Ep. 32 - Politics and the Christian, Part 3: Balancing Mental Health and Political Pressures

Can the chaos of political cycles really impact our mental well-being and spiritual health? Join us, as we explore the profound effects of political climates, such as the whirlwind of the 2016 and 2020 elections and the relentless COVID-19 pandemic, on our emotional and psychological state. We unpack strategies for managing the anxiety and depression that have surged among U.S. adults, emphasizing the importance of understanding and leveraging your locus of control. Our conversation sheds light on how prolonged family interactions and the isolation enforced by pandemic restrictions have reshaped our personal experiences and societal dynamics.

As we turn our focus to the upcoming 2024 election cycle, we discuss the enduring impact of pandemic-induced loneliness and the pervasive feelings of helplessness it has left in its wake. Fear-driven political discourse can make it seem like everything is spiraling out of control, but we urge you to focus on what is within your immediate grasp: nurturing family bonds and building personal resilience. While acknowledging pressing issues like inflation and social rights, we offer insights into maintaining sanity and stability amidst the tumult, encouraging you to reflect on the things you can change.

Finally, we delve into the spiritual dimension of these turbulent times, grounding our discussion in the enduring wisdom of biblical principles. Drawing from scriptures and the teachings of Augustine's "City of God," we explore how faith can be a steadfast anchor amid the rise and fall of worldly empires. Through prayer, trust in a higher power, and fostering human connections, we advocate for facing uncertainties with grace and resilience. Together, let’s navigate these challenging times, armed with the knowledge that, ultimately, there is a divine sovereignty guiding us through.

Chapters

• 0:01 Impact of Politics on Mental Health
• 11:02 Navigating Personal Control Amid Political Anxiety
• 21:35 Strength and Faith Amid Spiritual Warfare
• 28:59 Eternal City of God Amid Uncertainty

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

All right, all right. Well, welcome back everyone to the Psych and Theology podcast. You have been joining us for this political series that we've been discussing, and today we're going to be talking about the impact of politics on your mental health. I'm Sam, this is my buddy, tim, and we have been and we've been we've been racking up some, some episodes here on this, on this process, and it's a very difficult season for a lot of people, but hopefully, as we've talked about the biblical perspective, on the role of government, how you should respond as a Christian, and then today we're talking about the impact on your mental health and how to how to take care of that. So, yeah, tim, here we go Another episode on this series.

Speaker 2: 0:48

All right, and just as we are recording this. This is scheduled to be released on election day. So those of you who are listening to this people are going to be going to the ballot box. It's going to be wall to wall news coverage. Psychotheo is going to get called up. The ballot box it's going to be wall-to-wall news coverage. Psychotheo is going to get called up for interviews. No doubt we're going to be in the war room with CNN. I'm sure Jake Tapper We've got him on speed dial and yeah. So this episode, we intended this episode to be released on Election Day because there's a lot of consternation around election day. I remember the election day of 2020 and 2016 and all of the let's say, the range of emotions that were felt on those two days.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Yeah, yeah, definitely a lot, and I'm sure we're going to see a lot afterwards and today we're going to talk about what to do, about all these different things. So I'll give a little bit of background and talk about how you can protect your mental health throughout this process, as well as your walk with the Lord as we think about this too. But yeah, let's start. First of all, why was there such an increase in anxiety and depression and family breakdown and education? I mean, there were a lot of issues the last cycle and it seems like every election cycle has its own thing, but the last one specifically, at least for me first-hand experience, but also seeing with a lot of my clients and then just seeing the news and seeing what was happening to people and a big factor to that was COVID. I'm not going to focus on that a lot today. I just want to talk a little bit about how you view your sense of control, your locus of control, and how that's going to be an important factor as we enter into this election cycle and election season. But just to give you just a little bit of numbers here on what happened the last election cycle so not only did we have the election cycle. We're also dealing with the impact of COVID and again we had numerousA and here was the rate of anxiety the people US adults who are reporting symptoms of anxiety from January to December 2019. So reported anxiety symptoms was 7.4 to about 8.6, right, and then if we jump forward to April 20 through August 2021, that jumped up to 28 to 37.2. That is a significant leap in anxiety and I'm going to talk a little bit about the factors surrounding that, but that's very significant. There, from April 20 through August 2021. Depression was 5.9% to 7.5%. That was from January through December 2019. So it's almost a little bit less than anxiety during the same time, but that jumped up to 20.2% to 31.1% from April 20th through August 2021. To 31.1% from April 20 through August 2021.

