If Not this Easter, When?
Easter Sunday is meant to be about hope and a resurrection of new possibilities. God knows we need it now. As if a year in isolation wasn’t bad enough, it has to be admitted that we were already in a tough way prior to the arrival of this thing called COVID.
While millions have cast off the message of Easter, it turns out that it represents something we used to be. I don’t mean so much about religion. I mean the notion that if anything is of worth in this life, then it must be fought for by way of sacrifice. We admire it in those who fought for our freedoms. And we used to regard it highly in our parents and grandparents, who sacrificed so much for us, before we got around to accusing them of accepting things we now regard as unacceptable. The world they sacrificed for, and bettered, was our world, too. That is, before we cast it aside for its many faults. The fact that we threw out some of the most remarkable advances, due to some of the failures, left us with little to look to for example. We have tried to start anew with precious little to build upon.
Surely, previous generations would be right to wonder what became of our progress and aspirations, our spiritual faith and our care for one another. Somewhere on our modern journey we lost our ability to direct our own future, as we turned from generosity to greed, from humanity to hate, from democracy to dystopia, from ethical foundations to a kind of collective madness.
It took a global virus that we couldn’t see to remind us how fragile humanity is. And then it was only a little while longer before we were tearing ourselves apart in a world of science, conjecture, viruses, vile recriminations, and even death. When we required the steadiness of ethical words, generous forgiveness, and a humble humanity, we opted to separate ourselves instead of coming together. Is it any wonder that noted writers and philosophers have taken to calling our day the “age of dystopia”?
The disquieting problems we have experienced in recent years - the rise of hate groups, our fear of “the other,” a politics always riven with fear of not being up to the task, refugees on a record scale, our ineffectiveness in the face of climate change, the loss of work and of faith in the future - have exposed the global failure to realize the promises that were given to us regarding endless progress and wealth for all. Traditional ties, supports, and restrictions have been left behind, along with their assurances regarding a person’s self-worth and identity within the large whole.
Was what we built together following the Second World War, despite the many flaws, only an illusion? Was our equilibrium, our hegemony, really that fragile? What we have now is a world where all social, political, and economic forces determining our lives seem opaque. We are disconnected from one another, our future, ourselves.
Such things are why we need to be reminded about the possibility of the newness of life, of the ability to build again, only better and more equitably. There was a time when we respected institutions that defined the common good as well as personal identity. In our fear and disconnectedness, we have cast off such restraints in search of personal liberty and self-discovery. We’ve created a more difficult world, full of endless causes but little energizing coherence.
And where has that gotten us exactly? When no authority exists in matters of religion or politics or morals, people soon become unmoored in the face of such unlimited independence. With everything in a state of perpetual agitation, they become anxious and fatigued.
Despite all our differences, we have been herded by the forces of our modern world, our capitalism, technologies, and politics, into a common present where we all feel lost. Or to quote Hannah Arendt: ““All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy profaned.”
We desperately require a shared foundation, a common humanity. What we are getting, however, is an unaccountable individualism whose future is no longer a sure thing. There remains a great, sometimes undisclosed, fear that our global elites have cast off the constraints of social democracy in their pursuit of power and wealth.
Are new technologies and digital resources helping us? Apparently not. Humanity is taking its massive exodus into the emptiness of cyberspace, and leaving behind those shared institutions and foundations that once kept us together.
There is now this almost universal vexation of everyone with everyone else - a trait most easily discerned in social media. It poisons our civil societies and undermines our confidence in our shared future, leaving many, millions actually, turning to unfeeling and uncaring authoritative figures in hopes for some stability, some clear direction, instead of the incessant fog coming from everybody else.
This is a culture that stokes alienation and narcissism. And we need to reflect more penetratingly on our complicity in it all. We must find one another again, despite our differences, and remind our children that we aren’t just people of opinions, but that we can be people of objectivity. We were once moving along that path before we imploded, unable to come together to defeat our greatest challenges.
That’s why we need this Easter Sunday. More than any moment in modern time, we need a resurrection of faith in one another, in the sureness of a better world for our children, in the forgiving of one another for our meanness, and, yes, for millions, in a compassionate God. It’s in our hands. If not now, when?