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Beating Still

Death can be confusing, and confounding. A friend’s brother died very suddenly a few weeks ago—he was sitting, then he was standing, then he was falling. Cardiac arrest. Another friend’s husband died six weeks after she brought him home from assisted care. Probably a stroke. My mother passed away almost 12 years ago, just shy of her 88th birthday, and the cause was never determined. At 88, her body didn’t need a cause. After the first fall she declined rapidly, not wanting to stick around and be a burden to her children, even though we were ready to be burdened. On the last evening, I put my head on her chest to pick up her heartbeat.

I heard the last one, faltering like a footstep seeking purchase. Then stillness.

Through medical science we know when our hearts begin to beat: not to the minute, but definitely to the week, perhaps even the day. But no one knows when his heart will stop—with perhaps one exception.

I think about that sometimes after an early morning run, when I’m winding down and my heart rate it up to a healthy 140. I can feel it in my chest and hear it in my ears and contemplate the many millions of times it has clenched and released. It’s been a steady, reliable little machine for seven decades now. How much longer?

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” All the heartbeats, too, and every breath. If he keeps track of the hairs on my head, he must also have a number in mind: 2,575,440,000 . . . 2,575440,001 . . . 2,575,440, 002 . . .  When my heart reaches that predetermined number, it will stop.

Once, in a dusty village called Nazareth, a girl who had never slept with a man felt a baby quicken in her womb. She had been warned it was going to happen, but maybe she hadn’t told anyone yet, waiting to see if the angel’s word would actually come true. Imagine the start, her hand on her belly, a quick breath, the news taking shape in her own body. But even before that the little form was growing, and at some time during the fifth or sixth week, his tiny heart began to beat.

Ke-thump, ke-thump, ke-thump. Quickly slipping into the stream of time.

The angels know. The Father knows. Now Mary knows, and her own heart keeps the little one company.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

Did he know? Was his developing brain somehow aware that it had directed a heart to start pumping, and that it would keep pumping for thirty-three years before grinding to a halt, filling with water, spilling blood when pierced by a Roman spear?

If not then, he would know later. He would know, to the second, when the last drop of blood would fill up the measure and pay the price. His heart would stop once he willed it to stop, after pulling in a last breath and surrendering his spirit.

Then it would lie still in a cold body, wrapped up like a swaddled baby and carefully placed on a stone slab in a tomb. For the next 30-odd hours it would remain still. But then, sometime in the pre-dawn hours of the third day, it started beating again. And all these centuries later, it beats still. For us.

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Cynical Theories: a Review

Have you read White Fragility or How to Be an Anti-Racist? Even if you haven’t read them, you’ve probably heard of them. I’ve heard from WORLD readers who are making a good-faith effort to examine their own biases by exposing themselves to challenging points of view from the Times best-seller list. I applaud the motivation, but some of those books should come with warning labels: Ideas produced in the hothouse atmosphere of the modern university may not be profitable for the real world.

So don’t read those without reading this: Critical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody.  Cynical Theories, by two academics who have been there, tracks antiracism to its source. Also radical feminism, post-colonialism, toxic masculinity, trans identity, genderqueerness, body positivity, fat shaming, and intersectionality. Even if you’re not aware of those things, they are aware of you, especially if you’re white, straight, and male. Or if you disagree with any proposition from the toxic well of Theory.

“Theory” is the broadest term for all the academic disciplines examining power and privilege. It’s rapidly expanding to embrace all the academic disciplines, including the hard sciences and mathematics. How did this happen?

It goes back to a sickly academic trend called postmodernism. Michael Foucault and Jacques Derrida were major advocates of postmodernism, with its prevailing view that truth is socially constructed. What you might understand as a “fact” is actually a composite of points of view, inferences, and assumptions from your social strata. In fact, there’s no such thing as a fact. Truth is not just relative, it’s meaningless. The only thing that matters is power: who has it, and how they exercise it.

