A Tested Nation

Events are invitations as well as tragedies or celebrations. The mature person knows to look for these treasures in these moments.

I have lived long enough to experience the consequences of political violence. I was just 3 years old when President Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and some of my earliest memories were of the chaos and grief around that event. Just a few years later, I watched the televised funeral for Dr. Martin Luther King in my home city of Atlanta, and I remember my grandfather, an Atlanta police officer, telling me stories of that day and the surrounding days when everyone was terrified of the riots that would tear us apart. By God’s grace, our city stayed relatively peaceful.

My grandfather was on duty the day of Dr. King’s funeral. He was one of the few officers who had time to go home, shower, and wear his dress uniform. Most of the officers had been on duty 24 hours a day for several days. When it came time to escort Dr. King’s widow and her oldest son to the Ebenezer Baptist Church for the service, my grandfather’s commanding officer told him he had that duty. The crowds in front of the church were massive, and to move Mrs. King and her son through that crowd would be dangerous, to say the least. The actor Harry Belafonte was with Mrs. King, and her son, Martin III, was with my grandfather, Officer Woodrow Moore, as they moved through the crowd. As the only white man in a sea of mourners, there was a real fear that one wrong move would spark a riot. But it didn’t happen. The crowds respectfully parted to let the group through.

Once Pawpaw had gotten Mrs. King, Mr. Belafonte, and Martin to the church, he turned to head back to the police line by himself. Mrs. King asked him to stay with them and come into the church. She was well aware of the dangers of a lone, white police officer moving through the crowd of mourners back to the police line. Pawpaw told her his orders were to return to the line so he could not stay. Then, in a show of such poise and graceful wisdom, Mrs. King turned to Mr. Belafonte and asked him to escort my grandfather back to the police line. My grandfather was safely back to his position.

Just a few months later, in June of 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was killed at a political rally in Los Angeles, CA. I watched him being shot on the TV news on our little Black and White TV. I watched my mother crying as the country mourned another act of political violence, as if this was now the norm!

Then, in September of 1975, a woman attempted to kill President Gerald Ford in San Fransisco, CA, and the chaos surrounding the events played out on our TV screens across the country.

In 981, I was working as an assistant at WYNX radio station in Smyrna, GA. As I was driving near the station on March 30, I heard the news on the radio and quickly drove to the station to offer to help with coverage of the event. I wanted to know as much as possible about this event since Mr. Reagan was the first president I had ever voted for. The station owner was the only one there and he directed me to do my very first on-air reporting. I broke into our regular programming with the news and started talking about the events. Again, our nation had seen another example of political violence.

While, thankfully, we have avoided another presidential assassination, yesterday’s events were eerily familiar to me as an American citizen who had seen so much violence all in the name of politics.

But, make no mistake, while this is deplorable, it isn’t unusual among us humans. We Americans are regularly fed a sea of violent events from our society’s conflicts. Riots, “mostly peaceful” protests that burn down police precincts and set up chaotic “autonomous zones,” and other examples of how people use events as excuses to violently protest this or that. Even Hollywood gets into the game by producing dystopian “entertainment” like the Purge movie franchise, where American society degenerates into a mad, violent spree for one day a year.

Human history is a history of violence. We could focus on examples of this all day. But what does the Faith offer us in confronting reality with all its stark and painful moments?

I have been accused of being fatally optimistic, so I’ll warn you now that my response will not be gripped by a darkened slavery to despondency.

St. Paul declares, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) and reportedly the last words of the great 4th-century saint John Chrysostom, dying in exile, was “Glory to God for all things.”

When St. Silouan was struggling against temptations, demons, and despair, he heard this from the Lord: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”

All of this strikes a contemporary man as nonsensical since the secular and materialistic society has formed him to assume that physical pain is “bad,” comfort and self-esteem are “good,” and anything that gets in the way of him exploring his passions and indulging his desires is “wrong” and “offensive.” He may even see “offensive words” as “violence.”

But the Faith offers us a different path. This Path invites us to see our current lives and the challenges, tragedies, and even failures as all possessing the potential for good and offering us powerful treasures that lead to wisdom. My best friend, Rod Loudermilk, used to put it this way: “No life is a total waste; it can always serve as a bad example.”

The heart of this radically powerful way of life, which sets a person free from the eternal negative results of any event in their lives, is twofold.

First, the Invitation to Repentance. Orthodox Christianity understands the word “repentance” in its most ancient and healthy form. Far from reducing repentance (metanoia) to merely feeling sorry or guilty for breaking a rule, Orthodoxy understands that repentance and the call to repentance is a constant invitation to “change your mind” or renew your perspective on your actions, events, and even failures. If we embrace the wisdom of St. Isaac, the Syrian who teaches us to see that “This life has been given to you for repentance; do not waste it on vain pursuits.”

So, we get to confront every event, both small and great, in our lives, our world, and all of humanity as a choice between repentance and vanity. If I ask God for the grace to repent, I can now see every event, every experience, and every moment as an invitation to change the way I think about my priorities, actions, and choices. In making that shift, I can then escape the slavery of choices that are destructive and addictive. In other words, there is nothing that can happen, good, bad, or indifferent, that doesn’t invite me to embrace the constant challenge to change how I think and then change how I live. Nothing is wasted. , Nothing is eternally tragic. Nothing is devoid of a kernel of wisdom or grace.

This is the AMAZING life of one who actively participates and cooperates with the Holy Spirit to become by grace what Christ is by nature.

And that brings me to the second powerful reality of the Faith in this radical shift.

Jesus Christ is Alive. Jesus Christ has conquered mortality. Jesus Christ is risen!

At the heart of Christianity isn’t a religious philosophy or some metaphysical narrative meant to intoxicate us into fantasy. No, at the heart of Christianity is a revived corpse. The Body nailed to the Cross on Friday is seen healed, alive, and real on Pascha Sunday. Jesus Christ is not dead. The worst that can happen to a man gripped by this shallow notion of life is to physically die. But Christ has conquered death itself so that there is nothing eternal about anything that even remotely carries the stench of death!

The Resurrection of Jesus is God’s final word about the temporariness of evil and failure. Death doesn’t survive. Death, in all its forms and presentations, is dead.

This reality disproves the idea that tragedy, evil, disappointment, mistake, or foolish choice can ever have eternal consequences. Jesus destroys the power of evil to be eternal. The Resurrection of Jesus means that the ultimate purpose of Creation is life in Christ so that we humans can be what we were created to be: God’s eternal companions enjoying Him and sharing in His life forever.

So, no circumstance in your life, in society, or in human history is capable of undoing either the power of repentance or the Resurrection of Jesus.

This means that your life is filled with meaning and purpose, even the tragedies. But this is also true of human history. Look at the tragedies of history, the Holocaust, World Wars, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, assassinations, degenerating morals, the madness that leads to mutilated bodies of children to fulfill some insanity about “wrong bodies” and the like. Every one of them is not devoid of invitations to repentance and the power of the Resurrection. They are never not tragic. They are never not bad. But they are never eternal.

Jesus Christ proves His Lordship by infusing even our worst tragedies (and they are tragedies) with the light of hope, salvation, and a changed life. To embrace this mindset is to embrace the perpetual joy of the eternal victory of Jesus Christ over the darkness of a shallow mindset that foolishly sees only the temporary and chooses the short-sighted slavery of revenge or momentary pleasure.

This is the choice Orthodox Christianity offers humanity. This is the Choice Jesus Christ offers you in this moment and every moment in your life, past, present, and future.

Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. He is also the founder of Faith Encouraged Ministries and produces the Faith Encouraged Daily Devotional on Substack.