Posted on 11/10/2020 12:48:59 PM PST by Kaslin
It is because we hope in an eternal savior that we joyfully continue our daily lives. We don't need a week off of classes or work to mourn an election. Our daily joys have suffered no loss of meaning.
On Election Night, I was crowded around the television with a dozen college friends in a tiny apartment above our government professor’s house. The Virginia night air seeping through the window was rescuing the feeble air conditioning unit and someone had propped up the three-legged TV with a handful of textbooks. Everyone watched the colorful maps on TV flip colors and we good-naturedly heckled CNN hosts who had been talking nonstop for the better part of two hours.
When Trump started gaining votes in Pennsylvania, everyone glanced at the three Pennsylvanians in the room. “All the Republicans just got off work,” said one, a pastor’s son from Pittsburgh. We all laughed.
But his joke stuck with me. I imagined that amorphous group of Pennsylvania Republicans going about their days, serving customers, trading smiles, clattering dinner plates in the kitchen. They would vote proudly and then they would move on with their daily responsibilities to the people around them.
I can’t say for sure if those Norman Rockwell-esque voters in rural Pennsylvania exist the way I imagined, but I have been inspired and convicted by their imaginary example following the election. They cheerfully did their civic duty, and they went about their day. They didn’t drop the responsibilities and joys around them to hang all hope of salvation on a presidential candidate.
As Christians, that’s how we should approach the electoral process — both before and after the results are announced. We should be educated and enthusiastically involved in our governing authority. We should surely fight to protect our families, our right to worship, and the rights of those who cannot defend themselves. But at the end of the day, we do all we can and then leave the results in eternal hands.
We preach that Christ alone is the hope of our salvation. But how graciously we handle the results of this election will show those around us whether we mean it.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be rightly concerned about protecting the electoral process where there is evidence of voter fraud. It also doesn’t mean we should give up being politically involved or holding our elected officials accountable for their words and actions. Advocating for liberty and justice in the civic process is a legitimate and necessary calling.
But it does mean we have an excellent opportunity to live out our faith by remembering that we trust in something greater than elections. “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation,” the psalmist says. “Blessed is he whose hope in is the Lord his God.”
Because our hope is not in this world, we have no reason to be fearful. We may be disappointed and should be aware of policies that threaten our ability to live as we have been called. Yet we have no need to feel afraid, distraught, or betrayed. Any earthly idol would betray our trust.
It is because we hope in an eternal savior that we joyfully continue our daily lives. We don’t need a week off of classes or work to mourn an election. Our daily joys have suffered no loss of meaning.
We continue to enjoy fellowship with other members of the body of Christ. We keep going to work and serving those around us. We go on cooking dinner and enjoying it around the family dinner table. And we remain completely fulfilled by the daily grace of God.
Because of our faith, we know that politics isn’t everything (and thank God it isn’t). Our lives shouldn’t revolve around who sits in the Oval Office.
After all, the whole concept of government is merely a means to enable people to live well in community with each other. We cannot let the means become the end. Instead, we should continue to live full and fruitful lives with the people placed around us.
Furthermore, watching other reactions to election results reminds us how dangerous and disappointing it is to place our trust in fallen human beings.
A video of a woman screaming uncontrollably at Trump’s inauguration in 2016 became a meme because it captured the disconsolate reaction to Trump’s victory by some of his opponents. “I’m so sorry to my world,” the woman sobbed. “There’s so much potential for beauty and for devastation in this one moment, it’s just almost incomprehensible that they can exist right now.”
Other Clinton supporters reminisced a full year after Trump’s election about how devastated they were by his victory. “It kind of just hit you,” said Trent Vanegas, explaining how he broke down in tears when the 2016 election results were announced. “One moment, there’s hope and the next moment it’s complete despair.” Another Clinton voter expressed fear that he and his wife would have to raise their newborn child under a Trump presidency.
Even the positive reactions to Biden’s apparent victory show an obsessive and unhealthy faith in political power. Members of the media literally wept on television when they called the race for Biden. “I don’t know why I’m crying so much,” MSNBC contributor and former Democratic senator Claire McCaskill said. “I keep crying, I’m going to cry now.”
