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Who gets your vote of confidence?

I always enjoy finding something in the Old Testament that’s relevant to today. Gives a kind of coherence to the thousands of years of mankind’s history. In recent weeks, I’ve run across a couple of passages from Isaiah that address, imho, to the current political landscape.

First, a passage quoted in Scripture Union‘s Encounter With God included this verse:

Isaiah 9:20
On the right they will devour,
but still be hungry;
on the left they will eat,
but not be satisfied.

I made a joke to a friend about how Isaiah was up to date on the 21st century American politics, and left it at that. However, several days later, another Encounter With God arrived, discussing Isaiah 25:1-12. The Meditate part of the email included this paragraph:

Israel in the eight century BC needed a “refuge from the storm” of Assyria, and would need even more a refuge from the storm of Babylon in the sixth century. Throughout her history, this small country was caught up in the rivalry of the superpowers of her day, Egypt and Mesopotamia, at the mercy of whoever controlled the trade routes along the fertile crescent and inland from the Mediterranean coastline. When she trusted in God, she was protected, but when she played a political game of alliances and military strategy, she was swallowed up in the defeat of the weaker side. Losing sight of the covenant relationship with God as King of Israel, and trusting in human kings to fight battles, form alliances and unite the people, led inevitably to defeat, humiliation, exile and, worst of all, apostasy. Abandoning faith in God led to ruin.

Doesn’t this speak to the faith we tend to put in our political parties or the allegiances we declare to individual politicians? Or, inversely, the concerns and worries we entertain when the people from the other side of the aisle win on Election Tuesday? I think it’s pretty safe to say that we take some of the attention that belongs to God and give it to the government, instead.

That’s not to say that involvement in the political process is a waste of time – more on that later. But when it comes to celebrating your candidate’s victory or mourning his/her loss, it’s good to step back and remember that the politicians’ impact on your life is incredibly infintesimal, compared to that of God. So, with the historic 2008 elections behind us, let’s remember that while some posts have been decided for the next 2, 4 or 6 years, our eternal souls will outlast any political term, and what happens with them is a lot more important than what happens in Washington, D.C.