To say he was livid would be an understatement. They were only texts, but I could feel the fury flowing through the phone. A friend from college had watched the presidential debate Tuesday night and was on a tear Wednesday morning, ripping into the derelict media and their "persistent propagandizing efforts on behalf of whoever the Democrat Party's standard bearer is at the moment."
He was mad about the questions.
He was mad about the tag-teaming.
He was mad about the fact-checking.
"How do self-respecting journalists actually say abortions at the point of birth aren't happening when you can just pick up a phone and do this?" he texted, before sending the link to that Kristan Hawkins post that was covered by Not the Bee yesterday:
These conversations are becoming increasingly common for me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. The anger is real, the stress and tension good people are putting themselves through is palpable. And dangerous. And for my fellow Christians, completely unnecessary.
Yes, we are made in the image of a God who is just. When we see injustice of any kind - whether it's the life of innocent children being taken, or even debate "moderators" who act more like "participants" - we should react in disapproval. Injustice of any kind matters to a Christian.
But heading into what will be a maddening, frustrating, and volatile election season these next couple months, I think it's important to remember that anxiety and anxiousness over it all is not something believers need to experience.
From a worldly perspective it makes complete sense. To be brutally blunt, without Jesus, what we are living right now is the only heaven we'll ever know. It truly doesn't, and will never, get better than this. That places an unendurable significance, an otherworldly strain on people, positions, and events that happen around and to us. We have to obsess over worldly power, wringing our hands over who wields it, because it is the de-facto, counterfeit god we will necessarily worship.
Christians do not bear that burden. Living a life in Christ means that what we currently experience is the only hell we will ever know. The pain and sorrow of this life is as bad as it will ever be, and it is only for a time. That truth releases the emotional burden associated with believing everything hinges on the next debate, the next election, the next judicial nomination. It doesn't.
I recently read an encouraging article by a man named Kevin Halloran that pointed out how in the second Psalm, God tells us how worldly rulers and authorities will conspire and rise up against His authority and dominion. These are the very princes, presidents, and prime ministers that worry us. But Scripture tells us that God laughs in the face of any who would resist His righteous rule. He has sat His rightful King on the throne of the universe and at any moment He will execute eternal justice and, "break them with a rod of iron" and "dash them to pieces like pottery."
Halloran used these descriptive words to emphasize the point:
Our favorite candidate will not usher in a utopian society, nor will our least favorite candidate destroy the world as we know it…Don't let raging nations or rebellious politicians suffocate your faith; they'll one day be Jesus's piñata as he ushers in his perfect reign on earth.
If I truly believe the words of Scripture faithfully preserved, if that is truly where my hope and confidence is placed, then I have nothing to fear, and have no need to be anxious.
Don't misunderstand. It makes total sense why Christians would support one candidate over the other. It makes total sense why we would lament a seeming triumph for worldly evil. We vote on the basis of who will best facilitate the orderly and just procedure of man in a fallen world.
But we don't despair, no matter the outcome. Not just because there's another election on the horizon, but because ultimately our fortunes are not tied to the rise and fall of any manmade civilization - no matter how much we may love it.
