Post Election: Where Do We Go from Here?

At the time of this writing, the numbers say 74,939,396 US citizens voted one way and 70,636,322 voted the opposite. The final numbers will differ some. But regardless of what the final numbers are, that is a lot of difference. 

NBC broke down the race-based religious data. And they found this—which will come as no surprise: Among white Protestants, 73 percent voted for President Trump, and 26 percent voted for President-elect Biden. Pew Research paints a different picture for Blacks: 90 percent of Black Protestant registered voters backed Biden. Christianity Today reported, based on National Election Pool results, that nationally Trump took 40 percent of the Latino vote; Biden took 59 percent.  

Any way we cut it, we see things differently. And we are not all going to agree. So, we have to learn to be one in Christ’s church. And it won’t be enough to improve our tone (though that would help). We also need to listen and love.     

Here is one test of how well we have listened: Even if we disagree with a brother or sister, we can understand how they see things the way they do. Are we committed to listening long and well enough to think, “I disagree, but I can see how you’d see it that way”?

On one thing Christians must all agree, though—the gospel.   

A prominent evangelical pastor in my city suggested that a Christian voting differently from him “sold his soul to the devil.” Normally, I would ignore such an outlandish statement. But I heard a lot of similar remarks. And such statements muddy the gospel, which must be our primary message. Just to be clear, here is the gospel: Jesus Christ died and was buried; he was raised and was seen by many witnesses. Whoever believes in Jesus Christ as Lord will be saved. 

Do those who differ from us know what we consider the main thing? Based on the Facebook posts and Tweets and Insta’s and TikTok videos we make and dinner conversations and work chats we have, are we keeping the main thing the main thing: that the government will one day rest on his shoulders (Isaiah 9:6)? Because Jesus is the way.

Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash