Our Spiritual Crisis

I have written in recent years about the unseriousness of our politics, and the people pushing these political causes.  Whether it is climate change, or Black Lives Matter, or even more ridiculous, the entire transgender issue, normal Americans are beleaguered on all sides.  If such causes did not have such dire effects on us, we could all laugh at these people, with their silly twits...er tweets and their constant state of outrage and excessive drama. Over at Sultan Knish, Daniel Greenfield exlains why this is in a post entitled The Frictionless Souls Addicted To The Cause. Hint: it is related to our general loss of religion.

Ukrainian flags are flying on buildings across the country and Russian vodka is being poured into drains. Concerts are being canceled and books are flying off shelves over a cause that the vast majority of Americans would not have cared about and did not even know existed last year. In a matter of weeks everyone has come around to having a passionate opinion on the subject.

...snip...

The desperate hunger for new causes is a spiritual vacuum. The Ukranians and the Russians believe in what they’re fighting for. We believe in the need to believe in something. The conflict over Ukraine stretches back centuries while our fervent investment in it goes back a few weeks...People without a purpose to their passions rush from one cause to another in search of a momentary sense of meaning. Conspiracy theories make the world meaningful and nurture their sense of outrage because it distracts them from the aching emptiness within.

What Greenfield means by "frictionless souls" is that there is no resistance to these radical ideas. Once upon a time, people were guided by the reality God's word revealed to them in His word. People understood their place in society and the universe. We understood that God is in heaven, and we are on earth. He created us, we are His creatures. Without the sense of meaning and purpose that religion provides, we find ourselves easily manipulated by the Left.

True religion is an ongoing act of conscience while false religion evades the internal accountability and externalizes it into political causes. The external virtue signaling projects a false righteousness to mask the underlying failure to struggle for internal rightness.