Disengaged

Florida held an election yesterday.  The Florida Republican Primary to be exact.  I didn't participate.  This marks quite a change for me.

I come from a family that likes to be politically involved.  My grandfather and my father  have both served in elective office.  Participating in various campaigns was normal.  And I loved it.  I wanted to be involved in politics in some fashion.

But a few years ago, my attitude toward the political world changed.

I used to get very wrapped up in elections.  I still remember election night 2000.  It was the first election I participated in as an "adult."  I was in my MBA program at the time, so I had class the night of the election.  That was back in the dark ages before smart phones, lap tops and wireless classrooms.  So every time the professor gave us a break, a bunch of us would huddle around the computer at the podium looking for election night updates.

By the time I left class that night, things were looking bad for George Bush.  I went home and changed clothes so that Julie and I could head to an election night party with a bunch of Young Republicans.  In the course of that night, we thought Al Gore was going to win and then we thought George Bush was going to win.  When we finally went home, we had no idea who was going to win.  And we wouldn't know for over a month.  That was several weeks of angst about who was going to be the next President of the United States.

Fast forward eight years to another election filled with angst.  As a recent law graduate, I was particularly concerned about the future of the Supreme Court.  Despite being in office eight years, Bush was only able to appoint two justices to the Court.  With the aging Court, it seemed that whoever was going to be elected would have the opportunity to shape the future of the Court, potentially for a generation.  In less than four years, Obama has already been able to appoint to more justices to the Court.  At the time, I was very worried about this fact.

Caleb was born in April of that year.  That was my first election as a parent.  So I felt as if his entire future hinged on who was elected president.  I was very worried about the future and the country he would live in after I am gone.

During the course of that election, I listened to a lot of Glenn Beck as I drove to work in the mornings.  I heard a great deal of rhetoric about the dangers of Barack Obama.  If he was elected, the future of America was lost.

I spent a lot of time trying to convince people to vote for McCain.  Actually, I spent a lot of time trying to justify Sarah Palin as Vice President.  I had friends who planned on voting for Obama and I was shocked.  I pleaded with them to reconsider because of the dangerous path their votes would put our country on.  It was all very dramatic.

Well, election day came around and Julie and I went to vote together and we took Caleb with us.  After voting, we went our separate ways to our jobs.  I was on the internet constantly that day monitoring the elections and the reports of voter intimidation.  And it all felt a little hopeless.  I was again filled with angst over the outcome of the election and there was nothing left that I could do to affect the outcome.

Obama was declared the winner and yet I continued to watch the coverage.  In shock.  I watched Obama's victory speech and I was disgusted.  I was disgusted with the images of Oprah and Jesse Jackson crying.  I was disgusted with my friends who had voted for Obama.  I was disgusted with myself for not doing more to prevent that outcome.  And I felt sorrow for Caleb's sake.  I felt as if I needed to apologize to him for what had happened.

In January, I was resolved to not let it happen again.  I was going to get more involved in politics.  I was going to rejoin the Young Republicans.  I was going to read even more conservative literature.  Whatever it took, I was going to do it to retake this country for the Republican party.

But then something else happened.  I started reading more and more Christian blogs and as I did so, I was exposed to anabaptist writers who eschew political involvement.  I began to take more seriously Christian writers, including a good friend, who were concerned that much of Christianity had allowed itself to become too intertwined with conservative politics.  (To be fair, I thought then, and still do, that there is also a segment of Christianity that can't distinguish itself from liberal politics.)  I saw it in my own church and I saw it in myself.  There were people in my church, myself included, who couldn't process the thought of a Christian voting for Barack Obama, or any democrat.  I realized it was true.  It had become too easy to equate right wing ideology with Christian theology.

I soon realized people couldn't tell the difference with me.  I was known amongst my friends, even those at church, as a staunch Republican.  I wasn't seen as a Christian man, husband or father.  I was seen as a political activist.  And to a certain extent, I think some people avoided me because of it.   But there were also people who sought me out because of it.  I became acutely self-aware that I had an identity and it wasn't the identity I wanted.

So I decided I didn't want to play the game any more.  I would no longer allow myself to be known by a label that does not have eternal significance.  I stopped talking about politics.  I scrubbed as much political content from my Facebook account as I could find.  And I stopped paying attention.  I decided it wasn't for me anymore.

And that brings me to yesterday.  This is it.  This is the opportunity to bring Obama's administration to an end.  For quite some time now, a number of people have been jockeying to be the one to knock off Obama.  And I have tried to stay away from it.  I don't want to be a part of this time.  So I stayed away and I plan on staying away in November.

I want my identity to be about Christ.

I still have certain beliefs.  I still subscribe to certain philosophies about government that could only be described as conservative and it would be my preference to limit Obama to one term.  I may even choose to engage in the process again someday.  But for now, I am staying away.

This is a personal decision.   My current understanding of faith requires this of me.  But I don't expect everyone else to come to the same conclusions as me.  I don't expect anyone to take the same actions as me, so I hope no one reading this finds this judgmental.    This is simply my explanation for why I didn't vote yesterday.