Donald Trump’s selection of J. D. Vance as his running mate continues to generate headlines this morning, and for good reason. As David A. Graham writes in the Atlantic, “J. D. Vance’s rapid rise from obscurity to the vice-presidential nomination is an only-in-America tale.” Consider the facts and judge for yourself:
- James David Vance grew up in a broken home in rural Ohio, surrounded by economic and social decline.
- His parents divorced when he was a toddler. His mother struggled with substance abuse, so he was raised by his grandmother.
- He enlisted in the Marines, served in Iraq, then graduated in two years summa cum laude from Ohio State University, where he majored in political science and philosophy.
- He earned a law degree at Yale, where he served as editor of the Yale Law Review.
- He wrote Hillbilly Elegy, a bestselling memoir of the travails of working-class America. The book was made into a movie directed by Ron Howard.
- He founded a venture capital firm and then was elected to the Senate on his first try.
- At thirty-nine years of age, he has been nominated for vice president of the United States.
Now consider his counterpart:
- Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California. Her mother emigrated from India to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where she met Harris’s Jamaican-born father, Donald. Her mother became a cancer researcher, while her father became a Stanford University economics professor.
- Her parents divorced when she was seven years old. At age twelve, she moved with her mother and sister to Montreal, where she attended high school and founded a dance troupe.
- She graduated from Howard University in Washington, DC, majoring in political science and economics and serving on the debate team. She earned a JD in 1989, worked as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, and was elected San Francisco district attorney in 2003.
- She was elected California attorney general in 2010, the first African American and the first woman to hold the position.
- In 2016, she became the second African American woman and first South Asian American woman to be elected to the US Senate.
- In 2020, she was elected vice president of the United States, becoming the first female, the first Black, and the first Asian American to hold the position.
Both are “made-in-America” narratives. But as we’ll see today, there’s more to the story.
“From a nation of joiners to a nation of loners”
Our national ethos, as expressed in our founding declaration that “all men are created equal,” especially encourages the rise of individuals from obscurity to the highest levels of power.
But over the generations, this declaration has morphed from “all men are created equal” to “all people are equal.” Darwin taught us that we are not the purposeful creation of God but the coincidental product of natural selection. Freud convinced many that belief in a Creator is a fantasy based on the infantile need for a dominant father figure. Postmodernists have persuaded our culture that all truth claims are personal and subjective (which, of course, is an objective truth claim).
As a result, according to existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, we are actors on a stage with no script, audience, director, past, or future. Courage, he claimed, is facing the meaninglessness of life as it is.
How’s this working for us?
The Wall Street Journal interviewed a variety of Americans about their feelings following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last Saturday. According to the article, “they pointed fingers and expressed anger, fear, and heartbreak.” However, nearly to a person, “they also expressed a sense of dread, saying there seems to be no good news on the horizon.”
They are not alone. According to the New York Times, our country has been transformed in recent decades “from a nation of joiners to a nation of loners.” The article interviews Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, whose research shows that in the last fifty years, political polarization, economic inequality, and individualistic morality have fomented an epidemic of social isolation and loneliness.
Is this the epitaph of our age?
This is where the uniqueness of the biblical worldview is especially relevant.
On the one hand, Christians believe that we are each created personally by God in his image (Genesis 1:27) and so valuable to him that his Son died to purchase our salvation (Romans 5:8). On the other, we also believe that we are members of a larger body (1 Corinthians 12:27) who find our ultimate purpose and joy in community with our spiritual family.
You and I can experience the abundant life of Christ only through a personal, passionate union with him. He taught us, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). As Oswald Chambers notes, “The essential thing is my personal relationship to Jesus Christ. . . . To fulfill God’s design means entire abandonment to him.”
But we are only one of the branches on the vine. We are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). We experience God most fully in community. When we pray for each other, serve each other, hold each other accountable to biblical truth, and serve Jesus with each other, we offer our broken culture a redemptive community they can find nowhere else.
This adage could therefore be the epitaph of our age:
“With God, all things are possible. Without God, all things are permissible.”
Choose wisely today.
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God’s eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God’s heart.” —Henri Nouwen
Photo Courtesy: ©Getty Images/Andrew Harnik/Staff
Publish Date: July 17, 2024
Jim Denison, PhD, is a cultural theologian and the founder and CEO of Denison Ministries. Denison Ministries includes DenisonForum.org, First15.org, ChristianParenting.org, and FoundationsWithJanet.org. Jim speaks biblically into significant cultural issues at Denison Forum. He is the chief author of The Daily Article and has written more than 30 books, including The Coming Tsunami, the Biblical Insight to Tough Questions series, and The Fifth Great Awakening.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
For more from the Denison Forum, please visit www.denisonforum.org.
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