Why I Don’t Have The Post-Election Blues

By Cassy Benefield

I don’t have the post-election blues. And it isn’t because all my candidates of choice won. Because they didn’t. It’s not because the measures I voted for passed. Because not all of them did.

I’ll tell you why I don’t have the blues. This is an election in which I ventured out from my conservative evangelical comfort zone and voted for people I didn’t agree with whole-heartedly. In fact, I voted for people who hold to different views than I do of how to use government for the benefit of others. I voted for people who think differently than I do about some cultural issues. I voted for people who I would never have voted for 10 years ago.

Thing is, I still voted my conscience. I am so thankful to be a citizen of a nation that allows me this opportunity. I’m so thankful I can still worship with and love my brothers and sisters in Christ who voted differently than I did. I’m so grateful to be born in the time that I’m in and that I get to wade through the rhetoric and pray and be guided by my personal conscience to the person or persons I believe should represent me and others in government offices.

While I am still a little hesitant to be “out there” with my political beliefs and how I view government in my current thinking, I am trusting that the more I lean into the cultural issues going on in my nation and lean into the hard questions we have before us—such as our approaches to immigration, our views of how best to run the economy, and how we treat the transgender individual who is brave enough to share their struggles and desires to be heard and given a place in society, even if at the end of the day, we can agree to disagree with the fundamental reason why they are experiencing what they are—that the Jesus I know and love, who is the way, the truth, and the life will continue guiding my path.

Frankly, the older I get the less certain I am about what I understand His way to be. When I was a young believer, I was so certain of everything… seriously. I had breath, I had an opinion, and you better believe, it was the “godly” one. But that is just not the case today. Through time and growth, in entering into conversations with others, I see that my understanding of truth is not as black and white as it once was.

Don’t misunderstand me, I absolutely believe truth is not subjective. It is unchanging and immutable. It is. It was. And it ever will be. And the God I believe in, Jesus Christ, says about that truth, that He is it. He is truth in substance and totality. And His Word teaches me that in knowing this truth, in knowing Him, I will be set free.

But I’ve come to understand that while He, as truth, is unchanging, and that He is a perfect and infinite being, I am a finite one with a sinful nature, who will never understand Him fully this side of heaven.

Still, l find comfort, because no matter which way the wind blows and despite the fog that settles down on some issues that block the way of my clearly seeing the facts, I trust what Jesus told me in His word about truth, that He will guide me into all of it (John 16:13). After reading this verse, I say to myself, “See, He won’t guide me into just 98 percent of the truth. Nor will He guide me into just 50 percent of it. But He will guide me into all of it!”

I am certain enough to know that this side of heaven, my finite understanding will only know so much of it. But the promise is there. And the promise is something I hold onto every day, in and out of our nation’s election cycles. And while I do that, I vote my conscience where I am at in the knowing, and love my neighbors as myself. Who vote where they are at, in their knowing.

If everyone who reads and appreciates FāVS, helps fund it, we can provide more content news like this. For as little as $5, you can support FāVS – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.
[give_form id=”53376″ show_title=”true” display_style=”button”]