Hope Not Hortatory is Our Responsibility to the World

The antidote to what ails us is not for believers to shout like Jesus, “Woe!”

As I wrote earlier this week in light of Sunday’s lectionary readings, the correlative to the hope of resurrection is an understanding of sin as despair. Nihilism is the necessary predicate to tread boldly the path of the wicked and sit in league with scoffers. It is remarkable to me— and surely an indication of our predicament— that few observers have made the connections between American society’s rapid decline in religious belief and its concurrent increase in deaths of despair, cultural antagonism, vice-signaling, political grift, and rank bullshit.

That the zone is flooded with shit, in other words, is due to our collective nihilism.