Christian Hope in a Time of Trouble

This last Wednesday afternoon I arrived for Evening Prayer and ready to celebrate the Mass at 6pm, only to be greeted with news of the shocking political assassination of Charlie Kirk. A deep sense of horror and indignation in the face of so atrocious a crime has been the natural response of almost all upon hearing this news — together with the deepest sympathy for his wife and family. 

Prayer for the repose of his soul and for the well-being of his family are highly appropriate. 

Yet beyond the immediate circumstances and the shock of so heinous an act there is cause here for reflection upon what such an act of political violence implies when added to the already dark history of assassinations that is so very depressing a fact of American life and history.

Whatever specifics may yet emerge about the assassin and the background that preceded this act, there is surely real cause for concern now about the wider culture and state of politics in society. Most especially, we have reason to reflect on the rising sense encountered in matters of debate and dispute, that success can only be defined as achieved when those with other views are eliminated. While not normally meant in the literal sense, the sentiment is still a dangerous one for it is only too easily misconstrued by someone of confused or disturbed mind as a goal to take literally. 

What all this points to is the decline of tolerance in society, and a growing sense of such self-righteousness that people feel it would amount to sin if one were to permit alternative views even to be heard and still less entertained.

The paradox of such zeal arising at a time when the possibility of any firm basis upon which to ground strong belief claims is widely denied merits notice. For all the talk that we hear of diversity, diversity of opinion seems increasingly to be viewed with suspicion by those most sure of the rightness of their political and moral beliefs.

Similarly, the place for exercising an informed conscience seems to be shrinking rapidly, on the basis that it could only be an affront to allow any escape from the prevailing consensus of the presumptively enlightened it is wished to reify. 

How we can better manage to sustain a diversity of opinions and thus the ability to “disagree well” is a subject that merits a great deal of further and urgent attention. In the absence of this, the polarization that so many see and decry can only enhance the destructive path of bitterness and division which is gravely eroding the robust capacity for due political process that was once a hallmark of American success.

With such sentiments in mind the readings for Wednesday’s Mass seemed extraordinarily fitting in their long term message of hope, no matter how difficult our immediate circumstances.

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In the words of Colossians Chapter 3:

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory….put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth…., seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;  and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:  where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.