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It’s easy for me to get depressed about the state of things in this fallen world. Everywhere I look, there’s ugliness, ignorance and hatred. Those things are very real. But if all we see is the squalor in the world, we’re missing the love and beauty that were put all around us to experience. They’re very real, too.

I’ve seen evidence of the very bad and the very good this week, and I’m constantly trying to reconcile the two. It seems that the more you feel one of the extremes, the more you’re capable of experiencing the other extreme.

From talking to others, I suspect that I experience both extremes more strongly than most. The things that hurt me don’t just disappoint. They wound something really deeply, even if it’s something that wouldn’t affect others. I’ve never liked that about myself, but I suspect that if I didn’t feel so deeply about the hurtful things, I wouldn’t feel the beautiful things so strongly.

I started thinking about this Friday night as I drove west on I-20 in Birmingham just barely after sunset. I came over the top of a hill and suddenly had a vast open space ahead of me with hills in the distance. The fading sunset was a pinkish orange hanging just above the black of the hill contours.

It was breathtaking to me. It wasn’t just beautiful. It was something that touched me emotionally. For that moment, all the ugliness of the world was gone. All the problems of daily life were gone. I felt content, at peace and as though I was experiencing something God put in front of me — just for me.

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The defenders of the current coercive state political system seem exactly like this to me.

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It’s been almost eight years since the nation was subjected to a full nine-sixtheeth of a second of Janet Jackson’s bare breast on television — and the evil perps still haven’t paid a price. Sodom and Gomorrah are clearly just around the corner.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission fined CBS $55,000 for the brief “wardrobe malfunction” when part of Jackson’s costume slid open during a live Super Bowl performance. A long legal battle has ensued over whether the FCC had the legal power to do this, and a federal appeals court ruled this week that the decision was arbitrary.

The outcry from advocates for “decency” was swift and heartfelt:

“Today’s ruling reaches the level of judicial stupidity and is a sucker-punch to families everywhere,” said Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel sucker-punched. I just feel as though a bunch of people with nothing better to do are still pursuing something that would have been best forgotten by the day after the day it happened.

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