Even as a young child, I was aware of Evil, although I referred to evil as “The Devil” As a young preacher and university student, I became aware of Original Sin, the built-in tendency in all humans to seek their own good at the expense of others. In other words, free enterprise.
I believed, though, that Evil could be conquered, and Original Sin could be erased, if we just got folks to see how good life would be if we were all nice to one another, and how hate and prejudice and violence and greed were useless and unnecessary and self-defeating.
I continued to believe that most of my life, even through the Great Depression and World War II and Viet Nam and Iraqistan.
Then we elected Donald Trump, and claimed he was Christian, and smart, and good for America, and that he won every election, regardless.
That’s when I became aware of Stupidity. Not ignorance, where you just don’t have the information, or simple-mindedness, where you just don’t have adequate brain compacity to understand, but Stupidity, where you just make all kinds of world-destruction and soul-destruction decisions and actions even though you are perfectly capable of knowing better.
I now believe that people are not basically evil, or basically good, but we are basically Stupid, and that most people enjoy being Stupid enough that they will not change.
I could avoid thinking we were Stupid, and hopeless, during the Holocaust, and the jungles, and weapons of mass destruction that did not really exist, because they were somehow foreign, wars and lies perpetrated by Nazis and CEOs. We could blame Evil and Original Sin.
But it’s my friends and family members and neighbors who elected Trump, and proclaim him above reproach and above the law, and who believe any lies he and his minions proclaim. I’m getting a look at Stupidity that is up close and personal.
We can point out hypocrisy and Stupidity until the cows come home. We can point out how self-defeating it is to destroy our own environment for a few short-term dollars, and how there is no such thing as “alternate facts,” because facts are facts, and how violence and greed have in their very being the seeds of our destruction.
It makes no diff, because we are not basically good people who get caught up in the ways of Evil sometimes. We are basically Stupid people who are quite willing for the boat to sink as long as WE are the ones who get to make the holes. You can’t get any more Stupid, or stupid, than that.
Evil? Original Sin? Those are minor league. It’s Stupidity that will do us in.
But have you ever heard a sermon about Stupidity? Are there liturgies and litanies imploring God to save us from Stupidity? Are there any hymns about “don’t be Stupid?” Camp songs? “I shall not be, I shall not be stupid.” “Someone’s being stupid, Lord, kum ba yah.” No.
We haven’t even put in a volume, not even a chapter, on Stupidity in Systematic Theology [although Reinhold Niebuhr came close]. It’s like the gravity field in quantum mechanics. No one has ever been able to develop a unified theory, not even Einstein, because no one knows how to fit the gravity field in with the other fields. Same as Stupidity in Systematic Theology. So, like the physicists do with gravity, theologians just ignore Stupidity and act like they are still covering the world of reality.
The whole church has really missed the main problem. How Stupid is that? Well, actually, there are churches that embrace Stupidity and its ionic narcissists as Messianic. That’s even more Stupid, in a theological sense. Just plain stupid, without a capital, in common sense.
We’re all going to hell in a handbasket. In the meantime, it might be good to remember that Christ died for you, the Holy Spirit is with us through the Resurrection, and God loves you.
John Robert McFarland
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