The world is hyperventilating like I’ve never seen it before. Particularly for anyone who watches broadcast news (I don’t) or participates in social media platforms (sadly, I do), the world has been coming at us like one of those egregious music videos where images and scenes are fast-cut and flashing by so quickly you can barely make them out. Rather than a coherent narrative, what one takes away from it is an overall sense of things — a feeling, a vibe. It is empty, slightly disorienting and probably more subliminally persuasive than we want to admit.
It’s happened before in my lifetime — 1968 felt as dizzying — but I’m going to tag the start of this eye-crossing noise to the June 27 debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump. Biden’s performance unveiled his diminished capacities to the nation, and the world, and his party jumped into a panic-mode. Political operatives and journalists (am I redundant?) went into machine mode to find a replacement candidate.
Since that date, all of this has happened, in no particular order:
— An assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. Pundits reacted, jumping to the conclusion that a Trump victory against Biden was now inevitable.
— President Biden’s party reacted, too, talking him into jumping out of the race, if not the office. Vice President Kamala Harris jumped in, replacing him with surprising swagger. Pundits jumped to the new conclusion that Harris is impossible to beat.
— Eucharistic adoration jumped into headlines thanks to the 10th National Eucharistic Congress, only to be met with the XXXIII Olympiad opening with an obvious mockery of the Last Supper. The show’s producers admitted that the Last Supper was purposely implied, before walking it back. Eventually, they pulled the video.
— Two contestants in Olympic women’s boxing appeared to be testosterone-y men. Then we learned they are hormonally intersexual, raised as women. The world reacts, jumping to learn more about Swyer syndrome and dual chromosome bodies.
— Reactions to a horrific knife attack in Northern England jumped into anti-immigration riots. It was discovered that the attacker is Wales-born and not a migrant. The nation is still roiling.
— Asian markets collapse; Wall Street plunges into “bloodbath” headlines. Until suddenly the markets were rebounding.
Why am I detailing so much of this? Partly to illustrate just how dramatic the warp-speed headlines of the past five weeks have been, and partly to show how these ongoing stories either directly or indirectly demonstrate a worldwide cultural, religious and political confusion and sense of outsized panic. Countries, communities, politicians, pundits, creatives and controllers — all of us, really — are barely digesting what is happening before jumping to conclusions. We’re opining, condemning and denigrating before we have the full story, a bad habit that wounds charity, hardens the heart and can lead to dubious actions with far-reaching consequences, not always toward the good.
Christians correctly jumped to the conclusion that the Last Supper was being mocked at the Olympic’s opening ceremonies. Despite all the protests that we were simply too ignorant to know about Bacchus or Dionysus, we understood what was being mocked — not a great painting but the Gospel-related, real event the painting represented — Christ Jesus’ institution of the Holy Eucharist.
On the other hand, jumping to conclude that women’s boxing had been infiltrated by men taught many of us all that we didn’t yet know about human biology and the mystery of being loved into being by God.
The situation reminds me of Mt 19:12, wherein Jesus, discoursing on marriage, says, “Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so, some because they were made so by others … ” We have been grappling with issues touching on the sexually-different for a long time, but these are new questions: Should intersex people whose bodies default to female be competing with other, non-testosterone-infused women, or should there be another avenue for competition? My gut says the latter, but I truly don’t know.
I only know three things: First, that Jesus wants us to love each other — to recognize the God-borne humanity in each person that comes before us and — before reacting, deciding or judging — loving them for it. It can be challenging, and even Jesus acknowledged the reality of having “enemies” (Mt 5:44), but he insists on the love of respect, always.
Second, that jumping to conclusions about some things can be justified, but — if that list above demonstrates anything — most of the time doing so simply adds to confusion, anger, hatred and distrust.
Third, when the world seems to be turning too fast, the stories coming at us too quickly, it is good, nay imperative, that we step back, slow down the breath, whisper up a prayer to the One who is All-Wisdom, and refuse to just jump, jump, jump to the cacophony of confusion. Amen.
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