Elections Are Frustrating, Politics More So

[HKHaugan]

Elections Are Frustrating, Politics More So

       If this mid term election taught us anything it is one from the Spirit of God.  It was a battle of two secular parties where who could outfox who was the deal.  Both sides argued from cunning hypocrisy and gaudy assumption.  A nation divided is a message to its citizens, a message that neither side has either perfect insight nor is their insight flawless.  Both sides operate out of faulty wisdom and their imperfect conclusions.  Their oversight is really undersight, that is, what lies beneath all human activity.  Neither side relinquishes its sense of superiority in cunning intellect, financial backing and the real adversary, a driven self-righteousness.  What politics in general avoids is its vulnerable underbelly, a lack of guiding spirituality.  True, there are individuals who may believe they are spiritually motivated but as a body politique they are not.

       While one side leans on its analysis of physical conditions, economy, inflation, crime, border crises and value the origin of individual human life, the other side revels in its political value structure that frees every individual to be their own moral master, thus making personal choice  the definition of democracy in its purest form.  Both sides avoid humanity’s two most important realities, human imperfection and the perfect God who created us.  First, human beings are imperfect due to their spiritual condition, the personal imperfection of sin, self-centeredness.  No one is perfectly right about anything.  They are born and live isolated from their spiritual source.  Second, the driving force behind life, its spiritual source, is God.  God, the one and only God there is, ultimately rules the hearts of mankind in His perfection.  Avoid that and we avoid reality.

       Ultimately, above and over this world, there is spiritual accountability, spiritual judgment.  Until these two truths, human imperfection and a perfect God, are recognized there can never be any resolution to the issues that face humanity.  Whether they be kings, dictators, emperors, presidents, leaders or their followers, no political system can save them from their imperfections until they are reunited with their source, the God who created them.  Human history shows the resulting consequences of spiritual insensitivity in the moral breakdown of civilizations in the past and the immorality of our present society.  Privatized morality is hyper-caffeinated evil and haughty prognosis is evil’s companion.

       The present election had no winners.  It was a draw.  The divide is only more intense.  Human emotion is not satisfied only relegated to foment in the underground of bitterness.  Political winners don’t care about losers in the least.  Behind it all is the exposure of political motivation, the fear of losing secular power.  Losers find themselves in the cellar of non-attention.  Winners define right and worth, losers define wrong and are worthless.  Is the Lord not making a statement that unless He is allowed into the human heart humanity will always find itself in a struggle for power from within the individual that vibrates throughout all its external ruling structures?

       The nation we call the United States of America was founded with the belief that all people are created by God and created to be equal with whoever and wherever they are.  The founding documents protect that right and how they work that out is not first economically, socially or legally but spiritually in a personal relationship with their Creator.  All law is based on that one principle.  All economic structures are intended to be derived spiritually as well as all the social activity within them. 

       One thing we have to face is this reality.  There is no such thing as a pure democracy which is ‘one person /one vote’ on every issue and every function of governance.  With populations in the millions, every individual would have to be acquainted with every governing issue directly.  This is why our form of government is a modified democracy, a republic, whereby we elect representatives who we trust to make decisions for us in areas over which we as individuals have neither knowledge nor control.  Infrastructure, law, economics, military and international issues and their sub-divisions, are just examples.  Spiritually founded and grounded our republic can only function when it is spiritually assessed and directed.

       In all of these areas individuals are chosen to make decisions for us as individuals.  And it is individuals for whom they labor.  Where are their hearts, the hearts of those who vote and those voted for?  This is the basic issue we face living in a republic where the two sides will remain in conflict and its tensions.  We cannot dictate to either side the personal choices people make, the personal hearts that have different spiritual loyalties or no spiritual concern at all.  The imperfection of sin is in everyone and only the Lord God can give direction in the unseen dimension of choice and decision.   That is why faith in God remains at the forefront of any nation.  A nation will find its fulfillment only if the One Creator God rules the hearts of the individuals in it.  Here’s the wise bottom line King David gave us over 3000 years ago, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord (Ps.33:12).”  We need spiritual revival for every human heart.  It begins with the ‘I’ in each of us.