|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Hello, fellow wayfarers … What the presidential debate and its aftermath should tell us about a culture of geriatric childishness … How you can know that wasn’t really me dancing for Steven Curtis Chapman to run for president … What I think about the elimination of the abortion plank from the Republican Party platform … When I cheerfully refuse apocalypse, and when I hopefully embrace it … Where this newsletter will be, come fall … A Desert Island Playlist that finds room for both Bob Marley and Kirk Franklin … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
|
|
|
|
|
Our Old Leaders Won’t
Walk Away, and That’s About More Than Politics
A friend of mine told me that he was at a long-planned gathering of half Republicans and half Democrats for the purpose of talking through partisan polarization. They watched the presidential debate together, and everyone was nervous that the respectful disagreements would devolve into the cheering and booing of team sports. He said it was actually the most unifying two hours of the entire meeting, because everyone was feeling the same thing: embarrassment.
No matter whether Team Red or Team Blue, the viewers recognized that our presidents once said things like, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" and "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Two weeks ago, from two 80-year-old men, one of whom is to lead the country for the next four years, we heard instead such lines as "I didn’t have sex with a porn star" and "Anyway … we finally beat … Medicare." That was before they incoherently bickered about their respective golf handicaps.
When we ask, "Is this the best we can do?" we actually all know the answer. But neither man will step away, and there are no grownups that can make them.
This would be bad enough if it were only about which octogenarian will be occupying the only assisted living center in the world with a press office and a Situation Room. But the fact that our elderly leaders—one struggling to put sentences together, the other ranting with insanities and profanities—won’t leave the scene is about more than an election year. It’s about what
it means to live in an era of diminished expectations.
For years, sociologists and philosophers have warned us about the dangers of a cult of youth, that behind all of the Botox treatments and cosmetic Ozempic regimens, there’s a more fundamental denial of death. We want to put aging out of sight because we don’t want to be reminded that it’s the way we will all one day go. That this is, at least when it comes to the presidency, no country for anything but old men, would seem to indicate that we’ve moved past that infatuation with youth. But the opposite is actually the case.
We live in a moment of a paradoxical juvenile gerontocracy. Never have our leaders held on with such stubbornness to the quest for power well after they have the cognitive or physical abilities to do so. And never have our leaders seemed so childish. How can both be true?
Communications theorist Neil Postman warned us that we were entering this era over 40 years ago. Children find their way in the world, he said, through wonderment. Curiosity leads to questions, and questions lead the quest to find answers. "But wonderment happens largely in a situation where the child’s world is separate from the adult world, where children must seek entry, through their questions, into the adult world," Postman wrote. "As media merge the two worlds, as the tension created by secrets to be unraveled is diminished, the calculus of wonderment changes."
"Curiosity is replaced by cynicism, or even worse, arrogance," Postman continues. "We are left with children who rely not on authoritative adults but on news from nowhere. We are left with children who are given answers to questions they never asked. We are left, in short, without children."
Keep in mind, Postman was worried about television and was writing long before the internet and social media era. At first glance, the digital era would seem to have given us the opposite problem. Jonathan Haidt, for instance, argues compellingly that one reason for the spike in anxiety among children and adolescents is the anxiety of their parents, an anxiety that leads to a smothering, overly protective parenting.
In reality, though, the "helicopter parenting" that Haidt and others describe is precisely the problem about which Postman warned, just from the other end. Parents are anxious, at least in part, because they feel scared and unequipped, with few models for to how to transition themselves into a different phase of life while preparing the next generation to take the helm.
The symbol of our age is less that of the wise old leader, giving the offertory prayer at the Sunday morning service or presenting the trophy to the young winners of the Pinewood Derby, and more that of the Margaritaville-themed retirement home filled with oldsters pretending to be right back in their teenage years, complete with the latest gossip about who has a crush on whom.
Probably every one of us knows the crushing feeling that comes with realizing that a mentor
or a role model isn’t who we thought. Most of us have come close-up enough to realize that someone we thought could guide us with wisdom and maturity is actually a slave to temper, pride, ambition, lust, or greed. To some degree, that’s always been the case. T. S. Eliot wrote in the middle of the last century:
What was to be the value of the long looked forward
to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
At this point, though, our culture seems especially riddled through with this realization that those we thought were grownups are old, exhausted, and childish. An obviously declining president refuses to live in a world where "Hail to the Chief" is played for a new generation of leaders. The rest of the country looks to a porn-star-chasing former reality television host who says he wants to terminate the Constitution and put his enemies through televised military tribunals—and the country just laughs and enjoys the show.
We can’t do much about the cultural situation of 2024. We can, though, resolve to see and to embody a different model. The Bible upends the combination of childishness and age denial that we see all around us. Instead, the Scriptures give us the mirror-image paradox: a people who are both childlike and mature.
Jesus said that only those who
become as little children will inherit the kingdom of God (Matt. 18:3; Mark 10:15). This is not, though, about childishness. Inheritance is not a pile of stuff but a stewardship, a responsibility, a vocation for grownups who have learned from, as Paul put it, "guardians and managers" (Gal. 4:1–7, ESV throughout).
The Bible gives us a glimpse of the childlike maturity paradigm at the beginning of the life of Solomon. The new king asked God for wisdom, saying, "I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in" (1 Kings 3:7). He knew he was dependent. That wisdom manifested itself in the
kind of maturity that knew how to not please himself but to govern a "great people" (v. 9). That didn’t last, of course. Solomon veered off to the immaturity of being governed by his appetites rather than by wisdom, and his kingdom came tumbling down.
