(Hat tip to Amy for encouraging me to post this.) 

Sometimes it can be easy to get discouraged. Every week it seems someone in Iraq is kidnapped, some have been beheaded. We hear of murders and other crimes on the news. We see looney liberals declaring communist ideals for our country. The traditional understandings of marriage, life, and in fact humanity have been under attack. We are in a constant battle to be able to keep our religious freedoms. We see churches drift frighteningly back and forth between orthodoxy and heresy. Whenever we make a stand we are mocked and scorned. Most of us are called religious, conservative, or right wing, so as to write our views off as inconsequential. In the midst of such hardship, irrationality, and persecution, how are we to cope?
Here I'd like to bring in another analogy from Spider-Man 2 (possibly the film of the year for me, waiting on The Village). Spidey is continuously misrepresented as the bad guy, or the villain, by the press. The police want to arrest him. The bad guys want to kill him. Even his best friend wants him dead. But somehow Peter Parker finds a way to get past it all and fight the good fight. How? His words to Harry are telling, "There are bigger things happening than you and me." Peter Parker saw the big picture. His resolve was focused because it wasn't about him. It didn't matter what people thought, it mattered that he did everything within his power to save individuals from their particular perils.
We too must look at the big picture. It's not about us, and even it it were we couldn't save the world. In the midst of such troubling difficulties we look to the One who holds it all in His hands judging it sovereignly. We too have an obligation to look past the insults, lunatics, and dangers, and see the countless souls that hang in the balance of eternal life and eternal damnation. What drives us must be first a love for God, and from that will flow a love for people. We must first understand and apply God's truth in our lives before we can share it with others. We must constantly see that they are valuable to God because He created them in His image. And we must do everything within our power (however limited that may be) to spur people on to a knowledge and belief in Christ.