We are in the middle of a holy day season that points our attention toward why we’re here, where we’re going, and what we need to be doing on the way.
There is a being out there who would very much like to divert your attention elsewhere.
Anywhere.
In the first century, the Roman poet Juvenal remarked that the people of Rome had been lulled into relinquishing their power as members of a republic in exchange for just two things: panem et circenses.
Bread and circuses.
Juvenal held that the citizens of Rome were content to let others rule over them as long as they were provided with free food (the Annona, or “grain dole”) and public entertainment (like chariot races and gladiatorial combat). A pacified, distracted population was much easier to control—and less likely to rebel—than the alternative.
(Juvenal was probably onto something. Tiberius described the Annona as the responsibility of the emperor—a charge that, neglected, “will involve the state in utter ruin.”)
Today, the phrase “bread and circuses” isn’t nearly as literal. It’s a shorthand way to talk about any attempt to distract, divert, or otherwise mollify people from focusing on a bigger issue. And, let’s be honest, politics are filled with bread and circuses: constant attempts from countless leaders across the whole political spectrum to keep people looking anywhere but at the real problem.
Except Juvenal was wrong about something.
It’s all bread and circuses.
All of it.
All the political debates, all the big-ticket news items, all the shouting commentators—everything that boils our blood and begs us to weigh in and join the shouting match—every last bit of it is bread and circuses.
Not from a Roman emperor.
Not from the political party in charge.
Not from the political party trying to gain control.
There’s a bigger game playing out here—a puppet show filled with smoke and mirrors, all meant to keep you looking somewhere else than at the entity pulling the strings:
The god of this age. “That serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). He and his demons are hard at work creating as many distractions as possible—compelling ones; distractions that grab us by the collar and demand that we get involved and get entrenched with one side or the other.
Bread. And. Circuses.
We’re going to find right and wrong out there in the world, absolutely. And as Christians, we ought to be honing the kind of discernment that looks to God’s word for the dividing lines between wrong and right.
But this is not our world.
These are not our governments.
These are not our fights.
On a personal level, we must be committed to doing the right thing, always. But we must also remember that we are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13)—wanderers and sojourners in a machine so fundamentally broken that nothing short of the return of Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom will ever come close to fixing things. And the more we choose to embrace the identity of this group or that group, or entrench ourselves behind the lines of one debate or another, the more we ensure that we lose sight of the one thing that will truly and finally fix everything.
And so we stand back—not because we don’t care, but because we care deeply. Because we know the solutions for mankind’s problems aren’t found in mankind’s shouting matches. Because we know there is a malevolent spiritual force actively deceiving the whole world. Because we know that Satan and his demons must be locked up before the problems can be solved. Because we know that Jesus Christ will one day return to fix the things we can’t fix right now—and because we want to be with Him as part of the team that does the fixing.
The return of Jesus Christ and our resurrection as sons and daughters of God.
The binding of Satan and his demons in a place where their lies will be silenced.
A thousand years of peace, transforming and restoring a broken world.
A new heaven and a new earth where the former things have passed away.
Don’t let the bread and circuses pull your attention away from the things that really matter.
Happy sabbath rest, as many of us who long for the fulfillment of fall holy days. Continue to keep them among the distractions. for 8 days stepping out feels so… thank you again for sharing your thoughts and reminding us of better things to come.