Election 2012: A disastrous triumph

“We are not the lords of history and do not control its outcome, but we have assurance that there is a Lord of history and He controls its outcome. We need a theological interpretation of disaster, one that recognizes that God acts in such events as captivities, defeats, and crucifixions. The Bible can be interpreted as a string of God’s triumphs disguised as disasters. Those events seemed to say not only that people and nations have failed but that God has failed. Only the prophetic Word that both explained historical events and provided assurances that God is the lord of history could dispel the terror borne by such an appearance.”
Historian Herb Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction, page 304

We would do well to pay attention to what historian Herb Schlossberg is driving at, for it is a shrewd judgment. While there are setbacks and defeats, God is still in control, and His Kingdom advances.

Now that the U.S. electorate has decided to give the most socialistic, pro-abortion, anti-Christian president in the nation’s history a second chance, it certainly looks like one of those disasters as far as the Kingdom of God in America is concerned. Not that the losing candidate represented great promise. The trajectory of America can certainly be discouraging when even Federal Reserve officials are admitting we are heading toward a “fiscal cliff.”

It was of course a night of bad news for Christians. Perhaps most distressing were the votes in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington to legalize same-sex marriage. Then there was the defeat in Florida of the anti-abortion Amendment 6. Oh, and then to top it off, the electorate in Colorado and Washington voted for their “unalienable rights” to stupefy themselves. So all in all, not a good night!

Of course the anti-Christian media could hardly contain their glee. For example, a clearly jubilant Chris Weigant, writing in the Huffington Post said this: “America woke up more liberal this morning—it’s an undeniable fact. Legal weed. Rocky Mountain high, indeed! Voters approving of marriage equality. Anti-abortion extremists losing easy Senate races … America is, as the Obama campaign slogan said, about to move ‘Forward!’” Well, so it would seem, if a return to Canaanite sexual morality, self-stupefaction, and child sacrifice is your definition of progress.

The secularists clearly believe that they are on to a winner and that their victories spell the beginning of the end of Christian America. In God’s world, however, things are rarely that straightforward. There is more than one way to look at events, and as Christians we need to learn how to read the story, not just from down here on the ground, but from the cosmic order of things.

Psalm 2 provides one of the best illustrations of this principle. “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against His Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart, and cast away their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens laughs: the Lord holds them in derision.”

Although these words have general historical application, turning to the book of Acts we see that they also had a literal fulfillment: “Who through the mouth of our father David, Your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against His Anointed’—for truly in this city there were gathered together against Your Holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:25-28).

If we fully understand the implication of what is being said here, it will take our breath away. Acts 4 ties Psalm 2 to the moments when Jesus was being shunted by the Israelite leaders and Roman soldiers between Caiaphas, Pilate, and Herod, like the lowest criminal. Down on the ground things looked pretty bleak for the cause of Christ. But if this was the fulfillment of Psalm 2—which Acts 4 explicitly says it was—in the cosmic scale of things, something else entirely was happening. At the exact moment when the wicked were doing their worst, God the Father was doing what? Mourning? Raging? No, He was laughing, that’s what! At the very moment that the Son of God was being mocked by a bunch of jubilant, God-haters, God the Father was laughing and deriding them.

How is that possible? What was there to laugh at since these men were doing unspeakable things to His Son, the Anointed One? Well, certainly He wasn’t laughing at the wickedness that was being perpetrated. Rather, it was at the fact that what they thought was happening was the exact opposite of what was actually happening. They believed they were thwarting the claims of Jesus, yet they were in the process of doing the very thing that would establish His claims. According to Psalm 2, God the Father apparently finds such irony an occasion for mirth, and therefore, so can we.

This provides us with a pattern of how to view setbacks like the 2012 election results. Certainly we should lament America’s slide into wickedness, praying fervently for the nation to find repentance and working to rebuild what has been destroyed. But when we see people celebrating their Canaanite “freedoms,” casting off God and joyfully proclaiming the demise of Christian America, it is at that point that we should stop our lamentations and see things from God’s point of view, realizing that He is still in control. They actually believe that they are consigning God and His Church to the trash bin of history. Yet in the real world—the one where God “sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers” (Isaiah 40:22)—they are unwittingly doing their bit to advance the Kingdom of God.

I can imagine that this might be greeted with incredulity by some, and it may seem like an attempt to put an absurdly positive spin on a desperate situation. That would be missing the point, though. I am not saying that the election results were good any more than the actions of Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate were good. They were dire. Really dire! Yet God constantly works with really dire situations and uses them to bring about good and blessing.

This pattern is all over the Word of God. Joseph gets sold into slavery and evil triumphs. Yet God meant it for good. Athaliah has all the royal seed killed and the line of Messiah seemingly dies. Yet Joash is saved and the line lives on. The Israelites are exiled to Babylon and the kingdom is dead. Yet God uses the occasion to purify His people and spread the knowledge of God beyond Israel. Christ dies and all hope is lost. Yet He rises and hope springs eternal.

This is how the kingdom of God grows. He kills and makes alive (Deuteronomy 32:39). He raises enemies for the purpose of “killing” His Church in order that He might then raise it to new and better life. And let’s face it, much of the Church in America has been dozing comfortably for a century or so. It needs to “die and then be raised.”

On a practical level, here are some of the consequences that may well arise out of these dire results.

• Many Christians who were previously asleep, thinking that “it could never happen in America,” will awake out of their slumber and finally recognize what is at stake here.
• Many will withdraw their children from anti-Christian schools and find ways to give them a Christian education instead.
• Many Christian fathers will be so dismayed by the way the younger generation is sinking in the moral swamp that they will actually start taking their God-ordained roles seriously and begin shepherding their little flocks, teaching them as they sit in their house, walk by the way, lie down and rise up (Deuteronomy 6:7 and 11:19).
• Many pastors will take the opportunity to re-evaluate the direction of their ministry and begin seriously preaching a more full-orbed Christian worldview to their people.
• Many couples will decide to stop trying to limit their number of offspring and instead follow the pattern God gave the children of Israel for living in pagan captivity: “Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease” (Jeremiah 29:6).

Of course, some may continue to sleep. Some may compromise. Some who previously opposed the secularist doctrines may lay down their arms in an effort to “appeal to the center.” And, of course, the secularists will continue their march back to Canaan, celebrating the “end of Christian America” as they do so. Yet God is not sitting in the Heavens despairing. Rather, He is laughing at them and holding them in derision.

The 2012 election was a disaster, make no mistake, but do not forget that it was a God-ordained disaster. He knows the needs of His Church in America and He is using His jubilant but unwitting enemies to build His Kingdom. More disasters may follow over the next few years. Yet God is a long-term God, and just as every other “disaster” that ever befell His Kingdom was eventually turned into a “triumph,” we have no reason to believe that He will not turn these current “disasters” into “triumphs” in due season.

Rob Slane is the author of The God Reality: A critique of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. A former atheist, Slane is now a member of Emmanuel Church in Salisbury, England, where he and his family live.