Postmodernism killed literature by divorcing it from any meaning the author might have had in mind and “deconstructing” it to uncover the underlying power plays. The disease soon spread to the arts and social sciences. When I first learned about postmodernism in the early nineties, it seemed a dead-end philosophy. That turned out to be true, but I didn’t suspect what might revive its gasping, expiring body. The salvation of postmodernism was Theory, which clarified its precepts, expanded its reach, and made it, not an academic discipline, but a Dogma and  a righteous Cause.

The precepts are these:

  • All knowledge is socially constructed, with language (“discourse”) as the creative agent. This includes the hard sciences and mathematics.
  • All knowledge works to privilege the identity group to which it belongs by race, sex, gender, nationality, or physical characteristics.
  • The identity group with the highest privilege are straight white males, who have successfully structured society to maintain their dominant position.
  • All other groups (and intersectional combinations of groups) are thereby oppressed.
  • The only remedy for oppression is to deconstruct white male privilege by making it stand down while other identities and “ways of knowing” achieve an equal place at the table.
  • If this set of propositions seems to lack empirical evidence, well, empiricism itself is a white male invention and thereby suspect.

Do you see anything that might need to be deconstructed here?

Like most social analysis, Cynical Theories probably overstates its case, but I found it helpful and illuminating. If leftist agnostics are blowing the whistle, we’d better listen.

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Keeping Watch . . . for What?

Jesus said it many times: Watch out! Or simply, Watch! A watchman scans the horizon for enemy attack. In dangerous situations it’s his responsibility to listen for any alien sound and notice any untoward movement so he can alert the city. A watchman is the first line of defense. Someone has to stay awake at the firehouse. Someone has to be on alert at the bank or the political rally. That someone, in ordinary life, is every Christian.

What are we to watch for? First, threats like “your adversary the devil, seeking someone to devour” (I Peter 5:8). Also, those who cause divisions (Romans 16:17), who undermine sound teaching (I Tim. 4:6), who stir up trouble (Gal. 5:15). And finally, we are to watch ourselves, that we do not become careless and neglectful—even to losing what we worked for (II John 8). The world, the flesh, and the devil are all opposed to us. We forget that. We try to be friends with the world while picking fights in the church and making peace with ourselves. We sleep on the job, only to wake up with a start as Jesus stands over us, sadly shaking his head. “Could you not watch with me for one hour?”

One hour? How about a lifetime? From the moment we’re born again to the moment our story on earth ends, we’re supposed to be on our guard for the enemies who would pull us down. That kind of alertness is defensive.

But there’s another kind of watchfulness: the kind that actively looks for him to show up. He’ll be coming in the clouds for everybody to see some day, but I think there’s might be another  kind of Second Coming as well—not only a one-time event but an ongoing phenomenon. He was there, in the person of the Holy Spirit, when I believed. He meets with me in prayer. He ministers to me through the good works of the church, and ministers to others through me. He is always coming: Abide in me, as I abide in you.

Be on your guard against false teaching, the leaven of the Pharisees, the destructive aims of the devil, the inclinations of my own heart to sloth and neglect. Be the alert sentry, ready to sound the alarm while patrolling the wall of your soul or scouting enemy territory.

But also, be the faithful servant, tending the grate and freshening the flowers in anticipation of the master’s arrival. Watch for Jesus to show up in the hour-by-hour. If I’m looking for him, he will.

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The Problem with “Forgive Us Our Debts”

Jesus himself taught us to pray this way, so of course it’s biblically correct: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” In teaching, we usually focus on the second half—our own obligation to forgive those who have sinned against us. But I’m discovering a problem with the first part.

The problem is this: it’s too easy to say, “and forgive me for . . .” Often I add, “Please,” which seems to amplify the request.

You’ve heard the saying, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.” That’s a clue to the problem. The more explicit form is this: “I know God will forgive me. That’s his job.” I’ve actually heard the idea expressed in those terms. Most of us wouldn’t put it that way, but do we catch ourselves thinking it?

I do.

It can become too easy to ask forgiveness, because it is God’s job to forgive. It’s a task he assigned to himself, in order to reconcile rebels. But for a holy God, it’s not an easy thing to do, because offenses against holiness must be paid for. Holiness Himself paid, not with silver or gold or any other perishable thing, but with the precious blood of his own Son, like that of a perpetual spotless lamb (I Pet. 1:18-19).

