Things are bleak. It’s only going to get worse. We are starkly faced with the existential choice of how we are going to act for our neighbor, for our nation, for ourselves. Fascism is here. Cruelty is here. It is in the bones and muscles and veins and nerves of our nation. We are not safe. No one is safe. Dread and Despair pursue us like relentless furies. There is no safety. Where is God amongst our ruins? Where is our salvation? Where is our hope? There is only sorrow and fear. It sounds like a psalm, the bleakest of psalms. The darkest of lamentations. But this is not some ancient biblical text. This is our United States of America.
Years ago, when I began imagining this bleak theology, it was in many ways a reaffirmation of Christian existentialism, but in a contemporary frame. It takes Kierkegaardian anxiety, despair, and the leap into faith painfully seriously. What is bleak about it is the context within which our actions and being (i.e., our becoming) take place. And it takes into account the fact that this bleakness is intrinsic to who we are and how we choose to act and become. It is intensely personal, existential, radical about the self. It is about the self, but it is in no way selfish.
This bleakness is also one of perspective about the condition of humanity. My theology is, to borrow from Kierkegaard, a particular religious understanding, discernment, and judgment about our collective and individual condition and situation. My conclusion is that our condition and situation is very bleak. And it’s always more bleak than we can comprehend. It has always been this way, but now we see it more vividly and exacting and severe, because it is.
This necessitates our individual and collective response, which is kindness. These are our works of love. In an earlier age, kindness would be called “charity,” but that word has been infected with a sanctimonious and philanthropic tone that I despise. The Greek of this kindness is agape, the Latin Vulgate’s caritas. Bleakness requires, demands love. In our lifetime of bleakness, love your neighbor as yourself. Because things are going to get worse. Soon and fast. And yes, I believe were are at this most basic, foundational level of action.
Kindness is resistance. In the wake of this election, where fascism and Christian nationalism has won not just the day, but our American age, this simple phrase keeps repeating in my head and heart. Kindness is resistance. The protective institutions we have built for ourselves, for so many reasons, have failed us for so many reasons. We risk failing each other and ourselves. But kindness can never be institutionalized. It requires the creativity of the human imagination and heart that institutions can never fathom or implement. Kindness is a work of love. It is a practice. We must cultivate these practices of kindness. We must make them real and lasting.
MAGA is the incurvatus in se, that selfish turning inward, for one’s own self and one’s own kind. It creates an imagined, pompous history of prosperity and status. It is cancer. It feeds on itself to kill. But kindness does not exist in such an environment. Kindness turns outward toward God and the neighbor and the stranger and the least of us. Kindness exists most brightly, most boldly in the bleakest of moments and situations. Kindness presents the saints. My bleak theology emphasizes starkly the bleakness of our world and how we live within and a part of it. Kindness is resistance.
The sobering part of kindness, the kindness that Jesus taught, is that kindness is risky. Kindness is threatening and has consequences. Protecting and aiding the vulnerable, the undocumented, people of color, women (especially trans women and women of color), trans and non-binary people, the queer person, the child, the disabled, the poor, the sick, the hungry, and so many more. These are risky behaviors for risky people. Such kindness can have repercussions, bleak ones. Kindness can get you killed. Kindness is resistance.
Kindness is subversive. Kindness resists dogma. Kindness resists law. Kindness resists oppression. Kindness resists division. Kindness resists fear. Kindness resists inaction. Kindness displaces despair. Even in our despair, we can act in kindness. Even in our hopelessness, we can act in kindness. This is the radicality of agape love. The bleak theology is that in despair, in anxiety, in our sorrow and lamentation, we can and must and do love one another. Kindness presents the saints.
The Bible is rife with stories of people – faithful people – being oppressed and imprisoned and killed. This is kind of the Bible’s thing. People suffer. People die. For Christians, this is most of the New Testament: living, surviving or dying in a hostile Roman Empire. The texts that became the New Testament circulated and were compiled within a hostile empire. The texts are about a hostile empire. The early followers of Jesus did not bow down to that god of empire. And they suffered for it. Empire is never our friend. Empires are of the greatest unkindness. MAGA is our empire now. We must act accordingly.
My bleak theology, our bleak theology is a theology of now. It affirms not only suffering, but our understanding of the present world, this present America in which we live. Our present is bleak. Our future is bleak. We do not know what will happen. We act, as Jesus taught and acted within the Roman Empire, against the MAGA Empire within which we live. I do not know what will happen to us. But I will act in kindness in the ways that I can. Bleakness does not mean to live and act without faith, hope, and love. It is about the condition and the attitude within which we live and find our being. Let us love one another, regardless of what the future will bring. Kindness is resistance. Kindness presents the saints.
