From “Hosanna” to “Crucify!” in a Matter of Seconds

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 7:11 am by Mark Shea

From “Hosanna” to “Crucify!” in a Matter of Seconds 2016-07-27T07:11:56-07:00 Mark Shea

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One of the remarkable observations Pope Francis makes in Laudato Si (in a passage I’m having trouble locating) is that idolatry not only harms the idolator (by making him adore that which is not God) and insults God, it places an unbearable burden on the idol. Sooner or later, the idol fails you.

Sometimes that failure is due to a flaw in the idol. Other times it is due to a flaw in the idolator. Often it is both. And sometimes it’s because the idol is better than the idolator. Indeed, on no few occasions, even God can be made into an idol by us.

Sanders made a key mistake in his campaign: he declared Hillary unfit for office. It was rhetorical overreach and his idolators took him at his word. It happens, especially in politics involving the young, that the young forget politics is the Art of the Possible and not of the Ideal. Now the old warhorse, perfectly aware of what politics really is, finds himself in the perplexing historical position of having to get his followers to grasp that they have a stark choice: continue to have a hissy fit because they cannot have their ideal or face the reality that if Hillary loses, the most dangerous man ever to be placed within reach of the White House will have all the guns and nukes, foreign and domestic, at his narcissistic, tyrannical, orange fingertips.

Being just about the biggest flag-waving patriot of our generation, Sanders gets what is at stake and so, having used his campaign to push Hillary to embrace a number of his policies, he is disappointed, but game enough to know it’s time to back her or watch the nation fall into the clutches of Trump. He’s willing to fall on his sword and even willing to let his former idolators hate him for it. The question is how many of them will abandon the idol and listen to the actual man for the common good.

That’s the thing when you make people your idols: they are the frailest reeds of all. They cannot support your outsize desires for perfection, partly because they are imperfect and partly because your idea of perfection is wrong. Those idols burdened with such demands often flame out (look at the fate of many pop stars) or, worse still, accept the idolatry and become monsters.

But even good people worthy of honor cannot bear the weight of idolatry. Indeed, even Jesus–who is worthy of worship–could not meet the demands of the mob for an idol because their idea of a Messiah was all wrong. That’s why they went from “Hosanna” to “Crucify!” so fast. Even he was a letdown because they wanted all the wrong stuff and he came to offer us eternal life, not money, pleasure, power, and honor. The only way to get to that is not by investing our egos in a Strong Man who tells us everything we want to hear, but through crucifixion, death, and resurrection.

And that is an acquired taste.

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