It is God’s job to forgive; it is mine to repent.

But while it is God’s to forgive, it is mine to repent. He knows my weakness, and how I have to repent the same sins over and over. But I know this too: I am weak, but thou art mighty; hold me with thy powerful hand. It can become too easy to say, “and forgive me for . . .” and let it go at that. “Forgive me” puts the burden on him, and it’s true that only he can bear the burden of the penalty. And forgiveness is his job, because only he can forgive sins against himself (as all sins are).

But I bear the burden of repentance. “I confess” or “I repent” or even “I am sorry for—” returns that burden to me. Where it belongs.

“Forgive us our debts” is biblical, and when it focuses our attention on God’s miraculous grace in not only forgiving, but making it possible for him to forgive, the request is righteous. But even forgiven sinners run the risk of becoming comfortable with their less-heinous sins like judgmentalism, laziness, self-indulgence, neglect, and complacency, assuming it’s all covered with a blank check.

“Christian” habits can become as soul-defeating as secular ones.

After reaching Square One of salvation and deliverance from obvious transgressions, even after achieving some level of spiritual practice like church attendance and prayer, “Christian” habits can become as soul-defeating as secular ones.

I am not as sorry as I should be. I am not as repentant as I should be. I am not as resolved to do better as I should be. Sin doesn’t grieve me as it should. Grace covers this too, but “Be careful how you walk,” and what you say, and how you think. True repentance comes from a transformed heart, and transformation isn’t a one-time deal. It’s always going on, and while praying for forgiveness, I need to pray even more earnestly for that every-increasing likeness to Christ.

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The Time that Got Away

A little click, a little swipe, a little scrolling and skimming down your Instagram feed,

and lost hours will stalk you like the undead; spent minutes like ghosts. (From Proverbs6:10-11)

Where does the time go? Is there some place where hours and days and weeks pile up to exchange for some other value, or do they just disappear like raindrops on a hot pavement? Do I make time, or does time make me? Both, really: I dispose the hours but at the same time they are units to be filled in the blocks that build personality and character. The question is, filled with what?

For the last five years I’ve used a Passion PlannerTM to map the short- and long-ranges ahead of me. Passion Planner is big on motivation and goal-setting, with space for evaluating each month, strategizing for the year and setting markers for where you want to be in January 2021. Every month includes two pages for reflection on what you learned, what you’re grateful for, etc. (these pages get nothing from me). Each week has a “Focus,” a place to list positive things that happened, an inspirational quote, to-do lists for Personal and Work goals, and a “Space of Infinite Possibility”—a blank span of white, index-card size, for whatever you want. Infinite possibility! Usually blank, in my planner, because I’m just trying to get through the week. The columns marking off days and hours and half-hours get filled up. I also use the back pages, of which there are many, for lists, budgets, and ongoing projects.

So the planner is like a back-up hard drive for details I need to keep track of. And passing minutes are like software, always running, always claiming my attention, always falling into patterns. Patterns become habits that can so easily sink into vast swathes of “wasted” time—hours that can’t be recalled or remembered but somehow, like the daily calories I consume, build my character for better or worse.

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil

(Eph. 5:14-16).

Look carefully. What did I purchase with spent minutes? How can I spend them more wisely this week, or next hour? Maybe the Passion Planner, for all its motivational claptrap, is right to prompt me to spend some time in reflection each month, “looking carefully” over the time recently traveled, considering where I went and how I got there. Isn’t that part of wisdom? Most of us, I suspect, are sitting on a mountain of wasted time. The good news is we all have unused time ahead, though no one can say how much. The days are evil, but if Christ is shining, there’s enough light in each hour make good use.

