The Jesus Way and the Election
The forthcoming General Election in May seems to the ordinary voter quite chaotic. The new factor is the rise of the smaller parties as credible and worth voting for because it very likely that another coalition will be the outcome. Neither of the two big parties is trusted enough and their poll ratings are stuck in the mid-30s.
The pundits say that Mr Cameron ought to be racing ahead on the back of a reviving economy, but is not. Mr Miliband is struggling to present himself as a having prime ministerial gravitas but nevertheless Labour has maintained its core vote and escaped public blame for the financial crash. Mr Clegg and his Lib Dems will almost certainly do better than the polls predict because of their local activist strength, but will lose seats, notably in Scotland where the surging SNP will apparently dominate. That itself poses a constitutional crisis as SNP MPs will be voting in the Commons on ‘English only’ policies.
The new context of coalition politics means that voters may again find their votes in effect reversed by a party in power, as cultural conservatives found with the Conservatives and their support for liberalising cultural changes. This may damage faith in the democratic system itself, as will another low turnout. Another intriguing factor is that of the polling industry: they got the Scottish Referendum wrong quite badly: are they really drilling down to actual opinion and voting intentions?
We might cynically shrug our shoulders and say that this is just worldly politics. And yet the self-revelation of God and salvation from sin and cynicism was enacted in the midst of political turmoil – and in the Middle East where political mayhem continues and Israel continues to attract visceral hatred. Jesus died, historically speaking, from the hostility of religious leaders unable to cope with his radical message of direct faith in God as the loving holy Father, and at the hands of political leaders scared of his popular appeal and of communal violence breaking out.
He suffered judicial execution, ‘the suffering servant’ (Isaiah 53), leaving a bunch of frightened disciples and trusting the Spirit alone to take his great atoning work into the world and into the future of humanity. His rising from death declared him Son of God in power (Romans 1:4) and this power was of love, not violence. Jesus changed the way human beings would consider politics and power – Christians would be like Jesus, loving their neighbour and beyond that loving their enemies.
This movement of divine love is in fact far deeper than the current political wranglings, it is the very basis of our NHS for example, the ‘secular church’ ideal. This Gospel underlies all our educational institutions, from primary to tertiary – although of course the secularists have banished all mention of Christianity from educational theory, public morality and the caring professions. We have a duty to vote, and to look beneath the surface of noisy media theatre to truth, righteousness and judgement.