We are shifting toward enlightenment. Not The Enlightenment, for we are leaving much of that behind. But a certain enlightened view of the world that is more than logic and rational, ideological and fearful, more than cynical and compassionate. We’re moving toward being real and being forgiving.

I know this sounds pie in the sky or perhaps too much like the progressive model of history from the early 20th century, but I assure you it isn’t. It is far more local, much smaller than that. In fact, I would call this an exclusively North American moment.

It is more like a readjustment, a recalibration. We are starting to set things aright. For those with a very linear or swinging pendulum view of history, in which all forces swing us from left to right to left again as we struggle to find our middle-way path between swings of extremism. That’s not my view, but it would certainly work here. Mostly because this shift is revealing a sense of returning.

'The fringe is finally looking fringier. ' Share on X

I am not sure what my grand view of history is, but I am taken with Phyllis Tickle’s description of emergence. And this seems in line with that.

In her description of cultural change, Tickle suggests that the cultural forces in opposition to change will ultimately be composed of only the fringe: those unwilling to even embrace the idea of compromise and would sooner die off than deal with change. Who would sooner see their house rot and fall down than renovate and make the whole structure sustainable.

This fringe, then, can become a barometer. We can measure change, not by the sense of majorities and conflict, but by the fringe’s response and how ridiculous it seems. And right now, our fringe looks more ridiculous than at any time in my life. So much so that Donald Trump is looking like a legitimate exit strategy, while simultaneously tapping into the fringey hope for a walled-off country of white people.

The fringe is finally looking fringier. Here’s how:

The judgement, the callousness, the ridiculousness of our moment is frightening. A senator believing a snowball disproves global warming and climate change. Companies believing they have a right to deny the rights of employees on religious grounds. The dehumanizing of our moments of conscience and the humanizing of corporations. The ridiculous has been passed off as politics. And at its root, is that cynical, tyrannical judgement: the sickness of our time.

The level of judgement that is required to force people on food stamps to piss in a cup, for instance, so that they can simply receive a check that barely covers the food a family needs to live on is absurd. And many cannot afford the stuff that will actually keep them healthy.

I was surprised to find out that the measurement we use to determine what assistance people receive is a placeholder. It is factored by asking “what is the lowest amount of money a family can use to feed itself?” Then tripling that. Poverty, similarly is determined by saying that nobody should spend more than a third of their income to feed themselves. Of course, none of this is based in luxury, but based in a rational approach to hunger, devised at a time in which we valued the relationship of a person to her society. The sort of thinking that led a president to famously argue:

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Two decades later, a presidential candidate was riding the late 1970s shift to selfishness. It was subtle. We were already worried about ourselves, about the lines at gas stations and the likelihood that the oil crisis would get worse. Hostages made us look weak. We needed an injection of can-do-it and we were chugging not-going-to-happen. So the heroin of optimism was given to us in the form of unadulterated selfishness:

“Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?”

As if the mark of the whole country rested on your individual shoulders: whether or not you felt better during a recession than you did before it. The candidate knew the answer was “no” before he said it. That’s why you heard it. He wanted you to think about yourself, and only yourself. You got hooked. We all got hooked.

Certainly we aren’t selfish because Ronald Reagan delivered a brilliant political question to the American people. That would be ridiculous. But this was greed’s coming out party. And we were so hungry for it.

But after 35 years of selfishness, we are starting to see the moral bankruptcy of it as a people, rather than the collection of individuals coming to the conclusion on our own, in selfishly singular ivory towers of ideological protection. We are now seeing it, in our midst, the exposure. We examine the unseemly grime the exposed gears stained our fingers with and we are looking around and finding it on everyone’s hands. Watching the same dance of trying to wipe it off with an old T-shirt, water seeming to make the process messier rather than easier, the rejection of the Lava soap, the only thing that will get that stuff off.

We are trying to quit selfishness cold turkey and the sweats have taken hold. We want the feeling back, but we don’t want to go back.

This is what we’re talking about now when we are dealing with Black Lives Matter and economic inequality. What we’re talking about in our churches when we are increasingly frustrated with not only the prosperity gospel, but with the culture war and its root in blind hatred. What we’re talking about when we walk away from church for not getting in the game. We are not only tired of it, we are finally getting fed up and angry. Not a selfish anger, but a righteous anger. Not for protecting a dying institution, but to protect dying innocents.

And we’re tired of being pitted against each other, rather than the people doing evil things and those destroying community. We want to take on the cancer killing our society and stealing our future. We’re tired of being manipulated and feeling the need to manipulate the truth to win an argument.

The question isn’t whether or not you are better off now than 4 years ago (meaning, of course, financially), but are we better off with our selfishness? Are we healthier? Wealthier and wiser? Are we happier and more generous? Has our faith grown and our work for the kingdom made our world better?

This is the shift in which that world we are so tired of is finally sliding away and we {praise GOD!} are finally stepping over to a new soil, the soil we claim to love and want. Of hope and collaboration. Of love and understanding. Our land. The land that was always here, right here, next to us the whole time, we just…couldn’t see it. For some reason obscured [or perhaps no reason at all, it was us who refused to see].

Here, on the verge of new life, building the new new world together, in peace, like we all have prayed for our entire lives. Finally it is coming into view, we just need to finish shifting over. There we go. It feels good. Right. Like home.