Oedipus: transparency and shame
There are some actors that I would pay to hear read out the bus timetable, and Mark Strong is top of that list. So when I heard that he was playing opposite Les...
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In 2016, as results came in that indicated Hillary Clinton was in fact heading for defeat, there were a range of different reactions. I wonder what yours was. Personally, I remember how sick I felt in my stomach. As an idealistic politics undergraduate, Donald Trump’s first election felt, in a strange way, like a personal rejection of my own values relating to decency and democracy.
It feels different this time. And that’s not because I care less, but because eight years on, I care differently.
If I’m with a friend and the conversation turns to politics, specifically the American election, they might well turn to me and say, ‘But why should I care?’
I can answer that question with political or spiritual reasoning, but it strikes me that the question really being asked is, an ocean away and without a vote, ‘How should I care?’
When John Stott outlined the importance of ‘double listening’, he was emphasising how critically important it was to sensitively relate the word of God and the world to one another. It was impossible to fully comprehend one without the other.
And so, if the question is ‘how should I care?’, the Spirit demands it of us to pay attention for the sake of global flourishing, starting with our vulnerable neighbours.
Micah 6:8 answers the question of what the Lord demands of us: ‘To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’
It’s hard to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly if we choose not to care about the most globally consequential democratic exercise and instead bury our heads in the sand.
Regarding president-elect Donald Trump, we can differ; perhaps you’re celebrating ‘forgotten’ voters being heard. Whatever your view, just recognise the election result is worth caring about.
And how do we care? Stott would start his day by reading the Bible and the newspaper. In 2024, that may be the Bible and our trusted news app. But we must ingest the news with hearts that lean towards justice and mercy, no matter our party preference.
Pray for Trump, and for the outgoing Biden-Harris administration. Pray for those who, wherever in the world and for whatever reason, feel more unsafe after this result than they did before – especially if they didn’t even have a vote.
And listen earnestly to those who disagree with us politically, and daily practise acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.
Sam Brown
Sam is one of LICC’s Church Advocates and holds a degree in politics, as part of which he studied American elections.
I heartily endorse your comments, but with one caveat. America is simply one step further along the road than the UK, and any observations/feelings we have about the situation there, should turn our thoughts and prayers to the United Kingdom, where electoral turnout is falling, an unpopular party just gained a large majority because the “other lot” were even more unpopular, where extremist/populist/fascist forces, with access to foreign funding and digital misinformation (often directed at Christians), have made significant electoral breakthroughs, and those of us living in the most deprived communities of the UK are being ignored, and merely offered more austerity-based monetarist economics policies.
Christians are not the potent electoral force (for good or ill) here that they are in the USA, but those of us who take the teaching of the Hebrew prophets and the praxis of Jesus seriously, should be challenging the dangerous state of UK politics, and in particular, the lack of serious difference (in economic terms) between our two main political parties and their continued commitment to small government, authoritarian politics, and outdated monetarist economics that favour the City of London, but further impoverish the poor. It frightens me how content the bulk of the UK church (with some welcome exceptions) appears to be with the economic status quo at home, with gross injustices abroad and with environmental destruction globally.
If watchmen (and women) remain silent, then we become complicit.
Wise counsel…thank you, Sam!
It should read watchmen and women , we do not need to be bracketed as it makes women an afterthought not as important as male opinion