How to Flourish Amid Moral Chaos and Outrage by PATRICK SCHREINER for The Gospel Coalition
We’re in crisis. Currently this includes health, cultural, racial, and economic realities. Jonathan Dodson—pastor in Austin, Texas, and founder of Gospel-Centered Discipleship—argues in Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes that we’re also in a moral crisis. We struggle to distinguish good from evil. Our moral discernment barometer oscillates like a metronome.
Should we accept sexual revolution or insist on traditional categories? What should we think about immigration? How should we think through Christian platforms, distraction, tolerance, and pride in a new age? How should we vote when leaders are morally bankrupt? How should we react to the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements? How should we respond to what seems to be injustice if we don’t know the details?
The balm we need, Dodson argues, is Jesus’s words in the beatitudes. Jesus defines what goodness is in the greatest moral document of all time: the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7). Here the great teacher lays out the guide to a virtuous life.
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Pairing the Beatitudes with Our Age
Dodson pairs Matthew’s beatitudes to the issues of our age. He’s a pastor with one ear to Jesus’s teaching and the other attuned to his congregation and the current moment. Being poor in spirit is linked to the age of selfishness and individualism; mourning to distraction; meekness to hubris; righteousness to our moral vacuum; mercy to an age of tolerance; purity to an age of self-expression; peacemaking to outrage; persecution to our desire for comfort.
For example, in an era of outrage, we’re to take to heart Jesus’s teaching on peacemaking. We’re tempted toward what is bombastic and gets people excited. Clickbait titles fill the internet as institutions look for attention. But while some are tempted toward outrage, others are drawn to self-protection or what Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt call “safetyism.”
