The Political Illusion


 By Warren Cole Smith - Posted at MinistryWatch:

It’s important to keep our priorities aligned with Scripture, especially during this political season

Published August 23, 2024

Both major political parties have now completed their national conventions, on full display in nightly primetime broadcasts. News coverage between now and November will be dominated by political coverage. Candidates will spend billions of dollars on advertisements.

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.

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