Voting Like A Christian - 7

I have found myself thinking quite a bit about Scot Mcknight’s latest post on politics this week.  The election night results are in (disappointing), and the speculation about Dion’s supposedly inevitable resignation has begun in earnest (also disappointing by the way).  As I mentioned before the election, my feelings about the election are spurring me back into greater political involvement.

However, the world will not end on account of who wins elections. The fact is that no politician, no matter how grand and compelling his (or her) vision may be, will usher in an era of universal peace and prosperity where human suffering has been abolished.

Scott sums this up well, writing about the upcoming election in America:

Somewhere between 6pm and 8pm, Central Time, on November 4th, 2008, the eschatology of American evangelicals will become clear. If John McCain wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical has an eschatology of politics. Or, alternatively, if Barack Obama wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical too has an eschatology of politics. Or, we could turn each around, if a more Democrat oriented evangelical becomes depressed and hopeless because McCain wins, or if a Republican oriented evangelical becomes depressed or hopeless because Obama wins, those evangelicals are caught in an empire-shaped eschatology of politics.

Where is our hope? To be sure, I hope our country solves its international conflicts and I hope we resolve poverty and dissolve our educational problems and racism. But where does my hope turn when I think of war or poverty or education or racism? Does it focus on November 4? Does it gain its energy from thinking that if we get the right candidate elected our problems will be dissolved? If so, I submit that our eschatology has become empire-shaped, Constantinian, and political. And it doesn’t matter to me if it is a right-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Republican wins, or a left-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Democrat wins. Each has a misguided eschatology.

To be faithful to God entails that we must be faithful to him in politics, as in all areas of life.  However,  being faithful to God also entails that we not misplace our faith - investing it in a party or a politician or a particular policy reform.  Instead the horizons of our hope need be circumscribed by the doctrines of the fall and of human finitude; if we get the limits right on our hope in political life, it will help us to remain unbounded by foolish limits to our faith in God.