Speaker 1: 4:10

So there's a lot to impact there, and I'm going to make the argument that the majority of this had to do with the fact that people did not have a sense of control. They couldn't control anything. I mean, not only were you not able to control or manage things that were before within your control, like going to work, taking your kids to school, going out, having fun with friends, having community Then you were told what not to do what you could do. So it was two things right. One, you didn't have the ability to do something, so you have a little lack of control there, but then you were being told what to do or what not to do by the government. So there was a lot of layers of you not having any agency over some of the decisions that you wanted to make for yourself and for your family or for people that you cared about. So that creates a sense of anxiety in and of itself. Not only that. Then you have the impact of families being together.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Now, tim, I don't know if you knew this or if we've talked about this before, but one of the things that started to happen obviously, families, typically throughout the day, they're not with each other, right, kids are at school, the parents are at work, or you're at work, you're out with friends, if you have that free time, and all of a sudden, you know, depending on where you live in the country, right, there were different restrictions for different places. But then you know you had to wear masks, so you lose that person-to-person connection versus just being able to read facial expressions. And we felt it in the office with you know, when we had a council, for I think it was like a couple of months, maybe one or two months how to wear masks, how to counsel students, and it just took something away from those interactions. And you know, I'm just curious, you know for you or maybe from other people that you heard, I mean, what was that time like for you guys in interacting with your friends, with family?

Speaker 1: 6:02

I mean, I had conversations with my mom, who has a couple of health issues, and she was saying you know what, don't worry about any of this stuff, we're gonna continue interacting the way that we do. And you know, obviously, if we're sick or something happens and you know we'll take care of each other, but we're not gonna abide by this. And obviously I stood kind of by the same stance. But what was that? What was that time like for you, just to get a kind of a feel for kind of our different spaces or what we were doing during that time?

Speaker 2: 6:30

is that my 2020? Yeah, oh well, 2020 was wild.

Speaker 1: 6:34

Yeah, I mean and you were doing mission trips, right.

Speaker 2: 6:36

So I mean, I'm sure, well, no, because everything was getting canceled, all the flights were getting shut down well, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 6:41

So you weren't allowed to do that anymore. But you, that was part of your what you would do yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean generally.

Speaker 2: 6:46

Yeah, I mean there was a lot of anxiety, a lot of loss control, frustration. I mean I think personally I was very frustrated, yeah, because I I thought the whole thing was overblown. Not that kobe I'm not saying kobe was fake or anything like that I don't think that I had kovat, okay, uh, but the responses to k were completely beyond the pale and unprecedented in world history, ok, and so I and many others felt a great sense of frustration by what happened and the measures that were taken. I like what Tom Woods says.

Speaker 2: 7:22

He's a political commentator. He said the public health sector took this monomaniacal approach during COVID where the only thing of importance was quote, unquote, stop the spread, and that took precedence and everything else went by the wayside, including all other aspects of society that are important for us. So the whole world shut down and a lot of people I mean a lot of people I mean lots of anxiety and stress and drug addiction. You mentioned suicide and depression and anxiety all skyrocketed. Yeah, lots of things I mean. And I would just add to that government overreach. We watched state and federal powers get expanded, I mean just at such a rapid, unprecedented pace that anyone paying attention should have been alarmed by that.

Speaker 1: 8:12

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and so you're seeing this happen on a large scale. Push in culture during that time, even from government or civil perspective, where mental health was starting to kind of be considered more like hey, we need to focus on our mental health and you need to take care of yourself and all these different things, but the most important thing about mental health is the community or connection that you have with other people, and that was a primary thing that was being affected during COVID.

Speaker 2: 8:43

So you have it was a fundamentally anti-human response.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Yeah, in covid I mean and it's not even a complicated answer, like the answer was you need to have human to human connection and people were taking that and it was being taken away yeah, I mean we, we witnessed quite, uh, bizarre orwellian things going on People hugging themselves, you know, on, like between plastic bag layers and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Speaker 2: 9:10

I mean it was just insane, yeah, insane time. So, yeah, there were people who there's some really good books on this that I could recommend if I could recall their titles. But some of the commentators I was following at the time did a really good job of kind of explaining why certain people fell under different. I had different responses to this. Like you had people who were afraid to leave their homes. If they would leave their home, they were wearing a mask. They were driving alone, with the windows up, wearing a mask. I mean they're walking outside alone, no one's around, no one's like within a hundred yards of them, and they're wearing a mask. Right, why would people do that?

