It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me.

I grew up believing democracy was a stalwart beacon of hope for a better life. Such as is embodied by the iconic Statue of Liberty. Such as Ronald Reagan quoted on multiple occasions, "a shining city on a hill." I know Reagan malappropriated that quote from Jesus (according to Jesus, the "shining city" is His oppressed yet still joyful disciples who do good so that God is glorified), but even still, the image, the hope, of this dream of democracy and America was etched into my mind from childhood. And growing up in the Christian church, democracy was further muddled with religious and moral implications. But democracy isn't the answer. It never could save us from ourselves. And Christianity ought give Hope as an answer to these flaws, rather than attempting to manipulate democracy as a means to political power.

Before reflecting on where democracy and my formative beliefs have gone wrong, I think it is worth reminding all of us what American democracy actually claimed to be in these iconic renditions. The second stanza of the sonnet, "The New Colossus", stamped into the Statue of Liberty reads:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Yet how much of today's political rhetoric is actually "storied pomp" -- bombastic visions of prosperity for a select few reminiscent of a rose-colored past, at the cost of destitution for the "wretched" and "homeless" and "temptest-tost" in our midst? And Reagan said in his farewell address:

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

But if we look at the political rhetoric of the last several years, and the decisions our country's voters and leaders have made, it's obvious that even Reagan's glitzed up "shining city" sounds nothing like our 21st century democracy, and is an even further contrast from 1st century Christian discipleship.

I've been grieving the loss of this dream the past several weeks. I'm mourning the tragedies that await my country and my neighbors in the coming years. Sadly, these aren't new problems facing America; we've been through too many anti-immigrant (and anti-American) injustices in our comparatively short history as a nation. But the median American adult today is about 40 years old, so the events of just the hundred or so years prior to the majority of Americans' lives are lost to our experiences: Such as the Chinese Exclusion Era, Jim Crow Laws, Japanese Internment, McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights Movement. I think the saying about being doomed to repeat history doesn't need a conditional -- whether or not we learn from history, we seem doomed to destroy ourselves one way or another.

I am part of the many problems facing our country and our neighbors. I can't pawn that responsibility off to the "other side" -- and even falling into the trap of thinking about problems as two distinct sides only exacerbates the issue. Until I can repent of my own heart's "log"-sized flaws, I will be in no position to humbly illuminate the "speck" in my brother or sister's eye. And similar to my last two mini-essays, I'm providing this reflection and self-assessment as a means of applying what I've been studying this year in the Sermon on the Mount with respect to my life and current events. And right now, that's the 2024 election and the glimpse it gives of how desperate our country is -- and I am -- for Jesus and His Kingdom, whether we realize it or not.

The leading vision of "democracy" today looks to be populism, laced with Christian nationalism and proto-fascism. I must not pretend like I am not in some ways sympathetic to and complicit with these movements. My heart desires the safety and security promised by rigid, morality-enforcing governance (even if often by morally-depraved leaders). And I might personally stand to gain through my unearned advantages in this society's class-, ethnicity-, and gender-based hierarchies by even more sociopolitical stratification. But I must instead use what voice I've been given to vehemently distance myself from these disguised evils. With strong conviction, I reject white nationalism and the "great replacement theory" as loathsome and racist. I reject that enforcing morality is the necessary responsibility of government. I reject that America is fundamentally a Christian nation, such that Christians feel compelled to permit any means, even if unscrupulous, in order to preserve these purportedly divine foundational tenets (But how far is too far? Is breaking one law to protect another actually preserving the law?). I reject that God has uniquely "chosen" America to be a "great" nation. And Jesus makes it clear that He, too, rejects all forms of elitism, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and oppression of the vulnerable. Revisit Jesus's words to the political and religious leaders of the time in Matthew 23 if you're unconvinced. I would guess that most Christians who grew up in the church have the perception that the religious leaders in Rome were exceptionally corrupt, much more than the pockets of religious corruption we still see today, at least in America. That's certainly how I thought for a long time. But in studying further, I've changed my mind here. I don't think there's much difference, but in a moderating way -- to the effect of warranting even more grace for the ancient religious leaders and greater accountability for our modern religious leaders. And that makes Jesus' "woes" even more critical for us to understand today.

But nonetheless my heart has been taken in and led astray by my culture just the same. American culture has deep roots of nationalism disguised as patriotism, of idolatry disguised as Christianity. And I've been roped into it my whole life without seriously considering how it impacts my ability to be a faithful disciple of Christ and a light to my friends and family -- especially to those who I disagree with politically.

I unwittingly put my faith in my culture, my society, my government to save me. I trusted the laws in the Constitution rather than the Law of Christ. Yet there is only one Law that will hold up to the test of time without a single dot of it departing -- and that's not the Constitution. So my heart's foundation was sand, not the Rock, and the crashing waves of political discord threatened to wipe me out in recent weeks, and have for the last several years in general. But no matter what affections I still have for my nation and its laws, and what aspects of our laws I am still legitimately convinced reflect fragments of the wisdom of God, these laws are doomed to fail me -- and all of us. Whether you feel at the present moment that you're riding the high or low tide of politics after this election, if your anchor is not in Christ and His Law, you will eventually sink.

