Tucker Carlson and Dostoevsky: “I am truly responsible.”

“Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,”

― G.K. Chesterton

I watched Tucker’s address at Kirk’s funeral. He said something very profound, which has been largely lost amidst everything else going on. And I think it was the most Christian thing I've heard publicly in a while. He said:

“Our core prayer, given to us by Jesus, the Lord’s prayer, demands that we forgive other people, but preceding that is a request for our forgiveness. In other words, ‘forgive us our sins,’ meditate on what we’ve done wrong, how we’ve fallen short, and then it becomes possible to forgive other people….

“Change begins, the only change that matters, when we repent of our sins. We… me. A recognition that the real problem is me, and how fallen *I* am.”

This is something I would always press in my own sermons as a priest. “Forgive us our sins… as we forgive others.”

True change happens when we recognize the need for a change in ourselves.

It’s very easy to demonize the other and to scapegoat our problems away. But to quote Dostoevsky, once again:

“There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men’s sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things.”

Even the Qur'an is in agreement:

“Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” (Qur’an 13:11)

It is very easy, as a Christian (as I once was), to chant ‘Christ is King.’ It is much harder to say with Dostoevsky: ‘I am responsible for all’ …and to truly mean it.

Until the second follows from the first, is not our faith just a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal”? (1 Corinthians 13:1)

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