Faith in Hard Times

It is hard to keep one’s bearings in today’s world. It certainly does not resemble the world I grew up in or even the world I thought I inhabited ten years ago. There has been a titanic shift. I used to think, for example, that in modern times evil doing was something perpetuators had to keep in the shadows, something one hid from plain view. It was certainly not what one justified in public. I knew people in power often lied, but I didn’t imagine that they could do so in the face of contrary evidence and with impunity. That’s because I trusted that facts would eventually circulate, that the truth would eventually be patently obvious to most people, and wrong doers would eventually be embarrassed. I believed that the balance of powers would stay in balance. I also used to think that America, though blemished by its history of slavery, the murder and displacement of Native Americans, and its modern history of violent interventions in other countries, was a country still capable of carrying the banner of hope for democracy, peace, and the equality and dignity of all human beings. Why else would people want to come here? I also generally subscribed to the idea that America was more or less on a trajectory of progress, that once enough of us decided, for example, that racism was a real thing and a bad thing, we would know how to put it definitively behind us.

I now see that I was wrong. This has been painful to realize because it means I was naïve. It means I didn’t understand history well enough. I didn’t understand people. Or the nature of evil. I have been doing a lot of reading and soul-searching to understand what went wrong and what I can do better. The honest truth is, even though I consider myself a serious student of history, someone who has read, researched and written about slavery, someone who has read and traveled throughout Europe to familiarize myself with the history of the Holocaust and the fight against fascism and communism, and someone who has seen extreme poverty and domestic abuse up close, I still have a very hard time believing anyone is capable of great evil. I like people. I want to believe in them, see the best in them, and give them the benefit of the doubt when things look bad. This is not, in and of itself, a bad instinct, but when it attaches itself to denial, it is morally dangerous.

For all people everywhere, it is tempting to turn away from hard times, to pretend things are not as they seem, and that everything can go on as normal. We must resist this seduction with every fiber of our being. I don’t say this because everything about our present moment is unprecedented or because everything now is worse than it ever was in American history. I say this because the seduction of any present moment is ALWAYS to turn away, to pretend things are not as they seem, and that everything can go on as normal. This is what fear does. This is what fear wants. This is, in fact, what it means to live in utter terror. It is to live in denial of what is in front of our eyes.

And what is it that we fear that would lead us down such a road of misguided logic? I am convinced that we fear our own responsibility. The great Russian novelist, Dostoevsky, believed that above all we are afraid, even terrified, of our freedom. Freedom means responsibility. It means we can shape the world differently than it is, that we have to. We don’t like this. Instead, we prefer narratives that persuade us that our action is not needed, it is too late, it is too small, or too powerless, that someone or something else holds all the cards. We tell ourselves that evil is not happening, or that it was meant to be, or that it is in fact not evil but good. Thus absolved in our own minds, we turn away and ignore reality.

Because I know that I am not as courageous as I want to be and because I am often naïve, I hold on to my Christian faith. My faith doesn’t comfort me, at least in the way I have just described. It is instead a call to action. I cling to my faith because in the face of troubling reality I believe it will make me more brave and more wise, like a serpent, even if I must remain as harmless as a dove. I hold on to my Christian faith because it tells me I cannot look away when others are treated unjustly, because it tells me instead that I must act on behalf of my brothers and sisters, to honor and protect their divine nature and enable their divine potential. I cling to my faith because it tells me that our Constitution and the laws of our democratic form of government are divinely inspired so as to unleash this potential in everyone, because it tells me that I cannot stand idly by if I see its principles and laws denied or defied or distorted beyond recognition. I affirm my faith because it tells me I am responsible for my actions in relation to civic society, that I must be an informed, civil, principled, and committed citizen who is actively engaged in good causes so as to bring about God’s purposes on earth. It tells me that I cannot separate my civic and my religious life. And maybe most importantly, it tells me that I need to do the right thing, even or especially when I have no guarantee that it will make a difference. It tells me to have integrity.

These are hard things, but I cling to my faith because faith helps me to do hard things. These responsibilities feel especially hard right now because the very things I cherish—the equality and dignity of all people, the Constitution and American democracy, and the privilege to be a voice in my society—are harder than ever to stand up for. It feels that these values are being trampled in the very name of the values themselves. It seems that we are asked to believe that hate and violence are really love, that lawlessness is necessary to protect the rule of law, and that voicing dissent is not patriotic, as I was raised to believe, but traitorous.

So yes, it is hard, maybe harder than ever before in my lifetime. But there are two things I have learned in a lifetime of religious belief and practice: first, it isn’t faith if it is too easy. It isn’t faith until you have to take a leap, go against the grain, and show enough courage to take at least some form of action. Second, once you act, you will never be left without divine help and strength to do the right thing. Hard things become easier to do with divine help.

I should have never believed, not for a second, that any present reality before me didn’t need my vigilance, my commitment, and the principled use of my agency to relieve suffering, increase opportunity, and to build a resilient and healthy social order. This was always my charge. It is our charge as members of the human family and as citizens in a democracy. It is a charge for those of us who cling to Christ. As the social order around us collapses, each of us must turn away from contributing to its demise and commit to be builders of what comes next. We must engage and find those of good will to join us.

George Handley, Executive Director of Engage: A Forum for Civic Renewal