I recently returned from five days up in the mountains, the better part of four of which were spent with good friends. I had some more time by myself. Great hikes. Fellowship. Talking about things important and things incidental. What a blessing to have such an opportunity.

Back home, I was listening to a Spotify playlist that had a song with the name of this post. Made me think.

It IS a mad world. In that wherever we turn, we see the most remarkable things. And much of it completely inconsistent.

I have a wide circle of friends, acquaintances, and family. They cannot be corralled into a place of consistency.

I have friends and family who have joined the “Resistance.” This is that movement that has arisen as a result of the 2016 election and is wholly dedicated to opposing and even undermining the group elected to govern America last November. They are vehement in their ideals and at least, on occasion, compare the current president and administration to that of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. This Resistance is a vague or not-so-vague reference to the group that famously operated behind enemy lines during World War II, especially in France and German-occupied Europe. They believe the American Republic is at a crisis point and that the moral response is to oppose the new Executive and his appointees at nearly every point, lest we descend into fascism and lose the progress made in line with history’s imperative.

I have friends and family who don’t see it this way at all. They have been sidelined and their views discarded for many years as archaic and immoral. They look at popular culture, the media, Hollywood, and the like as rich elites or professional agitators completely out of touch with the principles that guide civilization and enhance community. They think things like socially constructed gender are absurd (citing the fact that racial groups think race cannot be socially constructed) and wonder where it will all end. These friends and family I know are accepting of differences and completely bridle at an accusation that they are racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, etc… They have been aghast at the extreme direction we’ve been headed.

I have friends and family who wake up every day who do not believe there is a God or do not know if there is one. Some are adamant there is no God and this natural state we are all in is all there is. Some accede that there may be a God but really don’t spend time thinking about it. It’s not a priority.

I have friends and family who wake up every morning and spend a considerable time in devotion to God.

I have friends and family who invest a very large amount of time and their financial resources helping those less fortunate. One couple in their 70s just returned from Kenya where they go annually to assist with an orphanage and school that our church supports. I have a friend who travels many, many miles in traffic each week to work with the most disenfranchised and marginalized people in our country, prisoners. I have friends and family who travel to Haiti and other disaster areas to help out. I have friends and family who spend many hours each week to help others they know who are in distress. Sitting with them in doctor’s waiting rooms, coming alongside them when they grieve. Being present with them when they struggle with all that life is throwing at them.

I have friends and family who do not do these things. They may have all sorts of reasons. But this is the case and it is not for me to judge the behavior of others. Some just do not have any time in their incredibly busy lives. Others are not so inclined and it’s not a priority. We are a strange people.

I am a very flawed person and often struggle with what it is that I am supposed to do. There is so much, after all. Our world gives so many possibilities.

Yes, it’s a mad world. Full of discord and sickness. Full of strife and disagreement and vitriol. But it’s also a beautiful world where the most amazing things happen regularly.

I was on a hike a few days ago. We were high up on a mountain outcropping and a friend observed a very small pine growing in a place a plant should not have taken hold. Are we so possessed by all of the toxicity around us that we don’t marvel daily at life growing out of harshness? We are quick to anger and just as quick at finding an outlet for our anger. Politics is in my DNA, something that used to offer me some measure of pride. Now, I increasingly see it as a curse.

For, after all, the political life begins in the head as judgment based upon all sorts of thoughts and feelings. But, once judgment grabs hold, it can dominate those thoughts and feelings, creating a kind of skewed reality, consumed as it is with being correct and opposing those who are incorrect.

The drive to judge others and to possess the wisdom to judge others is one of the greatest diseases keeping us in bondage. How ironic! To be judging is to be imprisoned.

And that place of bondage blurs our vision so we do not see the light of each day in all of its magnificence.

I have spoken to friends and family who have long been pretty well informed about things going on in the world who are now pulling back. They are smart people who understand that the world is a complex place but that they should stay abreast of things and to try to understand them to the best of their ability. They want to do the right thing. But, they see a level of madness that is somehow a greater challenge than confronting the thing itself. It’s the madness, not the thing.

On the other hand, I have family and friends who are consumed by the things going on in the world and who probably can’t imagine not being immersed in them. There’s almost a new raison d’etre (primary purpose for one’s existence).

I wonder at the motivation behind these two somewhat opposite responses. It would be a mistake to stereotype, although I’ll take a stab at it.

When listening to the former, I sense a level of sadness about the human side of our predicaments. I’m going to guess that it’s the “means” stuff that is to blame and not necessarily the “ends.” Anger. Discord. Incessant finger pointing and blame. The breakdown of institutions such as schools, churches and even governments that once accorded at least some measure of security in enhancing relationships … in binding us together as a people in the face of significant challenges. I hear sighs and laments and a refocus away from the political to the personal and internal. I don’t hear resignation and I do hear hope from these people. But the ground has shifted and there is more of a drive to withdraw from the public life rather than to engage in it.

When listening to the latter, I hear the opposite. There is inspiration and power. From the sidelines, there now comes purpose and drive. While the focus may not have changed, the volume certainly has. New connections are being forged and alliances built. The stakes are viewed, at least in part, as astronomically high. New means are employed and are justified by the end objectives. These are the battle grounds and the moral imperative is to engage. Passivity or withdrawal is just a form of appeasing the bad guys. Anger is justified. Discord is just a fact. Blame heaped upon the foe is just truth-telling.

I used to employ a tool with my advanced political science students by which they could sum up the things they’d learned at the term’s end. I created hypothetical conversations between philosophical adversaries and asked them to describe in long essay form the actual dialogue. For instance, I placed Rousseau and Nietzsche in a snowbound hut for 24 hours and let them have at it. If you know anything about these two 18th/19^th century figures who exercised great influence on western civilization, you’d know they would have competed at every turn. I mention this as a way of considering such a dialogue between these two groups just mentioned in the present day.

I wonder what they’d have to say to one another. I wonder how much they’d listen as well as try to convince. I wonder about how their minds and hearts would interact. I must admit, I carry on this dialogue in my head quite frequently although I’m not sure I know too many people from either camp who would care to do this thing in reality in any extended and meaningful way.

Perhaps these thoughts are just a kind of lament from a man in his 60s who has seen a lot, read and studied a lot and who is given to reflecting on some of the larger things in life. I’m sure it’s more than a little obvious that I align more closely with the former group than the latter. This while admitting that I’ve spent a significant portion of my life in the orbit of the latter.

Lest I end this on a sad note, I must admit that I do not lack in hope by any measure. Yes, this is a mad world and there’s plenty to find that is discouraging. However, it’s an immensely beautiful world with life abundant and new joys of each day to be discovered and lived into. Whether it’s a small tree growing out of a crack in the granite or the birth of a baby to loving parents … whether it’s that new stream carving its way over a formerly parched trail after blessed rain or the smile on the clerk’s face when she is touched by a kind word of thanks and encouragement and referred to by name. These are the things that are good and act as a true counterpoint to the madness and discord. Do we assign them the place in our consciousness they deserve? I hope so.