A Truly Existential Crisis

Way too many people these days think that some political outcome represents an existential crisis.  I cannot help but wonder if they have thought about what actually constitutes an existential crisis.  A massive meteor strike may have created the extinction of the dinosaurs, but even an event that immense did not end existence.  Besides, the dinosaurs lacked our adaptive abilities.

By most prognostications in the late 1940’s and throughout the 1950’s, we should all be long gone in some nuclear weapon fueled holocaust.  But here we are.  We were told by authors as varied as Hal Lindsey and Paul Ehrlich that we would all be gone by now through a God generated apocalypse or through the explosion of a so-called “population bomb.”  And yet, we remain.  The planet is still here; it still orbits the sun and rotates on its axis while we live, all-in-all, a pretty good life.

I doubt very seriously some election will produce a genuine existential threat.

Oh, sure.  Wandering through history one learns that some civilizations come and go, but from the perspective of the guy, or girl, just trying to get through the day, rule by the Phoenicians or the Romans or the British Empire mostly just affects the tax rate.  You still get up in the morning; you still go to work; you still love your family.  Sometimes the routine is more pleasant than other times, but the routine remains largely the same.

Like Paul told the church in Rome:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In light of that, what can really, truly threaten us?  It ain’t an election, that is for sure.  I mean, it’s right there in the quotation – “nor principalities.”

Maybe, instead of putting so much energy and worry into an election, we put that energy and faith in God, things will turn out better than you expect.

Get to church.