Same Enemy, Same Tactics, Nothing Ever Happens

"Scripture and the Saints, rather than social media, should guide the Christian response to both real and perceived crisis." cf Luke 12.25

From Crisis

By Kennedy Hall

Scripture and the Saints, rather than social media, should guide the Christian response to both real and perceived crisis: "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life." (Luke 12.25)

There is a meme that goes around social media in various forms that states, “Nothing ever happens.” This meme is posted when there is some supposed threat leveled by a foreign government or if a sitting politician vows to raise hell if the opposing party does X, Y, or Z. Basically, the idea is that we are constantly surrounded by threats of extinction, war, financial crashes, and so on; and the threats almost never materialize. Yes, they sometimes do, but they rarely do.

Global warming lovers have been telling us for decades that the polar bears are one stray pop can away from falling off the face of the earth. But there are literally still polar bears in almost every province of Canada—even my own, albeit a 30-hour drive away—and the population seems to be growing. Bitcoin bros and goldbugs (I don’t have a problem with either, by the way) tell us that the market is one bad national financial policy away from crashing, and they may be right. Well, one of them will be right eventually, but it hasn’t happened. 

Alex Jones has been screaming about hybrid animals and gay frogs and globalists taking away our rights for almost as long as I have been alive. Come to think of it, he is probably most correct about the gay frogs. And every few years, we have to pick a side that will save the universe from destruction because the red team or the blue team is going to kill all the people who like the wrong team, and if we don’t vote harder, we will all be put into some form of a concentration camp.

And, of course, despite all these threats…nothing ever happens.

Well, okay, some stuff does happen sometimes. The Covid thing happened, but, funnily enough, I have searched high and low, and I still can’t find any alarmists predicting that event. Sure, some people warned in a generic sense that the government could use legislation wrongly for vaccines, etc., but an actual global response to a flu that resembled something from an Orwellian fantasy caught everyone by surprise.

In any event, all of these constant threats to our well-being and happiness cause us immense worry and consternation. I, for one, rarely consume news media—because I hate the news—but I still can’t avoid hearing from a friend that this or that apocalypse is a policy proposal away. And, as much as I ignore it, I still can’t help but think about it in the back of my mind at times.

And how do we generally respond to these threats of evil?

Well, more often than not, we look for someone to blame for the evil and someone or some group to demonize. It is those guys who are ruining the country! That country is gonna wipe us out, so we have to wipe them out! And so on.

But here’s the thing, the real enemies are threefold, and they are almost never the enemies we are told about on the news.

The world, the flesh, and the devil have been our archnemeses since day one—literally, since the first day that Adam and Eve made that consequential mistake in the Garden. Like an inverted and unholy trinity, the world is made flesh and the fallen spirit prowls throughout our hearts seeking souls to devour. But it is hard to realize that the true enemies are on the inside of our hearts and minds, so we externalize. We are the ones who are in a conspiracy against Heaven with every sin, but it is easier to find out the “truth” about the clandestine conspiracy to rig the election, or poison our food, etc.

Our conduct is often hateful to God, but admitting that and rectifying it is a lot harder than getting whipped up into a frenzy at a protest or a rally and practicing the Two Minute Hate with our closest friends.

The Bible and the Saints tell us to wage the battle within. Even the wars in Scripture are historical prefigurements of the war to wipe out Amalek in our soul. Instead, we tune into professional actors called news anchors to tell us about threats to national security.

Now, we all know this, but we fall for the trap anyway—again, and again, and again. Why?

Well, worldly distractions are like slot machines. We know that we will rarely ever get a jackpot, but we know someone or have heard of someone who has, so we keep pulling the lever in the hopes that something really is or will be happening. We do this because deep down we know we are wasting our time scrolling and watching, but if something really does happen, and that thing is legitimately important, we will feel like all that time we spent worrying about the next big thing or the next big enemy was really worth it.

But even if something really does happen, would all that time spent worrying be worth it?

In the wake of Hiroshima, C.S. Lewis wrote an essay about how we ought to live in an age of nuclear war. He wrote:

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things, praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that), but they need not dominate our minds.

I would paraphrase Lewis for our time and say: If we are all going to be destroyed by [insert threat], let that threat when it comes find us doing sensible things, like going to Mass, going to confession, reading books (not scrolling endlessly), and playing real sports (not e-sports). Let us gather—not huddled together virtually, but alone in reality.

The enemy is the same, so let’s not make it too easy.