Two Mistakes to Avoid on Election Day
We are one day from the most chaotic presidential election I can remember, and we still aren’t sure who will win. Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump in the polls, but there’s more to the story.
Nate Silver, who correctly predicted forty-nine out of fifty states in 2008 and all fifty states in 2012, told ABC News yesterday that Clinton is one state away from losing the election. Then the FBI announced that their review of newly discovered emails has not changed their decision not to recommend charges against the Democratic candidate. Whether their announcement will change the race is yet to be known.
Then there’s the Senate, which confirms presidential nominations to the Supreme Court. Republicans went into this election defending twenty-four of the thirty-four seats being contested. If Clinton wins and Democrats can capture just four of the current Republican seats, she’ll have a clear pathway for her Court nominations. Many of these seats are too close to call today.
Meanwhile, Fortune reminds us that election polling is anything but infallible. Remember that polling before the Brexit election turned out to be dramatically wrong.
The angst Americans are feeling over tomorrow’s election is understandable, since so many tie their future to their country. If the economy falls back into recession, our incomes go down. If the nation goes to war, many of our children must fight. If the government legalizes unbiblical morality, Christians’ religious liberties become threatened. What our leaders do about abortion affects millions of unborn lives.
But let’s not make the mistake so many other Americans are making. Our nation is not the democracy (“rule of the people”) we think it is. Our future does not lie with tomorrow’s election or the one after that. It does not lie with either party or with any branch of the federal government. It does not lie with state or local leaders, or with multinational corporations, or with any other human enterprise.
Three millennia ago, the greatest king Israel ever knew said to the true King of the universe, “You rule over all” (1 Chronicles 29:12). God gives and honors our free will, but then he redeems even our sins and failures to advance his Kingdom and fulfill his purposes. Jesus founded his movement in one of the most despotic and hedonistic empires the world has ever seen, but even the mighty Romans were no match for divine providence.
You and I can make two mistakes on the eve of the 2016 election. One is to fear its results. The other is to trust its results. All that has come behind us shows that we can trust God with all that comes before us. As Winston Churchill noted, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.”
Publication date: November 7, 2017
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