CREEDE HINSHAW: The vanity of politics

To the ramparts! On the morning after Super Tuesday, one is left gasping over the quest for the presidency.

One political party has descended into name-calling and mudslinging unlike anything witnessed in modern American political discourse, while the other party is only able to trot out leftover clichés that most of us could recite in our sleep or our nightmares.

I am grateful for our great nation. We are not a perfect people. Some of our leaders are exceptional. Most of them are like you and me. A few are outright scoundrels.

I have an unfailing confidence in the art of governance. Call me a sucker, but I’ve never given up on the hope that government – at any level, led by either party – can improve our lot.

No political party has all the answers. No leader or platform can cure everything that ails us. I’ve had my favorites over the decades. Thankfully, some of them were defeated at the ballot box.

The election of any particular leader will not hasten or delay the Kingdom of God. Those in the faith community, though we have a responsibility to be politically involved and informed, must resist falling into the pit of our own digging where we identify our politics so closely with the Kingdom of God that we demonize those with whom we disagree.

I’ve been studying Ecclesiastes lately, a wonderful emetic for those who trust in politics. Everything is vanity. Everything is smoke and vapor. Everything. This raw truth forces us to put everything in perspective.

Noted French lawyer and theologian Jacques Ellul, author of more than 40 books, has written profoundly about the wisdom of Ecclesiastes in his book “Reason for Being” (Eerdmans, 1990). I’ve been re-reading Ellul’s incisive reflections these days, and the passage I read today, post Super Tuesday, is prescient:

“… (R)ecognizing my life is subject to vanity means that in the final analysis I cannot place myself in the center, not in the center of the world, not in the center of my relationships, not in the center of history, action or culture.

“Remember your culture and political systems are vanity! And then listen to others and respect them.

“If I am to comprehend revelation I must listen to others. I must also struggle against the nagging temptation to substitute my interest or my person for the center of revelation: the person of Jesus Christ. Remember that when you do this you and your ideas are only vanity. Listen to something besides yourself.” (Italics are Ellul’s; page 115)

Ecclesiastes provides the proper answer for the increasing American pessimism over politics and governance. The fact that everything is vanity does not call us to withdraw from politics or to decry it as useless. We remain informed and engaged; we support candidates and parties and platforms.

Ecclesiastes reminds us that none of these activities hold lasting value. If your candidate won last Tuesday don’t celebrate too much; if your candidate lost don’t get too depressed.

Email Creede Hinshaw at [email protected].