I wrongly trusted that Article II would bring judgement for treason. I trusted that the 20th Amendment would keep transitions of power peaceful. I trusted that the 25th Amendment would restore sane leadership. I trusted that the 14th Amendment would curtail insurrections. And I trusted that the 22nd Amendment will yet hold to ensure that any era of leadership will come to an eventual end in only a few years. All in all, I trusted that democracy would prevail over tyranny.

But I failed to consider why I even believed in the first place that democracy could provide any defense at all against the root problem: the evil in each of our hearts -- not any one man's evil. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote after being imprisoned in the Russian Gulag during World War II:

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.

In the same breath as decrying Christian nationalism, I also held my breath believing that America was at its core a decent, moral, wholesome country that would once again "establish justice" and "provide for the general welfare" -- and resume the work of breaking down and repairing the many divisions in our country. And I was filled with fear to see all of these national laws and cultural norms one after the next appear to fail. But at its roots, this is the very same fear, and the same captivation by our culture, that likely swayed many of my friends and family to instead look the other way. But this contrast between so-called democracy and tyranny -- and the fears it plays on in each of our hearts -- is fraught with misconceptions, and is directly at odds with Jesus' lived ministry and teachings. And I'm actively trying to unlearn the ideas that crept into my heart by my culture's formation, and to instead have my heart be transformed by Jesus' teachings. And I invite any who this resonates with to similarly reflect and reconsider.

Jesus arrived on the scene in the midst of rampant tyranny. His ministry started nearly a century into the Roman occupation of Jerusalem -- and very little changed politically for centuries after Jesus's ascension. The people of God were dispersed and under subjugation by faithless leadership. Poverty was the default mode of living for the vast majority of the population. What Rome called "democracy" was anything but democratic. Both secular and religious leaders feared Jesus. His prophetic arrival led King Herod to commit mass infanticide to attempt to eradicate the perceived threat to his throne. And later on, Jesus' large following of disciples presented a threat to the Pharisees' consolidated power such that they brought knowingly false charges against Jesus to have Him murdered. Yet in spite of the Satan tempting Jesus with absolute rule over the whole world, and in spite the purported crime of sedition levied by the Pharisees, Jesus's arrival and declaration of the Kingdom of Heaven was not so He could be inaugurated as an earthly ruler, nor to overthrow the political powers of the day. He established a different kind of Kingdom that looks unlike any political system that has ever existed, past or present. The lyrics of the song "Pour" by one of my favorite bands, My Epic, summarizes this poetically:

Then Satan came and offered up the kingdom whole.
Messiah refused then took it man by man.
Pharisees thought he would topple the empire,
but he changed the world by caring for men,
not the systems they create.

To put faith in any other leader or political system besides Christ and His Kingdom is folly at best, and will quickly lead to idolatry -- such as with christian nationalism. I stepped right into that trap thinking I was intentionally pushing back against it.

This is not to suggest that God is apathetic to tyranny, nor that He is not readily at work to restore the liberty provided by His Grace in the midst of the nations. Look no further than the Exodus and the Mosaic Covenant to see God's character at work to save His people from tyranny -- and then ultimately from themselves. Yet when Jesus came to fulfill all of the Law and Prophets, He did not directly confront the political systems of the day, but He confronted the very human heart itself. Jesus did not caucus with either the "liberal" Sadducees nor the "conservative" Pharisees. (I use the terms "liberal" and "conservative" here entirely for analogy; the actual politics of these groups' beliefs in their culture was much more complex and very different from today's definitions, but the key aspect is that these were ideologically opposing groups of Jewish leaders.) In fact, He repeatedly called out the corruption of individuals from both "parties."

But more importantly, in reflecting on the Sermon on the Mount in particular, Jesus used His words and actions while He walked the earth to instead exemplify a very different kind of political and social activism: To call us as disciples to examine our heart motives so we can live out a more complete, life-giving way of interacting with our neighbors. To be radically generous with our money and possessions. To embody the abundant blessings seen in Creation so as to be able to set aside worrying about whether we'll have everything we need. To examine our own hearts rather than judging others. To receive the grace and forgiveness lavished on us so we can give grace and forgive others, over and over and over again. To reject false leaders and their bad fruit, and embrace true discipleship under the one Lord. None of those activities require a specific political system or social climate. And we get to see a glimpse from Acts to Revelation of the living out of this mission directly in the face of political discord and oppression, both inflicted by the ruling empire and rising up out of the churches themselves (and more often the latter).

Jesus warned that the pathway to true life is narrow and difficult to enter, and that many will instead take the path through the wide gate to destruction. So while it breaks my heart now, and will likely continue to bring lament many more times in my lifetime, I need not be surprised when "majority rule" in our country appears at times to lead to destruction. Every man-made system and law will fail. Yet God is ceaselessly faithful, bringing rain and sunshine to both the just and unjust. Like Jesus, I pray that I will be able to change the world by caring for humanity, one person at a time, rather than trusting a system for redemption. And may I trust that in the meantime God will bring his life-giving rain and sunshine to the whole world, just or unjust, so that flourishing is possible no matter the intent of the people in power. Only He can wield and redirect political power for His good, even when it's intended for evil. This is the real Hope that Christianity has to offer the world. I surrender my heart's nationalistic tendencies and ask God to fill it instead with compassion for my neighbors.