Weary of politics

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I know that political debate energizes some people, but I find all of politics to be a very wearying affair. The debate, such as it is, is endless; in many (if not most) cases, both sides in the debate have some good points to make, and a lot of bad points that each side willfully ignores. The truth is often somewhere in the middle, and it is rarely pretty.

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Just to take one contentious issue: immigration. Here's an issue I can see both sides on. Illegal immigration is, in fact, a violation of our nation's laws, and those who violate it are lawbreakers by definition. They're also desperately poor people, in most cases, who want a better chance to work their way to a better life for themselves and their families. So their desire to cross into the U.S. illegally is very understandable to me. But it's not without consequences. Illegal immigrants tend to work cheaper than native workers do, which depresses wages at the lower economic strata. But, they also work hard and contribute to our national economy. But, they also use a lot of "free" government services from cash-strapped states that many citizens don't have access to. And what of those who follow the law, who immigrate legally? Are they fools? What are we to say to them if we shrug at the influx of illegal immigration?

All of which to say that this is a very complicated issue, one that defies simple solutions. And there I'm typically left by all the debate, not sure what to think, frustrated and weary. I sometimes wish I were more of an ideologue, just to find some degree of comfort with a political position. But then, when I see friends who are—how much of their time and energy gets swallowed up by their politics—I'm glad I'm not.

And I'm not. I am a follower of Jesus Christ, that much I know and believe. And I have friends who also are who fall all along the political spectrum. I'm grateful for them all, and I condemn none of them, even if I happen to disagree with them. (I also have friends who are not Christians; the same applies to them.)

It seems to me that politics is a necessary evil, an endless debate over every imaginable issue that has no solution that works for everyone. There is a futility to it all that I ultimately run into, and in times of futility, I run to the Lord. In this life, all things, all times are ultimately futile; in His embrace alone I find hope and comfort.

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Reasons to be hopeful: Life is getting better for most of us

I tend toward pessimism, I freely admit it. It's either an aspect of my personality, or a character flaw, depending on how I look at it. (I tend toward the latter view.) I'm trying to change that, in view of my faith and in view of the reality of the world, too, when properly viewed.

Matt Ridley wrote a great essay on HuffingtonPost.com getting to the heart of this very conundrum: Why is it that there are so many pessimists predicting a dire, hopeless future when the world is actually improving by every reasonable measure? Ridley has a few ideas:

I now see at firsthand how I avoided hearing any good news when I was young. Where are the pressure groups that have an interest in telling the good news? They do not exist. By contrast, the behemoths of bad news, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF, spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year and doom is their best fund-raiser. Where is the news media's interest in checking out how pessimists' predictions panned out before? There is none. By my count, Lester Brown has now predicted a turning point in the rise of agricultural yields six times since 1974, and been wrong each time. Paul Ehrlich has been predicting mass starvation and mass cancer for 40 years. He still predicts that `the world is coming to a turning point'.

I think Ridley's onto something here: Follow the money. Nobody raises funds by claiming that the problem they aim to solve is actually getting solved. No, it's dire predictions of imminent doom—unless you send money NOW. That's not to say that there aren't very worthy causes worthy of our support, and in many cases these organizations addressing these causes are the very ones imbibing at the downer bar to raise funds. They spend a lot of money, so they have to raise a lot of money. Understood.

But still, it's a healthy bromide—and it feels good going down, believe me—that mixes a healthy skepticism of pessimism along with an optimistic outlook rooted in facts. For all our carping about the excesses of the modern world, who among us wants to go back to a time of less sanitation? How unhappy would you be about unprocessed food if you struggled to raise enough food to feed your family? How much would global warming suck if you were alive during the Little Ice Age, when food was scarce and life was amazingly harsh? I could go on, but the idea is clear enough.

Nothing new about this dynamic, either, as Ridley notes:

I got back to 1830 and still the sentiment was being used. In fact, the poet and historian Thomas Macaulay was already sick of it then: `We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason.' He continued: `On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us.'

Admittedly, I'm as guilty as anyone. I tend to narrow my focus too much, in part because my depression can be so daunting at times. That's no excuse, but it is an explanation that makes sense; when my depression is treated adequately (as it seems to be now), I become more hopeful, reminded by my faith in Christ that I have every reason to hope no matter life's circumstances. (On that note, though, it doesn't hurt that I've recently fallen in love, and that definitely ups the hope factor.)

So, I invite all you fellow pessimists to drink in a little optimism and broaden the scope of what you see. Doesn't mean that problems don't abound, that horrors still exist; does mean that things have gotten much better, sometimes fitfully, and in spite of the predictions of imminent doom, things are generally better now than they ever have been. The future? A lot brighter than I had imagined. And that feels damned good.

Pain is ultimate; dying is final

The agony that leads to death, in whatever form it takes, is the ultimate reality of life. Everything else that we can sense in this life pales by comparison.

And in view of this, what have we as a human race done? Redeemed the time? Hardly. Just the opposite, in fact. We have raped and destroyed everything we have touched. We have tortured and maimed. We have rendered useless, sucked the lifeblood from, and dismembered and disordered everything living. We are the scourge of existence.

In this light, I celebrate nuclear warfare. It doesn't happen often enough. I shudder to think of all that is living that isn't human that would be destroyed in its wake, but I celebrate the mass death of humanity. If we are exterminated, all the better for whatever life can survive us. We are the cancer of existence. Let the bombs rain down.

