Scare
Tactics
“If
you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you
have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to
direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through
inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.”
Byron
Katie
I
wonder if you are watching all the political ads that have already started on
local television. I try to move fast enough to mute them before my ears are
permanently offended by the content. One in particular troubles me—a young
woman who is running for US Senate, says that liberals want to kill our babies
at 9 months gestational age. Another ad says the “secular left” wants us to
believe there are 51 genders. Now you know and I know that late term abortions
have been banned by law since 2003, and that no one has ever claimed there are
that many genders, but truth is irrelevant when it comes to politics. Instead
of putting your hand in the fire, and automatically jumping back, some of us
just walk on into it like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and take our seat in
the furnace. We accept lies and half-truths simply because in the sentence
before the person claimed to be a God-fearing Christian. This offends me as a citizen,
and it offends me as a Christian.
I will
accept responsibility for being offended—that is my issue, but it’s worrisome
when people who want to represent us stand in front of a television camera and
lie to our faces. Another of Byron Katie’s quotes says, “We don’t attach to
people or things; we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to be
true in the moment.” Uninvestigated concepts—we don’t take the time or
expend the effort to get the truth, either because we simply want to believe
the lie, or because we’re too lazy to fact check. In this age of
Google-everything, why on earth don’t we check before we swallow the bait?
These
attack ads cause suffering for an entire nation. We don’t need representatives
who lie to us, and surely, we don’t want to be represented by people who are
willing to lie to get our vote. Let’s reset the moral compass. Let’s look for
honest leaders and try ourselves to be honest people. And let’s ask those who
are running for office to leave God’s name out of their scare-tactic, attack
ads. It's simply revolting.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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