Speaker 2: 9:44

Well, there's, there's a sense of great anxiety. I mean some people they listen to authority. They're sort of more given to listening to authority than others. The authorities they perceive, and the media and government officials. So whatever those authorities say to them, they will conform and do because they have this great anxiety of being pushed out of the crowd or the herd. So there's a big herd mentality that was going on at this time, and so some people the worst thing in the world for them is to be exiled from that crowd or community. So to conform is a way of preserving self-preservation, in a sense.

Speaker 2: 10:24

But others had great anxiety over the liberties that were being lost and the government overreach and the really, really dark precedences that were being set, and they were being called crazy. You know, these people were being called crazy just for bringing it up, yeah, or you hate grandma because you bring these things up, you know. So there was a lot of anxiety and frustration there too. You could probably tell where I was yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, so let's fast forward to 2024, if you don't mind, yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Yeah, yeah, real, real quick, as so I mentioned the anxiety, mentioned the depression and how that started to impact families. The reason why I wanted to bring that up also is because this person I forget who it was, but I remember reading about it and they made a really interesting point because I was I was mentioning, because I was mentioning how you didn't have families that were together throughout the day, all the time, and now, all of a sudden, you have everyone at home and everyone isolated from everyone else, from their friends, extended family members and so on, and the point that this man was making was it seemed like people didn't really know how to even interact with their own family members, right, their only outlet for conversation or relating was outside of their own home. So when they came back home and it's everyone together they didn't know how to respond to that dynamic, which is an interesting point. I think that was, um that a lot of people experienced, because you do see an uprising extent, more loneliness felt, right, the depression, the anxiety and so on, and I just thought that was a very, a very interesting point. Um, as to is it that people didn't really know how to create genuine human to human connection with people that they loved and cared about, because those were the people that were being hurt the most. We saw an uprising, a lot of an uptick in a lot of different other areas as well.

Speaker 1: 12:17

But what does this all have to do, I guess, with leading into the 2024 election cycle. All of it had to do from 2020 and even before. That had to do with this idea of I don't have any control over the things that are going on in my life. I don't control over my job. I don't have any control over the things that are going on in my life. I don't control over my job. I don't have control over my finances. I don't have control over my family. I don't control over anything else that's happening around me. So here's the state where people were in at that time. So the way that I want to kind of set this up for this upcoming election is that you still, at least outside of your own family, don't have a lot of control over the outcome of what this election is going to be, and hopefully you're not creating for yourselves this sense of fear. You mentioned fear earlier that that was a main tool that was used at that time Like if you go out, you're going to hurt someone, or you don't really care about your family members if you do this or that and that's the same tactic that's used every election cycle. If you don't do X, that means this right, and if so-and-so gets into power, we're doomed. That's it, everything's over. So fear is a very common tactic, and fear causes anxiety. Fear can also cause depression.

Speaker 1: 13:37

So, as you look to this next election cycle, I think one of the primary things that I want to encourage you to do is what's within your control, right? And how do you prepare for something or prepare for things that are outside of your control? And a big part of that is this aspect of acceptance right, accepting what is within your control. So, for example, if you fear a certain thing that can happen, the first thing to ask yourself is how much control do I have over that outcome, right? No president is going to be able to fix all your problems, right? So you have to kind of start with yourself, with your family, with your close group of friends or close connections first. You got to start there, and I think I mentioned this in one that we did in an episode that we recorded, but we didn't get to air it. If you take this principle with you, I think this will be super helpful.

Speaker 1: 14:37

The family can't survive without the nation, but the nation cannot survive without the family. And, tim, in one of the previous episodes you mentioned kind of the established order. And because the established order kind of starts with the family, you know, father, husband be head of the household, wife being supportive in that, and then having this family unit, it's kind of like its own little government there, no, where you have someone kind of leading the family and that is your locus of control, right. If you're a mom, again that's your locus of control. If you're a dad, that's your locus of control. If you're single, that's your locus of control. If you're a dad, that's your locus of control. If you're single, that's your locus of control.

Speaker 1: 15:16

Just think of everything that's within your realm to do. That is where you need to place the most focus on, right. You have skills, you have abilities, you have certain levels of resilience that are going to help you get through this next election cycle. So I would encourage you to just focus on and start thinking about right now what's within my control and not putting all of your eggs in this basket of if this election goes your way, things are going to go well because there's still a lot of other things that are not within your control. And again, just refocus everything that is within your locus of control. Felt like I said that so many times there, but you get the point Just things that are within your control. Any questions that came up from that?

