By David G. Bonagura, Jr.
What new thing, capable of creating hysteria, shaking Wall Street, and obsessing the media, awaits us in 2026? It was COVID in 2020, ChatGPT in 2022, generative AI in 2023, DOGE in 2025. The next New Thing is an unknown, but if it resembles its predecessors, it will capture our attention and generate new anxieties about how it will upend our lives.
Today we rarely perceive these Novel Things as trials sent by God to test our fidelity, and even less as punishments for sin. The God of the New Testament, we are told, is too loving for that.
Such “enlightened” theories disagree with St. Augustine, who vehemently held in The City of God that God sends trials to both the good and the bad, not because He is vengeful, but because He has ordained suffering as a means of spiritual growth. During the “universal catastrophe” that was the fall of the Roman Empire, Augustine affirmed that “the sufferings of Christians tended to their moral improvement, because they contemplated them with the eyes of faith” (I,9).
When Novel Things become part of ordinary life, we learn that they are no different from any other thing. What they do for us, and to us, depends on our attitudes toward them and how we use them. They may well be trials or punishments—if not for our culture, then for some of us as individuals. Negative outcomes, unfortunately, are likely: new things are born into a world weakened by sin and destined for human beings inclined to selfishness. A New Thing promised to improve our lives can, paradoxically and simultaneously, undermine them.
Augustine, advising the citizens of the City of God who still pilgrimage on earth on how to face the world’s most recent problems, did not appeal to technology or influencers. Rather, he offered eternal advice taken from the Bible, which contains the tools his contemporaries most needed. He listed them in book XV,6:
- “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).
- “Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that none of you repays evil for evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:14-15).
- “If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted” (Galatians 6:1).
- “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26).
- “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone” (Matthew 18:15).
- “As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may fear” (1 Timothy 5:20).
These passages of Scripture command three types of action: self-regulation, moral correction of the neighbor, and forgiveness. Only the first, in the form of diet or exercise, has any hope of making it onto the twenty-first-century New Year’s resolutions list. But the great bishop of Hippo saw what we, consumed by the world, cannot: “So many precepts are given about mutual forgiveness and the great care necessary to maintain peace” because without them “no one will be able to see God.”
Seeing God is the end of our existence. All other things, including the great goods of family, religious life, and charity, are ordered to this end. Self-regulation, moral correction, and forgiveness, Augustine writes, are “the way in which the citizens of the City of God are restored to health while they pilgrimage in this land, sighing for their heavenly Country.”
Novel Things tend to work in the opposite direction and, therefore, can be dangerous: their shine draws us toward them. In our desire to possess them, we turn our gaze away from God and His Commandments. So it was with Adam and Eve before the Tree of Eden; so it is with us before the latest New Thing. By turning away from God, Novel Things do not generate peace, the fruit of the Spirit that allows us to see God. They create anguish in the soul. When anguish reigns, God seems absent, for the anxious person, though unknowingly, has placed himself in the place of God.
How can we welcome the New Thing of 2026 as a means to grow in faith? We can put into practice Augustine’s biblical advice.
First, we strictly regulate our exposure to Novel Things. In this, St. John the Evangelist is more severe than Augustine: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:15-16).
Second, we seek a prudent approach to patiently correcting those in our care who have succumbed to sin. Parents care for children, family members for one another, and friends for friends. As noted above, St. Matthew and St. Paul offer different approaches on how correction should be done—privately or publicly, so that others may learn. Today, unless we have a public role as teachers or pastors, private is the judicious option.
Third, we practice forgiveness: we forgive those who offend us and ask forgiveness from those we have hurt. We should not worry about the world and who has wronged whom: we have no control there. Home and family are what truly matter. For our families to be centers of love, we must forgive our spouses, children, parents, and siblings—and ask for forgiveness when necessary.
With forgiveness comes peace, and with peace we see God. And when we see Him with a heart full of faith and love, no New Thing will be able to tear us away from Him.
About the author
David G. Bonagura, Jr. is the author, most recently, of 100 Tough Questions for Catholics: Common Obstacles to Faith Today, and translator of Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning. Adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s Seminary and the Catholic International University, he serves as religion editor of The University Bookman, a book review journal founded in 1960 by Russell Kirk. His personal website is here.