By James Wilson
The United States – our America – faces a unique dilemma in this season. We are a nation committed to a two-party system for creating leadership and governance. There are multiple fringe political parties operating outside that framework but for the past century and a half they have gotten little traction other than to occasionally skew an election toward one of the two big parties. (Theodore Roosevelt – 1912 – and Ross Perot – 1992 – come to mind.) Our dilemma finds Republicans and Democrats equally determined to nominate the most disliked candidates in history. Our sixteenth president embodied a solution.
1860 saw a nation tearing itself apart over slavery. 2016 sees a nation tearing itself apart over the right to life, marriage, and raising our children as we see fit and understand our God. The issue was and is freedom – life, liberty and pursuit of happiness – but not that question alone. The question is about who authors the gift of freedom, and whose responsibility it is to care for that gift. In 1860 the two major parties were called the Whigs and the Democrats; neither had the vision, courage, and humility to acknowledge something fundamentally wrong with our hearts before we could seek healing for those hearts. Abraham Lincoln and the other founders of the newly birthed Republican Party were convinced the Living God Authored our freedom; only serving Him outside the traditional box of American political and religious faith would navigate us back into His vision for a just society.
Senator Ben Sasse, Nebraska, recently authored an open letter to Republicans and Democrats. Sasse says the majority of Americans “wonder why the nation that put a man on the moon can’t find a healthy leader who can take us forward together.” He advocates drafting a consensus candidate who is yet a conservative, observing wryly that it won’t be hard to find a likable person more conservative than Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton. He hopes for someone committed to one term of focus on healing national security, honest budget and entitlement reform, release of education authority back to states and localities, and ending protectionism for incumbents. He says we need and deserve a leader who will faithfully execute the laws, not re-write or evade them for the sake of agenda – any agenda. His letter poses good questions and better challenges, but it only goes so far. Let’s take it farther.
The leaders who put men on the moon loved their country but they were not healthy. They led us into war that killed sixty thousand Americans and a million Vietnamese, a war they never planned to win. They presided over a righteous civil rights movement they tried to contain until it burst its bonds; then they pushed it past justice by imposing affirmative action to compound the injustice. Putting men on the moon required physical courage and creativity; addressing war, peace, and justice required a repentant heart.
When the American people saw the mauling of peace marchers between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, we repented of lusting for peace while the innocent suffered; our culture re-committed to a vision of God-given equality. When we saw the dead in the Tet Offensive and realized we were fighting for stalemate – not victory – we repented of lusting for non-commitment and began the process of re-focusing our role in world affairs. That process bumped down the road until Ronald Reagan took office; repentance toward racial harmony is incomplete yet, but we-the-people accepted responsibility under God and the fruit of repentance is ours.
Senator Sasse asks two cogent questions of all Americans. He first asserts it is not good to be either ant-Republican or anti-Democrat and then asks, “What are we for?” It requires a repentant – re-focused – heart to ask and answer his query. He asks if we live lives of sacrifice for others – without self-imposed limits – or do we sacrifice what is convenient and expect others to be satisfied. It is obvious that one approach is good while the other is God’s best.
Sasse refers not to the confiscation of property that is the ruling elite’s idea of sacrifice, but to the voluntary commitment of lives, fortunes, and sacred honor that forged and renewed a nation under Washington and Lincoln. He refers to himself as belonging to the party of Lincoln, but he – and we – need to remember Lincoln did not limit himself to doing the right thing about slavery and preservation of the Union. He did it in the right way; he operated within the laws he was given in the faith God Who inspired the rule of law would permit justice to flow like a river in its time. This will to operate within the limitations imposed on his power by the laws of the land collided with determination not to be satisfied so long as evils like slavery existed. Such a counterintuitive will comes only from a God-given repentant heart.
We need remember repentance does not end with confession of how far we fall short as a nation under God; it only begins there. We reach the heart of repentance when we accept the privilege of re-focus on the God of our origin and destiny. That re-focus and its fruit may well include clearing the Temple of money changers – Herodian and Pharisee alike – as Jesus did with a whip, but it climaxes with a Cross of submission and an Empty Tomb of resurrection.
Senator Sasse calls for drafting an honest candidate for president, someone the grassroots can support. This is a good solution to an emergency and it might even vent the pressure. But Lincoln helped forge a new party re-dedicated to freedom for all Americans. The Party of Lincoln achieved virtually nothing its first few elections; third parties are like that when they first challenge the Establishment. But his party knew more of the vision it was for than the outrage over what it was against. It was a party of sacrifice before entitlement; it was in for the long haul. Resurrection requires some serious time in the tomb before the stone is rolled away. It requires a serious commitment to the whole process of repentance.
Neither Donald Trump nor Hilary Clinton is the best we can do. An independent leader, drafted by consensus, would be a good and better alternative. But the good is the enemy of the best while the best is…well… the best. And the stakes are worth whatever it costs to do the right thing in the right way. Lincoln may be with the Lord but the Lord is with us if we are willing to follow Him home.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
