I’m a bit of a pessimist. 

I’m in good company, in politics at least, as a supermajority of Americans have a similarly bad attitude toward our homeland. And I find melancholic fellows just as often in Catholic circles, which roam within shrinking and floundering dioceses around the country.

In short, it’s becoming fashionable to be pessimistic. And like any true pessimist, I’d maintain this is because such pessimism is really just a pejorative word for realism.

When you take off the hood of our churches, politics, economy, or any such thing, there are ample reasons to be pessimistic. Real, legitimate, data-driven reasons. Those of an intellectual bent who try to examine these entities will come across these reasons soon enough — and it suddenly becomes difficult to honestly imagine the Catholic Church exploding in popularity, Washington, D.C., becoming virtuous, or the global economy promoting charity toward the poor.

All the better, I say.

False optimism is a poison. The reasons for pessimism are true whether you acknowledge them or not. And it’s only by acknowledging them that you can hope to correct them. It’s a good thing, then, to see cultural commentators recognizing the many ills of this age.

But it’s not without its dangers. If we’re going to be rationally pessimistic — or even realistic — we need a guide. 

G.K. Chesterton was once asked, “What’s wrong with the world today?” His alleged reply carries with it great import for our age: 

Dear sir, 

I am. 

Yours, 

G.K. Chesterton.

Chesterton went on shortly after to produce a fuller, more systematic treatment of what indeed is wrong with the world. But he did not do so until first beginning as we should: humility. 

There is much wrong with the world. But the truth of our precarious situation is itself precarious. The devil might prefer his works to remain in darkness, but he has plenty of contingencies for when they come to light. His goals are attained just as much by knowledge as by ignorance, provided that knowledge is accompanied by either pride or despair. 

As the first is more grievous, we must begin there, and with its remedy: humility. Awareness of the wrongs of others all too often obscures our own. In our minds, we are puffed up by how we go against the tide of vice in our surrounding world. We relish, however deeply and secretly, being contrarian. Pride is a love of your own specialness, and specialness, after all, need not be one-directional. Satan is just as comfortable with our self-righteousness as our willful sinfulness; both send us to the same circle of hell. 

So, for any of us inclined to explore what’s wrong with the world, we must honestly, completely, and readily lead with: I am. The messes we uncover in the world are my messes, my failures, my sins — not another’s only. We may think ourselves opposed to them, but we are not always so helpful, for the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

The second temptation comes for those who avoid the first. Aware that we, too, are compromised, and perceiving the enormity of the personal and cultural task ahead of us, we yield to despair and cynicism. The world is so bad — it must be the worst it’s ever been. We are one family, one man, or at best one group of men — how can we withstand the tide? The rainclouds grow darker, and our Ark is left undone — indeed, it’s being actively dismantled. 

Let us here remember the Scriptural warning: “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). A little study can unbalance the mind; drink history to its depths and you will have cause for hope. For things are as bad as they’ve always been — perhaps worse here in our place than previously, perhaps uniquely arranged at this moment in time — but there is “nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). If you want to examine the problems of our Church, our politics, or our society, don’t be surprised at the rot you find — as if the world only now became fallen. 

Instead, choose hope. “There is nothing new under the sun” can itself be a kind of despair, which prompts us to give in to the futility of all our efforts. But this despair of Ecclesiastes is meant for deeper hope. We are meant to despair of only one thing: that we can do it alone. We have God with us (Romans 8:31). Just as our world’s problems have always been there, so has our world’s savior — and that is the reason for a cosmic optimism broader than any pessimism we might discover. 

So, despair that you can accomplish anything on your own (Psalm 127:1). But rejoice that you are not being asked to (Philippians 4:13). Then you will arrive at humility deeper than even Chesterton’s. He was asked, “What’s wrong?” and answered, “I am.” We may be asked, “What’s the solution?” May we fill in, “I am not.” Jesus Christ is the world’s only Savior, now and forever.

This is the drama of our liturgical time. Lent and Holy Week push us into new contact with the evil of our world; Easter and Pentecost prove that evil is, after all that, empty of power. Our fasting, prayer and almsgiving are not supposed to be our triumphs over our sinfulness, but an emptying of our pretensions. It is the Lord’s work in us, in our Lenten observances, that bears fruit beyond what our striving and willful disciplines may produce. Just as it’s the Lord’s work, in his Passion and Resurrection, that brings us the eternal life we still cannot earn for ourselves.

Despite this, I find my temperament to remain pessimistic — even justifiably so, on some level. Our world and Church still have many problems, most without easy solutions. 

But this pessimism is, ironically, justified only so long as it’s surrounded by an unshakeable optimism. Whether or not the solutions are ever found, our problems will still be solved. Because Easter is coming — and with it, our God who makes all things new.