Election Daze

Is there any hope for a productive, distinctly Christian voice in the political world?

In the modern Western church, we have a history of arguing about issues a lot, and then effectively dropping those issues once we sense that the issue has become so polarized that talking about it is more trouble than it’s worth.  Eschatology—the question of how the end times will unfold, when Jesus will return and how—was a hot topic in my parents’ generation, dividing congregations and denominations.  By the time I was ordained, though, it was more than acceptable for candidates to essentially say, “I don’t know when or how Jesus will come again, only that he will.”  We had argued so much about it that nobody wanted to argue anymore. Any light gained by the conversation was no longer worth the heat.

When I was a college student, people wanted to argue about the Holy Spirit and Pentecostalism.  How does the Holy Spirit move in the Christian church?  But people argued about it so much that now, students shrug and move on.

Of course, there is a cost to this.  Perhaps part of the reason why young Christians grow up lonely is that we have neglected to talk about the Holy Spirit, who lives in us and forges our identity as Christians in the world.  Perhaps part of the reason why they grow up aimless is that we have not ever painted a compelling picture of where this whole world is headed and how God will make all things new.  When we don’t talk about something, we lose it, and it changes us.

Which naturally brings me to the election coming up in eight days.  The church is weary of arguing about the issues and people.  Just hearing these words—Trump, Kamala, abortion, immigration—starts an immediate cycle of trying to figure out what side the person saying them is on.  It starts a whole conversation in our mind about what that person must be like, why they believe what they do, and on and on.  So we’ve essentially given up trying to talk about it, I think, aside from those who gleefully lob grenades.

Of course, when we don’t talk about things, there is a cost.  Behaviors and ideas are normalized in the Christian community that would never be normalized otherwise.  The way we talk and think about very important things is shaped.  Every church has a list of things that we “agree to disagree” on, and largely that list is formed viscerally, not thoughtfully.  We agree to disagree on things because we can’t talk about them without fighting, not because it truly is OK to agree to disagree on these things. So we agree to disagree about lots of things now, and many of them are shaping us in silence, changing us from committed Christians to compliant Americans, callous to people who challenge what we believe.

How can we break out of this?  We’re so polarized that conversation seems impossible, but of course, doing nothing doesn’t seem like an option either.  One potential way to change this would be, you know, Biblically. Jesus asked in Matthew 7:3 why we obsess about the speck of sawdust in our neighbor’s eye, when we ignore the plank in our own.  This is not Jesus’ way of telling us to agree to disagree, though it is commonly read that way in the evangelical world.  No, Jesus is reminding us that ideas have consequences—including our own ideas.

Christians, theoretically, believe that we are fallen creatures and have the capacity to get it wrong.  I don’t understand why most Christians live in fear of what will happen if the other candidate gets elected, and not in abject fear of what will happen if their own candidate gets elected.  Aren’t you aware that your candidate has weaknesses?  Can’t you see that if your candidate is chosen, their ideas and practices are in some ways counter to the Gospel of Jesus?  What is your plan to work against your own candidate’s blind spots?  If you have significant disagreement with part of your candidate’s platform or approach, how will you work to make sure that your communities do not blindly follow your candidate, but are places of flourishing and wholeness?

More than that, if you have significant disagreement with part of your candidate’s platform or approach, how will you guard your own soul from warping?  How will you keep from adapting to the plank in your eye, slowly accepting as normal this thing that you disagree with?  So often we expend emotional and psychological energy justifying our choices instead of acknowledging the imperfection of our choices and working against them.  So we end up becoming something we never wanted to be.

If we want to be for healing and wholeness in a divided and lost world, Christians have to start with this hard work, the work of looking within.  I only hope some of us are willing.