Do not be anxious, says the Lord

By John Pearring

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110720.cfm
PHIL 4:10-19
2 COR 8:9

Election mania will seemingly never end. So, how does God fit into this screeching, preening, and bloviating world, which has now become our daily fare? Election time certainly doesn't seem a holy and sacred moment, so how can holy and sacred fit in? 

This election is not really different from any other fist fight we find ourselves dealing with. Divisions between people put God on the back burner, and that's a constant goal of evil. Does God care? It's almost as if God isn’t involved in such crass and caustic endeavors. Is that because there's no room for God?

The question belies the answer. God doesn’t fit into a world as defined by ideologies. Ideologies can sound good, and often have very attractive objectives. God, however, isn’t formed. He isn’t an ideology. He is the real deal. God already supersedes all the distractions, but we're focused in the wrong place. The ideology wars are highly successful at masking and covering up God. Ideologies are pitched, sold and sealed with megaphones, advertising, and propaganda. These are distractions of the utmost kind from the true and present Lord of us all. 

For comparison, consider that God does not screech at us. He doesn’t preen. He doesn’t talk to us in an inflated and empty manner. Yet, here we are, encircled by energies that desire we all behave in synch with the rancor, conflict, and chaos of every sort. How are we so fooled?

“You justify yourselves in the sight of others,
but God knows your hearts;
for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God.”
(Luke 16:15)

God is here despite the race for human esteem. There is no question about that. How effective is the masking of God? How are we tricked to set God aside and focus instead on the ideologies that send us into chaos?

One of the exhausting things about being an adult in today’s world is the constant impossibility to react to evil’s lies and hoaxes with a calm and measured character. We're hurried into reacting. Our authority as calm and measured adults gets the bum's rush. Step up, don't just sit there, get going. The world is likely no more evil than in any era of human history. We can look to scriptures to confirm that. 

The issue that burdens authority today is the same as the past. Ideology controls our brain and heart cycles with anxiety in a hurried world full of communication overload. 

Authority, the expected duty of adulthood, is purposely crusted with a vast number of parasitical connections, ways to feast on our attention. God does not use the world’s avenues of connectivity. He speaks to us directly and through his creation. He gathers us together. His authority is complete and already fuels the order of the universe. The distractions mask that divine authority. 

I am speaking here about all authority. Authority in the family, at work, in Church, in commerce, and in our own neighborhoods and nations. These are the places that God connects to us. The fake authorities are easy to spot because they hammer us with communication chaos. Somehow, we get sidetracked by the chaos and leave the authority of God behind.

No servant can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
(Luke 16:13)

The responsibility of every adult is to provide patience in the face of chaos, negotiation in the face of rancor, and sacrifice mixed with quick decision-making in the face of conflict. We don’t have enough time to work out a plan for the constant chaos anymore. We can’t even rely upon an agreed upon set of rules for negotiations to solve rancorous arguments. And, we all feel ill equipped to step in with any effectiveness when the conflicts we are faced with take place outside of our reach. The chaos happening outside of our small world somehow has invaded into our homes. This is an amazing, fabricated result of being distracted from God.

We're forgetting that God is here with us. We've become frightened children in a world that needs adults.

I blame some specific technological advances for this connectivity overload which has invaded our homes. It has shifted our authority into an ideological warfare which completely ignores the loving and clear will of God. 

Social media communications have grown into a whirlwind. I have attempted to engage there and find it not just uncomfortable. It’s an emotional battleground of extremes. Where we once found news in just a few arenas, we now only find propaganda, manufactured opinions, and attention-getting hyperbole. In effect, our communication avenues are no longer means to engage each other, or to discover how our lives’ needs and wants are going. They are front lines of warring factions. To enter into the social media fray will likely end up with us becoming a soldier for some mostly emotional and dangerous time-consuming ideology.

The horrible thing about the fractuous connectivity with our family, friends, and peer groups is that everyone is suffering. There is no winner. We Christians have won everything by following God and agreeing to know his will. As the unbridled digital environment escalates at a fever pitch, the pressure increases upon our daily schedules and commitments, leaving us to think we're losers. 

Cameras and audio are now capturing our character and personality. Our physical appearance and quirky mannerisms are on display. Our very persons are now joined up with the digitizing of every document and transaction that we make. It’s not so much an issue of privacy as it is an issue of spam, deceit, and misinformation. Every thought, event, and even our daily activities are captured and made more quickly accessible. We’re all being sucked into a digital vortex when we focus our attention on how we look, how we act, and the groups that we belong to.

At the base of this digital and humanity crisis, this strange new chaos has lifted us into a battle for attention. This self-centered chaos is usually reserved only for celebrities. The mark of chaos, of course, is anxiety. We're experiencing the bane of fame without any of us being famous at all. We are anxious because we're overwhelmed with ourselves in a fight that has masked us from God.

Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.
Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
(Phillipians 4:6-7)

Let's set aside the ideologies and trust that God knows what he is doing. In the midst of the chaos, remember that our prayer and petitions go straight to God. His grace and blessings, then, come straight back to us. God is enough. 

This sounds too simple only because the chaos has fractured our senses. 

Let God repair us. Trust in God's wisdom. Realign our authority to him, and only speak from that calm and measured place of his will.