Once Again: On Maintaining Hope in the Face of the Demonic

 In my last couple of posts, I wrote about maintaining hope and being those who already have a king and are not looking for another one. I want to reemphasize all that I said there and maybe push that a bit further here. I would especially like to sharpen my thoughts on what it means to be a hope-filled people of prayer and love with Christ as their King when our focus and attention is constantly drawn to Trump into a kind of mesmerism or fascination by the tragedy to democracy he represents.

When Trump was elected president this time, I promised myself I would not watch the news much. I heard a couple of other friends were attempting the same thing. As I wrote to my director last week, "That has pretty much gone by the wayside." I did not make this promise because I believed that hermits should be completely separated from all of that or insulated from the truth of this world and its needs. I don't believe that at all. It was that I remembered the way the news of Trump's blundering and self-centered (narcissistic) excesses and stupidities began to take over the last time Trump was elected, rather like a terrible accident makes it almost impossible to look anywhere else or remain sufficiently about my own life and ministry; I didn't want that to happen again. After all, my life has a very real focus and it is not Trump. In fact, my baptism and eremitic consecration, the canon that governs my life, my vows, my Rule of Life, my own conscience, and daily praxis, all tell me it must not be Trump!  

And yet, the unprecedented nature, quality, and degree of the chaos and destruction Trump/Musk is visiting upon our country and the world around us makes it almost impossible not to be sucked into focusing our gaze and energies on him. I believe this same tendency to lose our real focus, our life-giving and meaning-conferring focus is what makes hope so difficult to maintain at this time as well. So how do we hold these two competing foci together without relinquishing the real telos (intention and goal) of our lives? How do we keep ourselves from losing ourselves? Is there anything in Scripture or our Christian Tradition that can help us here? Several things come immediately to mind: 1) the story of Jesus' temptation in the desert, 2) Jesus' continuing ministry and teaching in the face of political and religious threats to his life, 3) canon 603's requirements of stricter separation from the world and assiduous prayer and penance, and 4) the desert Abbas' and Ammas' tradition of battle with demons as intrinsic to the spiritual life. I want to look at all of these over the next days, but for now I want to start with number 3.

Hermits are called to embrace a stricter separation from the world at the same time they embrace a life of assiduous prayer and penance. This dynamic can be misunderstood as implying we simply close the hermitage, convent, or monastery door on the entire world outside us. But "world" in the sense used by canon 603 means "that which is resistant to Christ" and can also be understood to mean "that which promises fulfillment apart from Christ."  At the same time, the hermit is called upon to be hospitable and to open her door to anyone who should come knocking in search of food, rest, a word (from God), or whatever the hermit can provide to ease their journey. This might look like a conflict, but really, it is a paradox. The hermit is one who offers hospitality to God in every way God can come to the hermit. This means first of all she lives a life of assiduous prayer and penance in the silence of solitude, and then too, a life open to anyone in whom God might dwell (and who might be served in their vocation to make that more real by the hermit's hospitality). Both pieces of eremitical life must be preserved by the hermit in a single focus on openness to the presence and sovereignty of God. After all, this is who she is!

As I look at this paradoxical set of values and responsibilities and the task of maintaining an appropriate focus, it reminds me very much of the way we must handle the situation in which we in the US find ourselves today. We cannot shut our doors and windows to the evil happening beyond our hermitage boundaries, but neither can we fling them open so wide that the hermitage ceases to be what it is, namely, a place where God is hosted and may also be found by others. In other words, we must maintain our focus on God and hospitality to God so that God might truly be Lord of this world and transform it with (his) presence. If we can retain this focus, so too can we look evil full in the face and make decisions on what more we are called to do. But what does this mean? How do we do this?

In my life, it means to pray both directly before and after I watch the news. What I have begun to do is to pray quietly before watching the news and read and meditate on Gospel stories afterward. (So far, favorites include the story of the Good Samaritan and Christ's temptation in the desert. I will move on to others as these cease to nourish and strengthen me so much (one story I am sure I will be spending time with is Jesus' trial before Pilate and the conversation he held with Pilate there!). The idea is not to cede President Trump much real estate in my head or heart so that I don't become a kind of satellite of his narcissism; it is to maintain my focus on Christ, and on all those who are suffering in light of the current political situation the US finds themselves in and whom I might serve. In a very real way, it helps ensure I do not lose myself or my integrity to the soul-devouring emptiness and heartlessness we know as Donald Trump and those sycophants who cater to him. This praxis helps me to remain myself and strengthens my identity as imago Christi; in other words, it helps me to live to serve Jesus as Lord and King as the person I am called to be.

Some people will find their own focus and necessary praxis will differ from mine but their goal will largely be the same. A constitutional lawyer may make sure his/her attention is on the law, on statutes they have not paid attention to for some time and on working directly for the constitutional democracy that is currently endangered. A poet or musician will spend time writing and reading poetry, or listening to and playing music even more assiduously than they perhaps did in less chaotic times. All of us will try to be a positive presence contributing what we can for the sake of our world, especially those looking for a way to maintain hope. Again, the point is to not cede President Trump/Musk personal "real estate" in our minds and hearts as we entertain and are strengthened in the real values and relationships with those we are called to serve. This, I sincerely believe, is an instance of what c 603 calls "stricter separation from the world"!

For Christians, then, I believe the approach I suggest above will be helpful. We have one Lord and it is not Trump (or Trump/Musk)! We must be careful that Trump's vacuous heart does not suck us up into his orbit! Karl Barth once famously remarked that when he did theology he kept a newspaper on one corner of his desk and a Bible on the other. What I am suggesting is a variation on that. We must be informed. We must watch the news!! But we must first of all be persons of the Book, persons who live from and for the good news of Jesus Christ, persons for whom Jesus is the image of the humanity and lord of the Kingdom we are called to represent. As I said in my post on maintaining hope, we must be persons of prayer, both to help immunize us from and sensitize us to the evil we will meet and, of course, to inspire us to lovingly work for the good of all in the face of such evil and the suffering it brings.

_________________________________________________

Postscript: I use the term demonic rarely and cautiously; when I do, as in the title of this piece, it is usually in the sense that Paul Tillich used the term, namely, for the distortion of the sacred in the direction of evil or non-being. Human persons are sacred as is all of God's creation. When the telos (intention and goal) of that creation is raised to its highest potential, there we have the holy. When it is emptied of goodness and its potential (for life, truth, beauty, future, meaning, etc.) is otherwise distorted in the direction opposing its created or God-endowed nature, there we have the demonic. Any great gift of God can be perfected towards real holiness or distorted in the direction of the demonic. The same is certainly true of persons as a whole. When this happens, especially when it is accompanied by great power along with messianic trappings and delusions, we begin to see a reality some identify as antiChrist.