That Which Consumes Us

Monday, June 29, 2026

We live in a consumeristic society.  If you asked me what was the biggest problem the church in America faces, it is that we consume church instead of join it – we go to be entertained instead of to be improved.  And many churches, needing funds, decide to supply something to be consumed instead of do what church is supposed to do.  But we are also being consumed.

We are, I think, being consumed by hatred.

Hatred is, sadly, the human condition.  We are born having to rid ourselves of it.  I have seen it too many times in my life.  Born at the University of Mississippi before it was racially integrated, and returning to Mississippi throughout my life, I was watched segregation and lynching be slowly discarded, but only with great effort and much pain.  I worked in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia in the late 1990’s.  I witnessed firsthand a hatred between Macedonians and Albanians that erupted into war not too long after I was there.  And now, in my senior years I am watching the world’s oldest hatred reassert itself – hatred of Jews.

This story out of Australia made me freshly aware of just how bad it has gotten.

A Jewish lawyer wounded in December’s terror attack targeting a Hanukkah event at Australia’s Bondi Beach discovered that AI-generated images depicting him as a “crisis actor” were proliferating online as he was going into surgery, a royal commission inquiry heard Monday.

Hours after a heinous attack, they were trying to disappear the attack!  I thought about the attackers – they were immigrants in Australia from Islamic places.  Islam is not a religion that seeks to shake off hatred, rather it simply tries to direct it away from itself.  The results are obvious.

Charles Cooke looks at one of the people that won a New York primary last week – her primary claim to fame is her participation in the pro-Palestinian, and therefore definitionally antisemitic, “protests” at Columbia University of not so long ago.  She wants to do away with all controls on immigration, permitting the inflow of more of the hatred filled.

And those hatred filled immigrants find fertile soil here in America.  Jim Geraghty’s analysis of last week’s electoral outcomes:

Furthermore, both fringes share a desire to tear down the existing structures and traditions of American life.

All these whiners should shut the heck up. If you’re an American, you’re lucky enough to live in one of the most generous societies that has ever existed. I won’t repeat the whole thing; click and reread it if you missed it or forgot when I laid it out in excruciating detail in November, but America gives a young person more opportunities for education, jobs, career advancement, and the good life than just about anywhere else. If you do not apply for help, you cannot complain that no one is willing to help you. If you do not even try to take advantage of existing opportunities, you cannot legitimately complain that American society has somehow failed you.

Some readers absolutely hated that edition of the Jolt, because they really love their narrative that they’ve been uniquely screwed and life has been particularly unfair to them. Or they hated my declaration that “no one ever said that achieving the American dream was going to be easy. No politician is coming to save you. The person who has the most influence over your quality of life is you.” Because it’s a lot more satisfying to blame other people than to look at our lives and contemplate how we’ve let ourselves down, and a lot easier to believe in some politician as a messiah figure — complete with their own temples.

And so, the imported hatred takes root and grows.

We debate constantly whether America is a “Christian” nation.  Traditionally, Christianity, in its many and varied expressions, has been the force in our culture that worked to throw out our natural hatreds.  It was not a theocracy.  It was not a formalized national religion.  It was just there and it predominated and America got a little better and a little less hate filled every day because of its presence.  But then, somewhere in my youth we decided it was the problem and it has slowly disappeared from the national conscience.  And as that has happened, hatred has returned and again begun to flourish in our midst.

I think it is time for churches to begin to demand its congregants join and improve, rather than consume.  After all.

Where to start?  Well, with generosity.  The death toll from the earthquake in Venezuela is simply frightening – approaching 2000.  The destruction is immense.  Right now, the only Christian organization I can find reaching out to them is Samaritan’s Purse.  Please give and give generously.