Selling fear

 

Yet again, one of my wife’s childhood friends who is a conservative Evangelical made a post on social media saying conservative Evangelical bullshit. And so yet again, I don’t want to call them out on it because it’s unfair to my wife for me to alienate her friends… but yet again, I really NEED to write about why what they posted is bullshit.

Here’s what they posted:

“The government sells fear so they can become your savior.

Christ says, “Fear not”, because he is your savior.

I choose Christ”.

 

My response: *silently screams in Exvangelical*

 

The response I would make if I didn’t mind starting a fight that could alienate my wife’s childhood friend:

Sure, I hate when the government tries to make people afraid of Latino immigrants so they can spend billions of dollars on a useless wall. I hate when the government tries to make people afraid of Muslims so they can spend trillions of dollars on a series of unwinnable wars. I hate when the government tries to make people afraid that trans women will rape their daughters in a public restroom, so they can get a bunch of citizens to see government intervention as the only way to be safe from this almost entirely imaginary problem (rather than asking what we as a society should do about the very real problem of straight, cisgender men sexually assaulting one out of five women, usually on a date). I hate it when the government tries to make people so afraid of socialism that they’re willing to support fascism.

But you know who else really loves to sell fear in order to control people?

Evangelical churches. The same people who sell you everything you believe about Christ.

I never would have grown up fearing that I might go to Hell, even if I did my utmost to please God and serve my neighbors and be a decent person, if they hadn’t sold me the idea.

I never would have grown up fearing that I would be left behind in the Rapture, if they hadn’t sold me the idea.

I never would have grown up fearing that listening to good music would put my soul in danger, if they hadn’t sold me the idea.

I never would have grown up fearing that I could be attacked or even possessed by demons, if they hadn’t sold me the idea.

I never would have thrown out my Star Wars and He-Man toys, out of fear that even playing with toys that portrayed dark magic could lead to actual evil forces attacking me, if they hadn’t sold me the idea.

I never would have grown up without Halloween, fearing that participation would be a form of devil worship, if they hadn’t sold me the idea.

I never would have spent my teen years terrified that even THINKING about sex would make me as faithless as any adulterer and as evil as any rapist, if they hadn’t sold me the idea.

And you know why they sold me those ideas?

Because if I would buy those ideas, and buy the idea that the church was the solution, then I would give them free money and labor for the rest of my life.

Because if I would buy those ideas, I would also buy the politics they wanted to sell me, and buy in so completely that I would even have voted for the orange incarnation of everything Jesus told people NOT to be.

Because if I would buy those ideas, I would buy anything they told me, no matter how absurd or immoral.

If I would buy those ideas, they would keep raking in money while only working an hour a week, selling non-existent solutions to non-existent problems.

NO ONE sells fear like fundamentalists. You recognize what’s happening when the fundamentalists involved are Muslim, but not when it’s you.

 

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