Your Party Won't Win

The Election, Your Spirituality, & the Soul of our Nation #3

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My closing sentence in last Thursday’s email was “It’s up to us to be and live as God’s peculiar people who know how to love and to hope in God.” A lovely way of picturing what that might look like is in the great quote from Arthur Brooks (from the 2020 National Prayer Breakfast) – when he urged us to be “missionaries for love in the face of contempt.” Join me in committing to be such a missionary today!

Easier said than done. Forces tug and tear at your mind and heart, making this a season to be very attentive to the state of your soul. Are you veering into a shrill, dark mood? What pushes your buttons and makes you crazy? Can you take time to breathe, to read Scripture, to be at peace, to strive for a holy wisdom? Who’s hard to love? Jesus loves you too much to give you a pass because boneheaded political thinking’s involved.

We need to understand why and how boneheaded thinking happens. In politics, the problem is idolatry. If Martin Luther was right in saying “Whatever your heart clings to, that is your god” (and he was!), then let’s admit we make a god out of our political ideology. We believe our ideology will be the salvation of us and the world, but the other ideology will be doom and catastrophe.

Have you ever noticed how politicians and parties, with their soaring promises and speechmaking (with music!) function like a church – with its scriptures and leaders, with ideas clustered around what is good and what isn’t, what will deliver the good life and what will ruin it, a congregation chiming in together with their Amens? Depressingly, many politicians and citizens paste the true God, Jesus, and the Bible on the outside of their politics, as if Jesus bows down and serves their idol with them.

Idolatry scrambles your brain. You think those who don’t get it are heretics, numbskulls, menaces to society. After awhile, you stop caring about the actual issues. It’s more about tribal identity: I’m with these guys, and never those guys; it’s almost more important that they lose than that we win.

Idolatry divides people into winners and losers. The Founding Fathers didn’t wish for “winner-take-all.” They believed we would always have the kind of character and heart as a nation that we would accommodate the minority, that those who didn’t win could still win and be enfranchised, heard, cared for. As Christians, we have an absolute obligation to embrace and even make sacrifices for those who are fewer in number, and not as loud.

Ideology vacuums humility and curiosity out of your soul. You stop asking questions (except Why are they so stupid?). You become as gullible and narrow-minded as those on the other side you know to be so gullible and narrow-minded. When you feel that cocky assurance and a lack of interest and even loathing of another person or viewpoint, you are a long way from Jesus.

Russell Moore, in the current issue of Christianity Today, writes that “Your party will not win this election.” That’s because, whoever wins, no one will win. The soul of America will still be a trainwreck. The losing side won’t just go away. Your foes will not be vanquished. … and besides, your party will disappoint you, as all false gods disappoint, because they aren’t the one true God that can make and keep promises.

God has promised always to be with us. Neither political triumphs, nor political catastrophes are as gigantic as we imagine. God is still God.

More from James C. Howell

The Rev. James C. Howell is senior pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, N.C. This post is republished with the author's permission from his biweekly email to church members and other interested persons. Click here to subscribe.