The world is hyperventilating like never before. Especially for anyone who watches newscasts (I don’t) or engages on social media platforms (sadly, I do), the world is coming at us like one of those outrageous music videos where images and scenes cut and flash by so quickly you can barely make them out. Instead of a coherent narrative, what you take away from it is a general sense of things – a feeling, a mood. It’s empty, slightly disorienting, and probably more subtly compelling than we’d like to admit.

This sort of thing has happened to me before in my life—1968 was just as dizzying—but I’ll attribute the start of this dizzying noise to the June 27 debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Biden’s performance revealed his diminished abilities to the nation and the world, and his party panicked. Political activists and journalists (did I repeat myself?) went into machine mode to find a replacement candidate.

Since that date, the following has happened, in no particular order:

– An assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Experts reacted and concluded that a Trump victory against Biden was now inevitable.

– President Biden’s party also reacted, persuading him to drop out of the race, if not out of office. Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in and replaced him with surprising confidence. Experts came to the new conclusion that Harris was impossible to beat.

— Eucharistic Adoration made headlines thanks to the 10th National Eucharistic Congress, only to respond with an obvious mockery of the Last Supper at the opening of the XXXIII Olympiad. The show’s producers admitted that the Last Supper was intentionally alluded to, but retracted this. They eventually pulled the video.

— Two competitors in women’s Olympic boxing appeared to be testosterone-charged men. Then we learned they are hormonally intersex and were raised as women. The world is reacting and eager to learn more about Swyer syndrome and dual chromosome bodies.

— Reactions to a gruesome knife attack in northern England have sparked anti-immigration riots. It turns out the attacker was born in Wales, not a migrant. The nation is still in turmoil.

– Asian markets collapse; the headlines about the “bloodbath” on Wall Street are over. Until the markets suddenly recovered.
Why am I talking about this so much? Partly to illustrate how dramatic the headlines of the last five weeks have been, and partly to show how these ongoing stories reflect, either directly or indirectly, a global cultural, religious and political confusion and a sense of exaggerated panic. Countries, communities, politicians, experts, creatives and controllers – all of us, in fact – have barely grasped what is happening before jumping to conclusions. We voice our opinions, condemn and denigrate before we know the whole story – a bad habit that damages charity, hardens the heart and can lead to questionable actions with far-reaching consequences that do not always lead to good.

Christians rightly concluded that the Last Supper was being mocked at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Despite all the protests that we were simply too ignorant to know anything about Bacchus or Dionysus, we understood what was being mocked – not a great painting, but the Gospel-related, real event that the painting depicted – the institution of the Holy Eucharist by Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, jumping to the conclusion that women’s boxing had been infiltrated by men showed us that we still knew nothing about human biology and the mystery of birth through God’s love.

The situation reminds me of Matthew 19:12, where Jesus, speaking about marriage, says, “Some are unfit for marriage by birth, and some by the making of others…” We’ve been grappling with gender issues for a long time, but these are new questions: Should intersex people, whose bodies are female by default, compete with other, non-testosterone-soaked women, or should there be another way to compete? My gut says the latter, but I really don’t know.

I know only three things: First, Jesus wants us to love one another—to recognize the God-born humanity in every person who stands before us, and to love them for that before we react, decide, or judge. This can be challenging, and even Jesus acknowledged the reality that there are “enemies” (Matt. 5:44), but he always insists on the love of respect.

Second, while jumping to conclusions may be justified in some cases, if the above list shows anything, in most cases it only leads to confusion, anger, hatred and distrust.

Third, when the world seems to be spinning too fast and the stories are coming at us too quickly, it is good, even essential, that we step back, breathe more slowly, whisper a prayer to the One who is All-Wisdom, and refuse to simply jump into the cacophony of confusion. Amen.

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