How should we then live?
Don't let the dread stop you from living a life, but also watch out for "hopium."
How should we then live?
Text: Jeremiah 29:4-8
January 5, 2025
“The LORD of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away. Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because your future depends on its welfare. The LORD of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims: Don’t let the prophets and diviners in your midst mislead you. Don’t pay attention to your dreams.” (CEB)
There is a sense of dread among many as we begin the year 2025. Maybe that dread isn’t shared by everyone -- and is certainly not a global one. Perhaps you feel optimistic about the next four years in which America may become, as some hope, “great again.” If you are one of such people, perhaps it may help you to imagine four years ago this time, or an early January day in 2009. Perhaps you’ve felt some level of dread and pessimism then.
For others, these remaining days of the Biden presidency feel like a fleeting period of calm before the storm; among the marginalized people, in particular in the immigrant community and the queer community, even the word "dread" might not fully capture the fear and anxiety they experience now.
And if you're watching the news or following social media posts, things appear far worse than eight years ago. Politicians, corporate executives, and the media seem to be openly capitulating. We don't hear a lot of protests and "resistance" like we did in 2017.
It's hard to imagine now that, a mere 90 days ago, there was a lot of hope and optimism. Many believed that the tight polling data notwithstanding, their preferred candidate would win and, quote, "democracy will prevail." There was hope. Then there was what some call "hopium." Ultimately, hopium led to disappointment and despair.
The Urban Dictionary defines "hopium" as follows: "The metaphorical substance that causes people to believe in a false hope... [H]opium represents the belief that the situation will someday improve."
It appears like the world is about to fall apart in two weeks. A lot of us are in a fight-or-flight mode. And a lot of us are despondent.
How should we then live, in the year 2025, in the face of an insurmountably hopeless situation? Is there a healthy way to live in spite of what is happening?
The book of Jeremiah was set in sixth century B.C.E., in a time of turmoil. Everything in their lives was turned upside down. The Kingdom of Judah and its military collapsed, and they were forcibly exiled to a foreign land. Their tradition and faith were fundamentally altered. And they were now ruled by an absolute monarch of another country that conquered them.
Many so-called prophets came and went, peddling hopium and toxic positivity. False optimism can debilitate people just as much as anxiety does. People stop tending to their daily lives and responsibilities in anticipation of a magic silver bullet that could end this disaster once and for all. We've seen this several years ago. It was the Emolument Clause. It was the Mueller Report. One pundit after another predicted an easy, silver-bullet solution to "end the tyranny and restore democracy." Of course, none of that happened.
The 29th chapter of Jeremiah contains a letter sent by the prophet Jeremiah to the leaders of the community exiled in Babylon. The first verse reads, "a letter from Jerusalem to the few surviving elders among the exiles." This implies that quite some time has passed since the people of Judah were exiled to Babylon and many elders had already died. In the letter, the prophet addresses the proliferation of hopium and says that it needs to be ignored. The prophet continues, "They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I didn't send them, declares the LORD." (v. 9.)
The prophet prescribes a rather counterintuitive solution. It is not a call to mass protest, general strike, or riot. It is not a suggestion to pack up and leave for Canada. It isn’t even political, or for that matter, particularly religious.
Instead, Jeremiah the prophet conveys the words of God: “Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number so that you don’t dwindle away.” (vv. 5, 6.)
It has been said that the greatest act of defiance is to live your life fully. Or, in the words of philosopher Albert Camus, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
As a Saint Mary's University student wrote in their student newspaper, Albert Camus' rebellion "is a brave act of defiance, like wearing a mischievous smile and laughing in the face of adversity. We rebel by finding joy in the every day, by committing acts of good, by pursuing our passions, and by embracing life's silliness as an opportunity for self-expression and creativity in opposition to moping about how nothing makes any sense."
Building houses and cultivating gardens are acts of building stability and resilience. “Increase in numbers” so that the community remains strong. Jeremiah’s people had no access to political power. As conquered and exiled people ruled by a despotic foreign king, they did not possess legal rights to be treated like equal citizens. Even then, they could build a strong and close-knit community of mutual aid and solidarity.
The prophet tells the elders to do two more things: “Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for [the welfare of the city] because your future depends on its welfare.” (v. 7.)
It’s sometimes difficult to think about our neighbors and our cities when we are overwhelmed by worries about ourselves. Yet, Jeremiah tells them to promote the welfare of the city of Babylon, where they live among lots of strangers who may even hate and despise them.
Jeremiah then tells them to pray for the well-being of these people as well as the king of Babylon who oppress them. The reason given is that “your future depends on [Babylon’s] welfare.”
In the Book of Common Prayer used by churches of the Anglican tradition, the officiant of a service offers a prayer for the reigning king, or in the Episcopal Church, a prayer for the president of the United States. Some Episcopal parishes began omitting this or substituted with a more vague prayer in 2017 in order to avoid invoking the name of the 45th president of the United States.
But according to Jeremiah, we are exhorted to pray for the president, regardless of which party he belongs or what political ideology he espouses. If the people of Judah, in a decidedly undemocratic environment that is openly hostile to them, could and should pray for King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, then we certainly ought to be praying for Donald J. Trump and his well-being.
This isn't about whitewashing or "sanewashing" his behavior, and certainly is not about "obeying in advance." This, however, is about committing the nation's well-being -- and therefore the future of all of us -- into the divine dimension and into the realm of God. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of speculation and propaganda. The news outlets want us to be glued to TV screens dreading what may or may not happen. Social media companies make a lot of money from our doomscrolling and outrage-induced posts.
What if we all prayed for Donald Trump, in spite of his weaknesses and character defects, to become the best president in U.S. history? What if we all prayed that, in spite of Donald Trump, the United States prospered as a united people who actually care about one another? In prayer, we do not micromanage God; rather, prayer gets us out of God's way and brings us into God's dimension where truly amazing things can happen. In any case, for the next four years, the welfare of this nation depends on the success and well-being -- especially the mental health -- of its president.
Of course, none of this negates the importance of fighting for a more just and equitable world, the necessity of organizing at the local level, or the moral obligation to speak up in support of the oppressed, persecuted, and oppressed. Yet, instead of escapism, we should be building our literal and figurative houses and gardens. We build and multiply our communities to the point of resiliency and long-term sustainability. We live our lives fully. We create and live off of our creations. We find and express sacred joy in doing these, even in the faces of the politicians who wish us harm (cf. Psalm 23:5). Starting from there, we build a new society within the shell of the old. The Kingdom of Heaven may be as small as a mustard seed (Matthew 13:31). Not everything in our lives revolves around Washington, D.C. A true lasting change can also begin small in our individual lives, our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our cities, and grow upwards into a national and worldwide transformation.
Notes:
Scripture is taken from the Common English Bible®, CEB® Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Common English Bible. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
The Episcopal Church (1979.) “The Prayers of the People.” Book of Common Prayers. https://bcponline.org/HE/pop.html
Rizwan, A. (2023.) “I Rebel; Therefore I Exist: Exploring Albert Camus and the Absurd.” The Saint Mary’s University Journal (2023, Aug 2). https://www.thesmujournal.ca/arts-culture/intro-to-albert-camus
Urban Dictionary. “Hopium.” https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hopium
I have found this article by Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) very helpful if you are interested in finding strategies to counter the next four years: https://c4ss.org/content/60042