Hello, fellow wayfarers … How you can keep your sanity through a news cycle that’s going to be frenetic for a long, long time … Why the devil’s pronouns are still “he/him” … How we should think about “fake news” and real truth in what could be the time before a world war … A Desert Island Playlist from right down the road here in Music City … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
How to Live Through Four More Years of Trump Drama Without Losing Your Mind or Your Heart
Someone walked up to me in an airport last week and said, “So, what do you think about the election?” I was in a less-than-ideal mood at the moment, for reasons that had nothing to do with the election, but I stopped myself from saying sarcastically, “What do you think I think about the election?”
The last thing I wanted to talk about, after ten years of talking about him, was Donald Trump. Now the news cycle will be the Donald Trump Show all day, every day, for four more years.
The nonstop news cycle and drama won’t be some unforeseen circumstance. It’s what the American people voted for. The theory that people would want to “turn the page” on all that, offered by Vice President Kamala Harris, proved false. Turns out most people liked the drama just fine. So here we go.
I have very little to say that I haven’t already said, very little to write that I haven’t already written, and there are very few people who think like I do. I can’t control that. But neither can you. As a matter of fact, there is very little any of us can do to control the next four years—with a news cycle that will be, like the last near-decade, all Trump, all the time.
Just like during the last near-decade, those who support Trump and those who oppose him will continue to look at one another the way Adams and Jefferson did over the French Revolution: “How could you support (or not support) that?” You can control very little of that either.
And that’s surprisingly good news.
The passivity of Americans in their own civic order is always a problem. The word woke—before it became associated with identity politics—spoke to the sense of waking people from their slumber about injustice. The opposite of passivity, though, is often not responsibility or engagement. Sometimes it’s a kind of passivity that feels like “doing something.”
Wherever someone falls on the political spectrum, that’s where “doomscrolling” comes into play. We feel we are informed by having a steady stream of drama in front of us, our emotions driven up or down by the news cycle.
We’ve seen the end result of that. The constant flow of (real and fake) information spikes our adrenaline, activating our “lizard brains.” We throw our limbic systems into the sense of having to support or to oppose something—when, much of the time, there’s actually nothing we can do about it. And this works because many people like it.
What we call “politics” these days offers people a sense of meaning and purpose, an interruption to the dead everydayness of life. A jolt of adrenaline can feel almost like life—for a little while.
This kind of political “drama” is related to actual political life the way that pornography is to intimacy. Porn gives the same physical sensation as sexual union. The nervous system responds the way it is meant to respond in the union of a husband and wife; it just does so by getting rid of the love, the connection, the other person. In other words, it gives the physical sense without what actually brings about the joy.
Someone might think that porn use will kick-start their flagging passion, that it’s a temporary step toward intimacy. That person is left, though, feeling deader and lonelier than before. A news cycle can be like that too—ultimately leaving people not more informed and thoughtful but with worn-out attention spans and burned-out expectations.
One of the things you owe your country is your attention. By that, I do not mean your constant focus. I mean, quite literally, your attention: your ability to think and to reflect apart from the roar of the mob.
During the tumult of the 1960s—war, civil unrest, assassinations—Thomas Merton argued that his ability to speak to all of those things was not in spite of but because of his vocation as a Trappist monk, devoted to silence and solitude.
“Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought,” Merton wrote. He continues,
A monk loses his reason for existing if he simply submits to all the routines that govern the thinking of everybody else. He loses his reason for existing if he simply substitutes other routines of his own! He is obliged by his vocation to have his own mind if not to speak it. He has got to be a free man.
Merton concludes by saying, “What did the radio say this evening? I don’t know.”
I believe in the priesthood of all believers and, in this way, I suppose, in the monkhood of all believers too. News and information are important in helping a free and attentive mind discern what’s happening and how to make sense of it. News and information as sources of a sense of personal “drama” or belonging, though, will fray your attention, scatter your thinking, and affix you to whatever mob it’s easiest to mimic.
