“We far too easily believe the propaganda insisting that this election is the most important thing happening in our world.”

Well said (emphasis added):

We should seek revival and the expansion of the kingdom of God in triumph over the domain of darkness because we want to see Christ glorified, sinners saved, and the church built up. That should be our greatest priority as Christians. We should desire the salvation of our neighbors, not because we want to ensure they vote a certain way, but because we care about their eternal souls and want to see them rescued from the wrath of God.

Whenever we get the priority of the political and the spiritual inverted, we can be certain that we will lose both the spiritual and political battles.

Who said this and when?

If you have a radio, the next three months is a good time to have it (quit working). All you will hear from now until the 4th of November will be: ‘We must get our government out of the hands of predatory wealth.’ ‘The good people of this great country are burdened to death with taxes. Now what I intend to do is …’ What he intends to do is try and get elected. That’s all any of them intend to do. Another one that will hum over the old static every night will be: ‘This country has reached a crisis in its national existence.'

Ready?

Will Rogers. 1924.

I’ve made this comparison before and got some push back, but it still seems apt.
Whenever I see Christians getting into “we’re in a crisis; we have to do something” (often followed by doing very questionable or just plain wrong things) I’m reminded of Saul at Gilgal. 1 Sam 13:8-14

It’s just so easy to rationalize what we would normally not even consider, once we’ve slipped into desperation thinking.

Quite a few years ago I was a service technician and spent many hours a day on the road. I had a daily diet of conservative news talk radio for probably about a decade: Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity. I devoured everything they had to say and bought in completely.

During 2008 when Obama defeated McCain in the election, they portrayed it as the end of the US as we know it if Obama would be elected. They provided a daily dose of fear and outrage, and on the night that Obama won the election I was so worried about the future of my children and how they would live through the new world we were entering. They had stoked so much fear in me that I couldn't even listen to their programs the following morning. I switched to sports radio that day and never listened to their programs again (sports radio had its own issues, especially as a Philadelphia fan). I didn't see it at the time, but looking back I see how it not only stoked my fears, but created incivility and disunity in my heart as I could only see the other side in the worst possible light.

Fast forward to 2020 when Biden was elected and I watched the same thing happen to my much younger brother-in-law, and I tried to reassure him that the world was not ending and his kids would be fine.

I do think that elections are important and have consequences, but I no longer believe it's the end of the world if my chosen person is not elected. At this point I tend to view elections less as the affairs of the Kingdom, and more as the affairs of Babylon.

Ken, that sounds similar to what happened to me in 2020/2021. After Biden won the election, my FB feed was full of all the preaching about Jan 6 being an “insurrection” (rather than the protest-that-became-a-riot that it really was) from my liberal friends, or the shrieking about the “stolen” election (even though it was far from “the most secure election in history” that it was deemed in the media) and other fearmongering from my conservative friends, so I disabled my FB account. In addition, even though I didn’t get much of my news even then from TV, I also stopped watching any U.S. TV news and decided to get it all through reading only.

Honestly, even though I miss a lot of important friend and family updates that I now have to hear about 2nd-hand, turning off FB (which was, at that time at least, way more about politics and activism than friends and family) was one of the best things I did for my peace and sanity, and got rid of a lot of the poison I was ingesting daily.

I still believe that elections and politics are important, but I certainly don’t want them to keep me from what really matters in life. I’ve never believed that all that stuff is that important in the eternal scheme of things, but I also didn’t want those things to seem like they were in any way comparable to true Christian priorities.

Dave, I agree with your points about Facebook. I don't post much on FB, but when I do it's only to share updates about me or my family. I used to post political and/or theological posts, but it's become clear to me that those posts cause more harm than good. People come out of the woodwork to argue those topics.

I haven't yet disabled my FB account as you have, but it's not a bad idea. I like to see updates from old friends, but the amount of poison that is constantly being fed from FB makes it difficult. FB and other social media are largely responsible for the fringes of both political parties becoming so amplified these days. It seems there is no middle ground anymore as the algorithms constantly push people to the extremes.

I understand your position. What I did could certainly be seen as extreme by some. Given it still has some usefulness, I’m not advocating that everyone should get rid of FB (or talk radio for that matter). It’s just that for me, FB was doing to me what talk radio was doing to you, so I decided it had to go, even though there are times I really miss hearing from people I know who were FB friends with me. I stay away from both talk radio and FB, and I think I’m better off for it personally.

As to what everyone else should do, this is similar to the alcohol argument. Some don’t see why anyone would take a risk with any alcohol, and others use it within biblical limits. It’s not my place to make those decisions for others, whether on alcohol use or FB use (both of which can be detrimental in their own ways). If you still find FB useful, then you certainly don’t need to go to the extreme that I did, but you will have to find a way to keep it from being a negative influence. For me, elimination was the simplest way, if maybe not necessary.