(Adapted from my book Listen Listen Speak)
Last week I, along with almost 48 million Americans, watched Joe Biden and Donald Trump attempt to verbally pummel the other into submission. And as many people as that was, it was a significantly lower viewership than the first presidential debate in 2020 (watched by more than 70 million people) and even lower still than the expected viewership this time around. The data is telling on a number of levels. It seems to reiterate what Jonathan Haidt and others have noted about the ever-growing number of Americans who consider themselves a part of the exhausted majority, those who are, “tired of the fighting and […] willing to listen to the other side and compromise.”
For almost two hours last Thursday, Biden and Trump fought without compromise. On one hand, this is what they were supposed to do. This was a debate, after all, and the candidates stand starkly opposed to one another, both politically and, it seems, personally. On the other hand… it really is exhausting, and it shows:
These expressions on the faces of those attending various debate watch parties tell us much of what we need to know; and they tell us much of what we already feel. The writer and professor Jon Askonas reminds us that, “a shared sense of reality is not natural. It is the product of social institutions that were once so powerful they could hold together a shared picture of the world.” In the digital age, news and social media have replaced previous social institutions and the issue isn’t so much that they lack the power to “hold together a shared picture of the world” as much as it is that they are incentivized to do the opposite, leaving us intentionally and intensely fragmented, leading us into exasperation and exhaustion.
Jonathan Haidt explains that, “A democracy cannot survive if its public squares are places where people fear speaking up and where no stable consensus can be reached. Social media’s empowerment of the far left, the far right, domestic trolls, and foreign agents is creating a system that looks less like democracy and more like rule by the most aggressive.” Our collective attention has become the media marketplace’s most cherished commodity and the market dynamics dictate that fracturing our attention in divisive directions and luring us into the reckless fray is the formula for keeping us tuned in despite our skepticism and suspicion about what we're seeing and hearing. We find ourselves unsettled, nauseous, and reeling.
Heroes and Heels
In 1981, a political scientist from Harvard named Samuel Huntington suggested that every sixty years or so, American society and culture are upended by a surging uprising of what he calls creedal passion, his term for describing a widespread “distrust of organized power.” These uprisings are marked by an overwhelming disgust people feel toward the general state of affairs, deep contempt toward established institutions of power or authority, increasing skepticism toward and distrust of said institutions, and once-fringe groups, generally made up of younger, emerging generations, seizing power through new modes of communication. I've not heard a more accurate and vivid description of the social media and 24-hour news cycle age.
These uprising always leave massive societal chasms. In our day and age, the personality has stepped into the void. Politics specifically and cultural discourse in general have devolved into a version of professional wrestling. I don’t know Joe Biden and Donald Trump personally; but I, like you, am acutely familiar with their public personas. They are characters, heroes and heels depending on your political leanings.
As a young child, I was a devoted fan of professional wrestling. I have vivid memories of Hulk Hogan wrestling the Macho Man Randy Savage at Wrestlemania V in 1989. As a ten-year old, I didn’t know it was all scripted. I believed there was real hatred between these two men and that their match would unfold as a genuine athletic contest. But in reality, Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea and Randall “Macho Man” Poffo were actors—personalities—playing parts in a choreographed dance of madness and mayhem.
The former wrestling producer Eric Bischoff writes that although professional wrestling looks, “like a staged, choreographed fight between two people who supposedly have an issue, something that they're fighting over... What you really don't see is the skill and the art that's required to engage the third person in that ring. The third person in the ring is the audience.”
The culture of public personalities today has much more in common with professional wrestling than with previous generations’ iterations of media and journalism. In the modern-day wrestling ring of news and social media, there are “good guys” and “bad guys,” playing parts, putting on performances, and we, the audience, are the third person in the ring.
As the personalities rage on, we are violently thrust back and forth against the ropes, clotheslines to the neck and elbows from the top rope. The noise of hyperbolic fear mongering overruns our feeds and we find ourselves being thrashed about, flung from one side of any given cultural tension to the other. We end up beaten and battered. We need relief. Something steady and sure. Something anchored, timeless, and certain. We need what the Bible calls everlasting.
El Olam
In Genesis 21, we find an obscure story about Abraham making a covenant agreement with the Philistine king Abimelech, that he might dwell safely in the land of the Philistines with his family. The story tells us that, “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the LORD, the everlasting God.”
YAHWEH EL OLAM.
The placement of this story and Abraham's acknowledgement of God's eternal quality are important and, I believe, intentional. In an earlier part of Genesis 21, Abraham's wife Sarah gives birth to their first son, Isaac. This was the child God had promised them years earlier and his birth was a miracle. Abraham was one hundred years old, Sarah ninety. The story makes clear that God has a unique plan for this family and for this son in particular.
Then in the chapter immediately following, Genesis 22, God asks Abraham to sacrifice this son who'd been gifted to them. In fact, the one story flows directly into the next.
Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines. After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” - Genesis 21:33–22:2
Abraham experiences the highest high and the lowest low that one can imagine in life—the birth of a long-awaited child, then the possible death of that beloved child— within the span of two chapters. And right in the middle of that story, Abraham calls on the name of the Everlasting God.
The gift of life.
Everlasting God.
The sacrifice of life.
This is Genesis 21-22.
Earlier in Genesis 21, Abraham had made a covenant with the Philistine king Abimelek. Here’s the thing—“Abimelek” isn’t a personal name; it’s a generic title given to all Philistine kings in the Old Testament, from the time of Abraham all the way through the time of King David. So while God has a specific, unique name, the Philistine is given a generic name, akin to simply saying, “The Philistine king,” or “you know, that guy, who was sort of like all the other guys.”
Earthly kings come and go and they’re mostly the same.
God is everlasting and there is no other like Him.
This too is Genesis 21-22.
Once more, back to the story. Genesis 21:33-34 tells us, “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of YHWH El Olam. And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines.” The word “sojourned” is a Hebrew word specifically meaning, “to dwell as a foreigner or alien.” Abraham dwells as an outsider in the land of the Philistines, where earthly kings come and go, vanquishing their enemies and flaunting their dominance, inundating the land with volatility and instability. But all the while, the everlasting God is with him.
As the people of God today, navigating a landscape laid waste by the outrage culture propagated by the calculated rage of personalities feels like a sojourn through the land of the Philistines. We sense deep in our bones that we don't belong here. And in one sense, we don't. This isn't the world God intended. The trees of this land don't bear the fruit of the Spirit. But we plant trees here because in other ways, this is exactly where we belong. God has called us, the everlasting God whose timeless truth and grace comes alive in power through his people.
So what are we to do as the people of God sojourning through the land of the modern-day Philistines? We plant fruit-bearing trees that will grow slow and steady over time in a land littered with the spoiled rot of near-sighted rage. We do this in confident hope that while the furor of the now is veiled in a faux urgency, the truth is that God is eternal and timeless. No matter what happens this November, no matter who does or does not reside in the White House, we remember that, “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:8-9). We cling to the reality that the Yahweh El Olam has, “been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. […] A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:1-2, 4).