The despair of politics

As a Christian and a being necessarily encumbered to politics, I keep slamming into the deep divides between people who call themselves Christians, between people who do and those who don't, and between people who share their non-Christianity and little else. I keep thinking of an old Bad Brains song, "I Against I":

We are all at odds with each other, and faith does not heal, it does not bridge. It divides further. For all the talk of love, we humans hate far more effectively than we could ever hope to love anything or anyone. We lie to ourselves about that very thing on a nearly constant basis.

I have friends on many points of the political spectrum, and I love them no more or less because of their politics. That's to say nothing special about me; I just don't trust political boundaries as the final arbiter of who is worthy and who isn't. I prefer to stand in disagreement, but not to divide over it. And I am in a tiny minority, apparently, for that very reason.

Christians are people who disagree on a variety of issues, both political and theological. Such has it always been. But the divisions that have broken the church into pieces are a great shame, sin upon sin. We are called to union, not division. Yet how many times I have heard people who consider themselves Christians mock and belittle, or even deny, others who do the same over disagreement on a nonessential issue. Important, perhaps, but not essential to the faith.

But that is not the modern American Christian church or the modern American Christian, and I very much feel at odds with all that. Honestly, I don't "feel" like a Christian at all. Oh, I believe. I believe that Jesus is the risen Christ, the only begotten Son of God. I believe in salvation through Him alone. I believe He is my only hope, that my sin condemns me in the eyes of a holy God, and yet I am made new in Christ.

So I am a Christian. And I am not a Christian, not an American Christian, at least. I no longer know who or what I belong to in terms of human groupings, and I no longer care, either. I feel cut loose from all connection to this life and this earth, from this world and from all others. I am, in a way, biding time until I die, and I long for that day to come, my depression notwithstanding.

Let the bombs fall; may Christ return.
Let the diseases spread; may Christ return.
Let destruction gain; may Christ return.
Let chaos reign; may Christ return.

My battle for mental health

I was diagnosed with depression as an adolescent, and was prescribed meds in my late teens for the first time. It's been a battle ever since, although there have been long periods of stability thanks to the meds and the work of good therapists.

In the past year, depression has hit a new low for me. Triggered apparently by a year of Interferon therapy (for melanoma), the meds that had worked no longer did so, leading to suicidal depths on an ongoing basis. We finally got this thing mostly stabilized, but there are still periods of paranoid despair to be contended with. At least it's no longer a constant.

I thank God for the work of good doctors, for the drugs that are literally saving my life, for a good therapist I'm working with now, for every moment of clarity I get. I thank God for the strength to get up in the morning and do it all over again, and for the patience to see it through even when that's the last thing I want. I thank God for sticking with me, even when I abandon Him, ignore His Spirit's leading and comfort, question my faith, all of it. I thank God for having mercy for one more otherwise lost soul.

Naked before God

It can be a terrifying thought, and was to me for so long: Standing naked before God, as we always are. He sees all. Knowing this, I long believed, meant that I simply could not believe He could love me, even within Christ. How could God love this guy, the one with wicked thoughts, the one with misanthropic tendencies, the one whose faith faltered at all the wrong times, this sinner?

To be sure, God doesn't love me because I'm a sinner. He loves me anyway, in spite of my sins. He loved me so much He rescued me from my life of destruction, dragging me into His kingdom for His own good pleasure. Because He loved me.

And yes, He surely sees me in Christ now, sees me in terms of what Christ did for even me. But He loves me naked and alone, too, even though I am never truly alone; at my worst, on my face (having fallen there), cold and alone because of my foolish choices ... Yet He is there, not to judge me (even though I am braced for it), but to surprise me anew with His love and mercy.

Of course I don't deserve the least of it. But I receive it gladly, all the more knowing that He who gives love and mercy so freely does so boundlessly because He is able to love what I cannot: even me.

My quiet spiritual earthquake

With cancer and more so the depression that followed interferon therapy, my faith took a beating. In a good way. Some bad things have been beaten loose, detached from my soul, and I am grateful for the pounding I received at God's behest. I needed it.

The line between legalism and grace has always been profoundly difficult for me to understand. To what extent can we truly "rest in God" when "the devil prowls like a hungry lion"? When the threat of sin and all that pertains hovers ever near, how much joy can there be in knowing and savoring Jesus and all He means to me? I found a lot of dissatisfaction with the answers I read and received, even, from well-meaning fellow believers.

At times, I thought I was losing my faith. At times, I thought I was losing my mind, my soul, my all. But what I've been losing in all this time is fear. I have found, through this hard period, that God is yet there with me, as He has been every second of the journey thus far (even when I hated Him, which is amazing to me!). Has nothing to do with merit or dessert; it never does, it never did. It has to do with love, grace, and mercy, and He holds nothing back.

I am, for the first time, experiencing real joy in my faith. Not the sporadic happiness that comes in the early phases of a newly christened faith; this is quiet, enduring, peaceful. A fault line in my faith has shaken me to the core, and the resulting earthquake knocked down all I didn't need.

How all this plays out theologically, I don't know. I don't think my theology per se is any different, but maybe it is. What has changed is my experience of God in the odd moments of my life; rather than an ancient judge sitting atop a throne, marking my every move, I am finding a Spirit of kindness, tenderness, mercy. Everything I don't deserve, yet everything I long for in the depths of my soul, painfully so at times. There is no word, no phrase for how sweet this is. That it comes on the heels of depression's vicious hold on me, all the sweeter. Morning has broken.