An Election Reflection

***NB: This is meant neither to minimize the real vulnerabilities that many people face in our world depending on the winds of political change nor to minimize the real import of who may win the US elections in 2024 or who may serve in political office around the world. Rather, as is all too apparent from the experience of early Christians under Roman rule, it is meant to show that we have resources and forerunners in the faith whose example can challenge our own ways of living in the contemporary world, whether the best or worst political outcomes should come to pass.***

This year, 2024, has been an oddity for me as we have been living abroad in Leipzig, Germany. I can imagine, mostly by the use of my memories from 2016 and 2020, what it must have been like in the US leading up to Nov 5, 2024, but in my life in Europe, the US elections are a distant thought. I have only had one conversation with a European individual about US politics in all of August, September, October, and the beginning of November. I don’t think this is due to uninterest on their part as I have seen individuals consuming news about the US elections. (Perhaps it is more due to a subdued manner with respect to broaching the topic with a US citizen.) But it has led to a different experience for me when it comes to my regular pre-election meditations and prayers. 

For almost two decades now, I have spent time in the lead up to major elections in the US meditating on Paul’s words in Philippians and, more recently, on a small comment from a beloved mentor and friend. As to the first, early in my life, Paul’s comments in Phil 3 lodged themselves in my brain according to the NIV translation: “But our citizenship is in heaven…” Yet, this translation takes considerable intellectual work for me to understand what Paul’s words really intend. Paul uses the word politeuma here to communicate a particular idea, one which is served by the addition of the alternative translation, “but we are a colony of heaven…” See, citizenship is a fine idea to communicate everything, but as a US citizen living abroad in Germany, I have not only desired to obey German laws and behave in ways that will be appropriate to my current host country, but I have also been interested in minimizing my “Americanness” broadly. However, what Paul intends in Phil 3 is much closer to what life is like at an embassy in a foreign country. For Paul, the Jew who has lived in the world of Jewish Diaspora and the legacy of first Greek empire and Alexander’s vision of cosmopolitanism leading to the Hellenizing of the ancient Mediterranean, being a politeuma means a life of resisting the host culture and way of being in the world even as one lives amidst it. Hence, we must balance the idea of citizenship – that one‘s ultimate loyalty and responsibility lie with a different polity than where one resides – with the language of colony – the idea that one lives among a community who actively work to resist accommodation to ways of life that are not our own. As a citizen of heaven/resident of a colony of heaven, I am neither subject to the laws and customs of an earthly nation nor am I to allow the culture and way of life of an earthly nation to colonize my life. I am a member of Christ’s resistance, of heaven’s beach front, of God’s initial cultivation of a land gone to seed.

In terms of U.S. elections, then, I consider it paramount to remember that neither my ultimate duty nor my ultimate responsibility rest in the US electoral system or the changing winds of power in various capitols and city halls. Moreover, my hope is directed towards the future victory of God’s reign in Christ, as it is already manifest in my life and in the Church. This foundational reality and hope, then, can determine my choices and my emotional outlook. Ironically, this exact reality is ever-present on the US currency: “In God we trust”, not in the US president, not in the US constitutional system of governance, not in the US economy as it is represented in the world through the US currency wherein those words are written, or the US military force, or the US diplomatic corps, or in any other political economic, or cultural power. Instead, elections serve as a reminder of my need to resist all the ways that it could be so easy and unconscious to rely on US global prominence, and often dominance, as a source of peace and strength and hope. No, my hope and my life must be built on nothing less or other than Jesus’s love and righteousness. Practically, this challenges me to neither live in fear or pessimism based on a majority of US citizens seeing an election as other than how I see it nor to live in exultation or hope based on a majority of US citizens seeing the election exactly how I see it. Salvation and condemnation will neither be found in US political power or any other human power. 

This leads to the second element of my recent meditations: through which circumstances will I trust (have faith in) God? Should I be living in a colony of heaven, a natural corollary arises: I live on the territory God controls and over which God has ultimate authority. Now, unlike with an embassy, I am convinced that God’s outpost, the colony of heaven, is neither a gift from a host polity nor does it continue by the goodwill of said host. No, the Earth and all that is in it is the Lord’s. Thus, living in an outpost of heaven does not mean God’s authority over this colony where I live is in trouble, even should hostilities increase between the world and God. The New Testament regularly reflects the experience of early Christians living in an empire that was hostile to God’s reign and so these texts imagine and describe the world and its powers as in opposition to God. Even in this experience, though, the authors are convinced of the ultimate authority of God and therefore of the certainty one can place in God’s authority. For example, Paul himself in Phil 2 quotes a hymn by which early Christians reminded themselves that the day is coming when every knee will bow before Christ and every tongue will confess him as Lord (one of the imperial titles). As Paul would say elsewhere in Romans 8, he is convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Certainly, my circumstances in the US and the world are more secure and fortunate than most if not all early Christians and so it is worth reminding myself of their example should I be lulled into a sense of comfort through worldly political circumstance or should I be jarred into a sense of fear based on political shifts away from my own desired outcomes. Thus, I ask myself whether those for whom I voted win or whether they lose, will I trust in God? Will I rely on and put my faith in the love of God and the already but not yet reign of God, no matter the current, coming, or future reign of any political candidate for office or the military, economic, or cultural reign of any nation, whether my own or another? In whom/what do I trust?