It's been a roller coaster of a week as 2020 continues to "do its thing." Tuesday was election day, I had a busy week at work with 5 am alarms set and, worst of all, somebody near and dear to me went to the hospital Wednesday night for COVID (fever and low oxygen level). Thankfully, the doctors at Kaiser treated her immediately and the fever is gone. She's not totally out of the woods yet, but we are sleeping better at night.
I haven't really been posting much about the election on Facebook because I know I have a lot of friends who are Trump supporters and I don't wanna rile things up more than they already are. I've unfollowed some a while back because I found some of their posts to be pretty disrespectful of liberals (to put it mildly), but I noticed that one of my friends has actually posted a couple reminders to Christians to act like Christians (instead of talking about Civil War etc). Another Conservative friend posted congratulations to Biden/Harris and he was quickly met with posts about how liberals are a bunch of baby-killers, Commies, Marxists, etc.
And of course there are plenty of posts that parrot the President's claims that the election is being stolen with fraudulent ballots. There is no evidence of such and many of his claims have already been thrown out in court. The ones that have are pretty minor (such as letting more Conservatives observe the ballot counters). These folks seem to forget that poll workers and ballot counters are from both sides of the aisle, and they work together in a non-partisan fashion. It is pretty awful for folks to denigrate these people who are risking COVID in order to have fair elections... but whatever... The next official term doesn't start until January 20 (day after my birthday), so there's plenty of time for recounts.
The worst part of this is that, because the election is so close, it's clear to see that Trump has many supporters who don't recognize or mind his racism, misogyny and incompetence. They let themselves get all hateful of liberals even though they know liberals have been there for them when the chips are down in personal matters. They let a politician that they've never met rule how they behave to others. I compare some of these White Evangelicals to Pharisees because of the hypocrisy they demonstrate. They'll say God commands us to pray for our leaders (like Trump), but turn around and denigrate Gavin Newsom (and Obama during his term). If they were not Christians and pulling that "pray for our leaders card," I would be fine with them pulling for "their guy" and slamming "the other." But these are self-proclaiming Christians who give non-believers more reasons to not believe. I personally just do a blanket prayer for "all our national and world leaders."
By the way, the Bible also has verses which say it's okay to pray for the removal of bad leaders (Proverbs 25:5) which I have done. Everybody has their own opinion of a bad leader, but only God truly knows the hearts of each of us. I also don't necessarily believe God appoints leaders, people do. He's given us free will and people in the USA are supposed to have free elections. Of course God can use anybody to see His will be done, but that doesn't mean each leader in every country was hand-picked by God. Just look at how many dictators have ruled in the world, and let's not forget that Satan also has a presence in this world.
When I was an Independent voter and agnostic, I cared most about my pocketbook... and I think a lot of people are still like that, no matter their religion. The Bible says it's hard for the wealthy to get into heaven (Matthew 19:24), and I believe it's because the wealthy love their wealth more than God and/or their neighbor. This is usually how I base my vote - Who will love his/her neighbor more than their wealth? This current Administration is mostly benefitting the wealthy and large corporations. He downplayed the virus because he didn't want it to impact the stock market (which many middle and lower income people have no means to dabble with). He put money above lives... and in the end, damaged both. While it's not his fault COVID spread, he did not call the nation to address it aggressively and now we have more cases per capita then anywhere else. We also can't get the economy going as well as others like Japan because many people refuse to do the simple things like wearing a mask, staying out of large indoor crowds, etc.
Many conservatives will base their vote strictly on abortion. While I don't believe anybody "likes or loves abortion," I believe that it will happen whether it's legal or not. It's happened since the beginning of time, and making it illegal doesn't magically make it go away. I believe that, if you want to decrease it, then you need to decrease unplanned pregnancies with birth control and sex education; and you need to provide more social services for people who want to give birth to their babies and sustain a quality of life for the child. You can't claim you're truly pro-life and then accuse women of being "welfare queens" (who are, btw, mostly White and not Black as folks try to portray). I've said this all before, so I'll stop yammering about it.
Anyway, I'm praying that God can use Joe Biden/Kamala Harris to heal this nation. From a human point of view, it doesn't seem possible with all the rancor between the right and left wings. I didn't pick Biden in my top 5 candidates during the primaries, but my eyes opened up when Jim Clyburn backed him. It made me see that, while my leanings may be more progressive, only a moderate (with ties to the Black community) would be able to win the Presidency over Trump. David Flores-Workman, a young Christian man at New Life church, posted on Facebook that he "chose morality over policy; please let there be healing now" and I really loved that. While he and I may have different political ideology, we both see the need for healing. That is my prayer. With God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).