It’s hard to maintain sanity with a mind like that. It’s hard to love your country with a mind like that. It’s hard to love the Lord your God with a mind like that.
The stakes are too high for us to see our country as a reality television show. You can’t opt out of the country, but you can opt out of the show. In some ways, you get there by subtraction. Don’t rely on social media for your news, for instance. Don’t fall into the trap of every-ten-minute hits of dopamine about how your side is losing something or winning something.
But maybe an even more important factor is not subtraction but addition. You are meant to have a life of drama and adventure and excitement. Politics—of the left, right, or center—can’t deliver it. News cycles can’t replicate it.
For those of us who are Christians, we already have it. We need no Jungian hero’s journey. We are joined to the life of Jesus of Nazareth. His story is our story. Our lives are hidden in him (Col. 3:3). We are crucified under Pontius Pilate. We are raised out of the grave. We are seated at the right hand of the Father.
All of that is true, right now, for those who are joined by the Spirit to the life of Christ. And we are waiting a trump—not a Trump—to tell us when the action of our lives will really get interesting, in ways we cannot even imagine yet.
Realize that this is true for you. You don’t need to be part of some make-believe drama. You don’t need to adopt some politician as a father figure. You have an actual Father who is making plans for you. And when you realize how temporary, how fleeting, and how pitiful much of what is counted as glory is in this moment, you can learn how to love it without placing on it the burden of making you happy or driving you crazy. We always come to hate our idols—whatever they are—because they never give us what we want.
That means you will need the Bible—and more than just the devotional cherry-picking or doctrinal proof texts to which modern American Christianity is accustomed. You will need to immerse yourself in the stories there until you gradually start to sense they are your stories. You need to plunge into the poems and songs there until you find they are telling you the story of your own life too.
You need to spend enough time with the Jesus found in the pages of Scripture that he starts to surprise you again. You don’t have to understand what you’re reading all the time. Read it anyway. Let the Word do its work. Don’t immediately Google “How to understand Psalm 46” or “What does Colossians 2 mean?” Wrestle with it. Be baffled by it.
And sooner or later you will start to hear, as though calling to you personally from those words: “Who do you say that I am?”
The news cycle will be crazy for the next four years. You don’t have to be.
The Devil Declares His Pronouns
“Hello, my name is Lucifer and my pronouns are he/him.”
This kind of ridiculous sentence had never occurred to me until this past week, when I read a book by Episcopal biblical scholar and preacher Fleming Rutledge.
The gender debates are, of course, all over most of Western culture. We are quite accustomed to people in some communions—for at least 50 years or so—attempting to remove so-called gendered language from God so that one ends up with “Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer” instead of the biblical and creedal language of “Father/Son/Holy Spirit.” In more recent years, we’ve seen some preachers and scholars so avoidant of calling God “he” or “him” that they end up with jargon-filled stuff about “God swears by Godself that God will keep God’s promises” and so on.
I’d never seen the debate applied to the devil, though, until I read Rutledge’s By the Word Worked: Encountering the Power of Biblical Preaching, based on her lectures delivered to Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. As with everything Rutledge writes, this was full of fiery insight and a call to the preaching of the Bible, often critiquing missteps in her own tradition. The whole thing had me thinking all week about no less than five or six different important themes.
But for now, let me just mention her treatment of the simple issue of what pronouns to use for the devil. It drives me crazy to hear people in my own tradition refer to the Holy Spirit with an impersonal “it”—which implies in English a force or an object rather than a person. I suppose I could see the case, at first glance, for using “it” for the devil, often represented by a serpent. Except for people sadistic enough to keep snakes as a pet (don’t get me started) most people rarely refer to a snake as “he” or “she.” Rutledge, though, goes right at this.
“In this fraught age of gender politics, it may be questioned why Satan is called he (let alone she),” she writes. “Since the Devil’s name is Legion (Mark 5:9), they might indeed be preferred. But the concept of a personal intelligence with a single-minded adversarial project must be retained; therefore he remains the best option.”
