Category: Of Random Interest

This is an email I sent to the stu­dents in my min­istry the morn­ing fol­low­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion:

---

I would like to say some­thing to the despon­dent and the jubi­lant: the despon­dent should not be too despon­dent and the jubi­lant should not be too jubi­lant.

To The Despondent:

You just woke up and feel as though you woke up in a dif­fer­ent coun­try than the one you thought you lived in. You feel as though you don’t belong. I want to encour­age you: this will pass. There are rarely per­ma­nent defeats in pol­i­tics. You will get anoth­er try at the pres­i­den­cy in four years and at the leg­isla­tive branch in two years. Remem­ber when Oba­ma rode into office? The Democ­rats had the House, the Sen­ate, and the Exec­u­tive Branch along with most state guber­na­to­r­i­al and leg­isla­tive offices. The days of the Repub­li­can par­ty seemed over, yet now the Repub­li­cans have usurped the Democ­rats in every one of those roles. Your turn will come again. Be patient.

A few prac­ti­cal pieces of advice for you in the mean­while:

1) If you did not reg­is­ter to vote, do it now while you’re moti­vat­ed. It will not take much time and is one of the few pro­duc­tive things you can actu­al­ly do right now.

2) You may be tempt­ed to blame the oth­er side’s vic­to­ry on the basest of motives. The oth­er side is racist. The oth­er side is misog­y­nis­tic. The oth­er side is dri­ven by hate. Please hear this: they don’t think they are. “But they are — I know it!” Even if you are right that there are vile motives float­ing around inside their souls, you will not change their minds by point­ing that out. Instead, you must under­stand your oppo­nents in order to per­suade them. If you are gen­uine­ly shocked that a large chunk of Amer­i­cans are afraid of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty and what it would have done with four to eight more years of pow­er, you need to read more wide­ly.  Add to your read­ing list authors such as Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, Ross Douthat, Thomas Sow­ell, Matthew Lee Ander­son, Rus­sell Moore, Rod Dreher, and David French. If you use Twit­ter, fol­low each of them. If you don’t, pay atten­tion to their writ­ings. They pop up from time to time in the Fri­day emails I send out — begin delib­er­ate­ly read­ing the entries you think you’ll dis­agree with. Also, con­sid­er watch­ing Fox News from time to time.

3) Pray. This is some­thing you will have a chance to do at Chi Alpha tonight. #just­say­ing

To The Jubilant:

It’s a good feel­ing when your side wins. Enjoy the moment, but rec­og­nize how ephemer­al it is. When­ev­er one par­ty sweeps into pow­er across mul­ti­ple branch­es of gov­ern­ment, cor­rup­tion and infight­ing ensues. Your team is like­ly in for a rough time two years from now in the midterm elec­tions and will face a seri­ous chal­lenge four years down the road.

A few prac­ti­cal pieces of advice for you:

1) Rec­og­nize that some of your friends are gen­uine­ly ter­ri­fied right now. Peo­ple who are made in God’s image — some of whom are your broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ — are in pain. Be empa­thet­ic. Even if you think that their emo­tions are overblown, acknowl­edge that their emo­tions are real.

2) Pre­pare for dis­ap­point­ment. Politi­cians rarely deliv­er what you hoped for. The Democ­rats did­n’t deliv­er immi­gra­tion reform when Oba­ma was in office even though the Democ­rats held the House and the Sen­ate. The Repub­li­cans will almost cer­tain­ly get bogged down on issues that lat­er prove to be incon­se­quen­tial and as a result will let some of your high­est pri­or­i­ties slip out of their grasp. Two years is not that long and Repub­li­can offi­cials will refuse to believe that’s prob­a­bly all the time they have.

To Everyone:

Yes­ter­day Amer­i­ca elect­ed a pres­i­dent for the next four years, but we know the King who reigns for­ev­er. So acknowl­edge the pres­i­dent, “but in your hearts revere Christ as Lord” (1 Peter 3:15a).

Remem­ber Philip­pi­ans 3:20: “our cit­i­zen­ship is in heav­en. And we eager­ly await a Sav­ior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Elec­tions mat­ter, but eter­ni­ty mat­ters more. Keep per­spec­tive today and always.

God bless and I hope to see you at wor­ship tonight. I’ll talk more about these things there and we will pray.