We can thank God that Jesus tells us, "Behold, something greater than Solomon is here" (Matt. 12:42). We can walk in that way and embody it in our churches if we reject the kind of childishness that clings to power and the kind of childishness that sees power itself as a game. We can model the sort of maturity that cultivates character and equips the
next generation with the hopes that they will outpace us when they do.
Our childish old-culture is embarrassing. We see it not only on a debate stage in our country but in church after church that’s segregated by age, pulpit by pulpit where the options seem to be either staying too long or being replaced by youth for the sake of youth itself. There’s a different way. There are no grownups coming to save us. We were supposed to be them.
This was an obvious deepfake. I am an unconventional Baptist now, so I am allowed to dance. But no one wants to see that. I think that Pierce, the author of the book Home School Sex Machine, would understand that there comes a point when those who grew up with alternative-homecoming church lock-ins should just embrace reality as it is.
Still, if it would give us Steven Curtis Chapman instead of—well, you know—I would take lessons.
Abortion and the Republican Party
Platform
What did you think was going to happen?
I Cheerfully Refuse
Apocalypse
I was with some friends last night for our regular pipe night, at which I do not have a pipe (see "dancing" entry above). At the end, someone asked me to give my predictions for the rest of 2024. I did. Everyone sat quietly until someone jokingly said, "Well, that sure brought everything down."
I responded by citing a meme I
saw somewhere this past week of Harrison Ford being interviewed by David Letterman around the time of the release of the old film Blade Runner. Ford was describing the universe of the film and its detective-in-dystopia vibe. He explained that it’s not so much science fiction as it is a futuristic film, set 40 years in the future (so, about now, come to think of it). Letterman asked what the future is like. "Well, it’s no musical comedy," Ford replied.
If you want musical comedy, I said, tell me and I’ll meet you halfway and sing for you (still will not dance). But 2024: Face it, this is no musical comedy.
In his new book, Democracy and Solidarity, political scientist James Davison Hunter argues that optimism, as opposed to hope, is a kind of defeatism. He quotes Christopher Lasch arguing that optimism is "just a cheerful kind of fatalism" that assumes something will happen and it will all work out. As I’ve argued
here, hope is different. Hope groans. Hope prays. Hope waits (Rom. 8:20–27).
Over on the podcast this week, I talked with author Leif Enger (Peace Like a River, Virgil Wander) about his new novel, I Cheerfully Refuse. You can listen to it here.
We talked a lot about
apocalypse and about the power to cheerfully refuse it. We were on the same wavelength as long as we were talking about lowercase-a apocalypse (Blade Runner). When it comes to capital-A Apocalypse, though, there’s nothing more hopeful than running out of hope and finding, on the other end of it, that there’s a voice saying, "Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades" (Rev. 1:17–18).
That kind of Apocalypse I cheerfully embrace. In fact, it makes me want to sing out, with a number no man can number, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain" (Rev. 5:12). For that, I will even dance.
Coming Up in August
This newsletter—which has been on Thursdays since I started it during
COVID lockdown in the spring of 2020—will move to Wednesdays.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 Kathryn Whitbourne from Atlanta, Georgia. Here’s her list:
- "Three Little Birds" by Bob
Marley: I was born in Jamaica so I have to include some Bob Marley. And this one sounds like it would be good to listen to on my desert island.
- "Rosalinda’s Eyes" Billy Joel: I’ve seen him twice in concert and he didn’t play this one, but it’s my favorite of his. Love the Latin beat.
- "For No One" by The Beatles: Another somewhat obscure song by famous musicians that I really like.
- "If I Stand" by Rich Mullins: One of the most honest CCM songs ever made.
- "Dancing Queen" by ABBA: You need at least one song to play when you feel like having a "dance party" on the island.
|
|
|
Quote of the Moment
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."
—Abraham Lincoln
|
|
|
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
|
|
|
|
|
Join Us at Christianity Today
Founded by Billy Graham, Christianity Today is on a mission to lift up the sages and storytellers of the global church for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For a limited time, you can subscribe for less than one dollar per week. You will get
print/digital content of the magazine plus all kinds of member-only content that will be coming very soon. Plus, you’ll be supporting this weekly conversation we have together. Or, you could give a membership to a friend, a pastor, a church member, someone you mentor, or a curious non-Christian neighbor? You can also make a tax-deductible gift that expands CT’s important voice and influence in the world.
Ask a Question or Say Hello
The Russell Moore Show podcast includes a section where we grapple with the questions you might have about life, the gospel, relationships, work, the church, spirituality, the future, a moral dilemma you’re facing, or whatever. You can send your questions to questions@russellmoore.com. I’ll never use your name—unless you tell me to—and will come up with a groan-inducing pun of a pseudonym for you.
And, of course, I would love to hear from you about anything. Send me an email at questions@russellmoore.com
if you have any questions or comments about this newsletter, if there are other things you would like to see discussed here, or if you would just like to say hello!
If you have a friend who might like this, please forward it, and if you’ve gotten this from a friend, please subscribe!
Onward,
Russell Moore
|
|
|
|
|
Russell Moore
Editor in Chief
|
|
|
P.S. You can support the continued work of Christianity Today and the PUBLIC THEOLOGY PROJECT by subscribing to CT magazine.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Join Russell Moore in thinking through the important questions of the day, along with book and music recommendations he has found formative.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
