Election Dread

November 4, 2008
Election Day starts a half-day earlier here in India, where sunrise comes before midnight arrives on the east coast of America. So I get 36 more hours to worry, to hang by my fingernails?
Waking early and still in bed, I turn to prayer. This is a critical time for our nation, perhaps a defining time.
It’s stressful for me, because I love the USA. My uncles, cousins, and my brother served in WWII. As a kid I saw the Gold Stars replace the silver stars in windows in my neighborhood—stars for families whose sons would never again sit around the Sunday dinner table to talk and laugh as families do. “For God and Country.”
In those days every school day we listened to our teachers read a Psalm and pause for prayer before we all stood with hand over heart to salute our flag and pledge our allegiance. Something was ingrained in me then. Something that still insists I vote in every election, even if by absentee ballot.
I do not believe in prognostication. But I will admit that when the RED Sox went down before that team in BLUE (Tampa Bay) I wondered if that meant the blue states would take the coming election. Then when the red uniforms of the Phillies knocked off the blue uniforms of the Rays, would that mean the red states would be victorious? I know, I know. This is nonsense.
So here I am in India. Here the US presidential election is not paramount. Terrorists are killing scores almost every week somewhere in this country—not to mention the murder of Christians. That’s what the headlines are about—life and death, literally.
Like the Psalmist who was wracked with anxiety over what was going on around him, as the wicked seemed to get their way, I too went into the House of the Lord, so to speak, and got another perspective. (Read Psalm 73, and note verse 17.)
Can I by being anxious add an hour to my life span? If my hopes are not realized, should I be in despair? If my hopes come true will that make much difference?
As I lay in the pre-dawn darkness God began to remind me of our position as citizens of his kingdom. This world is not my home. I am in it but not of it. Does God care who wins an election and takes earthly power?
Perhaps he searches for motives more than results. Where are our hearts? Either way, God is in control, working his plan. And we know that plan is for the good of those who love him and for the destruction of all earthly powers and opposing heavenly dominions.
So now I have a broader perspective as I pray for “Election day USA.”
The long-range prospect for the kingdoms of this world is not good. Judgment is promised for a fatally flawed human race. We have it coming. We have mocked justice despite the worldwide chatter about the oppressed. Violence is rampant. Sin abounds.
As I muse on these obvious truths, I am in contrition. The problem is not really “sin out there,” but sin within. The question is existential. It is not “why is the world such a rotten mess?” It’s “why am I contributing to that rotten mess?” The problem is not them but us.
There was no hope for me personally aside from the mercy of God. I know that full well. There is no hope in our world at large aside from the mercy of God. As a species on earth there really is no hope for us. We have a spiritual cancer that may be suppressed for a while. In the end we’ll succumb, no matter how we try to ignore the symptoms. No one is going to win this human race. None of us get out of life alive.
So I understand that God is not mocked. We sow; we reap. Our cultures of death will end in death. God is on track as he promised. It’s not as though God has not forewarned us. The Bible outlines it most distinctly. Just read the epistles at the end of your Bible. I, for one, can see it coming.
I guess you could say my expectations are low.
How society treats the powerless is a test of its goodness. We do not protect our own babies, even when they are born, unwanted but alive. We give them a blanket and then toss them in the trash when they expire. We do not do justice for those in prison, for those in economic straits, for the ill. Rather than care for them personally as communities of faith, we commend them to the tender mercies of a government program, faceless and impersonal, so that we can get on with our projects and pleasures. We’d rather “pass by on the other side.”
Wealth obsessed, we as a nation have forgotten God. Pleasure crazy, we have perverted our souls. Why should God stay his hand—his “terrible, swift sword?” Our God is marching on.
But God is not an American any more than Jesus was a Zealot. Who wins elections and takes political power in this world is of little account to God. No final solution can come from this election. Don’t get your hopes up, I say to myself. I am not invested in this quest for power.
So I sing not the songs of Zion in this foreign land. I am to pray for whomever rules over us, as our Lord commands. But even as dark clouds gather on the horizon of history I will not fear. I will pray. I will serve as long as God permits.
I will not be red. I will not be blue. I will be walking in the light of the kingdom that is my true and final and blessed dwelling place.
But did I vote? Yes.
Go and do thou likewise….