How many urgent campaign emails have you gotten in the last month? How many voices on television and social media have been telling you what a terrible situation we’re in? How many political marketers have been whispering in your ear: Be afraid. We have to fight. If their candidate wins, we will lose our country.
Regardless of our political affiliations, we are all being bathed in a sea of fear and fury. As a culture, we have been reduced to our most primal instincts – fight or flight. For years, they’ve told us that every political battle is a fight for the very survival of our family, our nation, our planet.
This propaganda is so seductive, because there is a lot of truth to it. We do live in a time of great danger for our nation, the international community, and the created order that sustains us all. There are a thousand reasons to be concerned.
The powers know this. They feed on it. We’re living in the midst of a huge, complex battle between political parties, corporations, think tanks, and marketers. They all use fear to push their agendas, because fear works. Fear sells.
We’re living in the midst of a global arms race, and fear is the weapon. The same marketers are working for both our friends and our enemies. They have terror and manipulation down to a science, and they’re throwing everything they’ve got at us. To win the election, to steer the debate, to take our country back. They will win this war, by any means necessary.
But this isn’t a war, this is a country. We’re not a battleground, we’re a community. And for quite some time now, our community and cultural institutions have been burning – ravaged by this scorched earth policy of the politics of fear.
This can’t continue forever. Fear is a limited resource, yet this extractive political industry is intent on draining it to the last drop – and beyond. All of these ideological forces – left, right, and center – are strip mining our shared consciousness. They’re sapping our strength and drowning us in a pool of fear. They can only scare us so many times before our adrenal glands dry up and we have nothing left but cynicism and despair.
The good news is that we don’t have to yield to this culture of terror. As followers of Jesus, we are given power to see through the deception. We have a solid rock to stand on, that endures beyond the froth of cable news and social media updates. He teaches us to feel the world’s pain and embrace our responsibility to participate in the healing process. The Spirit guides us in a life that is concerned, but not fearful; engaged, but not terrorized.
The future of our country doesn’t rely merely on who is elected this November, but rather on our own willingness to embody the love of God in the world. This is a question of both personal and collective responsibility as the people of God. Will we demonstrate an alternative reality to the destruction and terror that our nation and world is currently embracing?
In these times of cynicism, outrage, violence, and despair – who we will choose to be? How will we choose to respond to the fear, paranoia, hatred, and bitterness that is festering throughout our culture? How will we be peacemakers, justice-seekers, and lovers of our neighbors? Regardless of who captures political power, will we choose to live in the love and power of Jesus that casts out all fear?
