Our Present Hope

Today is election day and it feels like every four years we recycle the same tired arguments and debates. We find ourselves convinced that this election is the one where democracy ends if our team doesn’t win. We debate policies and theories with as little nuance as possible. 

Pastors, who legally cannot tell you who to vote for, cleverly and not so cleverly give very explicit sermons about who is really on the side of Jesus. 

We preach these sermons about where our hope lies while simultaneously stoking fears about what life will be like under X President. We pretend that the Christian's hope is based on who sits in the White House.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of it. 

I am old enough to have lived through enough presidents to know that life doesn’t change that much daily. The boogeymen are never quite what we think they are. We still find ourselves battling through our regular lives. That doesn’t mean we check out.

Civic engagement and caring about this present world are important. We don’t get to play spiritual escapism because “this is not our home.” We are still responsible for being a force for the Kingdom of God.

Our fears and feelings can be valid and not be ultimate. Our present hope is and always will be in a future reality. In the promise in Revelation 7, every tear will be wiped away. 

But while we are here, we push back against the darkness. The darkness includes the way we engage politically. The ESPNification of how we do politics, where it’s just shouting at the evil of the other side, is moronic and gets us nowhere. 

People are voting today, and the sad reality is that we only pay attention every four years. We are suddenly policy experts. We allow our churches to be torn apart, and in the intervening four years, we spend no time figuring out how to engage better in the next Presidential election cycle. 

So, my prayer is that four years from now, whatever we have, we, the people of God, will show up significantly better than we have in the past. 

Four years from now, may we model the way of Jesus in our speech, compassion, empathy, and demeanor.