"I am scared by the direction things are going in the world", one of my family members told me after another depressing look at her Facebook page and watching "The Social Dilemma" - a documentary about social media. The same day I had a phone call from another family member who was struggling to make sense of a YouTube video about the Corona virus and how we are supposedly being hoodwinked by the authorities. She didn't know what to believe anymore.
I am not sure myself what to believe either. Yes, I was able to give some perspective to both. No, there is no big conspiracy going on, because the world is far too complex a place for anyone to pull off a global virus to control us. No, the truth about the Corona virus cannot be purposefully hidden, because there are far too many researchers digging, hoping for a big breakthrough. The complex web of relationships in today's world somewhat protects us against any would-be control.
But it is that very complexity that is so scary. Most questions have more than one answer. The future is utterly unpredictable. That has always been true, but the uncertainty has certainly scaled up. Together we know so much more, that no single person has a chance to know even a small percentage of all that is known. And what is ‘known' changes in no time at all with new discoveries. What used to take decades or even centuries can now change in a matter of years or even less. Unlike before, everyone now has a chance to dig into that treasure trove of knowledge; new and old theories, fantastic inventions and long ago debunked facts. But most of us don't have enough of a framework to sift through all of that. The complexity threatens to overwhelm us. And that includes me.
Not understanding is scary. Having no control over what is coming is even worse. And therefore we look for some kind of anchor. We search for something, anything, that helps us make sense of the chaos and to regain control. We try to find someone, anyone to blame for the mess. We desperately blame these terrible leaders, those wicked companies, the awful people over there. We blame them for being rich, for being poor, for misusing the system, for not agreeing with me. Such a cycle of scapegoating never ends well. That is how pogroms came about. That is why wars were started. That is how organizations fall apart. Seeing that growing polarization scares me. I scare myself by participating in the blame game. I too am scared by the direction things are going in the world.
But that is not the whole story. I am a christian. And christians have the opportunity to choose a different kind of anchor, one that is based on the assertion that Jesus took all the blame, so that there is no point in accusing others anymore. We have a hope that things won’t careen out of control, however much it feels like it right now. The world is not a lost case, because God hasn’t given up on it. And whatever the complexity, it doesn’t get too complex for Him, by definition.
That changes everything. It means that I can participate in this maelstrom of tangled relationships with a sense of purpose and hope. I don’t know the outcomes of my actions, I don’t necessarily know whether I am right or not, but that doesn’t matter. As long as I can contribute based on the foundations of love and justice, as long as I can have faith in a God who redeems the poor and transforms the wicked, I have hope that He will leverage my well-intentioned but often misguided actions for good. There may be lots of reasons to be scared about the direction things are going in the world, but that is not the whole story. God reigns above the complexity. He rules the waves. And therefore I can confidently echo Martin Luther King Jr. in saying: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
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