Election results come in: ‘I’m sad. At times I’m angry. I’m confused.’
Personal reflections in the aftermath of Christianity and politics gone wrong
I have attended church nearly every Sunday of my life. I generally attend even when I’m traveling; it’s what I do. Rarely, happenstance prevents me, but except for the pandemic and the time I was recovering from surgery, I can’t think of a time in years where I’ve missed more than one Sunday in a row.
But this morning, with church beginning in a few hours, I feel unease about going.
I’ll be there, for I have a bit role for which a tiny number of people are depending on my presence.
But I’m wondering if it’s a place where I belong.
During last week’s Sunday school class, two days before the election, I heard complaints about “the world,” about how much evil there is today. Heads nodded in agreement. This isn’t unusual. It is something I hear often in church, along with allusions to Isaiah 5:20.1 Three days after that class, the day after the election, I learned that my precinct voted 73% for Donald Trump; knowing the demographics of my precinct and my church, I realized that the vast majority of the voters in that class, probably 80 percent or more, had voted for a man who has never apologized for his sexual assaults on women, instigated a coup attempt, lies constantly, bullies and dehumanizes anyone who isn't as privileged as he is, and so on. Why would you rightfully complain about evil and then vote for a man who represents the worst that the world has to offer?
I don’t get it.
It's evil.
I do not use that word lightly. I watched that man's Madison Square Garden rally and saw nothing but hate and fear accompanied by unrestrained vulgarity. Oh, but the gathering opened in prayer, making the whole rally an exercise of taking God's name in vain. So, yeah, it was evil.
I'm sad. At times I'm angry. I'm confused.
Kamala Harris isn't perfect, but she's a decent person, someone I would have been pleased to see leading the country I love. I watched her graciously concede her loss not long after it became known, something her opponent has yet to do with his loss to her running mate four years ago. Her concession to a man who had repeatedly belittled her, calling her a person of low IQ and worse, gave me an example of divinely inspired grace in action.
And I cried, knowing what could have been.
The verse in the King James Version begins “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.”