Chickens Coming Home

By Charlie Johnston

It was a banner July for our little community here at A Sign of Hope. We were right about every aspect of Covid – and were one of the earliest to get it right. We didn’t use weasel words; we were full-throated about it.

It absolutely gobsmacked me that, during the depraved indifference to human suffering combined with the surreal dictatorial “Simon Sez” game the feds played with peoples’ lives, that evil little imp, Anthony Fauci, was squeeing like a little fangirl at her first ‘New Kids on the Block’ concert after her hormones first went into overdrive. But he was fangirling himself. Reading excerpts from Fauci’s diary, I could not help but think of SNL’s Stuart Smalley character. How do you know the truth, peddle the lies, then exult in how eagerly people eat up the lies?

Well, not all people. Just the ones who like to think of themselves as smart without doing any work to earn it. Sadly, far too many of that sort have occupied the high places of the media and the federal bureaucracy. They are the clergy of the cult of worship of the “holy” state – and think that makes them smart.  From their high places, they abused and oppressed the “rubes” they think honest critical thinkers are. It pleases me to no end to watch the actual pompous rubes being cast down from the high places in our society that they had highjacked without merit.

It got me thinking. Right around a hundred years ago, a debate was raging over whether the universe was static (neither expanding nor contracting) and eternal or dynamic and expanding. Belgian physicist and Catholic Priest Georges LeMaitre had posited the Big Bang Theory. Scientists had largely adopted a materialist view of everything, insisting that if it could not be explained in concrete terms it was either in error or an illusion. To scientists, the Big Bang sounded way too much like a creation event. Among the scientists lobbying for the static model was the young Albert Einstein, who posited a mechanism to explain an eternal, static universe.  But all the recorded and new evidence supported the Big Bang. By 1931, Einstein accepted the overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang and even, in later years, called the mechanism he had proposed to justify a static model as, “the biggest blunder of my life.” You still get a few scientists every few years positing a new justification for a static model. It is not because every iota of new evidence does not support the Big Bang (it does) but because these scientists chafe at a theory that supports the idea of a Creator. It is useful for me, as it separates the honest scientists from the confirmed ideologues, desperate to maintain their illusion of supremacy.

How different the response of Fauci and Einstein to overwhelming evidence proving their statements wrong! But the two men were looking for entirely different things. Einstein was primarily engaged in a search for truth. Fauci was engaged in a quest for pre-eminence and power. The quest for pre-eminence was there for Einstein, but it took to a backseat to the search for truth. It was the opposite for Fauci: in his case it was truth that had to sit in the back – and it didn’t much matter how many died to preserve his pre-eminence.

In every age, men strive to balance their need for influence with their desire to serve the good. I am not condemnatory of either goal. If you are going to accomplish good, you must have influence, so prudence dictates that you should not go self-righteously tilting at windmills to prove how righteous you are, lest you squander the capacity to accomplish any actual good at all. But influence without purpose is just the raw, naked will to power. It is meaningless and will ultimately leave you bereft. Both Alexander the Great and the most pathetic addict of the last century have returned to the same dust from which they came. Ninety-nine percent of the most influential men and women of just 50 years ago are entirely forgotten. Men are remembered for the good – or the evil – they do. Influence and power are transient things, mere tools to accomplish the good or evil of a lifetime. How pathetic the man who seeks these tools for themselves! He will have no legacy.

I don’t begrudge people their quest for influence. Over the years, many of the candidates and officials I have worked with have fretted to me, at times, about the role ambition plays in their lives as if it is something disreputable. (By and large, the people I work with are of such quality they are given to such serious introspection). The truth is that politics and public life is a LOT harder than it looks. Ambition is the fuel that keeps people going through the often brutal times. The key is to keep it all in proportion. A steady injection of gasoline keeps an automobile running – but serving as a reservoir for gas is NOT the purpose of that automobile. When it becomes a contest for which vehicle can hold the most gas – and no attention is paid to the operating systems of the automobile, no one gets anywhere and, soon enough, the fires and explosions will start.

Today the quest is disproportionally geared towards power and influence – the gas – rather than making the car run properly. The left is almost entirely taken with schemes to expand and cement their power. Too many on the right have been caught up in the same thing, not objecting to the coercion but simply wanting to wield it for their priorities. Even in most of the best cases, the right is arguing from a foundation of the leftist terms as if they are dispositive rather than partisan assumptions.

The quest for power and influence always plays out in the city of man. Meaning can only be found in the City of God…or the city of the satan. That is not to say that the quest for power and influence is not needful. It is. Just ask Sts. Joan of Arc, Robert Bellarmine, Thomas More and most other saints. It is as needful to accomplishing God’s purposes on earth as a hammer and saw are to building a house. But these things are tools. If you pursue a hammer and saw in order to build a house, there is meaning there. If you pursue the same things to better murder and dismember victims, there is meaning there, too. Evil meaning, but meaning. But if you pursue hammers and saws for their own sake, you are the most pitiable of creatures. You confuse means with ends. When those means are so confused, eventually they turn to evil…even as they are meaningless. Seeking meaning in the collection of tools is like trying to quench your thirst with a glass of sawdust.

St Augustine said, in prayer to the Lord, “Our heart is restless until it rests in You.” And so it is. Try to find satisfaction in ideology, politics, or any other earthly ism and you are ever doomed to disappointment, disappointment that degenerates into rage and despair. It is only in pursuing a noble purpose that we find satisfaction and peace. We serve God by serving those around us. Even if we are unaware of God, we unconsciously serve Him when we lovingly serve our fellows. The only thing that can sustain a noble purpose through every trial is love. Ambition will flag, revenge will turn sour, anger is exhausting. Only love will sustain a noble purpose and only a noble purpose will bring peace and contentment.

The chickens of our secular lusts for power and influence for their own sake have come home to roost – and it is a bitter season, indeed. No matter how much temporal improvement we accomplish, our hearts will remain restless until we apply ourselves to helping build the City of God. So, by all means, get your hammers and saws…but know for what you are getting them. Let us build the City of God.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on X at @JohnstonPilgrim

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The Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC)

18208 Preston Rd., Ste. D9-552

Dallas, Texas 75252