This is about more than pronouns. Rutledge unpacks the apocalyptic power of the Bible in shaping the way we see the world around us and within us. We face more than just impersonal forces and structures—although we do face those. We face more than “fightings within and fears without,” as the old hymn put it. We also must recognize that we face an evil that is both deeper than human and deeply personal.
“But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” (Rev. 12:12) is a big truth that is both cosmic and personal. The devil depersonalizes us—tries to make us think of ourselves as things or beasts or machines or legions of competing impulses. That’s not just a reality to overcome, but a person to be withstood.
Rutledge’s work made me think about Jesus’ words to his disciples: “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this age is coming. He has no claim on me” (John 14:30).
Fake News and Hot Wars
“We don’t live in a world of ideals right now.”
That’s what Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, explains to me in this week’s episode of the podcast.
We recorded on the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and discussed what he sees happening in this fraught time around the world as well as closer to home. We also talked about how to define heroism in this time and how people can tell whether what they’re consuming is real or fake news.
You can listen to it here.
Desert island Playlist
Every other week, I share a playlist of songs one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a desert island. This week’s submission comes from reader (and my fellow Nashvillian) Mark Jackson from Hendersonville, Tennessee. He writes at http://akapastorguy.blogspot.com. Here’s Mark’s list:
- “You Belong With Me” by Tonio K: Though the album came out in 1986, Tonio K’s masterpiece of a love song ended up on a mixtape I created for my soon-to-be wife in 1989. It’s “our song.” (Bonus factoid: Maria McKee of Lone Justice is singing the backing vocals here.)
- “Hawkmoon 269” by U2: No one is quite sure where the title came from … but for me, it’s a plaintive echo of my own desperate need for God’s love.
- “Leave It Like It Is” by David Wilcox: It’s important to hear this message on a regular basis.
- “A Song About Baseball” by Bob Bennett: As a kid who was an awful baseball player with a loving dad, I took this song as nearly autobiographical for years. Then one day, I realized it was about the love of God … and that my dad had done an amazing job of modeling that for me.
- “I Still Believe” covered by Russ Taff: This classic ’80s rock anthem by The Call has been my personal anthem as I’ve faced church conflict and struggles over the last 30+ years.
- “Satisfied Mind” covered by Ben Harper and The Blind Boys of Alabama: Another important message song—this one dripped in Southern blues/gospel.
- “Man of No Reputation” by Rick Elias: Often mistakenly credited to Rich Mullins since it appeared on The Jesus Record … Rich loved the song so much that he made Rick sing it almost every time they performed together.
- “Where the Light Shines Through” by Switchfoot: Yet another song to remind me that God shows up in the middle of my brokenness … and He loves me more than I can calculate.
- “The Lust, the Flesh, the Eyes and the Pride of Life” by the 77s: A timeless warning … “I’d rather fight You for something I don’t really want / Than to take what You give that I need.”
- “Strong Hand of Love” covered by Bruce Cockburn: Mark Heard’s beautiful song reminds me over and over about God’s presence … particularly when I think He’s gone silent.
- “Double Cure” by Vigilantes of Love: It seems like a common theme of these songs is a longing for grace from God and allegiance to Him. (There’s an excellent acoustic version of this song as a hidden track on their V.O.L. album.)
- “The Finish Line” by Steve Taylor: My life story in a song.
Thank you, Mark!
Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
- For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)
- For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.
Quote of the Moment
“To be sane in a mad time is bad for the brain, worse for the heart.”
—Wendell Berry
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Mike Cosper, The Church in Dark Times: Understanding and Resisting the Evil That Seduced the Evangelical Movement (Brazos)
- Nicholas J. Moore, The Open Sanctuary: Access to God and the Heavenly Temple in the New Testament (Baker)
- Fleming Rutledge, By the Word Worked: Encountering the Power of Biblical Preaching (Baylor University)
- Michael R. Licona, Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently (Zondervan)
- Saint Maximus the Confessor, Disputations with Pyrrhus (St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press)
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Russell Moore
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
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