Reflections on a historic day

I didn't wake up thinking about the election. Actually, I woke up thinking about UFO's -- a result of watching one of my perennial favorites last night while Shannon attended her women's Bible study -- Close Encounters of the Third Kind. While she studied the Patriarchs I studied Steven Spielberg's fairy tale of latter-day exodus and apotheosis. It didn't hit me until a few minutes after my feet hit the floor that this was the day (I voted on Saturday).

When I walked outside there seemed to be a sense of something big in the air. This will be a historic day no matter the outcome, but especially if the polls are to be believed and America elects Barack Obama our first black President. I wave hello to my neighbor at the end of the street -- Mister Ed everyone calls him. Mr. Ed and his wife are retired postal workers, and they proudly display a Postal Workers for Obama sign in their yard. My next-door neighbors also have an Obama yard sign, but they've already left for their jobs driving a truck for a construction company and driving a school bus for the county. "Salt of the earth" people and wonderful neighbors are these folks. We went through three hurricanes together. Their daughter returned from a tour in Iraq not too long ago.

Most of my neighbors are African-American and many are old enough to remember when discrimination on account of the color of one's skin was enshrined in the very laws and fabric of this nation. I wonder what they're thinking and feeling today. If Sen. Obama becomes our next President, what a powerful testament to the world of how far we've come in actually living up to our founding ideals. What a powerful statement to a generation of young, black males that you don't have to be a gangster, entertainer or athlete to be somebody. Not only that, the most powerful, respected African-American in the world is by all acounts a model husband and father. Talk about a paradigm shift! A possibility worth celebrating. This is a great day to be an American.

Yet. I can't unreservedly celebrate the possibilities of this Election Day 2008, because there's a tragic irony at the heart of it. Barack Obama, whether he wants to be or not, is a powerful symbol of how far we've come from the evil days when a class of human beings were considered non-persons, unworthy of protection by our laws and Constitution. But Barack Obama, despite all the rhetoric and smoke screens, is on the same side as those who believe unborn children are non-persons unworthy of protection by our laws and Constitution. He's said this issue is "above my pay grade" and has indicated a desire to reduce the number of abortions, but he's promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act which would erase decades of incremental pro-life progress, supports repealing the Hyde Amendment which would open the door to federal funding of abortion (here and overseas), and believes Roe v. Wade is defensible. I'm sorry, if you want to reduce the incidence of something you don't subsidize it and remove restrictions on it. Bottom line -- he thinks "choice" or a "right to privacy" trumps the fundamental right to life of unborn children in all cases. I say all because he's never seen his way clear to vote for any measure that would indicate he thinks otherwise.

I know there are other sanctity of life issues besides abortion. "The least of these" includes the homeless, the elderly, the disabled, the outcast, but it certainly includes the voiceless unborn child. It doesn't have to be an either/or issue. I've read the "pro-life/pro-Obama" arguments and heard a lot of false equivalence proposed i.e. "this issue trumps this issue, etc." But it's clear to me that on this defining human rights/social justice issue of our time, Barack Obama is AWOL. For that reason, my rejoicing at his election (should it occur) will be mixed with mourning.

This struggle won't ultimately be won or lost in this election. Could a President Obama have a change of heart? Should we pray that happens? Yes and yes! This is going to be a struggle for the long haul. Remember Wilberforce? It may be that standing up for life in our culture is about to get a lot harder. Russell Moore issues a stirring challenge:

The question for us, then, of whether we are truly pro-life or not, has very little to do with how many signs are in our yards or what bumper stickers we put on our cars. Indeed, it may be the case that after this election the abortion debate will be over in this country politically.

But even if that's the case, it's not over. Our churches are to follow in the walk of faith, which means that--like Joseph walking away from stability and comfort--our churches must be different, they must be counter-cultural, the kind of place where the teenage mother is welcomed and loved, where abandoned children are received, and where a culture that is in love with death can come and hear a message saying that life is better than death because there is a man, an ex-corpse, a former-fetus, who is standing as the ruler over all the nations and the universe. And he is not dead anymore.

What we must have is a church in which the gospel we give is the kind of gospel that leads people out of death and despair and toward the kind of life that is found in confessing a name--a name that was first spoken by human lips by a day-laborer in Nazareth, "Jesus is Lord."

If we follow this kind of pure and undefiled religion, it doesn't mean we will be shrill. It doesn't mean we will be culture-warriors. It doesn't mean we'll be belligerent. It will mean that we will have churches that are so strikingly different, that maybe in ten or fifteen years the most odd and counter-cultural thing a lost person may hear in your church is not, "Amen," but is instead the sounds of babies crying in the nursery.

And hearing the oddness of that sound, when they look around at the place in which all of the Lord Jesus' brothers and sisters are welcomed, protected, and loved, the place in which the lies of a murderous and appetite-driven dragon are denied, the lost person might say, "What is the sound of all these cries?" And maybe we'll be able to say with our forefather Joseph, "that's the sound of life. That's the sound of hope. That's the sound of change."