Maybe it’s a sign of getting older, of having strong feelings of nostalgia. Maybe it’s a reaction to the breakneck pace of our internet age and Twitter-intoxicated world. For whatever reason, I find myself looking back at thinkers from the recent past in order to navigate the challenges we face today. For example, I read a review of essays from the World War II-era political scientist Hannah Arendt. As a Jewish thinker and activist, she fled Germany in 1933, landing first in France and later in the United States, where she became a citizen in 1951 and scholar until her death in 1975. She knew firsthand about totalitarian states and tyrants. I find that her words offer a compelling message for us today.
Arendt said this about the danger of politicians who lie: “If everyone always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes anything at all … A lying government leaves people not only dispossessed of their ability to act, but also of their capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people, you can then do whatever you please.” Arendt reminds us that far worse than being misguided by a lie is when a series of lies causes you to stop trusting everything you hear. Once that happens, you have nowhere to stand except upon a platform of self-interest; and if you are all that matters in this world, your judgment is fatally impaired and tyrants can rule over us as they see fit.
The chorus of voices that supports this political theory of self-interest shouts out to us: Don’t trust the government (politicians are all bad); don’t try to change things (the problems are too big); don’t risk yourself for the sake of others (let “them” take care of themselves). But the scriptures I’ve read and cherished offer an entirely different message. By entering into a covenant of faith with God, we are necessarily moving beyond “self-interest” and focusing on the “common good” (or in biblical terms, the Kingdom of God). This is the opposite of disbelieving those in authority; rather it involves choosing to stay in relationship with others at all costs. That is why Jesus spoke of taking on his yoke and his burden. That is why the Beatitudes speak of how the poor and meek are blessed, and that we are to forgive others not seven times, but seventy-seven times. That is why, by faith, we are no longer captives of this world. However as the prophet Zechariah reminds us, we are actually “prisoners of hope.” And from that form of idealistic captivity of faith, by God’s grace we shall never be set free.
Faith is the opposite of escapism. It is digging in, defending truth in a culture of lies, accepting yokes for the common good and the Kingdom of God instead of the false freedom of individualism and self-interest. And why is this important? Again, Hannah Arendt offers words of guidance: “If we ever lose our ability to wonder and ask unanswerable questions, we will also lose the faculty of asking the answerable questions upon which every civilization is founded.” The one who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life would never have us lose the ability to formulate idealistic, hopeful, unanswerable questions about this life, knowing that by grace it is precisely this faithful, covenantal work that helps us approximate the good news summarized in the Lord’s Prayer: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
—Randy Bush