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Emerging on a New World, Part Five: What Remains

When I was a kid we used to play a game called “Spin the Statue.” Whoever was It would take each participant by both hands, spin her around and let her go, at which time she was supposed to freeze in position. Once everyone was frozen, It would survey the group and assign each person a part in a scene or tableau (“You be the car, you’re the driver, you’re the road, and . . . uh . . . you be the stop sign”). Then turn around and count slowly to 10 while everyone assembled themselves, and when It turned back the scene should be in place. (Though not for long, especially for the person who ended up being the road.)

When I first started on this series, the whole world was in the middle of an economic freeze, with no one as It to tell us how we were supposed to reassemble ourselves. Most of us agreed some changes would be permanent—big cities would begin to hollow out, more workers would be working at home, and possibly (on the downside) economic depression and suicide would deepend.  Some predicted explosions of excess when the lockdowns were lifted. I don’t recall anyone predicting literal explosions, but here we are.

Given the pressures of being cooped up for almost three months, any strong emotional trigger could set off a whole nation. One reason George Floyd’s death became the trigger is that it was so iconic. A black man crushed into the gravel with a white man’s knee on his neck—what better picture of the whole tragic history of race? The tinder was already there: the well-publicized 1619 Project, a dozen best-sellers from the recent past all on the same theme, widespread discontent at a supposed racist in the White House. All it needed was a spark.

When the center does not hold, things fall apart. The political center, guided by what we might loosely label “western values,” has been crumbling for decades. It’s impossible at this point to tell how many Americans even understand their country, or think it’s worth defending. There will be no savior from D.C., now or perhaps ever. Our culture, post-Christian, is quickly becoming post-American.

The one time in history God claimed a nation as his own, it wasn’t for national pride. “It was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your fathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery” (Deut. 7:8). The story of Israel’s roots, told in Genesis 12-50, is not the typical heroic narrative. Our own history is a complex narrative of lofty ideals and shameful deeds, heroic self-sacrifice and hypocritical greed. The potential for nobility creates a corresponding potential for venality. Freedom to achieve means freedom to deceive, and the United States is the story of both.

But it’s also the story of self-correcting over time: how the lofty ideals reassert themselves and remind us how far we’ve wandered. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence is our national conscience, particularly, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights . . .” It’s human nature to default to but some are more equal than others (see Jefferson the slave-owner), but the principle is sound and biblical, and sound because it’s biblical.

In the current wild spin, what shape have be spun ourselves into? Could be a spasm, or signal for real and lasting decline. The United States as originally conceived is definitely worth striving for, yet we know for a fact that no nation lasts forever. Sooner or later—and we can definitely pray for later—the United States will disunite.

But we are dual citizens, and What Remains is the Word of God. Truth is stumbling in the streets (Is. 59:14) but it won’t disappear. If we (as a nation) will not have truth for our conscience, we will have it as our consequence, played out in literal and figurative street fights. But we (as a royal priesthood) will always have a place to call home.

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Emerging on a New World, Part Four: Power

What is power?

My first year in high school, I felt unseen. About 2000 students attended that school, and I joined the restless masses that thronged the halls at every bell. I had one friend, a holdover from grade school who felt as insignificant as I. We hatched a plan to get to school early one day and bring screwdrivers, with which to remove as many light-switch covers, and any other removable hardware, as possible. And we did. Because those were the days before surveillance cameras, we got away with it. The only effect was this: for the next few days, every time I passed one of those little acts of vandalism, I thought, I did that.

It was small and silly, but at the time I was small and silly too. Still, I wonder if I was motivated by the same impulse that causes spray-painted slogans and smashed windows.

That’s one form of power: the ability to be heard, be seen, and make changes. Over the last few weeks it has mostly been exercised by people who feel themselves powerless, at least individually. Corporately they march in the streets, hoping to impose change by signs and slogans—or spray paint and Molotov cocktails. Certain kinds of change will almost certainly happen: the law and policy kind. The heart kind of change has already happened, sparked by a 9-minute video. That’s the same way hearts were changed almost 60 years ago. by news footage of police clubbing people on the Edmund Pettis Bridge and setting their dogs against peaceful protesters.

The protests (not the riots) are a result of that heart change, not a cause. Any meaningful change, in policy or attitude, will come from the heart, not from law or policy.

