As Election Day approaches, I find I crave some antidote to the acrimony of this campaign and the unavoidable anxiety it has raised in all of us about its outcome. Thinking about this gnawing sense of apprehension has sent me back to CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. There the mentor demon, Screwtape, specifically advises his protégé to encourage in the humans an obsessive worry about the future. “In making them think about [the future] we make them think about unrealities.”
For Screwtape, this election cycle has provided a feast of epic proportions. Each candidate has called us to imagine the horrors that would attend if we elect his/her opponent.
It is not that we don’t need to think about the future. Clearly, selecting a candidate is all about judging who will provide the better leadership going forward. Making that choice and actually voting comprise our present responsibility.
But worrying about the outcome is ultimately unfaithful. As Americans, we ought to have faith in our system. Even if we don’t like this year’s results, we do well to remember we have survived periods of poor governance in the past. If our assessment of wrong thinking in our leaders proves correct, perhaps it will open the market to better ideas in the future.
Beyond our faith in the American system, as believers, we need to remember that, despite the free rein God gives to our will, the Lord reigns nonetheless. God keeps the future in shadows for a reason – that we might wait to walk through it by divine light. If we become obsessed with what might happen, it will surely cloud our perception of what God may be trying to show us there.
Come what may on Election Day, God will still be Lord of the Universe. While God refrains from offering us immunity to the troubling fallout from our times, the Lord stands ready to guide us through the repercussions of every shaky vote we cast.
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