Voting is not the Most Important Thing I Will do Tomorrow
Dear Friend,
These are, as ever, simply wonderings. Things I may have heard these past few days.
It’s the Monday before the voting stops. Somehow, that seems very different than saying it’s the Monday before the campaigns end and the election is settled. I wonder if any campaign has ever really ended or any election has ever truly been settled. I think it’s safe to say it’s been at least a long, long while. How could I reasonably expect that the 2024 election will suddenly and finally put to bed all the things that have divided us from the beginning. From the very beginning.
It’s tempting for me to imagine our current political disagreements are relatively recent developments. But I cannot. For me to do so completely, and probably even intentionally, ignores the legitimate political differences that have characterized our discourse from the very earliest days of our constitutional republic. We have fought with one another over substantive issues (i.e., chattel slavery, the roles of the federal and state governments, representation, executive power, the line between faith and government, ,..., and many, many others) beginning even before we declared our independence, and continuing through the constitutional convention of 1787, the ratification in 1789, through the westward expansion, during the civil war… You get the idea. We have been a nation of not only political differences, but also of political violence for a long, long time. I know this is not a newsflash, but sometimes it’s easy for me to just sort of assume that we have, until recently, been united in our fundamental political beliefs, and that any disagreements we had were quickly and diplomatically resolved. But the facts, to me, undeniably say otherwise.
That is not to say that I condemn anybody who sees this particular election through a different, or even a more apocalyptic lens. I just cannot see it that way. Nor do I condemn anybody - right, left, or center, who claims that God attends their political rallies, and theirs exclusively. I don’t condemn them, but I have a very hard time believing them. Every thing that Jesus did suggests to me that he was most likely completely disinterested in attending rallies at all, and more interested in hanging with people on the margins. Maybe what people mean is that they have reserved a seat, a seat close to the podium for Jesus to sit in. But I doubt he has ever shown up, because as far as I can tell, he was completely focused on the Kingdom work of honoring the Father and caring for his Father’s beloved children, especially the outcasts, no matter the cost. I think that Jesus’s example of Kingdom-focus was characterized by ambassadorship through love, and never by working hard to gain and retain power and influence in the Empire so he could install the Kingdom through policy. Or attending rallies. Again, you might see it differently. I cannot.
I have heard some suggest, that it was only because of the relatively civilized and peaceful time in which Jesus lived (relative to ours, I mean) that he could opt out of political discourse and not only talk about, but practice a life of love and peace that would simply not be feasible in the 21st century. Maybe these people are right. But for me (and me alone) such a position requires a degree of denial that I cannot quite bring myself to embrace. The political vitriol seems to me to have been at least as caustic in his day as it is in ours.
His example to me seems clear. Kingdom first. Empire second. Kingdom alone. And again, in my faith tradition, Jesus is God-incarnate, and therefore, presumably God’s ideal of humanness, so I’m trying to take his example seriously.
And what did Jesus’s laser focus on the Kingdom cost him? Well, His life, to begin with, which he willingly-not-reluctantly, gave for the sake of others - even the very ones who took his life. There is no indication that Jesus demonstrated his love for us by consolidating his political power or influence, or by advocating for any act of violence. To me, those are not Kingdom values, at all. Even his disciples didn’t quite get it. In Mark’s account of Jesus’s arrest, one of his followers pulled out a sword to defend Jesus by cutting a man’s ear off. Jesus’s response?
Jesus said, “Put your sword back where it belongs. All who use swords are destroyed by swords.”
The point? It’s very hard for me to get behind the idea that this particular election, or how I vote in it, will dramatically shift the course of human history, or even the course of our nation. And even if the entire election swings on my single vote, it seems unlikely to me that the results will somehow restore decency and order on the one hand, or push the U.S. over a bottomless cliff on the other. Or that God is counting on my vote to make any of that happen.
Nope. My mindspace and heartspace are better given to ambassadorship and love.
C.S. Lewis wrote about this very thing in The Screwtape Letters. It seems instructive and cautionary to me - no matter the direction in which I find myself leaning.
“Let [your patient] begin by treating … Patriotism or Pacifism as part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the ‘cause,’ in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism.”
For context, this is an excerpt from a letter from a senior demon to his nephew, who is working for the damnation of his “patient’s” soul. This was written in 1942, a time of deep division in England over it’s position in a conflict that had turned global.
I replace Patriotism and Pacifism with my favorite twenty-first century American political division. There are plenty from which to choose. It’s tempting to argue myself into believing that my position is faith-based and that God is on my side. Easy to believe that people who have a different view have turned their backs on God and easy for me to reject their belovedness before Him. I’m certain Lewis was describing that very phenomenon. How close am I to making my just cause part of my religion, and maybe even the most important part? Probably closer than I would like to admit.
I am not saying I’m not voting, or that I don’t think my vote matters. I am not, and I think it does. But there are other things that matter a great deal more than voting, or my vote, I think.
So what is more important than voting? Let’s get started.
Calling Kathryn while she is waking to remind her I love her.
Letting Carley greet the cows and the donkeys and the llamas and pigs on our walk. Speaking with the people I see. Acknowledging their status as God’s beloved children with a simple, “How do you do?” Listening. A lot. And if someone is not interested in speaking, then honoring his or her desire with silence and a warm smile.
And when I am alone, walking slowly enough to notice and to remember that every ray of light that falls on this mountain, each tree that has taken up residence here, each bird that finds her sanctuary in this tree, and each breeze that loosens this withered leaf that eventually lets go and falls onto this earth at my feet, and then gently bounces before another breeze carries it to another place and time - noticing and remembering that each of them of them - and every step and every breath is a word of God. To be cherished.
Writing some long overdue letters to people I love. Taking my keppra. Trusting God with the world long enough to long nap. Preparing a meal slowly and simply and elegantly. Reading a new Rilke poem. And a poem by someone whose name I don’t yet know. Introducing Carley to popcorn…
…Well, there are a lot of things, and all of them, I think, Kingdom work. It’s where I’ll be.
Oremus,
Ć
Thank you Chris. Just what I needed to read today.
Thanks Chris for bringing rays of sunshine in to a day that was feeling gloomy, and making me smile knowing Carly has met a llama!