When fear meets uncertainty, we reach for clarity rather than truth, for purity rather than presence. In Sweden, this surfaced recently in something as ordinary as the debate over Halloween. Darkness itself became suspect, as if naming or engaging it would somehow invite danger. But beneath the surface, it was not a quarrel about a holiday. It was a small mirror of the human condition: our instinct to divide the world into what feels safe and what feels threatening.

We see the same pattern in our churches, our politics, even our online conversations.