Christianity Today: What To Do After The Election, by Bonnie Kristian (Christianity Today; Author, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (2022)):
I want to speak to fellow Christians from my spot outside each camp but friendly with people in both. I keep returning to two passages from Scripture as I mull this result and consider what has not changed in and for ourselves and our neighbors.
“There is a time for everything,” Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, and this week is a time for Ecclesiastes, especially its eighth chapter, which is brimming with prudence and equanimity in the face of political and social turbulence. …
Don’t spend too much time on worries and anticipations, whether your concern is the Trump administration or backlash against it: “Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come?” (v. 7) …
Add, then, to the prudence of Ecclesiastes 8 the exhortations of Hebrews 13. This is the chapter that declares, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (v. 8), and that is a timely word right now. But so too are the chapter’s many instructions for the Christian life under duress. …
It is in this context that we can “say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?’” (v. 6). It is in this context that we recall that “here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (v. 14).
And yet, the present city is unmistakably, unignorably before us. Maybe you are happy with its new direction, or maybe you are mourning. In either case, all the above remains the same—and so do we.
Contrary to some sensational election responses, America is not different than it was on Monday, and neither are our duties as Christians. The family members, friends, and fellow congregants who voted differently from us all thought differently from us a few days ago, too. What we love about them is the same. The kindnesses they have done us still happened. And what we find misguided or incoherent or annoying about them is the same, too. They were sinners then and are sinners now. We all are.
“Pray for us,” as the author of Hebrews pleads in 13:18. “We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way,” but so often we are weak. We err. We sin. We strain harder to see tomorrow than to see Christ. There is a time for everything, and this is a time for humility, grace, and prayer.
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