After Election Day, we owe it to our country to embrace each other, denounce violence

I am one of many who speak about the forthcoming presidential race in apocalyptic, even messianic, terms. Some people say, “It’s the end of America!” “It’s the last chance we have to preserve our democracy!” As Dan Coats, retired U.S. senator and President Trump’s former director of national intelligence, wrote recently in The New York Times, voters “face the question of whether the American democratic experiment, one of the boldest political innovations in human history, will survive.”

It’s one thing to say that Americans are concerned about the integrity of their voting system. A more fundamental question looms over us: Has America lost faith in itself? With this election, is America teetering on the edge of free fall into a deep abyss?

Yes, policy is at stake, with people divided on health care, race, a COVID19 stimulus bill, climate change and reproductive rights for women, to name a few contentious issues . The economy oscillates between recovery and regression. We are not coming ‘round the bend on COVID19. Is it any surprise people are hyperventilating over the future of the United States?

When the dust settles, not just on the presidency but on down ballot races, too, there will be a lot of angry people — as many as those experiencing jubilation that their candidate was victorious.

Then what? Will we as a people rebuild our spiritual infrastructure? This is not about who becomes president. Rather, the issue is who will we become after the election?

Make things right

In my faith tradition we have an ancient teaching about when the Messiah will come to redeem the world. One sage said, “if you see a generation increasingly dwindling away, hope for the Messiah.” Another sage added, “If you see a generation over flooded by many troubles as a stream, hope for the Messiah.” A third sage exclaimed, “The Messiah the son of David will come only in a generation that is wholly wicked or in a generation that is wholly righteous.”

They concluded by quoting Isaiah 60:22 about the messianic redemption. “I the Lord will speed it in its time.” They divided the verse into two parts. If Israel (the Jewish people) is worthy, then “I the Lord will speed it,” but if that generation is not worthy, then the second half of the verse applies. Redemption will come but “in its (predetermined) time.”

The Jewish view is that we have a responsibility to make things right before the Messiah comes. If we are not worthy, then it’s in God’s hands and, I fear, the time will be a long way off.

The message of this Talmudic teaching is simple. From an old proverb it is written, “Pray as if everything depended on God but act as if everything depended on us.” I do not believe we are wholly righteous nor entirely wicked, either, so we probably need to get our act together if we want to see a brighter day again in America. Yes, elections have consequences. But every American owns those consequences as much as the elected officials we choose at the ballot box.

In the Judeo-Christian heritage, we have differing ideas and theologies about the coming of Messiah. Can we agree that until that person arrives, we have a shared duty to face ourselves and acknowledge our own responsibility for the atmosphere that so many are decrying today as a wounded and divided nation?

Stand against demonization, violence

We have been through worse: a worldwide pandemic of 1918, a Civil War, two world wars and political traumas, too. Yet we have always made our way through. We have to focus on the nation’s healing as our top priority, no matter who is elected to national office.

This is the time to pray for the strength and resolve to return to each other despite our political divisions.

If we are a peace-loving nation, then we have to take a stand against elements in our culture that feed the flames of hatred, demonize anyone who does not agree with their politics or threaten violence against fellow citizens. And we must denounce those who stoke the flames of the partisan divide in the nation’s houses of governance.

It’s time we look in the mirror. Where is our moral compass? The Messiah will come sooner or later, but I hope each of us will do our part to embrace each other, friends or adversaries, and see the sacred dimension in all of us.