Bulletin 12.15.24

I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. 

– Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)

If you didn’t know any better, you might think all this political activity was the most important thing going on in the world today.

But, fortunately, you are a Christian. You know better.

However, many of our neighbors are not, and do not. They have succumbed to what the French philosopher Jacques Ellul called “the political illusion.”

If you have ever read Ellul, you know that his ideas do not easily reduce to sound bites. That said, I think it is fair to reduce the “the political illusion” to this: the illusion that politics plays a greater role in our lives than they do. Politics and the propaganda associated with politics demand more of our attention than it deserves, and when we yield to that demand, we give politics more power than it should have.

Christians understand that what has gone wrong with the world can’t be fixed with political activism or culture war victories. I have a lot of sympathy for the expression “politics is downstream from culture.” That is mostly true. But a more complete truth is that culture is downstream from theology and anthropology and ontology. Politics and culture are both effects, not causes…

– Warren Cole Smith, “EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: The Political Illusion” (Ministry Watch [online], August 23, 2024)

Psalm 24.7ff 

Reader: Lift up your heads, O gates, 

And be lifted up, O ancient doors, 

That the King of glory may come in!

People: Who is the King of glory? 

Reader:  The LORD strong and mighty, 

The LORD mighty in battle.

People: Lift up your heads, O gates, 

And lift them up, O ancient doors, 

That the King of glory may come in!

Reader: Who is this King of glory? 

People: The LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory. 

(Prayer)