Here’s another definition of power, from Culture Making by Andy Crouch: “the ability to successfully propose a new cultural good.” Notice the verb. Political change must be imposed by law and threat. Cultural change can only be proposed, by persuasion and example. Imposition forces; proposition appeals. One breeds resentment, the other sympathy. To take one example, the legalization of same-sex marriage came about not by vandalizing wedding chapels and boycotting Bed Bath and Beyond, but by persuading enough of the public that marriage was a basic human right, to which many of our fellow humans were unfairly deprived.

Emotional appeals work true and lasting change more than angry demands. Both are forms of power available even to the powerless, but how successfully any group proposes a new “cultural good” (such as meaningful change in race relations) depends on when, where, and especially how the proposal is made. Anger is powerful, but by nature anger doesn’t last in its purest form—it quickly burns off into resentment, vindictiveness, opportunism, radicalism, rationalization, frustration, apathy, and a host of other negatives.

“American race relations” is a huge, complex topic that has already taken up entire library stacks. I can’t address it in a column, except to say this: No one (except perhaps the very old, the very young, or the very sick) is completely powerless. Everyone has a certain degree of power and a platform for using it. Some will have a lot more than others, but all it takes is a voice, a mind, and a will.

The question is, what will you do with it?

The world proposes one way: get in their face and make demands.

Jesus offers another way: He who would be great among you must become your servant—not by groveling, but by hearing, encouraging, and investing.  

Martin Luther King understood this. He could not make America change her biases, but he could persuade her to change her heart by harnessing the influence of the black church, challenging the conscience of the white church, inspiring youth, and reminding his fellow Americans of their founding ideals. He invested his power in service, not violence. As much as some present-day activists would like to deny it, change happened (I was there; I saw it).

They say peaceful power doesn’t work anymore. I say it’s the only thing that works. Destruction squanders power (I did that); investment builds it. Whatever you have in your hand builds your power base, which grows as you share it with someone else: knowledge, skill, connection, even friendship. This kind of power doesn’t spread as rapidly as the other kind, but it’s more durable, and certainly more stable.

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Emerging on a New World, Part Four: Remaking Culture?

I graduated high school in 1968. What a great year—for race riots, assassinations, war protests and burning buildings! None of it affected me directly, as I was working my first summer job and realizing I absolutely hated the 8-to-5 routine. (Just like school! What was the point?) In other words, like most 18-year-olds I was totally self-focused. Things seemed pretty bad out there, but they were still out there. Had I a boyfriend who’d just received his draft notice I would have felt differently, but boyfriends of any kind were still in my future.

I doubt the perspective of 18-year-olds has changed much since then, but current events have leaned hard on them. These “uncertain times,” for the first time I can remember, have affected literally everyone. The late sixties and seventies were awful, but I was busy getting married and having babies and didn’t notice so much. 2020 may actually signal a profound turning point in a long process of coming apart (in the Charles-Murray sense).

Who’s in charge here? Nobody.

Never have officeholders seemed more hapless. Never has magical thinking been so pronounced. Never has a culture so obsessed over anecdotes while broad-based problems go begging for attention. Definitions are so blurred and signals so crossed that vandals burning property owned by blacks is excused in the cause of justice for blacks. Are we doomed?

Nah. This is America, in the best way. Our national superpower is initiative, and I don’t think we’ve lost it. It’s true that the academic left would do everything in their power to tar-brush our history and remake our character, but the academic left is not invincible. Polarization is as intense as it ever was—except for that situation in 1861, which was a little worse—and that’s not good. But neither is it hopeless.

I’ve been rereading Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, and here’s one thing, among a lot of things, that stands out: “I have become convinced that little good comes from straining to ‘change the culture.’” That’s a misunderstanding of what culture is and who we are. Whole books could be written about what culture is (and Crouch wrote one), but we can all understand who we are as a function of our community: family, neighborhood, church, club, or organization. And community is where we don’t change culture, but make it.

Volunteers who come together to sweep up broken glass are a community, quickly formed and just as quickly dissolved when the job is done.  But to get out there and make some culture requires something a little more deliberate, and I found Crouch’s subsection on “The 3, the 12, and the 120” especially helpful.

