This Story Has a Happy Ending

I have been dwelling, of late, on a lot of conservative rage I see reflected online often by people who would describe themselves as Christians.

Being nice or civil is now a sign of weakness. Having friends across the aisle is too. We can’t turn the other cheek or love our neighbors if they disagree with us. Loving our neighbors who are gay now means we have to stand in the yard and tell them they’re going to burn in hell and we’re loving them by reminding them. We’re not relational people anymore. We’re too online for that. Relationships are weaknesses. Loving your neighbor might mean you have to actually get to know them in the real world and find out you disagree on something. It’s all mean tweets all the time instead.

“It’s war!” they tweet from the comfort of their couches or offices or cars without ever, in real life, acting like it. It’s a war of words by asthmatic couch dwellers who define themselves by their online personas where they can be brave, bold, and belligerent without getting off the couch. Their denunciations of weakness deflect from their weak and malleable character. They want to be just like the progressive activists of the left who storm state capitols, riot in the street, burn businesses, and get not much done. “But the narrative,” they scream. Yeah, narrative-building has really helped get Build Back Better passed, hasn’t it?

We’ve all seemingly lost the plot of the only narrative that matters. Society itself reflects this.

The most popular shows reflect the nihilism of the age. Game of Thrones very famously killed off anyone you cared about before killing off your caring about the show with a ridiculous finale. Succession highlights the foibles of a billionaire family of terrible people. The secret to understanding the show, a media critic pointed out, was to understand that in Succession each person gets what they want and is more miserable because of it. Other networks have followed with lots of new shows designed to make you hate everyone in the show.

An entire media industry exists by making heroes of the three angry people who hate all the stuff everyone else likes. As I write this, some absurd angry woman is being lionized by progressives on Twitter for criticizing the Christian conference Passion for the sin of having a conference during COVID. The event, by the way, was at a football stadium that was open air and masks required if the roof was closed. But some people want to be miserable and angry and scared.

Republicans and Democrats both want you miserable, angry, and scared of the other. The media reflects all of this as much as both political parties do. The New York Times is running a fear-mongering story about a massive COVID spread in Puerto Rico. There’s a 4,600% increase in cases. If you make your way all the way down to paragraph thirteen you’d actually find that on an island of 3 million people with a 4,600% increase in COVID despite a massively high vaccine rate, only 300 people are in the hospital with COVID. That actually means the vaccines do work, even if not as first advertised. But the New York Times has gotten obsessed with fearmongering stories about COVID as has so much of the media. All that does is further undermine vaccines and truth.

There is a whole industry on the left and right that has rejected truth for confirmation bias and rage about the confirmation bias. In the run-up to January 6th, the media and Democrats are in full rage mode about what happened. Meanwhile, Trump supporters have turned the storming of the Capitol into some sort of patriotic act that should be celebrated.

As real religion has given way to politics, religious orthodoxy now is wrapped around political beliefs and partisan interpretations of events. With no grace in the political religion, there’s just rage, jackassery, and bullying anyone who dissents into silence.

Cancel culture thrives on all sides.

Our cultural outlets like movies and television shows are now all bad guys turned “anti-heroes.” Anyone and anything sincere, good, and true is laughed at and mocked by all sides as weak.

For all the screaming from the right about CRT, many of them have embraced post-modernism and intersectionalism too. “Follow the money” has become the hallmark phrase of post-modern conservatives convinced if one has any financial interest, real or imagined in anything, they cannot be trusted.

Gen Z and younger millennial right-wingers saw the neutralization of the supposed blue wave in 2020 as voters tired of progressive jackassery and concluded they needed to out jackass progressives and you’re a cuck if you don’t agree.

On the left, they spare no mercy for anyone who points out that maybe dissenters have a point. They bullied Patton Oswald, the comedian, into apologizing for being friends with Dave Chappelle. Gen Z and younger millennial progressives idolize Harry Potter, but are canceling its creator because she dared to truthfully say men cannot become women. Having canceled the actual Creator, they’ll cancel anyone who affirms his creation design.

Anyone who says anything you disagree with must have their motives questioned. We don’t take people at face value. We assume everyone has an angle or an agenda. We impute bad motives to disagreement instead of just disagreeing. Post-modernism has us all in its clutches.

Everyone has forgotten how this story ends and we’re miserable because of it. It has a happy ending and all these things, plus all the random rumblings in nature, make me think we’re in or about to be in the final chapter.

It all ends with the king returning. I’ve read the final chapters. There’s a pale horse, a man with a sword, violence, plague, fire, Johnny Cash singing back up, and then… the king who gathers all his people.

Y’all, if you’re on the winning team, maybe start acting like it. The story has a happy ending so you can be happy too. Being angry because temporary things are as temporary as you know they’re going to be or because you might lose some tribal power is wasted energy when the story has a happy ending. The only man that has ever truly mattered comes back in town. He cleans it all up and makes all things new and perfect and good.

Society may have lost that plot point. We shouldn’t. The story has a happy ending and really it is the only narrative that truly matters.