Today is the Super Bowl for political junkies. More so than election day, this is the day that matters. Nomination battles will become – possibly – clarified. It is unpredictable, it is exciting, it is only sort of important, however.
The great delusion of the build up to sort-of-interesting Tuesday is that it is SUPREMELY-IMPORTANT Tuesday. It isn’t. It is just a day when the presidential nominating process takes its largest leap forward. It is just a day when primary elections are held from sea to shining sea. It is just day shaped by politics.
To hear the passion around the campaigns, however, is to fall into the trap of believing that it is a battle for the future of our children and our country and our world.
Those are great and grand sentiments and they are supremely overblown.
What we choose in November isn’t the divine ruler of the world or of our country. We will be choosing the person who is the head of our government, our chief executive. Don’t get me wrong, that is an important decision. Obviously the person who wins will become extremely important and has the capacity to touch each of our lives.
But the person who wins in November – let alone the people who win today – will be powerless against the great challenges we really face. They cannot touch the emptiness too many Americans feel or the depression. They cannot touch broken marriages and broken people. They cannot stop obesity. They cannot touch loneliness. They cannot really stop abortions or domestic abuse and they cannot make broken people whole. They cannot touch the neighbor across the street who is old and who has no friends. The person who wins will not be America’s savior.
This is an important thing to acknowledge for political and for spiritual reasons.
Politically it is important because if our expectations of the next president are too great we will only experience crushing disappointment and that man or woman will only be tossed out of office a failed president. We have to temper our expectations.
Spiritually it is important because we cannot fall into the tempter’s trap of believing politics is the answer and that if we simply do politics better or with more passion we can save the world. Politics can’t save the world. God can.
So, on this sort-of-important Tuesday let’s take a deep breath and enjoy the day for what it is and warn against what it is not.