Every movement begins with a small group—perhaps just two or four, but three is the perfect number. Each individual springboards off the others, and three is just right for hatching an idea that’s feasible as well as inspiring. To carry it out, however, requires a larger group. Could be 8 or 13, but 12 has a nice historical—or at least biblical–vibe to it. The 12 provide essential support within a circle that pulls in many talents and skill sets. Then, as the circle widens, it draws in more people as accessories: say, 120. The 120 are not the core; mostly likely they will be involved in several other projects, as well as focusing on their own, but they form a kind of phalanx to extend the original idea, now refined to a cultural product, onto a broader platform—that is, into “the culture” at large.

As I read this I found myself thinking of Christ’s ministry, and sure enough: he began with his “3”—his inner group of apostles, or even the original Trinity. His “12” were the apostles who spent almost every waking moment with him throughout his ministry. But to launch that ministry into the world took the 120 believers who were praying in an upper room on Pentecost.

But the same pattern can hold for any new cultural good. Publishing a book, for instance. Andy Crouch explains that his “3” were his wife and a good friend, who sounded his ideas for Culture Making and supplied inspiration for further thoughts. Then his publishing team, the “12,” pitched in to make the book a reality: editors, designers, and marketer. To get the book off the ground took a platoon of bloggers, pastors, reviewers, and interviews, so that eventually Culture Making got to me and stimulated my thinking to look for my niche and my 3. Everyone makes culture; intentionally or not. Everyone has their potential 3 and 12, and perhaps even their 120. And everyone has power: the question is, how much, and what do we do with it?

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Emerging on a New World, Part Three: Magical Dysfunction

I review a lot of children’s books for a website called Redeemed Reader. A common theme in children’s fantasy is “magic” as a lost element in a disenchanted world. The protagonist is born with some supernatural gift or sensitivity that no one appreciates, but once presented with a problem he (or she) forges fearfully ahead and discovers calling, power, and purpose. The plot unfolds against a background of skepticism or outright hostility. In the Harry Potter series, muggles provide the contrast to magic, who are often irritating but generally harmless.

In Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials series, the Magisterium, a cartoony stand-in for organized religion, play the villains. I just read a delightful children’s fantasy that followed the Pullman plotline closely (but less dogmatically), complete with a monk-like order of naysayers intent on stomping out all witchery and wizardry.

I’m also seeing a lot of magical realism, where supernatural events occur in a real time and place, among characters with quirky names and personalities. The magic in these stories doesn’t have a source; it’s just there, or it’s somehow passed down through families, coming to rest upon an unassuming protagonist. A common element in all these books is the need to believe—in yourself, in your abilities, and especially in the “magic.”

I’m not sure what the increase in fantasy and magical realism for middle-schoolers tells us, except perhaps that when God goes out the door, magic creeps down the chimney. We have our supernatural yearnings, and need our supernatural fix.

Magic is one thing in literature; another thing in public policy. Some of the most ideological politicians like to claim science as their guide, as though “science” were a magic word. And in a way, it is. “The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins,” wrote C. S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man: “one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse”—that being, to control nature and bend reality.

That Hideous Strength, Lewis’ fictional exposition of The Abolition of Man, pictures Science going full circle and merging with Magic in order to remake humanity. In his 1945 review of the novel, George Orwell approved the premise of THS, but “On the whole, novels are better when there are no miracles in them.”

Still . . . when God goes out the door, the supernatural creeps down the chimney. In the secular public square, life can’t be seen as a gift, because gifts imply givers. Life is therefore more of a problem, or series of problems, to be solved with facts and stats repeated like incantations. Capital-S Science becomes a religion–even a Magisterium–and imagination retreats into fantasy, e.g., children’s literature and the Marvel universe, offering hope that the world really is a fantastic place and there’s a little magic in all of us.

