Faith and Values: Why I don’t have the post-election blues

I don’t have the post-election blues. It isn’t because all my candidates of choice won. Because they didn’t. And it’s not because the measures I voted for passed. Because not all of them did.

I’ll tell you why I don’t have the blues. This is an election in which I ventured out from my conservative evangelical comfort zone and voted for people I didn’t agree with whole-heartedly. I voted for people who hold different views of how to use government and who think differently about some cultural issues than I do.

Still, I voted my conscience.

I am thankful to be a citizen of a nation that allows me this opportunity. I’m thankful I can worship with and love my brothers and sisters in Christ who voted differently than I did. I’m grateful to be born in the time I’m in and that I get to pray and be guided by my personal conscience to the individuals I believe should represent me and others in government offices.

As I lean into the cultural issues going on in my nation and into the hard questions we have before us – such as our approaches to immigration, our views of how best to run the economy and our health care system, and how we treat the transgender individual who is brave enough to share their struggles and desires to be heard and given a place in society, even if at the end of the day we can agree to disagree agreeably with the fundamental reason why they are experiencing what they are – I trust the Jesus I know and love, who is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), will continue guiding my path.

When I was a young believer, I was so certain of everything. Seriously. I had breath. I had an opinion. And it was the godly one. That is just not the case today. Through time and growth and by entering into conversations with others, I see that my understanding of truth is not as black and white as it once was.

Don’t misunderstand. I believe truth is not subjective. I believe it is unchanging and immutable. It is. It was. And it ever will be. And Jesus Christ says about that truth, that he is it. He is truth in substance and totality. His Word teaches me that in knowing this truth, in knowing him, I will be set free (John 8:32).

I’ve come to understand that while he, as truth, is unchanging, and while he is a perfect and infinite being, I am a finite one with a sinful nature. As such, I will not be able to understand him fully this side of heaven.

That’s OK. Because no matter which way the wind blows and despite the fog that settles down on some issues that block the way of my clearly seeing the facts, I trust what Jesus told me in his Word about truth, that he will guide me into all of it – not some of it, not even 98 percent of it (John 16:13). All of it.

So, even though I am certain this side of heaven my finite understanding will only know so much of it, the promise is there and is something I hold on to every day, in and out of our nation’s election cycles.

While I do that, I vote my conscience where I am in the knowing. And love my neighbors as myself, who vote where they are in their knowing.