Letter #156: Elections and the Elect

Joy Without Complacency

Spensoir.

Well, another fraught election day, another lesson in Christian living!

You quote C. S. Lewis on romantic love: “Like most of the other things which humans are excited about, such as health and sickness, age and youth, or war and peace, it is, from the point of view of the spiritual life, mainly raw material.”

This truth is at the heart of the unbeliever’s misunderstanding of Christian doctrine. “Why doesn’t Christ condemn slavery?” they demand. Or: “Look at all the evil done in Christ’s name.”

But Christian wisdom is that slavery will come, and when it’s gone, abortion will come, and when that’s gone, some other evil will come, done in Christ’s name or against it, whatever serves the devil best. The poor you will always have with you and in the world you will have trouble.

But take heart! Christ has overcome the world.

What does it look like to live in this knowledge? That’s the question that always interests me. I enjoy talking theology, but I’ve always been a practical man deep down and even not so deep. I want to know how best to live, how most joyfully and truly. How to become what God made me to be. How to create what he created me to create. I do not think we would have been given this material life so prone to suffering if it were not, as John Keats called it, “the vale of soul-making,” urgent to our formation. We have all seen people live and die unformed, mesmerized into stagnation by their moment and its demands and desires. Even if there were no eternity, I would prefer a different ending to the story of my life.

So what does it mean — in practical terms — to overcome the world?

In church on Sunday, the Gospel reading was timely. Shall we pay taxes to the hated Roman overlords? Jesus points to Caesar’s image stamped on a coin, implying that God’s image is likewise stamped on us. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”

We owe the state its due, but our soul is promised elsewhere. This is why the apostles preached obedience to their rulers, and why every man-jack of them died by a ruler’s decree. They were executed for one crime only: speaking the truth.

This is Christian life in the world. Quietude without quietism. Joy without complacency. Tranquility without acceptance. Whatever the election results, you won’t have to storm the barricades. You can get in all the trouble you need, just by speaking the truth.

We are responsible for loving life as we are responsible for loving one another. For better or for worse, in sickness and health, for richer or for poorer, we are married to existence. There is only one way to fulfill our vows happily. Learn to find God everywhere. In the bread and wine, in the flesh and spirit, in victory and defeat.

Learn to find him, then spread the word.

Love, Dad