“I’m very emotional,” CNN’s Don Lemon said. “So when you ask me how I’m feeling right now, I’m sorry, that’s all I can tell you.” CNN’s Van Jones repeatedly wiped his eyes with a tissue on camera.
SUPERCUT!U.S. media weep in ecstasy following AP calling race for Biden pic.twitter.com/spxRBtNJGI
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 8, 2020
And then there was Stephen Colbert on Thursday night, in what was supposed to be a comedy routine. Because of Trump, “I’m not sitting down yet, I just don’t feel like it yet,” Colbert said. “I’m also dressed for a funeral, because Donald Trump tried really hard to kill something tonight.”
Two minutes into the show and without having told a single joke, Colbert hung his head and just stood awkwardly in silence. “What I didn’t know is that it would hurt so much,” he finally added. “I didn’t expect this to break my heart, for him to cast a dark shadow on our most sacred right.”
Comedian Marc Maron led off his podcast on Monday — after about 30 seconds straight of profanity — by proclaiming “the weight has been lifted…I don’t know that people really fully understand the power, the symbolic power of the head of state that determines on some level how grounded people feel in the country.”
“We just barely f—ing avoided real fascism, people,” he added, before calling Trump supporters “brainf—ed, brainwashed people or just people who believe that fascism is the way to go.”
Watching these reactions, we should not make a mockery of their joy or sorrow. We should, however, be inspired to share the promise that we have. After all, we are blessed with the confidence that politics is not our final hope. And we are called to live accordingly.
Yep.
But we have children thoically unlike the typical leftist.
I felt a great peace in 2016 that Trump would win and that hasnt changed
However the Left Marxist bunch still sez stuff that is maddening, but not faith shaking. I have to ask forgiveness a lot for my thoughts concerning Bye Dumb, sigh.
Idiotic. By this logic a Christian should be just as happy in Venezuela or China. After all, you’re going to heaven ya know.
its good vs evil...
I don't like the "o well...ah shucks" attitude...
its defeatism....
God expects WARRIORS....God does not expect us to lie down the just take it...
God expects us to protect children and old people and poor people and disabled people and everybody inbetween from evil....
HE does not expect us nor want us to be sheep for the slaughter...
Oh yeah Christians have no more reason to fear than any other Christians living in other Muslim Nation.
I really think the clock has run out on the left trying to sell their “Biden won” fantasy to patriots.
WHAT??
You trying to make us feel better with 21 guns pointed.
Nope.
Biden is working with the Pope and China to bring down Christianity altogether in place of a new world government.
These sorts of people are delusional. There is nothing good about the collapse of the USA into a communist tyranny, the end of the rule of law, unfettered abortion, rampant sodomy and perversity, forced euthanasia, religious persecution, and everything else a Marxocrat steal of this fraudulent election would bring upon this country.
If you do not despair in the face of evil winning it is because you are friends with the world.
Real Christians are having a Job/Elijah moment.
“Idiotic. By this logic a Christian should be just as happy in Venezuela or China. After all, you’re going to heaven ya know.”
Yep, dumb. Real dumb.
A Christian understands that God will bless His people who are obedient to his will. Our founding fathers understood that America must be a sovereign nation under God. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.
If most Americans refuse to put God first over country, then why would anybody be surprised at the state of America in the year of our Lord 2020?
I’ve always been a “God, family, country” person. Many times you have to start at “country” to support the God and family thing.
The government will continue banning Christians from assembling, in the name of science.
The government will continue to force Christians to finance the slaughter of infants, in the name of womanhood.
The government will continue to groom Christian’s children for sodomy and/or pedophilia, in the name of human rights.
Tell me again you are not in despair.
Tell me again the government is not your god.
Pleading ignorance here. What does “thoically” mean?
HE DID NOT WIN!
“Idiotic. By this logic a Christian should be just as happy in Venezuela or China. After all, you’re going to heaven ya know.”
Well, yes, in the sense that the Christian is happier than his non-Christian neighbor. The Christian can be a faithful slave because his circumstances are the providence of his faithful God. Read the story of Daniel in Babylon, or Joseph in Egypt, for examples.
Amen.
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