Things are rather tense in the United States.
More than two years of COVID lockdowns that isolated us from one another certainly didn’t help, but even before most people had heard of Dr. Fauci or vaccine cards, tensions were getting so bad that the Atlantic Monthly, one of the nation’s oldest and most-respected magazines, had a cover article in December 2019 titled “How to Stop a Civil War.” The idea was that civil war was already in the making; all we could do now was to try to stop it from spiraling into mass violence.
A promotion for the Atlantic issue read: “‘We don’t believe that the conditions in the United States today resemble those of 1850s America. But we worry that the ties that bind us are fraying at alarming speed—we are becoming contemptuous of each other in ways that are both dire and possibly irreversible,’ writes editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg in an introduction to The Atlantic’s December issue, ‘How to Stop a Civil War.’”
Again, this was 2019—before COVID, before January 6, before skyrocketing inflation, before the war in Ukraine, before astronomical gas prices. If it was tense then, what about now?
Millions of Americans Ready to Kill?
On July 20, 2022, Britain’s The Guardian ran an online article titled, “One in five US adults condone ‘justified’ political violence, mega-survey finds.” The opening paragraph stated: “One in five adults in the United States, equivalent to about 50 million people, believe that political violence is justified at least in some circumstances, a new mega-survey has found.”
Fifty million?
The article reported on a poll by the University of California at Davis. The question posed to about 9,000 Americans dealt with how willing people were to use violence to confront the political turmoil in the country today. Researchers “discovered that mistrust and alienation from democratic institutions have reached such a peak that substantial minorities of the American people now endorse violence as a means towards political ends. ‘The prospect of large-scale violence in the near future is entirely plausible,’ the scientists warn.”
If people are talking about civil war, then there is going to be violence. Right? Consider that the last civil war in America killed 620,000—with a population only one-tenth of what it is today.
Although violent extremists exist on both ends of the cultural and political spectrum, thus far, they’ve typically been a tiny minority. However, one in five is not an insignificant minority. “Most alarmingly,” the study found, “7.1% said that they would be willing to kill a person to advance an important political goal. The UC Davis team points out that, extrapolated to US society at large, that is the equivalent of 18 million Americans.”
Eighteen million Americans ready to kill over politics?
Social Media Heightens the Divide
The sad thing is that most people living in America today would not find these numbers hard to believe. The brewing political, cultural, and social tensions are palpable. The gaps between each side seem insurmountable and grow with each new crisis.
And though political and cultural differences are nothing new, the advent of social media—often a source of unbalanced and unthoughtful commentary from said extremists—continues to rub such differences in our faces 24/7. It’s nearly impossible to get away from it. Instead of having dinner with neighbors and talking weather and sports, the loudest voices on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are teaching us why we can’t trust them.
While many Americans fear the end of our nation, the leaders on each side blame the other for that impending demise. If Democrats see Republicans and Republicans see Democrats as actual existential threats, it’s no wonder that the number of those open to violence has increased.
Lawlessness Abounds
All this is so tragic. But it should not be surprising.
We are all fallen beings who have been corrupted by thousands of years of sin—all of us: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Romans 3:19). We all have violated God’s law, the Ten Commandment, making us all sinners.
Who is going to deny their own sinfulness?
Also, as we near the end of time, as we get closer to Second Coming, things are going to get worse. Jesus said so. Talking about the last days—wars, rumors of war, nation against nation, earthquakes, pestilence (Matthew 24: 6, 7)—He warned, “Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12).
All one has to do is look at this nation to see this prophecy unfolding: “In the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!” (2 Timothy 3:1–5).
Perilous times? Despisers of good? Unholy? Unloving? Watch The Final Events of Bible Prophecy to see what happens next.
What should we do as Christians in response to such news? We have been called to love our neighbors—not to shoot them. Read our Study Guide “A Love That Transforms” for the only solution when the nation and the world face a crisis of hatred and distrust.