Midterm Elections

In case someone might have missed it, mid-term elections were held in the US last week. These involve the selection of people to govern and to lead virtually every element of government other than the presidency. Held every four years, it seems that every time they are conducted, the intensity, the grandeur, and the expenses escalate to levels never previously contemplated.

We live in times when the language we use has taken ever-deepening turns for the worse. I am not suggesting that civility and grace have ever been centric to American campaign rhetoric, but outright incivility, half-truths, and outright lies have become our modern norm. It does not seem to matter what perspective is claimed, which party is represented, or what sorts of beliefs the candidate may state as foundational. At first glance, I may be most concerned at this, but there is more. Something deeper.

In the world of governance and the realm of politics, what constitutes “absolute” is generally granted to be the province of individual choice and design. So, what I hold as right is what informs my morality and decides my ethics. What I believe, my personal faith, is dictated and shaped by the causes that I support. Whatever I contemplate as holy writ is interpreted by whatever rules and laws I desire to see enacted. There is something fundamentally misdirected in all of this. If one holds that there is a supreme being,  a divine power, God at the head of it all, then the appointment of oneself as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong truly turns the world on its head. Yet, vast numbers of people support exactly this approach to setting the course for our various units of government. We like strong minded people who express big ideas that have little to no depth to them. These are essentially loud noises, great gusts of wind, and powerful statements made with absolutely no concern for the actual impact or effect of carrying them out.

Death or disenfranchisement might follow behind a new rule or law much as the wake of a ship follows its passage; yet, those lost in these churning seas are viewed by lawmakers and by their acolytes as being of no consequence, for they are the meaningless ones that exist on the fringes of productive society. They are of no greater consequence than are the pieces of debris that constitute the flotsam and jetsam left bobbing in that important ship’s wake. I recognize that this is a merciless world. Yet I fear that our rhetoric is, in fact, a symptom of a deep and lingering illness of the soul. It is a disease that defies cure not so much due to its persistence but more so because we rather like the way that its fevers make us feel. There is power in the rush of heat. We find control in the boiling frenzy that drives the timid and the weak to seek cover and to stop protesting that which starts to appear to be inevitable. 

All of this is so contrary to the way of Christ as to seem impossible to reconcile within the context of the Lord’s church or among people claiming to be Christian. Yet still, there are large numbers within those spaces that identify most directly and with great certainty with various forms and expressions of what is known as Christian Nationalism. Their fealty is pledged firstly and most prominently to politicians, to political parties, and to their stated values. All of this is expressed as being focused upon a desire to see a nation returned to its so called “Christian roots and heritage.” It is hard to imagine that Jesus would have agreed with most of these ideas, or that He would have granted blessing to the ready dismissal of people that differ in perspective from that of those seeking to make the rules for our lives.

Jesus held people as being foremost in His view of what mattered. Those He cared for were extraordinarily diverse. They were ordinary people, poor ones, sick individuals, women, children, and even the powerful rulers of His day. His mission was simple and very explicit. Jesus came to save the lost—which is all of us—and He was intent upon providing the way to eliminate the chasm that separates all sinful people from our Creator God. Jesus engaged with people in the harsh reality of where they were living. He was willing to look deep into hearts and gaze with love into the darkest recesses of souls. He provided comfort and healing for real situations and circumstances as He cured illness, fixed broken limbs, and drove out demons from the minds and hearts of suffering people. All of this was accomplished while remaining focused upon leading each of them to understand and to accept the need for a Savior and for an on-going relationship with God.

So, I wonder if in a world where we hold that rule making is somehow a form of spiritual victory over evil and wherein political control is held out as the answer to all that is broken in our society, if we are not straying ever further away from Christ’s calling to “Follow Me.” This is not to say that there are not legislative and law making victories to be achieved for the sake of what is holy and just. There  certainly are those areas where our society can and should respond to that which is wrong and broken in our world. However, we do need to be careful about claiming such victories and celebrating them while ignoring multitudes of people that are left damaged, struggling, and feeling disenfranchised by our often partially though out and ill-constructed legislation and laws.

We are far too quick to demonize those that see things differently from us. We are ready to proclaim victory or to mourn loss when neither of these concepts looks forward to how we work in unison to move our world even a small amount toward being a just and a holy place for the next generations to dwell. This zero sum approach to how we view our process of human, secular governance ignores Christ’s fundamental call to His people to be peacemakers and to accomplish this by living out and sharing the Gospel of love, grace, and mercy in all corners of our world. It also tramples upon God’s overarching mandate to His people as expressed in Micah 6:8. 

“I have told you, O man, what is good;

and what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?”