The Weekly, November 6, 2023: The Answer is Always Jesus
Hi all,
One of the weird parts about my work is that because Mere O's audience includes journalists, academics, pastors, and non-profit leaders and because our readership runs from young boomers to zoomers, I hear from lots of different types of people just over the course of doing my normal job.
Here's something interesting: The most pessimistic people I talk to are the politicians, journalists, and the academics. (And yes, yes, of course my sample size is small. So your mileage may vary. I am simply sharing what I am hearing in my day-to-day conversations.)
The most hopeful people are the pastors. I talk regularly with pastors who love their jobs, see God at work, and are hopeful about what God is doing. This has especially increased in the past year in the aftermath of Asbury. I consistently hear from people who tell me something is happening right now that wasn't happening 2-3 years ago.
Why are the political people, media types, and academics so despondent? Well, that isn't hard: There are lots of dark things going on in the world and each of those fields require watching that stuff closely. Moreover, political people mostly spend their time operating in dysfunctional institutions, the media types spend their time doomscrolling and wondering if they'll still have a job next week, and the academics mostly have not very good jobs and also don't know if they'll even have those in the near future. And in the meantime they're likely dealing with an obnoxious dean or administrator who wants them to update some online course content. All of that will create despair.
But pastors? Different story. One friend summarized it well after I shared this observation with him:
I suspect that if you spend your time absorbing and thinking about big-picture problems, the current vicious dynamic of "let me say the most outrageous thing I can think of because it builds clout and gets me subscribers" and "will you take a look at this outrageous thing Person A said as a representative of the other side, like and subscribe" will naturally corrode you.
If you spend most of your time with people, you'll see the ugly terrible cultural demons seeping in but you'll also mostly see people trying to grow in Christ.
I think that's correct. Which is why I'm using this newsletter more and Twitter far less and why I am trying to point y'all toward books and interesting essays and reviews.
The doomscrolling option is a dead end that will destroy you. Do something different.
To be specific, do something that involves spending time talking to people who love Jesus and, however imperfectly, are trying to follow him. Here's another reader response prompted by someone else when they heard all this:
We have a man who is 34 and has started coming to our church in rural England. He grew up atheist, was big into Dawkins in the 2000s. In the pandemic his faith journey began.
Phase one: Took the red pill. He realized the liberal narratives weren't trustworthy and began to question everything he'd built his life on.
Phase two: Took the black pill. He was convinced of some notable conspiracy theories. 'I discovered evil existed and went down some very dark holes.'
Phase three: Took the white pill. He realized that if evil existed, then so must good. "At the end of every dark tunnel the answer was always Jesus."
That man, and his daughter, will be getting baptized in the next couple weeks.
Aslan is on the move.
Reading
Books
I'm still reading Jeff Stout. I think the Princeton Civic Republicans are the way forward politically—that's Stout, Todd Bowlin, Eric Gregory, and Cornel West plus their various students, such as Jenn Herdt, Alda Bathrop-Lewis, and so on. But I'm still thinking and figuring it out. Look for something in print #5.
The Scrivener book is great: Highly recommend.
I got an advance copy of Matt Martens new book. It looks very promising. Crossway is doing some great work.
Articles
Operation Reconquista: This looks super interesting.
Samuel James on Movies, Moral Revulsion, and a post-Christian Age
Erin Sorenson on a 93-year-old attending her first Nebraska football game and a 98-year-old at his first Husker volleyball game
Matthew Lee Anderson on John Paul II's Theology of the Body
Ian Harber on digital ministry for Endeavor
Dori Moody on the Bones of Memory in Plough
Ian Clary on Natural Law for TGC Canada
Matthew Andersen on Moyn, Niebuhr, and Butterfield
Elsewhere
As the year wraps up, this section is going to get shorter: There are EOY emails to draft, some other admin tasks to do, writing, editing, reading, and work on the book.
All while also doing holiday planning, birthday planning (our oldest turns 11 in November and our youngest turns four in December), and hopefully doing enough to allow for a real week off around Christmas and New Year's. Mostly right now we just need lots of prayer: for energy, perseverance, and good spirits as we slog through a lot of work, virtually all of which is one kind of difficult or another.
Thanks for reading!
Under the Mercy,
~Jake
PS If you need a fall cocktail, this is great.