[note to the reader…it has been almost a full year since I wrote or published anything; I have been in a season of reflection and pausing in my writing has been a part of that. I am not certain still if I will start in earnest again, but the following was burning inside of me in the light of recent events in the USA during the latter few weeks of 2017 and the first weeks of 2018]
Moral authority cannot simply be claimed (which is easy) but must be earned through clear demonstration over a lifetime.
We find ourselves in this sad moment when various personalities attempt to speak to the nation with moral authority when everyone watching knows that these people represent the worst bastions of a lack of any moral authority. How tragic, how bitterly hilarious to see members of Hollywood preach to the nation about equality and race when they have spent the last several decades, if not longer, exhibiting the very sin they complain about. Worse, in their case, they remonstrate yet have all along been masters of their own fate. Hollywood and its members have both the actual reality of the objection as we notice continuously their failure to choose women or people of various races for directors or producers, failing to pay equitably for what is clearly an equal job AND AS THE SAME TIME ALSO make films that promote and encourage the very behavior for which they now protest.
The country finds itself in a morass of its own making, having long ago abandoned any shred of a hint to value truth, running quickly to the comfort of relativism in which no one can ever be wrong. Now in the latter years of the second decade of the 21st century, we run headlong into a mirror and we are horrified by what we see.
Thus, we see the tragic hilarity of various spokespeople, supposedly of “the people,” in the two most elitist, exclusionary enclaves of the land, Hollywood and DC, trying to speak with a moral authority. Sure…it is possible that a few people in both gated worlds may have some morality, having chosen to eschew the relativism and raunchiness of their peers. Yet, overall, when the evidence of what they have produced is viewed and examined, their lifetime of work is abysmal and lacking in terms of earning a moral authority.
What we need now are voices that can exhibit the moral leadership we so desperately need. Those voices probably won’t be found in either Hollywood or DC, and we should not look there nor necessarily listen to people from there in vain hopes. Instead, the leadership we need will be found in the women and men in the cities and villages of the land. Look there and listen.
Yes, it is nice that finally, after the blistering white hot glare of the spotlight, that some in Hollywood and DC, as well as big business and academia, are finally speaking out. But their next steps should be to humble themselves, be quiet and simply start living out what they are proclaiming. Make movies and TV shows that honor this new worldview you claim; pass laws based on truth, not relativism, and in both places, demand a civility and wholesomeness of those in your power enclave. In the meanwhile, go sit in silence at the feet of those with true moral authority, and learn.