Speaker 2: 15:59

I have a lot of thoughts. I don't necessarily have a question from that. Let me just read some things that I think are in the forefront of political discourse right now for people to kind of understand what you're talking about. These are big issues that people don't necessarily have control over in their personal life Inflation, world War III, the housing market, lgbt immigration, reproductive rights, guns, racial discrimination, religious persecution All of those things are huge political conversations happening right now at the national level. But as an individual person, or maybe as an individual family, I don't really have a lot of control over that. Like I can vote, I can voice my opinion, but there's 330 million people in this country, you know, and so I'm sort of you know, in a proverbial sense, crossing my fingers and hoping that more of the country believes like I do, but they may not.

Speaker 2: 16:57

Arthur Brooks has a really good advice on this. He's a behavioral economist and he has a book called, or he used to have a podcast called the Art of Happiness, and he makes this observation that when someone's focused on politics, the more focused someone is on big national politics, the more anxiety that will that they'll usually feel, because it's these are huge issues and with big movements behind them and you have coordinated media efforts and hundreds of millions of dollars going into ground game activism to move the needle a little bit politically. And you're just one person observing this. I mean, it's like it's like being in the middle of an ocean and watching like a hurricane come over the horizon and it's like you're hoping the hurricane blows to the left or to the right, but you might get caught in it and that's a little bit like what national politics is. As an individual person, it's like you don't really have control over that storm. It's a big thing and if you, but if you focus on that big thing, it's going to create a lot of anxiety in you.

Speaker 1: 18:22

Yeah, you know, as you were talking about that, those were a lot of great, uh great points, by the way, of things that are not within our control. And that thing becomes a lot bigger if all you expose yourself is to information that reminds you of all of those things that you're not in control of. For example, I think there was a study done where there was a correlation between a strong correlation between how much news you watched and how anxious you were about those specific things, because it's happening outside of you. It's not. It's so much focus and anxiety. Usually it's something about the future. It can be in the past, but usually it's focused on the future, things that are not within your control. So it doesn't allow you to focus on the present.

Speaker 1: 19:10

So if that's always on your mind things that are not within your control it's going to continue to make you feel like you're not in control of anything in your life, which then leads to this aspect of depression. Again, those are often comorbid, right. They often are linked together. If you're anxiety, you can have some depression, or vice versa, right. So it makes a lot of sense. If you're focusing on things that you're not in control of, you're going to feel depressed, you're going to feel defeated, you're going to feel like you don't bring any contribution to your work, to anything around you, and you're going to start feeling sad and worthless. Right, again, a lot of feelings of depression. So if you're exposing yourself to news consistently or social media, and all you're seeing is negative, that's going to have an impact on your mood, right, and that's the other part of it too, is that give yourself moments, just little moments, where you can check and just be informed to what's happening. But if you do that every single day, oh gosh guys, you are going to be highly anxious, highly depressed, really quickly. Be highly anxious, highly depressed, really quickly.

Speaker 1: 20:17

So, and I think you know, taking a fast from those things, from political updates and all that I think will be, will be good. You want to be informed, you want to know what's going on. But, again, the things that are within your control and the only thing within your control right now is everything that's within your household and who you're going to vote for on the day of election, which is today, the day of release of this episode and then after that, again, all of those things that they've been promising, even depending on those things, hoping that they're going to happen still not within your control, but you're going to be hoping for those things to happen and I wouldn't even focus on that. Just continue to do what you've been doing on a day-to-day, be consistent with it and continue to focus on that, because that's going to empower you to feel like, okay, I have control over these things. How will I prepare for that? It'll help you to focus on the present, not on the future, not on the past. It's a good guideline.

Speaker 2: 21:10

All right, so I think we can get into some biblical theological advice. If you want, I'm ready to go deep. Let's go deep. Yeah, okay, we're going to go deep. I want to do a conspiratorial.

Speaker 1: 21:21

Okay.

