Don’t Lose Your Soul in an Election Cycle

Are we willing to lose our own soul for an “existential threat”?

“Trump is an existential threat.”

“Harris is an existential threat.”

In the name of protecting views of democracy, referring to political opponents as “an existential threat” is the new name-calling.

What is an existential threat? It is a situation that hovers over our life, threatening our life, our very existence. It elicits the deepest of fears. If politicians can get us to panic, we are in the palm of their controlling hands. 

Can an election cycle really be an existential threat? If Kamala wins, will you die? If Trump wins, will you perish? I think not, for:

Your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Colossians 3:3

The problem with making a politician or an election an existential threat is that it calls for a hostile, anything-goes response, like that of a cornered raccoon who will shed whatever blood it takes to stop the threat, to survive.

Is that how we want to treat our neighbors who are Democrats or Republicans or Independents?

Let’s apply a core teaching of Jesus to our political moment:

And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?

Matthew 16:26, NLTL

What if playing the existential game, doing whatever it takes to get a political win, is the true existential threat? Are we willing to lose our soul for electoral victory? 

Your Soul

Soul is the hidden or spiritual side of the person. It includes an individual's thoughts and feelings, along with our heart or will, with its intents and choices. It also includes an individual's bodily life and social relations. As Dallas Willard writes in Renovation of the Heart, “Our soul is the aspect of our whole being which correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self.” You don’t have a soul, like a house has a foundation, or a heating and air system. You are a living soul.

As a living soul, I am defined and given purpose by the creative intention of God. I therefore refuse the definitions of political manipulators. I accept, welcome, and give myself the label: a follower of Jesus. I seek truth wherever it exists, learning to live life in the kingdom of God so as to be a person of gentle peace, the overflow of which is love for my neighbor and enemy.

Being a living soul created in the image of God means you never again have to be manipulated by the fear-mongering of politicians who tell us that “this election is an existential crisis.” No! Never! Our existence is not dependent on election cycles.

Yet the political operatives continue to scream:

We are in the war of our lifetime!

It is just baloney. It is noise that poisons a soul. It foments hatred that imprisons minds, warps souls, and leads us to using our human strength to harm another. It is what causes people to destroy themselves for political gain.

Jesus would ask: Are you sure you want to do that? What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?

When politicians lie, flip-flop, manipulate, say whatever it takes to get elected, bully the system, and dehumanize their opponents, they are losing their soul. Let’s not follow their example.  

The Vision

The Oval Office is not a throne. Nor is the Speakership of the House or the Majority Leader of the Senate. God owns and resides upon the only true throne in the universe, and…

To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and forever.

Rev. 5:13

This is our vision from today through the inauguration in January: My soul is spoken for. It is dedicated and devoted to the One Who Sits On The Throne. It is passionately committed to the Great Commandment, to loving the Lord my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind and with all my strength…and to loving my neighbor as myself (Mark 12:29-31).

When a soul is full of love pointed in the direction of God and neighbor, it automatically rules out seeing our neighbors as rivals who we must eliminate in the cause of defeating an existential threat.

Don’t eat the baloney—you’ll lose your soul.