Scenes from the Empire of Fear

Other countries don’t need to have snipers perched everywhere, ready to blow away maniacs at their sporting events. But we do–and we will for the rest our lives and our children’s children’s children’s lives. Because we are becoming a police state that has chosen to exchange virtue and a civilization built on the love of God for a civilization built on the worship of money, sex, and pleasure and that has made us a lot of enemies–as sin always does. We live now in a steady and growing culture of fear, perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop, fearful that any day now the Judgement will come–and, of course, boastful that we neither deserve, nor need fear, any such judgment because a) we are a secular 21st century people who don’t believe in such mumbo jumbo; b) we are a good Christian people who don’t deserve such judgement since we are not sinners like tax collectors and prostitutes; c) nothing is our fault and everything is Their fault and besides it’s normal to go to the Super Bowl fearing a terrorist assault.

Snipers at the Super Bowl? Perfectly normal. Everything is just fine.