We are going to be OK.
Love it or hate it Donald Trump is going to be the president of the United States of America for four years.
Americans across the country are exhausted.
Neither candidate was an ideal option, and a majority of the political discourse this cycle has been filled with vitriol and hopelessness.
It is easy to be disheartened by our present democracy. Even so, we are going to be OK.
Federalism, history and theology all make it apparent that the sun will still rise and the earth will still spin.
The presidential election is important. As Daniel-Day Lewis stated in the film “Lincoln,” “I am the President of the United States of America! Clothed in immense power!”
But while the president does hold a lot of power, we should not hyperfixate on that office alone. Congress and state governors also hold power to impact our lives in ways the president cannot.
Think about all the other names that were on the ballot. Each one of those individuals are there because they hold some power or responsibility that the president does not.
“That is a design of the system,” Philip Byers, the Halbrook chair of civic engagement, said. “That is the genius of it — the genius of federalism is that power is diffused.”
As well as federalism, historical elections should provide comfort that everything is alright.
The election of 1800 has been brought up a lot in this recent election cycle, and for good reason. When John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were duking it out for the presidency, the political atmosphere was also stifling.
“In 1800, the Adams people are running ads in the newspapers saying, basically, ‘You're an atheist if you vote for Jefferson; Jefferson is going to take your Bibles,’” Benjamin Wetzel, associate professor of history, said.
This does not sound too dissimilar to the accusations of both sides leading up to Nov. 5.
Jefferson ended up winning the 1800 election, and bibles are still common in American households. With the benefit of hindsight, we can laugh at Adams’ false accusations. We made it through Jefferson’s presidency, what is different this time?
In our head we might be thinking: but this time really is different. The present is not 1800. We really are in a crisis that we cannot recover from.
Hopefully this has been proven otherwise, but we can play pretend. What if this time really is different? What if we really are in a crisis that America cannot recover from?
If these are our thoughts, then give up hope.
Russell Moore recently wrote a piece for Christianity Today discussing something called ‘hopium.’ This hopium is an addictive yearning for something lost. A hope for something that was once good.
By living in fear that the U.S. is totally lost and this democratic experiment is a failure we fall prey to this ‘hopium.’ We yearn for a time before the 2016 election. If this is what Americans hope for, then yes, we need to give up hope.
As Christians, however, our hope is not found in the past. Instead, our hope is found in God’s sovereign will for the future — a future that will be so much better than the past. We need to reassign our hope to God’s plan, not our past.
“Seek first the kingdom of God who controls our eternity,” Edward Meadors, professor of Biblical studies, said. “ Then we'll have an understanding of how to deal with injustice, how to respond to it, how to persevere through it with hope and confidence and security.”
So, reassign hope to God. We are going to be OK.