And you know what? It’s true. “Organized religion,” in the form of Christian doctrine, tells us that the world is fantastic, and humans are spiritual beings as well as physical. But since public policy can’t acknowledge that in any meaningful way, suppressed spirituality comes out in magical thinking via “science,” all the more as it drifts away from traditional forms of religion. In That Hideous Strength, every nation has its own spiritual genius—its “magic,” you might say, that defines its place in the world and calls it back to its truest self. Our truest self combines initiative and altruism in a dynamic that self-corrects as it progresses: at its best, something like the abolitionist movement. At its worst, Karenism.

That’s why, in the United States, I can’t see us either buying in to a massive socialist restructuring, or going back to small-government federalism. We keep drifting leftward while our peculiar American genius pulls us back, so that we’re stuck mid-stream. The pressure of the current will keep tugging our freedoms away, but even as that happens, our resistance may grow deeper roots.

No political solution will work very well. We’re seeing that already, with a patchwork of openings and closings, conflicting data, escalating anger, and a looming election that looks more like a bloodbath. When the smoke clears, I doubt anyone will be happy. This state of affairs will not be fixable by science or magic. But if we can’t fix it, I think there’s a way to navigate it, by a combination of practical thinking and spiritual muscle. And that’s a topic for next week.

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Emerging on a New World, Part Two: Nobody Knows Nothin’

When I was a budding novelist, I quickly learned that the publishing world didn’t care about my aspirational goals. I had to conform to the publisher, not vice versa. As many positive thoughts I lavished on my first novel, it never saw print because it wasn’t very good.

Eventually I learned, over the 20-year process of writing three more unpublished novels, how to write fiction. It’s true that I probably wouldn’t have learned if I hadn’t believed in raw talent worth developing. Positive thinking, while it bridged no gaps, at least provided a landing platform. But between the dream and the realization was a long stretch of hard work.

For some time now, I’ve had the feeling that our political class is marked, not by positive thinking, but by magical thinking. Psychologically, “Magical thinking” is defined as the belief that one’s personal thoughts, fears, and goals influence the outside world. Young children indulge in magical thinking all the time: a child who prays every night that his parents will stop fighting, for example, could feel he’s to blame when Mom and Dad stop the fights by splitting up. It’s normal for kids, but a grownup who indulges in such fantasies is called a schizophrenic. Or a politician.

You remember when Barak Obama, after winning the Democrat presidential nomination, inspired his followers with rhetoric about the day the oceans stopped rising. Or Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention: “I alone can fix.” Trump at least had actually built things with steel and concrete, while Obama had built nothing but his own persona. But both were overpromising based on a magical (or at least inflated) view of themselves in the world.

During the Democratic debates Elizabeth Warren brought the hammer down on mild suggestions that there was no need to overhaul the entire health care system. You gotta Dream Big! If she ever got the chance to enact her Day-One agenda, “Big” would have included cancelling the constitution as Step One, since much of what she wanted to do was clearly outside its parameters. Elaborate promises are nothing new in political campaigns, but the size and scope of this year’s Democrat vision is breathtaking. Bernie Sanders, likewise, seemed to think he could materialize his socialist dream by yelling about it.

DreamBig: the Next Generation is even farther out in the galaxy. Got Climate Change? Let’s just re-structure our entire civilization. We won WWII, didn’t we?

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it,” said everybody from Mohammed Ali to your kindergarten teacher. They never add that somewhere between Believe and Achieve is a lot of stuff: planning, coordinating, hard work, setbacks, tedium, failures, and thousands of details. Since we don’t dream in details, the gaps between here and there are too readily filled with know-nothing thought. And that leads to last-minute sloppiness and long-term incompetence, like the Obamacare website rollout and Iowa Caucus 2020.

A habit of magical thinking is extremely dangerous when a real crisis spills out like an escaped virus from a lab. Too much of the political class (I’m naming no names) has outsourced its brain to chosen experts and crossed its fingers and wished upon a vaccine that “the Economy” (whose breadth and complexity they never came close to grasping) will somehow survive long enough to a) snap back to its former glory, or b) surrender to a total makeover. It’s not likely that either of those things will happen. More likely is a dysfunctional hybrid. What can we do with that? I’m still thinking.