Written by Charles L. Jacob |
Thursday, May 30, 2024
As we vote this year, let’s turn down the anxiety and frenzy. Billions of dollars and man-hours are being spent to call this the most important election of your lifetime. I’m 61 years old. I’ve been told this every four years. I no longer buy it. Instead, let’s humbly seek the Lord’s will, consider the issues and candidates, and confer together as “iron sharpens iron” (Prov. 27:17). Then let’s vote lovingly and respectfully, knowing Jesus’s kingdom isn’t ultimately dependent on the election’s outcome.
In 1984, two of my Christian friends lived together in Washington, DC, as summer interns. One worked full-time to elect Walter Mondale and Democrats. The other worked full-time to elect Ronald Reagan and Republicans. In August, as they returned to California for their last year of college, they laughed that each probably canceled out the efforts of the other.
How many Christian friends would enjoy the same kind of summer together in 2024?
Way too many of us care way too much about who’ll win this year’s presidential election. Though the partisan fires didn’t burn as hot 40 years ago, Richard Lovelace observed a similar spirit then:
Every four years the American people elect a new president with the hope that somehow this will make things better. Economic downturns, crop failures, moral declines and worsening international conditions are all blamed on presidents—who in most cases have little control over events. In the hearts of the people is a groping, inarticulate conviction that if the right ruler would only come along, the world would be healed of all its wounds.
If I’m honest, presidential elections have meant way too much to me. I spent the first decade of my adult life in Washington, DC, including a six-year stint as a political lobbyist for Apple Inc. I know what it is to live and breathe politics as a Christian. During the 1992 election, the Lord began to proportion my political energies with the gospel message revealed in Daniel 2. I’ve returned to the book of Daniel every election year since.
Political History’s Kingdom Climax
In Judah’s exile to Babylon, Daniel sees God’s people suffer on a massive scale. He later sees the Babylonian empire vanquished by the Persians. For Daniel, the question that surfaces is whether the rise of global empires rendered God’s kingdom moot. Despite all the bloodshed and appearances to the contrary, the Book of Daniel’s answer is an emphatic no.
In Daniel 2, the prophet interpreted King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, where an uncut stone struck and destroyed a great statue representing the world’s mighty empires. Daniel tells us that stone represents God’s kingdom, and he sees God’s kingdom as the climax of all political history: “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed. . . . It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms [our world’s successive empires] and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever” (v. 44).