I studied history in college, which for me means that I have always watched American politics with more than a passing interest. I would try to imagine the news from the perspective of a future historian. How would history remember these moments? Would it look favorably on these decisions, these elections, or would this be a mere paragraph in the story of America? It was a fun exercise, for a while at least. But it turns out that investing near-cosmic significance to my news feed isn’t all that enjoyable.

You see, last October I came face to face with my idol. I do not mean I met someone famous or influential, rather I woke up to my own idolization of politics. 2020 was a rough year for all of us and the run up to the Presidential election was no vacation from the stress. I wrote in my journal, “I realized I place so much hope in my candidate/party winning and while I do hope that happens, I also put my hope in Jesus and trust he will provide.” Staring at what I had written, the word “also” became suspended on the page. In the next line, I wrote, “That’s funny. It’s not an also but an only. Only Jesus will provide the relief and compassion I need.” They say you shouldn’t edit your journals but last October, I needed to edit my own beliefs.

I found that I had become more and more concerned about the state of affairs in our country, and less and less in control of my actual life. My interest in politics went from academic to obsessive. It no longer interested me to simply think about how we would write the books. Polls and elections dramatically affected my mood, my hope and my everyday. I put an outsize value on politics and ultimately, it did not hold up.

Daily life cannot be fixed by politics. A good election cannot change my son’s disappointment about his broken right arm. My anxieties about coronavirus cannot be changed by passage of legislation. The loneliness of a new move does not hinge on who is the President. We look everywhere for answers to loneliness, how to help our children, how to be happier; we even look wrongly to politics.

So I was not surprised when I read an article by Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times about fatalistic attitudes among politically active women. Protests about the Texas abortion law are planned for this weekend but they expect ten percent of the participation of the third Women’s March in 2019. Goldberg argues it could be coronavirus concerns but more accurately, she writes, “a lot of politically committed Americans are burned out.” She quotes Lara Putnam, historian at the University of Pittsburgh, “In the outer ranks of people who became politically engaged, that’s where I see the biggest shift. Many people are just worrying about other things. It’s coronavirus. It’s family, it’s work. They have ‘backburnered politics’ for now.”

Many others things certainly do vie for our attention, but I wonder if some of this disengagement might just be healthy. I wonder if other people have had the same epiphany I did. Politics simply cannot bear all of our hope and expectations. Like all idols, it is flimsy and changes with the season. As Goldberg writes, “Burnout is marked by feelings of futility, and there’s a lot of that going around.”

Her article wants to fix our burnout, to offer hope that if we just engage more intensely and more intentionally, we will have strength to continue. The problem isn’t politics, she implies, it’s bad messaging. Like any idol, politics demands more and more, offering little respite from weariness. What Goldberg sees as cause for concern might instead be signs of new life. Because those other things vying for our attention are probably important, like our children. It could also be God.

Michael Wear, former adviser to President Obama’s faith-based initiatives and author of Reclaiming Hope, writes, “Christians — the problem is not that you are politically homeless. The crisis is that we ever thought we could make a home in politics at all.” Wear goes on to argue that our only home is in Christ. He writes politics is a way to love our neighbor, not a way to identify ourselves.

Affiliating with a political party or candidate will never make us feel at home in this world or solve our daily issues. Only God is steadfast and life-giving rather than demanding. Politics cannot help my son’s disappointments, but praying about it does offer him hope that God cares about his sadness. My loneliness may not be addressed by protesting or writing letters to a representative. But remembering that God is close to the lonely does give me hope. Christians are a people of hope, not that our politics will always be successful (they will not) but that God is providential, caring for his children, even (or especially) when they are completely burned out.

COMMENTS

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