Doug Wilson has a little encouragement over at his blog for Christians worried about the US election next week.
That would not be me. No fussing and fretting in this corner. I can cheer for a particular outcome I believe to be best, pray for it and even get emotionally invested in it without spiraling into depression if in the end it doesn’t go my way.
That’s either the work of the Lord in conforming me to
However it shakes out, we are in for interesting times as we head into the new year.
Drinking the Post-Millennial Kool-Aid?
A couple of early paragraphs in Doug’s post had me worried he might’ve just consumed a sip too many of the post-millennial Kool-Aid in anticipation of American Thanksgiving. I’ll let him speak for himself:
“We should be praying in such a way as to know that whatever happens in the election, we can know that it was an answer to that prayer … God either wants us to slay this dragon now, or He wants us to slay a bigger dragon later.”
Admittedly, the image of Kamala Harris breathing fire and covered with green scales has a fair bit of resonance with me, but that’s probably not what Doug had in mind. Or again:
“Our fundamental desire for the United States should be for God to do whatever it takes to bring us as a people to the point of true repentance. We should therefore not want a premature deliverance. If it is going to take four more years under the Midianites — to give our Gideon time to graduate from some obscure Bible college — then that is what we should want.”
Only four more years, you say?
Likely and Unlikely Outcomes
Now, I’m not saying we should be uninterested in the repentance of all, or even a slim voting majority of 332,000,000 Americans and people of other nationalities and allegiances currently parked on US soil, citizens and non-citizens waiting to see what transpires next. A sweeping spiritual transformation of the republic would be a wonderful thing, but let’s call it what it is: staggeringly unlikely.
Why? Because Christians are a holy nation “called out” of numerous other nations and, more importantly, out of darkness into light. When you call someone out, the implication is that you are creating something new that stands as a contrast to the old, and some people have always preferred their old wine. History and our Bibles agree that even when the Holy Spirit of God speaks, not everyone responds obediently. Sometimes the numbers are quite small.
God’s strategy, as I see it in scripture, is not to save nations (or, in the case of the US, empires) as entities, but rather to save individuals in numbers large or small, as he sees fit. Imagining a divided nation electing a “Gideon” from “some obscure Bible college” four years from now is a fever dream fantasy in my book, not because God is unable to do the impossible or to save hundreds of millions of people, nor even because the average Bible college graduate is not blessed with head-turning charisma, but because God commands men to repent, he doesn’t force them to do so against their wills. Four years or ten thousand won’t change the character of God or a strategy he has employed with humanity since Adam fell. Faced with options, some will always turn away.
By all means pray for US voters without distinction. Such generosity of spirit is to your credit. But don’t be disappointed with the numbers who actually repent. Every one is precious to God, and he is not unduly impressed by the number of zeroes in a total. But it will never be a majority. You will never build an earthly state on it.
The Voices of the Dead
To be fair to Doug, I don’t believe for a second he is imagining an America that reverses its precipitous moral decline within his lifetime, or even one in which the magic 270th electoral vote goes to a mythical Gideon in four years, eking out a razor-thin margin for the “good guys”. As he makes evident further down his list of encouraging election thoughts, there are other possibilities:
“God is glorified by empires in their prime and He is also glorified by Ozymandian ruins. He is glorified by such ruins as have had sand blowing over them for centuries, and He is glorified if all the scattered rocks are still hot and smoking. And His glory would not be any the less if the smoking rocks were American rocks.”
64,000,000 dead babies since Roe v. Wade in the US alone, and 36,000,000 total throughout the world just this year, for which politicians in countries like the US and Canada that have promoted abortion in the third world will one day give their account. How many innocent dead in the Ukrainian money laundry, let alone in all the other useless, unbiblical foreign wars the US should never have initiated? The numbers are probably uncountable. The voices of the dead cry out for justice, and God hears. The time is coming for Americans to eat the bitter fruit of the trees they planted, or else God is not God. And guess what? He absolutely is. It may not be this election cycle or the next one — assuming there exists a United States of America capable of holding federal elections at that point — but the time to avenge the dead will come. All empires fall. America will not be the sole exception.
And Doug’s right: God may choose to glorify himself over the smoking rocks of the USA. We could not argue with him if he did.
Nothing Beside
Probably not our job to pray for it though, nor to dance in the “Ozymandian ruins”. Whatever November and subsequent months hold, we need to remember “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment”.
He does, and he will. May our prayers and conduct in all things affirm we are among the godly rather than the unrighteous.
“And on the pedestal, these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
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