Gomer and The Post Election Church

Da Vinci's Magdalene

This is for the Christians horrified over the election outcome: don’t be! This is for the Christians that are excited over their political champion winning: don’t be!  We have one hope and it is not in temporary things like systems, platforms or positions. No, it is in a Messiah that we have hope. This Messiah united us in the Eucharist of remembered suffering which can be remembered best when the meal leads us to stop trying to be winners and with a glad heart pick up the cross.

You may then ask what about our moral obligation to use our voting-voice? I contest that we are not obligated to bring God’s kingdom about through the management of any pagan-empire like Franklin Graham and the American Renewal Project suggest. In fact I believe that such “moral obligations” has less to do with obligatory matters and more to do with the church deeming an unrepentant social structure holy out of a desire for control. If you want a moral obligation, it is love for God, for the world and for someone who does not deserve it. It will look like radical attachment to friend and foe.   

We should stop and ask ourselves, is it even our job to control the country’s morality?  The reality is we can no more force someone into Christian morality through laws than America can bomb terrorists into a “higher” morality.[1] Not one bit of this softens hearts, offers mercy or tells of a Messiah that died for his enemies. Yet, as we keep trying to unlawfully manage American politics it is we who will be conquered by its corrosive nature; it is a beast after all. So until the church is satisfied with Jesus as our president, the Sermon on the Mount our constitution and the witness of God’s mercy our national anthem, just expect that God will have to come get Gomer from her new pimp every four years. If that sounds too harsh, well then just remember that the Church can always become the faithful partner living counter to the cultural that sells itself for self-preservation.

[1] I ripped that line off of Bill Cavanaugh and I make no apologies for it, unless he demands one.