Not so way back, most individuals believed God would someday convey the world to an finish. These days we predict that humanity will do it. I’ll allow you to be the choose of what this says about our estimation of God and ourselves. At this level, apocalyptic language is so pervasive that it’s grow to be clichéd, main us to succeed in for modest substitutes. There’s the ever-reliable “disaster” language, which could be handily grafted onto any subject or area we want to lament (e.g., “disaster within the church,” “disaster in increased schooling,” “disaster within the humanities,” “disaster in politics”). Mark Greif has written extensively on the topic.
And don’t even get me began on unprecedented. Or how about civilization? On this sense, we aren’t approaching the top of the world as we all know it nor are we going through a cultural disaster that’s solely with out precedent. No, we inhabit a “civilizational second.” Add to this the sober discuss “cultural collapse,” “decadence,” and “disintegration.” What’s clear is that for many individuals, the prognosis is grim, issues are bleak, and the long run is a supply of trepidation somewhat than hope. We can’t afford to sit down idly by. We should act.
To these tempted to take a tragic view this election season, I might counter that the Christian imaginative and prescient of actuality is, in truth, a comic book one.
It’s in opposition to this backdrop that Dr. Mark DeVine argues we should take a tragic view of historical past and see a determine like Donald J. Trump in roughly the identical phrases as Basic George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, and William Tecumseh Sherman: “The tragic view periodically assesses the character and greatness of threats to civilization such that extraordinary means are wanted and sought so as to withstand and quash them.” In different phrases, “Determined occasions name for determined measures.” Based on this tragic view, we battle in opposition to titanic forces and we achieve this largely on our personal. Clashes between tribes and nations finish with the destruction of 1 aspect. It’s a zero-sum recreation. To suppose in any other case is to delude oneself.
Determined occasions additionally provoke determined acts of creativity. Thus, we’ve seen efforts to convert Trump into King Cyrus and arguments that Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have voted for him. And now we have now an try to decorate him up like a ruthless normal. For all intents and functions, these unique wardrobe adjustments come throughout as little greater than a intelligent technique for permitting craven political expediency to masquerade as sober realism. At any charge, for tragedian Trumpists, now not do you maintain your nostril and vote. You step, with grim resignation, into that sales space realizing that you simply don’t have the luxurious of entertaining ethical scruples about “voting your conscience.” In any case, civilization hangs within the bounds.
However does it?
For the sake of readability, let’s single out one of the crucial (in)well-known tragic heroes: Oedipus. Although the story of Oedipus was not unique to Sophocles, the genius of his specific telling of the story is that he made the story flip, not on the merciless fingers of destiny that crush the hero, however somewhat, on Oedipus’s discovery and recognition that he had in truth already fulfilled the prophecy of the Oracle at Delphi.
Oedipus brings all of his heroic qualities—braveness, intelligence, perseverance—to the duty of uncovering the reality, and this heroic quest is the supply of his undoing. Towering the Aristocracy thus meets unyielding culpability. The little freedom to which Oedipus lays declare consists in his means to stare instantly into his abject situation. It’s an immensely transferring conclusion that resonates deeply with anybody who’s ever devoted critical thought to the mysterious relationship between human freedom and ethical company. It’s additionally a imaginative and prescient that’s overseas to Christianity.
If we prohibit our gaze to the brittle mild of historical past (and particularly navy historical past), then it’s arduous to argue with some iteration of the tragic view. Nice empires rise and fall. Peace is uncommon, fragile, and comes at the price of ample bloodshed. That is typically what of us take into consideration once they rattle off a phrase like “Freedom isn’t free.” In civilizational moments, we are able to both face grim actuality or pitch our tent with the utopians and face extinction for our efforts. Fortuitously, Christians usually are not confronted with a choice between a tragic imaginative and prescient and a utopian one, between Athens and Arcadia.
In sharp distinction to the noble trappings of tragedy, which contain royal palaces and bloodstained battlefields, comedy is worried with extraordinary folks going about their extraordinary enterprise in kitchens, bogs, and bedrooms. Naturally, that is the stuff of laughter. Within the phrases of Montaigne, “And on the loftiest throne on the earth we’re nonetheless sitting solely on our personal rump.” The truth that the vast majority of right this moment’s thrones are manufactured from porcelain solely strengthens his level.
Nonetheless, the chief distinguishing mark of comedy doesn’t consist in humor, however somewhat, within the glad ending. From Aristophanes’s The Birds to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Evening’s Dream, a great deal of the pleasure we absorb nice comedies comes from the ultimate decision supplied by their glad endings. True, the characters might lack Oedipus’s the Aristocracy and charm, however in contrast to him, their flaws usually are not all that they’ve left on the story’s finish. Reasonably, their deliverance comes by way of their foibles and weaknesses. For Christians, this could sound unusually acquainted.
In Scripture, we encounter a comic book imaginative and prescient of actuality. The nation of Israel traces its origin to 90-year-old Sarah. This little nation is then led out of captivity by a stammering man who spent forty years in exile after murdering an Egyptian. Christ, the Lord of all creation, involves us within the type of a helpless babe and proceeds to construct His church on the rock of Peter, a person who repeatedly put his foot in his mouth and denied Him thrice. The triumph of our Lord comes about not by way of the sword, however the cross.
Conspicuously missing within the heroes of the religion are any of the noble qualities that characterize our best tragic figures. As an alternative, the biblical imaginative and prescient reveals that God has chosen the silly issues of this world to confound the clever and the weak to disgrace the robust (1 Corinthians 1:27). Most significantly, Christian women and men know that the story has a contented ending: a cosmic consummation through which God will choose the fast and the lifeless, wipe away each tear, and make all issues new. In a masterful essay on the topic, Daniel Russ argues:
The archetypal comedian plot—order to chaos to order—is the type of the scriptural canon. God’s folks start in a backyard in proper relationship with Him, fall by way of their silly satisfaction, attain redemption by the unlikely incarnation of God Himself, and are available lastly to a metropolis which incorporates the unique backyard.
To these tempted to take a tragic view this election season, I might counter that the Christian imaginative and prescient of actuality is, in truth, a comic book one. We’re not locked with our political opponents in a zero-sum recreation that necessitates “extraordinary means” or the non permanent bracketing of 1’s prophetic witness. The universe we inhabit is roomier than that as a result of Christ has made it so.
If He has not left us as orphans, then we want not sacrifice our conscience on the altar of political expediency. We’re free to meet our duties as residents realizing that Christ stays on his throne no matter who occupies the Oval Workplace. A tragic world will not be large enough for a “third means,” however a comic book one is.
To make sure, this allegiance to Christ and his kingdom doesn’t preclude struggling, however that struggling doesn’t have the final phrase. The present state of our nation is certainly grim, however those that belong to Christ are free to dwell within the mild of the promise of his glad ending.
