We live in a frightening time. Everything cosmic to personal seems unsettled. Within the space of a lifetime, we have become fully aware that hyper-dense black holes are flying around space, like loose cannonballs preparing to obliterate whatever target they choose, including our galaxy and us. This giant pinball game occurs within a universe that is not explainable by the standard model of cosmology. The universe not only expands but is increasing its rate of expansion, possibly spreading energy so thin that a dark freeze could be our ultimate fate. Those who study the universe don’t understand why this is happening.

On Earth, the unbridled burning of eons of stored carbon is creating havoc with Earth’s previously balanced climate. Global warming melts arctic and antarctic ice, raising sea levels. Warmer air releases untold amounts of methane previously locked up in permafrost, a gas that exceeds CO2 in its greenhouse effect. New and old pathogens revel in their newly expanded environmental range, pandemics hiding in plain sight just around the corner.

Humanity has its own black holes, cannonball-like men seeking power and riches who care not about the health of their fellow humans or planetary survival. Even in the US, a theoretical bastion of democracy, the population has voted into office a self-confessed dictator, one of a growing number of such tyrants across the globe, for whom the destruction of war is a profitable pastime. 

From the edge of the universe to our own backyard, times are indeed frightening. It is in times such as this that people on the fringe entertain worldviews that border on the insane and work to make them mainstream. They make Other people the cause of our trouble. Immigrants, people of color, and women are all cast as the enemy in a battle for supremacy. White male nationalistic Christianity is championed as the only solution to our cultural anxiety. And, of course, as happens in all such historical moments, they proclaim that it is spiritual warfare that will determine the future. The fate of the universe is portrayed in terms of the ultimate Armageddon when god will come, win the battle with the messiah leading the charge, and save the true believers from the hands of demons. 

The reality, of course, is that there are, in fact, demons at work in this world, not imaginary ghostly spirits who do naught but distract our attention, but greedy, rich, and powerful human beings who, through the deceit of false promises, lead the broken to clamor for them to be king. From a Christian perspective, the horror is that the truth and love incarnate in Jesus has been hijacked and hideously transformed into exactly the opposite of what he taught, lived, and died for. The demons that Jesus exorcised were the evil political and economic powers that oppressed the people of his time, and those same demons are alive and well today.

There is nothing we can do to stop the expansion of the universe or escape the fate of black holes. But there is much we can do to end the rampant evil that rears its ugly head at this moment in our history, and that includes fighting back against the illegal and the immoral. It also includes the essential tool and power at our disposal, and that is to manifest the spirit of love in our daily life, a spirit available to each and every one of us, a spirit that requires no system of belief other than our belief in one another as brother and sister. That is the banner we will carry into battle.

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The Progressive Professor seeks to relate theology to the public arena of history, politics, science, and whatever else is happening. Believing that truth is truth, wherever it may be found, The Professor, Ph.D, offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding who we are as human beings in an ever-changing context.