The measure of last night’s disgrace is measured by the lengths I had to go to to conceal it from my children. When there is a presidential debate, our usual routine is to turn it on in the family room and to watch it. The kids may be in and out of the room if they are not in bed already. But it is a conspicuous viewing in the middle of our home if it is anything else.
Last night was different. I retreated into a room by myself to view the debate. On two or three occasions, my children came into the room. And on each occasion, I had to shew them out as quickly as possible to conceal from their tender consciences the ignominy unfolding on the debate stage.
It is not easy trying to explain to them why they cannot watch our two presidential candidates debate. Nor is it easy trying to explain to them why our family cannot support either of them. All they know is that we should respect our leaders, no matter their political party. They also know that we usually have a favored candidate who most represents our ideals. But they also know that there is no candidate for us this year from either of the two major political parties. This is a first for us.
This election has made me acutely aware of a weighty burden that I feel for my country and for my children. If evangelicals have felt at ease in Babylon until now, that ease has passed. Our culture is post-Christian, and so are our politics. We are strangers and aliens here (1 Pet. 2:11). That is nothing new. Indeed it has always been the case. But the contrast between the church and the world is becoming increasingly stark in our nation.
The burden I feel is not that Christians have lost the culture or that we need to figure out how to recover some pristine era in the past (no such era ever existed). The burden I feel is for preparing my children and the church that I pastor for the world that we live in now. To be in the world, not of the world, for the sake of the world is what God has called us to (John 17:13-21). To love our neighbors and our enemies and to do so faithfully and joyfully in the face of open opposition and cynical indifference—that is the burden of our time. And that is what we must prepare our children, our churches, and ourselves to face in coming days.
We live in sad times. But the debacle of the 2016 presidential election is not the cause of our times. It is the sign of our times. And we need to have our eyes wide open to the world and our hearts full of gospel joy and our feet swift to our great work. This does not mean a retreat from public life or from our democratic stewardship. It just means that we know where we have pinned our hopes for this life and the next. And believing that, we bear witness to a coming King who will one day make all things new (Rev. 21:5). For here we have no lasting city, but we are seeking a city which is to come (Heb. 13:14).
