The 2012 presidential election is now history. Democrats are dancing in the streets, while Republicans are nursing their wounds. Since OUTLOOK is non-partisan, I’ll leave political analysis to the pundits. But perhaps from a spiritual perspective I can venture to share some personal reflections.
Whether or not you voted to re-elect our African-American president, I believe all of us can rejoice that once again our nation (albeit by a narrow margin) has installed in highest office a person who at one point of U.S. history would not have been able to even cast a vote. This doesn’t make racists out of those who voted against Barack Obama. One can accept and respect his ethnicity without approving all his policies.
For example, millions of Christians are worried that marriage, as a foundational institution of our society, was degraded by last night’s election. The president’s entourage of gay rights enthusiasts is celebrating the approval in certain states of homosexual marriage initiatives. For those who share my concerns about this, the preservation of the family is an issue that transcends political partisanship and even parochial religious convictions. We simply believe that every child needs both a mommy and a daddy—and one need not even be a religious person to understand that.
Homosexual advocates agree with the concept of team parenting, but they suggest (sometimes arguing from their own data) that kids do just fine when raised in a same-sex marriage of two moms or two dads. To counter that notion, I point to the simple impossibility of even having children from a same-sex union. Genetic gymnastics hasn’t changed the fact that you need male and female collaboration for a human being to exist. One need not be homophobic or guilty of “hate” to believe that our Creator designed us to need one parent of each gender to propagate the human race.
It’s not just homosexuality that undermined the family in last night’s presidential election. Heterosexual activity outside of marriage (formerly infamous as adultery and fornication) was a big winner as well. Among the few absolutes in secular society is the conviction that consenting adults should be able to copulate without consequence—specifically in terms of pregnancy. Realizing this, President Obama constantly promoted “reproductive rights”—code language for preserving abortion.
“Let women decide for themselves whether they want to have children,” abortion advocates say. “It’s their right to choose.” Such thinking may suffice for secular society, but Christians need not be chauvinists to believe that “prenatal life is a magnificent gift from God,” created and redeemed by Christ. So what right do we have to make ourselves the lords of life and death? (Situations involving the life of the mother, grave fetal abnormality, rape and incest all transcend abortions that are motivated by economics or convenience and thus merit discussion beyond today’s contemplations.)
Yet another victory in last night’s election is being celebrated by crusaders in favor of legalizing marijuana. All told, it was a very big night for those who wish, in the name of freedom, to diminish or dismantle various moral restraints in American society.
To summarize these brief reflections on the spiritual consequences of the 2012 election: We can praise God that once again the United States has overcome racial prejudice in installing an African-American president while at the same time confess concerns with other aspects of last night’s election. To me it is clear that our nation is sinking into an ever-deepening moral abyss, and the only thing that can save us is the second coming of Jesus.
