The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

The American Empire now embraces xenophobia, political corruption, and disinformation. Empathy lies slain. Children in Africa are dying because aid is cut off. Palestinians are slaughtered with weapons made in the USA. Grift and emoluments are applauded. Gestapo-like raids tear apart families. Funding for science and medical research is gutted. Quackery replaces legitimate public health. Democracy has given way to oligarchy and kakistocracy. A toxic authoritarian narcissist whose history, lifestyle, and decisions are diametrically opposite of the teaching of Jesus is venerated by white conservative Christians. That our society is polarized is a gross understatement. People see their fellow citizens as inhuman enemies.

A convergence of factors brought us here. Some of those factors are political, others economic, religious, racial, or tied to false narratives. 

Among the factors precipitating the collapse of the empire is an educational system that has only emphasized the importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEM education is vital, but STEM is being taught at the expense of the humanities. 

People are coming out of high school, college, and graduate school with no background in logic, ethics, history, philosophy, literature, or theology. They quite often have never been taught how to think logically and critically. Graduate schools hire writing coaches for doctoral candidates. Many adults have no clear picture of true American history, warts and all. 

Institutions of higher learning that once produced well-rounded, clear thinking, critically informed graduates, are now little more than trade schools. Tech people become billionaires without ever taking a course in the humanities. If life is all about making money, then greed is good, the end justifies any means necessary, and literature, music, art, history, and philosophy are at best pastimes, if not worthless. Foreign languages, sociology, and psychology only hold value if they contribute to wealth. 

Such a nation has no interest in morality or ethics. It seeks a “golden age” of increasing opulence for the very wealthy. Compassion is weakness. Humility is a vice. 

When a people bow to the golden calf of Mammon, the need to care, reason, think critically, and learn from diverse cultures evaporates. The immediate result is the chaos we see around us. The telos is the collapse of the empire.

Every empire in history has imploded. Some lasted for a millennium, others only decades. Some ended spectacularly like Imperial Japan and the Third Reich. Others faded into irrelevance. Most left a bloody trail of dead innocents in their wake. 

Could it be that God is indeed in all of this, not to make America great, but to bring her down? Perhaps those who survive will look back at the ruins and sing with Jesus’ mother Mary:

He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
    and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
    and sent the rich away empty.

(Luke 1:51-53 NRSVUE)