The stuff in bold is my emphasis,  from Hauerwas:

As Christians we seek not to be free, but to be faithful disciples of our Lord who would not employ violence to avoid death at the hands of a state. Just as that oppressive regime could not prevent his [Jesus’] authorization of God’s kingdom, so neither as Christians do we believe any worldly power can stop us from living true to God’s peaceable kingdom. It is of course true that they can kill us, but they cannot rob our death, any more than they could rob Jesus’ death, from its service to God.’ In that lies our freedom to see the world as it is rather than as it would like to be seen. In that commitment lies the possibility of the church to be a “zone of truth-telling in a world of mendacity.” For nowhere is that lie more powerful than when it takes the form of the nation state which tries to make us believe that God’s kingdom depends on the false ideals that it promises to secure through coercion and violence.

So by all means let the church be the church. But let us remind ourselves that it is not first of all a strategy for insuring the existence of the limited state. Rather the call for the church to be the church means that the church is the only true polity we can know in this life. For the church, because it is a polity that fears not the truth, is also a community that has the courage to form its citizens virtuously.

Thus the challenge before us is to be a patient and hopeful people who are able to live truthfully between the times. Only by being such a people will we be able to resist the false choices–such as choosing between America and the Soviet Union–that would have us take sides in a manner that divides the Christian people from each other and their true Lord.
—Hauerwas, Against the Nations, pp. 130-131

The deceptions of this world’s powers, imbedded so seemingly “seamlessly” into our social realities, and our philosophic perspectives on them, is somethng which is given so little attention. To name the false choices is to give us a shot at then moving from that recognition to formation; or “re-formation”. To realize that just as such “false choices” have been instilled into us by our “freedoms”; the freedoms to make up our own minds, as long as the results are not a threat . But the reprisals in a capitalist society are geared toward “market correction”; “the market” rewards and punishes and sways by “working for us” or by “reacting against us”.

But as Hauerwas points out here, we are easy targets of this default set of false choices unless we see and submit , for “Only by being such a people will we be able to resist the false choices” .

What do we do when we notice how NOBOBY is giving much of a serious try to actually being a formative people working WITH the counter-choices to the false choices. At what point is a gathering complicit with the false choices no longer a gathering capable of, or willing to, resist the falsehoods? How does a people find true worship of God when God has been replaced? How empty does the shrine get before we we cross over into false worship; or can the church be born from within a church that refuses to be the church; or a church that cannot see its self-deception? Is such a tipping point ever to be contemplated, so that as an alternative we choose NOTHING rather than face the frustration of feeling like we’re headed in the wrong direction? Even given all this, how does God act to “make these bones live?” And how dare I presume to “stay away” and by so doing, imply that I can see more clearly than those in the church zone attempting to find what it is we’re all really searching for!