Here in the US, we are in full-on political mode, some 90 days before election day. Your social media feeds, your television commercials, your neighbor’s yard signs – all politics, all the time. It can be a stressful season.
I get people all the time who tell me they hate politics. But mostly, when people say they hate politics, they mean they hate the bickering, the my team vs your team, the name calling, the hyperbole and the bad faith arguments. They hate that it gets reduced to something more akin to SEC football than public decisions about how we live with each other. They don’t hate politics – they hate partisanship.
Because politics isn’t about teams, or elephants and donkeys, or yard signs – that is partisanship. Politics is the way free people decide how we are going to live together. It is the way we decide how to spend public money, and on what. It’s the way we discern our collective values.
Christians have a sort of dual-citizenship. We seek to live into the reign (or kingdom) of God, while also living, geographically, in the country or state or town where we reside. Historically, some Mennonites have argued against voting, or other forms of political action, based on their faith. But I don’t find this argument compelling. In the 29th chapter of the book of Jeremiah, God tells the exiles to “…seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
As Christians, who live among people that Jesus loves and died for, who seek to work for the welfare of the city where we find ourselves, I believe we must be political to work for the welfare of the other folks in the city, or state, or country where we find ourselves. And God promises us that if we take care of them, then we too will be taken care of. Our wellbeing is wrapped up in theirs. If we would not deny a hungry man a plate of food in Christ’s name, I don’t know how my refusal to vote for someone who wants to decrease the chances of his being hungry in the future, honors God.
I do not believe the Kingdom of God will come about through the ballot box. And I will never tell you who you should vote for. I am wary of politicians telling us that they are God’s preferred candidate. But voting is one of the ways, in a free society, that we can work to reduce suffering in the world, and to promote the welfare of where we find ourselves. And if we have the opportunity to reduce suffering and we do not, I don’t think God will hold us blameless.
So, I hope you will vote. I hope you will, in the days prior to the election, focus on how we reduce suffering, rather than how we increase partisan division. And whether your person wins or not, I pray that you will wake up the next morning, committed to working for the welfare of the people you live among.