A Thought for E-Day
A thought for election day as many of you head to the polls…
How are we to judge tomorrow? Is history going anywhere? Is there meaning? Can we have hope?
Our answer very much depends on the lens through which we view the goings-on around us. If we begin with Man as the measure of all things (Homo Mensura), we will forever limit our perspective—never able to see beyond man and the fractured moment he continually leaves behind with the next tick, tick, ticking of the clock—never able to hear a single voice above the mob of voices, each baying, “Meaning is my own to make!” To be sure occasionally, the voice of the most, or the strongest will win the day. But when such represent the worst of men and not the best, what will we do then? And how are we supposed to tell the difference in a homo mensura world, where man is the only measure?
There is much to commend this perspective, I suppose, particularly when your party comes out on top, and “as long as you are big, strong, and between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. But watch out if you are in a lifeboat and there are others who are younger, bigger, or smarter. (William Murray).”
But even we do win, is it worth the trouble? If life’s winner defines life’s meaning, does the meaning he means mean anything? When it’s all said and done, is there any difference between a history that can mean anything and a history that does mean nothing? Wasn’t this the Bard’s point?
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing....(when told from an merely earthly perspective by the next man who wins the right to speak)
But what a difference Christ makes to our reading of history. When this man becomes the meaning-maker, history has a final measure by which every second of time and every event of life derives lasting significance. It really is His-story—And what a story it becomes!
“Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, And are counted as the small dust of the balance: Behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, Nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing; And they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will ye liken God? Or what likeness will ye compare unto him? …Have ye not known? have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, And the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; That stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, And spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: That bringeth the princes to nothing; He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. Yea, they shall not be planted; Yea, they shall not be sown: Yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: And he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, And the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.” (Isaiah 40:15–24, KJV 1900)
I expect we will hear a storm of words (and perhaps dark, dangerous, and divisive deeds) in the weeks to come but, as Christians, we must hold our ground, steadfast, stable, sensible, gripped with right-reason and the mind-renewing power of Truth.
“Christians must not only confront this storm with the gospel of Jesus Christ, we must do so with full faith. Our hope does not rest with temporal political victory though it understands the importance of politics; it rests in the One who sits at the right hand of the throne of God; it rests with the One through whom all things were created. Our faith is in the One who was nailed to the cross, rose from the grave, ascended into heaven, and established His unchallenged rule over the cosmos. Death is defeated, and the head of the serpent crushed. The attempt of secularism to usurp the rule of the Son of God amounts to the height of human folly. Nothing will prevail over our God. Nothing can withstand the power of the gospel.” Amen. (The Gathering Storm: Secularism, Culture, and the Church, Al Mohler)
Whatever our political persuasion, in this, I trust, we can all agree. In Christ, Meaning has died, Meaning has risen, and meaning is (and shall) come again. Nothing this truth can dim.