A TWISTY THOUGHT SEQUENCE? MAYBE

 'O...o, po' little Jesus, dis worl' gonna break yo' heart.....'
So starts a spiritual. This particular train of thought begins with my thinking of how my late first wife's heart, had she been alive to see the Penn State scandal of 2010, would have been broken (she loved Penn State, of which she was an alumna). From there, I mull over how, sooner or later, this world breaks the hearts of close to all us bipeds.
Then I ask myself, and maybe ask God, What do we expect? We all need to grow up and know our parents, our countries, our 'tribes', including our faith communities, are human beings or human communities, with all their failings as well as their points of light. Why, then, do such shocks hurt as they do?
One reason is, how bad most humans (we Americans are, unfortunately, by no means unique in putting together theologies in almost every way but the God-centered way; anyone remember about Islamism and/or Hindutva, to name but two other bad examples?) are at understanding, and acting like, God.
One thing that I see as indispensable here is drawing a clear, sharp line between acting in the same way God looks to be and 'playing God', which is what humans do when they imagine God in all-too-human ways.
For us in what used to be called Christendom, Jesus is the primary exhibition of what God is really like, shorn of all (or most?) of the human projections we all put on God. Maybe Krishna is like that in Hinduism. Anyone who can enlighten me and my readers on this, please feel free. Jews and Muslims have their own, sometimes wonderfully idiosyncratic, 'takes' on these matters.
I've reminded my readers before of the meaning of the name 'Israel'; it means to have striven with God and man and...prevailed. Say WHAT?! Prevailed?! With GOD, no less?!!?
That's what our reaction might be if we read this seriously. Now, one can say (and be almost certainly right) Jacob 'prevailed' with God in the same way that a small boy might think he's 'prevailed' with his daddy, who he thinks he's just wrestled to the ground--that is, if he's one of the lucky ones who gets enough of the affectionate horseplay dads ought to give their children as needed. I'm happy to say my sibs and I are among that fortunate cohort.
To turn to probably the most immediately relevant example: the machinery of democracy always needs keeping up, and can always use improvements. We've been all too negligent in that since 1980, perhaps at least partially by design. Because an indispensable part of doing that is to have a citizenry with at least some time and gelt to spare from the struggle for our daily bread and a dry roof over our heads. Having those blessings has grown considerably harder since too many of us decided we wanted to live in Disneyland--by design? I wonder, myself. Those readers of mine who know of the economist James Buchanan (NOT the 15th president!!) should also wonder about that!
And I wonder if our anxieties about imagining ourselves to be Good People have a connection with this: could it be that those anxieties have grown as we've become so much more atomized and individuated? Could this be behind us growing more 'tribal', or is that aspect of our society only more apparent than it once was? Certainly the sense that our own particular parts of the economy are shrinking has something to do with our scrunching more into hostile 'tribes', although the extent of that is quite debatable.
I also think our anxieties about wanting to at least look like Good People are at the bottom of today's 'culture war' over CRT, living with LGBTQs, and the teaching of truthful history. A (shrinking) majority of us , including yours truly, are still Christians of various types. Being Christians, aren't we supposed to know our Scriptures? Jesus hit a deep mark when he said what is now Matthew 6:5-8, for one thing.
I mention this as those who are the loudest 'Christians' also are most conspicuous for acting the most unChristianly.
But more importantly, we need to remember something Jesus said to a rich young man who asked him how to obtain eternal life: "Why do you call me 'good'? No one is good, except God alone." (Mark 10:18, NIV)
If we remember that more often, maybe we can concentrate more on doing what is just for all of us, including restoration of what has been taken from people belonging to 'marginalized' groups and indeed to restoring whole ecosystems and our planet home as well. And not worry about looking like Good People.