Movement of Stone

On September 11, 2001, the security of Americans was changed by terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. The targets were not insignificant. The Pentagon and the World Trade Center are symbols of the greatest military power in the world and icons of modern industrial technology and economy. The “steel” of American culture had been shaken into a hole covered with stone.

Modern American culture is extremely ambivalent about the place of suffering. The value of suffering is not presumed; it is outright rejected. The current ethos of “It is wrong to not be happy” is social dogma. So when more suffering occurs, it demands an even more desperate need for moral dialogue, law and order. The pursuit of happiness becomes a social and political responsibility.

In contrast, the highest forms of art and religion have been the traditional modes by which a culture finds meaning in pain and suffering. Pain is the physical representation and suffering is the psychic representation which challenge the moral precepts of fairness, equality, and justice. Pain and suffering are not aggrandized. No one is suggesting moral masochism. They are accepted as facts of human existence. The Christian understanding of the cross is the prime example, both in art and religion, of how Western culture in particular expressed meaning in pain and suffering.

Many writers, especially post World Wars I & II, have lamented the failure of human enlightenment to create a technological and political utopia that spares one from the pain and social injustice of our past. In spite of this awareness today, it is ironic that our political left fights intensely for the arts, but without being chained to the religion of the cross. And our political right fights intensely to save “Christian roots” with a disdain for arts which promote “selling property and possessions to divide among them, as anyone had need” (Acts 2:45).

According to philosopher John Gray, “The human mind is programmed for survival, not truth.” At the bedrock of the body and the mind is the need for safety. This is again represented in physical and psychic terms as pain and suffering. The antithesis of safety is threat. Threat occurs when a boundary has been crossed. Whether the boundary is skin, one’s integrity of the self, the door to one’s home, or the wall on the border of one’s country—these borders define a person’s existence in terms of safety and threat. Culture provides a physical context in terms of land, community, and family, and interprets “pain and suffering” for individuals. This interpretation guides the meaning and purpose of pain and suffering. The individual who is “lost” or has a culture which fails in a meaningful interpretation of pain and suffering becomes an individual alone. In her book The Undying, Anne Boyer writes, “The person alone is already dead.”

While post-World Wars, post-modern, American culture has been evolving, especially with regard to shedding its skin of traditional Christian religion and authentic art, there have been three events in the last twenty years which have been catalysts in changing our culture’s approach toward safety and threat, pain and suffering. 9-11, the stock market crash of 2008 and the resulting financial crisis, and the viral pandemic of 2020 have all been apocalyptic breeches to safety as an American society and as American individuals. 

All were breeches to our boundaries. They were defined to a certain degree by our connection to geography. 9-11 is perhaps the most obvious in which our geographic isolation from terrorism was no longer a guarantee for our safety. Along the same line, COVID-19 is a global pandemic the likes we have never seen in history because of the global connection of our travel, economies, and environments. A bit more obtuse, the stock market crash and the housing crisis of the Great Recession of 2008 directly affected homeowners who provide the economic safety net for their homes. In all three of these crises, the internet, the iPhone, and electronic communication were tools used to break through the boundary.

To escape pain and suffering would be a natural act of defense. Blaise Pascal said, “We play to forget our misery.” A deeply wounded culture may seek desperate forms of therapy. The current cults of electronic gaming, sports, and pornography add convincing proof to Pascal’s proposition. 

One reason for this demise is the loss of locale. Religion, art, and culture are intrinsically “grounded” to the earth, to a particular local environment, and humanity’s place in it. The culture gives meaning to paint suffering through the geography of sky, tree, water, animal, light, darkness, desert, wind, seed, and soil.

A global culture is an illusion, a philosophical premise with “no skin in the game.” Cell phones are the faceless messengers of this global culture. This “angel of light” has disconnected us. And this culture, especially in America over the past twenty years, has increasingly fallen and failed to find value in suffering. Play and pleasure have become vacant substitutes for a Christian message of sacrifice and suffering. A culture that has lost its location in the world, has also lost its borders. Safety is more threatened than ever. A community without a central moral story (or worse, everyone creating their own self-imagined and self-protective story, i.e., a self-reliant gnosticism) views pain and suffering as not just unbearable, but purposeless. 

The individual confronted with wrongs is often threatened by guilt and defends himself or herself by shaming the outside forces of culture. One who is disobedient to culture in this way becomes dangerous. The political left shames the right for not wearing masks to protect others and the political right shames the left for rioting and looting businesses during racial demonstrations. In both cases, our disobedience to the cultural boundaries creates the threat of danger. It is no coincidence that Black Lives Matter and COVID-19 are linked together by the chains of individual autonomy and social inequality.

We are as threatened as ever by our physical and social environment. But unlike times past, we are not rooted in a common local ground. Real religion and art have eroded into politics of self-expression and preservation. We reject any guilt, but we are dying with shame. To defend ourselves, we spew our shame on others. 

The threat that a powerful, rich white man can hang you (or step on your neck) physically, socially, economically, or psychologically is as real as ever. 

The threat that a social ethos controlled by electronic media can cancel you physically, socially, economically, or psychologically is as real as ever.

The threat that an invisible virus can inhabit your lungs and kill millions especially the poor, sick, disadvantaged, and elderly is as real as ever.

The threat that a social structure that views all things in economic measures as a type of social Darwinism may fail to help the inequalities of race, gender, and education is as real as ever. (e.g. “Let the virus run its course…”)

Perhaps it is more than coincidental that three days after 9-11 the Church celebrates the finding of the cross on September 14. The message of the cross gives meaning to suffering. Pain and pleasure are transcended into sacrifice and joy.

Safety not only can be found in danger but is valued more in the midst of danger. Danger gives God purpose. In danger, we are ready to hear that “God is with us.” With Christ, we can shoulder the guilt without the scorn of shame. Christ lifts the shame of injustice. This is not just a psychic experience, but takes on actual flesh. Our prayer must have hands.

The cross is fulfilled in the resurrection. Suffering is fulfilled in compassion. Suffering alone is unbearable. It is not enough to endure the sacrifice with hope; we must suffer with others in love. This requires a movement. The cave of Christ gives no light, whether in Bethlehem or Jerusalem, if there is a stone unmoved. And Christ becomes an evil god if stones are thrown. It is not enough to just preach the message of the cross as the answer to suffering; there must be messengers on earth who show the world that the stone that holds us captive can be moved.