Can faith help in a moment like this?
I write this little post while on the Harbor “election night watch party / support group” Zoom call. The mood is, to quote something Shannon H. saw on Facebook, nauseously optimistic.
The phrase probably speaks for itself, but I will speak for it anyway: we are feeling a dissonant combination of nauseating dread and cautious optimism. And let’s just tell it like it is: the dread and the optimism each map very neatly onto the binary of the two possible outcomes to this election.
Writing about this whole thing before the election is called, knowing you are likely reading it after it’s been called, is like a political Schrödinger’s cat experiment. Are you rejoicing? Are you losing your shit? I don’t know (and I don’t plan to log back in and update this post if they do call the election tonight, because once you commit to a quantum physics reference, you can’t back down).
One thing I’ve noticed online from many conservative Christians (and some progressive ones) are Jesus memes that are meant to comfort people experiencing election anxiety. And here’s what I’m trying to say: these memes suck.
Comfort is good. I don’t want to stand in the way of an anxious person getting some comfort. But I do think it matters how we get comfort—it’s better to hug a friend than to burn down a village, etc. Likewise, some theological forms of comfort are healthier than others.
The memes I am talking about are the ones that essentially minimize the importance of the election by redirecting focus to some sense of Jesus’ power or authority. Some ways you might see this worded in a meme:
No matter who wins the White House, Jesus will still be on the throne.
In the battle of donkeys vs. elephants, the Lamb wins.
Whatever the outcome of this election, our citizenship is in the kingdom of heaven.
I’m sure (if you have conservatives on your timelines) you’ve seen many more varieties on this theme. They are very popular. Why do these well-meaning memes make me want to scream into the void?
There are two roads to comfort when we experience bad stuff. One road is the path of toxic positivity: pretending like things aren’t as bad as they are. Deny, deny, deny. This, as we have written about before on this blog, is not the way.
Yet it is precisely the path taken by these memes. What they are trying to communicate is that it doesn’t really matter who wins the election because, well, Jesus. And maybe for folks with a bunch of privilege, it truly doesn’t matter who wins elections or which party is in power. But for many others, it matters very much who the presidents, senators, governors, representatives, and justices are. It has real consequences on their safety, livelihood, freedom, or sense of well-being.
So how do we find comfort? Election anxiety is not so different from other types of negative emotion: the only way past it is through it. We can accept that it’s scary. We can lament when harmful people gain power over us, our loved ones, or our fellow citizens. And in the midst of our truth-telling and lamenting, we might find comfort in the belief that God is with us. Jesus (though perhaps not the version of him who is conquering donkeys and elephants) can be the source of this comfort, because the incarnation is the pinnacle of God with us. And remember that Jesus wasn’t born into a cozy little Nativity scene under a Christmas tree—he was born in a real town in a real world, under the rule of a murderous tyrant. We can embrace God’s presence and love without minimizing or denying the dangers of authoritarian rulers.
But I’m not sure that last paragraph will fit into a meme.
