America, are we willing to put in the effort to become a better country? If so, we have to exercise more self-control as leaders and as ordinary citizens. Also, arguably just as importantly, we’re setting a bad example for young people, who learn from us. The lessons we are teaching them through our own words and actions are not good.
The Washington Post wrote that Senator and Reverend Warnock asked his congregation to pray for a certain person. They initially offered a muted response. He asked more forcefully, to which they said, “Amen!” This is a hard process. It is difficult to rise above a certain person’s own unrepentant sinfulness, especially as it relates to contributing to political violence and the normalization of cruelty and coarseness in our discourse. However, the Way demands that we love our enemies. Does that mean absolving them of their sins? No, it doesn’t. That’s not our role. That’s ultimately between sinner and God. However, it does mean fighting with love and not with hate. It does mean praying for them. It does mean not trafficking in conspiracy theories or even speculation and stoking fervor when one should be asking for and practicing calm, reason and restraint.
Biden tried to do that, but as many of us have noted, he’s too old for the position he holds. Additionally, his own moral authority has been damaged. It is clear that his administration, complicit with the media, was not forthright with the American people regarding his health. There is a marked decline, and he cannot be our leader for the next four years because of it and his moral failure as it relates to it. As we mentioned before, neither can a certain person, for all the same and obvious reasons as we and many others have outlined numerous times. The assassination attempt doesn’t change anything as it relates to the fitness of either of these candidates. They are both unfit for the highest office in the land, but for different reasons.
Power can be seductive, and the assassination attempt might entice people by his defiance in the face of an existential threat, a reaction similar to the perceived existential threat that has animated the right for some time and has now become embodied in one man. For many, a certain person’s instinctively raised fist and verbal utterance, “fight,” might be attractive. The AP photographer’s picture, which was artistically excellent, might become iconic, but with the wisdom of time, it is likely to also become unflattering. If fight, flight, or freeze are the instinctual response options to a perceived threat, are any of us surprised a certain person defaulted to fight? Likely not. Now, let us revisit the Way. What is it asking? It’s asking us to go against that instinctual response. When Peter cuts off the Roman soldier’s ear, Jesus responds with the phrase many of us know by heart, with variations on the exact phrasing, “Those who live by the sword die by the sword,” and he heals the Roman soldier’s ear.
We hope that the assassination attempt changes Americans’ hearts. May it make our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh; may it soften us to help us realize our full potential, to be a city on a hill. We fear that it is unlikely to do so because too many Americans, as good and capable as they are in their daily interactions, live a parallel life in which they unintentionally “feed the beast,” in great part, because they are unwilling to exercise adequate self-control and maturity as individuals to serve the collective good of our country. In any case, we cannot continue like this. If we persist on our present path, we are asking for a harsher reckoning than if we recognize and rectify our sinfulness now.
God doesn’t set our agenda. He doesn’t control us individually or in the collective. Omnipotence doesn’t make puppets of its people. What God gives us is life and free will. He gave us options and the ability to make our own choices. Jesus didn’t force us onto the Way. We choose to follow him and to take it, as demanding as it is. In the collective, our choices as Americans will determine our destiny, as it has since our founding. Every great leader we’ve ever had has appealed to our conscience, to us as salt and light, to rise above ourselves, our baser instincts and to choose the path that holds true to our values and our ideals as a country, as hard as that might be. Americans, the Way is demanding; it asks a lot of anyone who chooses to follow it, but it is the only way to truly solve our problems and to realize our promise. Please choose of your own volition to take it. God bless you all.