For the last three days, I have studiously avoided commenting on the results of the election. Up to this point, I found politics interesting and fascinating from a “people watching” perspective, but ultimately, I realized a county precinct commissioner had more effect on my life than all eight years of the Obama Administration combined. Now, my ambivalence has transformed to avoidance and revulsion. I think we can all agree that this election has brought out qualities in us as Americans that we shouldn’t be very proud of.
How do I feel about this election? I think that it’s over and I survived it. I want a T-shirt that says that on it. I will not be remembering this election with anything remotely resembling pride or fondness, because it cost me something personal and of deep significance. I’ve noticed that on social media a number of people have stated they intend to “unfriend” anyone of a particular political stripe (who does this over an election?) I had this happen to me in Real Life™, not Facebookland. This election made me pay a deep, personal price, and ultimately one I had to be willing to pay, but the details of which are unimportant.
I have a lot of friends who voted for Trump and a lot who voted for Clinton, because (spoiler alert) I’m nice to people. As a future minister of the word of God, I have to be even handed and treat people equally, no matter their point of view. In the end, we are all subject to God’s word and no one person will be held accountable to an unfair degree, because unlike the world, God truly is fair to us all. There are a lot of people who voted for Trump who are not racist, misogynist, xenophobic, or sexist. Likewise, there are a lot of people who voted for Clinton who truly believe that there should be a system of justice that treats everyone equally, both the well-connected and the disadvantaged. There are a lot of people who took a look at both candidates and found nothing noble in either one of them and voted for a third party. That act doesn’t assign any more nobility to them than anyone else.
So, what do I intend to do? Well, I intend to do exactly what I planned no matter who won. I plan to pray for our new president. I will pray that he will surround himself with people of good judgement and sound counsel. I will pray for our nation, which I believe – despite our often glaring faults – is already the greatest the world has ever known, regardless of who occupies an office that is thousands of miles away from me. I will pray for us to start remembering that there are more things we have in common than are different.
I will pray that this president is a success. I found the sentiment that many people had during the Obama Administration of praying for his failure to be particularly nauseating and it hasn’t gotten more attractive with the election of Donald Trump. That’s roughly akin to being in a bus loaded down with everything and everyone you love and care about and praying that the driver is drunk.
I will hold this president accountable, just as I did when previous occupants were in office. When this president does things to bring honor to this nation, I will celebrate him. If this president commits to a path of divisiveness and sectarianism, I will condemn those actions and actively campaign for a replacement. This presidency will be watched like none other. I suspect that I will not be alone in this regard.
I will abide by the results. Because whether people like it or not, whether people choose to believe it or not, the governments we have are the ones God chooses to put in place. That means that as much as Donald Trump was ordained by God to be the President of the United States, so was Barack Obama.
“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” – Romans 13:1
“Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” 1 Pt. 2:17
The Apostle Paul was a Roman citizen, and as such, he knew he had rights far above most. He never hid from the governments of his day and he was eventually imprisoned and executed for preaching the word of God. The Apostle Peter met the same end for the same reason. It is our responsibility to obey the governments of our time inasmuch as those governments do not ask us to violate our conscience to God, even those that would plan to kill us. Those governments have been put in place by God, and I believe those governments are there in order for us to learn a lesson. The questions are:
a) What lesson is it that God is trying to teach us?
b) Did we learn it?
One of the more troubling things I saw was the feeling some had that Donald Trump was hand-picked by God Almighty to restore this nation to its Christian roots. This is only partly true, because the same people forget that some of the leaders that God has chosen over the years represented judgement, not a reward. The same God that appointed Trump appointed Nero. The questions still remain, what lesson is it that God wants to teach us, and, are we humble enough to learn it?
Most of all, I plan to go on with my life. We do this every four years for a reason. One of the problems I saw in this election is that people went beyond being informed to being personally involved. It was never meant to be so. We were meant to have lives outside of elections, and I plan to live mine.
This is never more epitomized than during the destruction of the Judean nation in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah spent years telling the nation of Judah that unless it returned to honoring God, it would be destroyed by invasion. The Judeans never returned to worshipping God. When the dust settled, the once-proud Hebrew nation was utterly destroyed, its capital sacked and burned, its people either enslaved in captivity or ruthlessly cut down. They would get a letter from the one man who obeyed God and warned them this would all happen years before.
“This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” – Jeremiah 29: 4-7
Their nation reduced to utter ruin, their cities burned, their people enslaved, and Jeremiah’s advice to them? Make a home. Work for a living. Get married and raise a family. Live your lives as best you can. And that should be the hallmark of what the American experience should be, lives of independence.
Now, I’m going to speak to those of you who have decided not to do any of this. You know who you are. You’re the ones flipping over police cars and torching businesses. We need to have a word. You need to knock this nonsense off.
I’m not talking about not protesting. You live – still – in the greatest nation the world has ever known, one that has stated that it is the God-granted right of any red-blooded American to be able to walk into the public square and express his displeasure at anything he or she finds objectionable. You may even be right about what’s making you so upset. But the minute you pick up that brick to toss it through a window, or pick up that spray can to deface a wall, or light that gasoline-filled bottle to burn down something that doesn’t even belong to you, the righteousness of your cause vanishes into thin air. The moment you commit that criminal act, you have proclaimed to the world, “this is why I deserved to lose.”
We live in a nation that allows for the peaceful transition of power. Whether we are happy or horrified how this election turned out, let that be our legacy we leave.
The Dented Vessel 