Bishop Robert Barron, Tucker Carlson talk rise of evil and hope of revival
The misery of the West
The conversation began with an attempt to explain why unhappiness seems to be growing exponentially in the Western world, which Barron described as the natural consequence of rejecting God.
Noting how rising suicide rates and plummeting birth rates in the West seemingly indicate increasing widespread despair, Carlson asked, “Why are people unhappy?”
“They've lost a sense of God. I mean, God is the supreme good,” Barron said. “And when you lose that sense of God and you collapse back in on yourself — that's St. Augustine; he defines sin as ‘incurvatus in se,’ I'm caved in around myself’ — when you do that, you are by definition unhappy.”
“When you lose a sense of objective value grounded in the supreme value of God, again, by definition, you become unhappy.”
Barron went on to explain that when the self and its desires supplant the intended role of God in one’s life, misery necessarily ensues.
If the Bible has one message, it's that when you live your life that way, you get lost,” he said. “When you deify your own psyche, your own ego, you get lost. The joy of life comes from forgetting, in this great ecstatic act, you forget about yourself and you lose yourself in some great value.”
Barron warned that many attempt to escape themselves by replacing God as the “highest good” with politics or sports, but noted that all such acts are fruitless violations of the First Commandment to have no other gods before Him.
“You get caved in around yourself and then you fuss around in this kind of addictive way,” he said, adding that all sin is a form of addiction. “That’s how I would diagnose this thing spiritually.”
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
