Wednesday, November 5, 2014

HOW I VOTED


Yesterday was election day in the United States. This was not the big election, where we elect a new president. That happens in 2016. This one is called a mid-term election, where many of our state officials who are to represent us at the capital are elected. These are our Senators and Congressmen.

It has also been our year for election campaign advertisements on television and radio, besides countless billboards and signs adorning the lawns (or, depending on your point of view, littering the lawns) of the true believers of this or that candidate. This is our election process and it is good to have a voice in government.

Nevertheless, as I cast my ballot at our local town hall yesterday, I realized that I was mostly casting it in favor for all of the campaign hoopla to end. Hoopla is just the word that I want to use here, because that is what it is. For all of you for whom American English is not your native language, hoopla is a slang word that means excessive and boisterous talk. Even misleading talk.

As I cast my ballot, I found myself relieved that I will no longer be subjected to these incessant campaign ads. For those of you who have been exposed to the excessive and boisterous TV advertisements for the candidates, you know what I mean. These ads are also on the radio and by way of other media, but the television ads are the worst.

These are the advertisements for which the candidates spend many millions of dollars telling us how they are going to save the country so much money if they are elected.

These are the advertisements where the candidates try to convince us that once elected, they are going to work well with the opposing party and without any ill feelings. This they do at the same time they are also trying to convince us that the opposing candidate is an evil and lying bum who only wants to take your money and give it to their already rich friends and campaign backers.

This, I am afraid, is democracy in action.

Winston Churchill, in his characteristic manner of putting his thoughts in a memorable way, said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I suppose that I agree with the honorable Churchill, but I also find myself asking, “Do you mean, this is the best that we can do?”

Perhaps it is the best that we can do. After millennia of trying different forms of government and some centuries at trying to refine the democratic process, perhaps what we are seeing in action today is actually the best that we can come up with.

Thank God it is not the government of eternity. The Bible teaches us that all of history is moving to an eventual administration that will be under Jesus Christ. This, the Bible calls “an administration suitable to the fullness of times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.”

In that administration, the Bible also says that Jesus will be,”far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:10, 21 NAS).

Now there is a political slogan I would be glad to post on my lawn.

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