Neither outcome of this presidential race would’ve surprised me. I don’t like to make predictions, but in my capacity as my former roommate’s mom’s personal, text-on-demand pundit, I did venture back in August my instinct that Donald Trump would take my state of Pennsylvania and, with it, the victory. And so he has.
Neither outcome would’ve pleased me, either. I know that’s the kind of thing for which partisans have no patience, especially while the win or loss is so fresh. But the truth is, I don’t want Trump or his rival, Kamala Harris, to be president of these United States. I believe he will do (and she would have done) a bad job. In some matters, it would’ve been the same kind of bad job in either administration; elsewhere, I think one or the other is worse.
I don’t want to parse all that here. The decision is made, and there will be plenty of time for policy and poll analyses later. Here, I want to speak to fellow Christians from my spot outside each camp but friendly with people in both. I keep returning to two passages from Scripture as I mull this result and consider what has not changed in and for ourselves and our neighbors.
“There is a time for everything,” Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, and this week is a time for Ecclesiastes, especially its eighth chapter, which is brimming with prudence and equanimity in the face of political and social turbulence.
“Obey the king’s command,” advises 8:2—but not, apparently, because he is a good king. Act instead out of duty to God (v. 2), refusing to “stand up for a bad cause” while recognizing that, realistically, the king “will do whatever he pleases” (v. 3).
Don’t spend too much time on worries and anticipations, whether your concern is the Trump administration or backlash against it: “Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come?” (v. 7)
For all we may hope or fear now, we do not know what will happen next. Sometimes, “a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time” (v. 12). Sometimes, it is “the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve” (v. 14).
But sometimes, “a man lords it over others to his own hurt” (v. 9). And sometimes, “because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow” (v. 13). Sometimes, even, “it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him” (v. 12).
In any case, our business must be the state of our hearts before God, for “wickedness will not release those who practice it” (v. 8). We cannot always keep its claws off others, but with God’s help we can tear them off of ourselves.
Yet rejection of wickedness and a bad cause is not enough. We don’t want to be houses merely swept clean (Luke 11:25) but filled with the likeness of Christ, rebuilt as little outposts of his kingdom, recognizable as his claims.
Add, then, to the prudence of Ecclesiastes 8 the exhortations of Hebrews 13. This is the chapter that declares, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (v. 8), and that is a timely word right now. But so too are the chapter’s many instructions for the Christian life under duress.
First and foremost, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters” (v. 1). Show “hospitality to strangers” (v. 2), and “remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering” (v. 3). Never is that advice more needed than if we find ourselves in power. The first readers of Hebrews were a poor and powerless minority in their society, yet they had a duty to the stranger, the prisoner, and the suffering. How much more, then, do we?
Beyond that, heed church authorities (v. 17) and avoid “all kinds of strange teachings” (v. 9). Honor marriage and reject sexual immorality and love of money, two of our culture’s greatest idols (vv. 4–5). Be content, “because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’” (v. 5).
It is in this context that we can “say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?’” (v. 6). It is in this context that we recall that “here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (v. 14).
And yet, the present city is unmistakably, unignorably before us. Maybe you are happy with its new direction, or maybe you are mourning. In either case, all the above remains the same—and so do we.
Contrary to some sensational election responses, America is not different than it was on Monday, and neither are our duties as Christians. The family members, friends, and fellow congregants who voted differently from us all thought differently from us a few days ago, too. What we love about them is the same. The kindnesses they have done us still happened. And what we find misguided or incoherent or annoying about them is the same, too. They were sinners then and are sinners now. We all are.
“Pray for us,” as the author of Hebrews pleads in 13:18. “We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way,” but so often we are weak. We err. We sin. We strain harder to see tomorrow than to see Christ. There is a time for everything, and this is a time for humility, grace, and prayer.
Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.