Speaker 2: 21:25

So I like what you said about things that you focus on. If you focus on the things that are outside of your control, it's going to cause more anxiety in your life. I think there's a direct inverse to that, or converse to that, in the scriptures, where the Bible continually tells us to fix our gaze or like our mind's eye, fix our heart and our soul on the Lord. You see that in the Old and New Testament, david says I fix my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Lord. You see that in the Old and New Testament, david says I fix my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, psalm 27.1. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? All throughout the scriptures we're told to fear no, no, don't be afraid Isaiah. He says in the year that King Uzziah died. So this is chaos, political chaos in Israel. Isaiah is really worried and he has this vision of a God in the temple. God's on his throne and the angels are around him singing holy, holy, holy. Ezekiel, on his way to Babylon, has a vision Everyone reads about. Oh, it's a UFO. You know the wheel within a wheel. It's a UFO. No, it's. God is on his throne and he's in control. A lot of these visions that the prophets have are about God being in control, daniel, all the visions about the latter times and the end of days. The most high is on his throne. The son of man will bring all the nations to heal. You get all the way in the New Testament, go all the way to Revelation 1.

Speaker 2: 23:00

The New Testament church. This is like 90 AD, 90s AD. They're being persecuted. All but one disciple of Jesus is dead, martyred. The only one that's left is John, and the Romans tried to kill him. They boiled him alive and he didn't die, he wasn't harmed, and so they said well, we can't kill this guy, so let's get rid of him. So they put him on the island of Patmos and he's exiled. The churches are being persecuted under Domitian yes, domitian. I always get Diocletian and Domitian mixed up in my head, forgive me, church historians.

Speaker 1: 23:32

I should know better pretty sure it's Domitian.

Speaker 2: 23:36

Is the emperor, severe persecution. And during this time John has a vision. Is the emperor, severe persecution. And during this time John has a vision on the island of Patmos and he sees the resurrected, glorified Christ. He falls flat on his face and Christ reaches out his hand and grabs him and picks him up and the first thing he says to him is fear not. He says, for I am the everlasting one, I'm the eternal one, I was the one who was dead and then raised and alive forevermore and I hold the keys of death and Hades. And all the imagery of this glorified Christ is imagery of lordship over all of creation and over his churches. So, in the midst of all the persecution that was going on, christ is still over his churches and there's actually angels over the churches too. So God is ministering to his churches this whole time, but he tells them to fear not.

Speaker 2: 24:30

I think that's the key principle we need to take from the scriptures, and I don't mean to sound cliche when I say that. But the first century Christians, I think, dealt with a little bit more, a little bit more than we were Now. They weren't facing like global annihilation, you know, with like nuclear war or anything like that, but I don't think that's possible in the biblical narrative anyways. So we shouldn't fear that. But they were. They had reason to fear persecution. But God tells them fear not, don't be afraid. Look to me and remember, hold fast, persevere. So I think that's the first one is don't fear, fix your eyes on the Lord. Second is notice, understand that this is spiritual warfare. It's not like the spiritual warfare of going around I always like to say going around kicking demons in the face. You know that kind of spiritual warfare. This is high level, geopolitical spiritual warfare.

Speaker 2: 25:32

The scriptures talk about rulers and powers and principalities and heavenly places. They also talk about Satan himself being. He is the god of this world. He blinds the minds of people. He walks about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. That language actually is in the context of persecution of the Christians. So Satan is kind of looking to see who he can actually kill and destroy. The evil powers of this world under Satan use political chaos to their advantage. They want to institute evil.

Speaker 2: 26:12

So if you understand, like if all this stuff is making you anxious, just understand it's, it's warfare, the enemy is at work and that actually may help you to understand. Okay, like, oh, I understand, now I'm in a war. I like it's. Think of it this way, like the more you know about something, the less anxious you are about it, the more you know about it. Okay, like, uh, when you were a kid you were afraid of like, oh, there's a monster in the closet or there's something under my bed. Okay, and if you looked in the closet, you looked at the video. Okay, there's something there. You know.

Speaker 2: 26:49

The more I know about it no, I'm not saying there's nothing there in spiritual world, but but the more you understand that what is affecting you is not just some happenstance, it's not just some random stuff happening. There's actually an enemy at work. He kind of wakes you up like, oh, okay, what I? What can I do? I can pray. I actually have authority over the enemy in many respects through Christ, so, and God's in control anyways. So I don't need to. Even though there's chaos in the world that might actually mean a spell turmoil for me in my personal life, god's still in control and, as long as I understand, this is spiritual warfare that's going on. And, side note, that's also why Christians need to be engaged in politics is because it's actually spiritual warfare that's happening, just know like that's like that's going on. So that's the second thing. So one, god is in control, don't fear. Two, you're in a spiritual war. You got responsibilities as a Christian. In a spiritual war, things you could do is preach, evangelize, pray, try to influence the things that you can, but don't worry about the big things, because let God take care of that. And the third thing I think is getting to your point, that's acceptance, accepting what comes.

Speaker 2: 28:08

Augustine, who's a really famous father of the church he lived in the late fourth century, early fifth century, so this is like, if you think of like four early 400s. He writes a book called the city of God. City of God is all about helping Christians understand their role in the world, like how you reconcile the kind of the coexistence of good and evil in the world. Augustine is writing this book. In the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire, rome has just been sacked and destroyed by the Goths and Visigoths from the North and Germanic tribes. Rome, this eternal city, has just been wiped out. I mean this is just chaos. I mean, as St Jerome said, it shook the whole world when Rome fell, this eternal city.

Speaker 2: 28:59

You know, I always I like when I teach revelation one, I like to bring this up that Christ is the eternal one, and this is a contrast to Rome. The Romans would call Rome the eternal city, and the city of God in Christ still stands. That truly is eternal, not the city of Rome. The city of Rome is not eternal, um, but uh, yeah, like the rome fell and this, it was a christian empire, and it fell um, and so christians were just reeling like how, what? I mean, the pagans were blaming the christians, like you guys are the reason why we fell, you know. And so augustine city of God is sort of an apology against, not, not an, I'm sorry apology, but an apology in the sense of a defense against those accusations.

Speaker 2: 29:47

But he tells Christians and this is one of the main points of the book is that the city of God, that is, there's a line that runs through the heart of every person and on one side of that line is the city of God and the other is the city of man, and your place in the city of God is depending on your faith in Christ.

Speaker 2: 30:09

But the city of God isn't bound to some empire like the Roman Empire.

Speaker 2: 30:17

The Roman Empire would fall, the city of God continues, and so Christians need to understand that their place in this world, that we're pilgrims, we're always going to be pilgrims in the city of God, dealing with the city of man and all of its vices and wickedness and wars and turmoil and all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 30:34

The city of God endures amidst the cities of man. And I would say to American Christians that we might be looking at a situation where the American quote unquote empire even though it's not quite the same kind of empire America's dominance in the world is waning and we might be looking at a situation where our country goes through a really, really hard time something that it would just be unimaginable, you know and the world might totally change within our generation. Can you accept that as a Christian, or is your identity so bound up and being American and being that America is the greatest, must be the greatest, must be number one that If that produces a lot of anxiety in you that America might slide off the world stage, then I would say you probably need to do a little bit more meditation on Augustine and who's really in control of this world.

Speaker 2: 31:38

That's not to say we can't fight for the good things in this world, um, no, that's not to say we can't fight for right, the good things in this world and and there's a lot of good things about our country that's that are worth preserving and worth fighting for. I'm not saying don't do those things, but, uh, the point you made about acceptance, accepting what comes, because the city of god is eternal. America is not the eternal city. Constantinople is not the eternal city. It fell in the 1400s to the, to the Muslims, and that was another earth shattering event. The city of Rome is not the eternal city. The city of God is the eternal city.

Speaker 2: 32:14

And that is his church.

Speaker 1: 32:16

I love that. It's good, tim, it's good you know and close that with out with this as well. As you were talking about that, you know, one of the big words in the psychology or counseling world is this idea of resiliency ways. This is one of the benefits to looking back is that, as you think about this next upcoming season with the election, is that whatever coping skills or things that you used the last time around because that was a very difficult time for everyone, for a lot of people whatever you used at that time to cope, or whatever you learned from that time to cope, you can always draw back on some of those things to use this time around.

Speaker 1: 33:04

So what did you do last time that you weren't happy with that didn't help. Avoiding doing that and seeking to do things that actually did help and I made this point very early on about probably the most important need that was neglected during the last time around was seeking or not having the human to human connection, not being with other people face to face. So seek this time with other people not to create divisive or being argumentative with people that you love and care about. Talk about issues. Do so respectfully. I mean you know we do this all the time where we can talk about issues and if you, if you respectfully I mean you know we do this all the time where we can talk about issues and if you, if you disagree, then you disagree and that's fine. But you shouldn't be losing so many people from from this, from this, this topic, because it's just one part of all of your life, one part of everything else that's that's going on in your life right now.

Speaker 1: 33:58

So focus on those things that helped you get through some things last time and every difficult situation that you've had before. The Lord has carried you through some difficult moments. Use that, Draw close to him and to your point. At the end of the day, god's in control of everything. Everything else that's not within your control. Don't focus on that. Focus on what God has placed on your plate at this moment in time. God is in control of everything. I think that's a good place to close out this series. All right, guys? Well, thank you for tuning in Sam and Tim here saying we'll see you next time.