Rules? What Rules? Community? What’s That?

             Rules? What Rules? Community? What’s That?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/8/17

             America is increasingly showing evidence of spiritual emptiness.  If the Las Vegas killer of this past week was a millionaire, a successful gambler, an independent figure with no political or religious affiliations, and a citizen with no known ax to grind, why did he commit such an evil act?

            As is our therapeutic habit, we are again asking why, as though there is no such thing as an evil act committed by an evil mind.  He must be ill, we say.

            Perhaps the killer’s non-affiliation with political or religious groups begins to shed some light.  Our nation was built not on therapy but on self-reliance and on a can-do spirit that eventually showed the world what political and economic freedom can produce.  Simultaneously we have been a nation of communities, neighborhoods, faith groups, Rotary Clubs, and political parties.  Our self-reliance and ruggedness have, from our beginnings, been tempered by a genuine social ethic, that of helping our neighbor and of joining with people of like mind to achieve worthy goals.

            This social ethic, especially its political and religious aspect, has its roots in the Greco-Roman tradition and the Judeo-Christian faith.  This doesn’t mean we necessarily like the Greeks and the Romans or that we are all Jews or Christians.  It is only to say that Americanism is primarily informed and shaped by ideas, institutions, and laws that originated in Greece, Rome, and Israel as opposed to, say, China, India, or Saudi Arabia.

            In spite of any shortcomings of Europe, America, and any other areas of the world that sprang from Greco-Roman / Judeo-Christian values, it remains true that the western world has produced more individual liberty, more groceries, more material prosperity, more help for the needy than any other political or ethical system known to man. 

            Why then are America and Europe having so much protest, mass killings, and general unhappiness? Why is campus unrest intensifying?  The answer could well be that we, or at least young adults, have become empty of purpose and meaning. 

Denying the faith of our fathers, we seek meaning in other things.  Politics we have found wanting.  Pleasure has left us sated.  Science can provide a description of the universe but offers no consolation for suffering and no meaning for human existence.  Though we have always had a measure of violence, more and more young adults incredibly share a manic joy in disturbance and destruction.   Their Internet-driven contagion spreads.  No longer impressed or delighted by the mysteries of life – friendship, beauty, sacrifice, babies, sunsets, faith, love – they seek something else.  They stroke their sense of grievance.  They cry.  They are empty.

            Western man’s loss of faith and hope is a topic which even secular thinkers and writers have addressed.  In his poem “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold wrote, “The Sea of Faith was once at the full, but now I only hear its long withdrawing roar.”   Another Englishman, G.K. Chesterton, wrote, “When a man chooses not to believe in God, he does not choose to believe in nothing; he believes in anything.”

            America has never had a President who did not profess faith in God.  Yet people of faith are more and more being marginalized and told to keep quiet.  They who say “Give faith a chance” have become pariahs.  They are dwellers in the past.  They don’t have fun.  They lack sophistication.  They are Bible-thumping throwbacks.

            There are many scriptural admonitions that point us toward a path that can cure self-absorption and emptiness: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Be kind to one another,” “Esteem others better than yourself,” “Children obey your parents,” and “Put away bitterness, wrath, and anger.”  These admonitions were once instilled in children and youth.  They were not necessarily religious, but cultural.  In a sense they were our rules. They promoted community.

            Our nation had better start obeying the old rules.  It is apparent that many18 to 21 year-olds were not taught them.  Whence comes our rules if not from homes, churches, synagogues, and schools?  Where are they being taught now?  Where and what is our rudder?

            Spiritual emptiness is not as prevalent among youths who enter the workforce after high school as it is among college and university students.  But then colleges and universities are not known for perpetuating America’s traditional values. 

            There’s hope for the spiritual vortex in which we find ourselves.  It lies in reformation, in reclaiming that which has always made better people and better nations.  The old rules, in other words.  A full Sea of Faith.

Roger Hines

10/4/17