"...take the humanity back into the center of the ring"

It's Friday. I am supposed to be in love or something like that. Actually, the idea of falling in love at this stage of my life isn't very appealing. At no point in my life was that something for which I was particularly well-suited. Let's face it, when it comes that, I am probably one of those people you're best steering clear of.

I spend a lot of time these daze worrying about the state of our humanity. It seems that we're not letting it slip away as much as we are just giving it away. It's almost as if our humanity is worth less than the artificial reality we can create or hope to create. It seems to me that we're not even getting a bowl of whatever it was Esau received from Jacob for our birthright.

It stands to reason that the creator is greater than its creation. Increasingly, reason has little or nothing to do with it. There are two axioms we seem to have to adopted. First, might makes right. Second, when it comes to technology, if it can be done it should be done. I'll add a third, we seem pretty at ease with the ends justifying the means. Many of the ends we are seeking don't strike my as particularly good ones (see axioms one and two).

I am a pessimist. Overly optimistic people bother me. Yes, this if often a matter for the confessional. This week in a thread on Blue Sky, I generated about as much social media buzz as I ever generate (which doesn't amount to much) by posting this:

In my teaching and preaching I make a hard and fast distinction between optimism and hope. They are not the same by an imperial mile. Hope is what remains when optimism fades

Karl Rahner's essay on Christian pessimism is good on this but pessimism, at least from my perspective, does not lead to optimism. But is doesn't necessarily lead to despair- though I do despair sometimes, more than I will ever publicly write about.

I am not sure one can have genuine hope, the theological virtue of hope, without pessimism. I think of optimism as believing things will either work out the way I want them to (something that in my case virtually never happens- sometimes for the better but sometimes not) or at least working out in my favor. Hope, by contrast, lies in total abandonment to God.

Even so, how often do we trivialize the Lord's prayer "Thy will be done"? How often do Saint Paul's words blithely tumble from our lips: "I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong"? (2 Cor 12:9b-10 is the reading for Morning Prayer today- Friday, Week III of the Psalter). For a Christian, at least in worldly terms, losing is winning.

God's will is often, I would say usually inscrutable, at least it is to me. Of course, one needs to separate the "what" from the "why." Is everything that happens God's will and our "job" is just to deal with it? Another question, one taken up well in Woody Allen's 1989 movie Crimes and Misdemeanors as well as in the Psalms, is why do the wicked prosper? See Psalm 73. Yes, optimist, there are wicked people.

The hardest thing to teach children in catechesis is not to treat others as you want to be treated. Rather, it's to gently help them over the usually automatic assumption that if you treat people the way you want to be treated that they will always respond in kind. They won't, yet to follow Jesus is to persist anyway. Too often as Christians we talk of triumph at the expense of discusssing the this-worldly futility of living what Jesus teaches.

We know from scripture that Jesus did not want to be stripped, beaten, mocked, and crucified. Who would? Nonetheless, He abandoned Himself to the will of the Father, which meant putting Himself at the mercy of human authority, which is almost always merciless, even when, maybe especially when, claiming the name of Christ. Christian integralism is the equivalent of a rounded square.

Think of the absurdity of capital punishment in a "Christian" society. For that matter, even the whole of concept of retributive justice in a Christian society (see David Bentley Hart's "Further Reflections on Capital Punishment (and on Edward Feser)". Sticking with Rahner and taking some his thinking its logical limits, perhaps the whole concept of a Christian society this side of the eschaton is an abusrdity. I ran across this by Justin Steckbauer, written several years ago: "'To be Christian, is to be Truly Human' Karl Rahner’s Thoughts on a Darker Christian Realism.'

Anyway, all of the above is to be far more honest than I usually am here. It's amazing that we're closing out the second month of 2025.

I could go on in this vein, but I won't because, well, I want to end with a little hope. While I was tempted to post The Smith's song "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" as our Friday traditio, I am going with a video, made to honor him after his death, of Joe Strummer singing Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." I have used this before.

Apart from loving The Clash and Strummer's post-Clash band The Mescaleros, I am choosing this for Joes' voiceover at the beginning. I think Bob would endorse that message.