Elections have consequences
We "liberals" need to accept that reality more deeply, more humbly, and more intentionally. It doesn't matter the excuse: the weak candidate we had running, the untimely scandals that plagued us, or getting stuck on the wrong side of an issue at the wrong time. Excuses just don't change much: elections have consequences.
There are asylum seekers having their children stripped from their arms at the Mexican border and kidnapped to unknown locations across America, because of the consequences of an election. The important Ontario Sex-Ed curriculum will be scrapped and suspended because of the consequences of an election. A woman's right to choose, the right for LGBTQ couples to marry in all fifty U.S States, and the balance of judicial power in America will now be the consequence of an election.
It might make you feel sick. It might make you lose faith in your fellow citizens. It might even make you lose faith in God.
But God called prophets, martyrs and evangelists throughout all of the story of salvation history and sent them right into the heart of the very consequences of political realities.
But their job was rarely to just pray; it was almost never to simply keep silent; and it was absolutely obligatory that they not accept systemic and exploitative wrongs.
So what is the Church to do?
Shame people in the public square? A secret Coup d'état? Raise an army and fight the rising powers?
Only at our worst.
Instead: We give our time. We lend our voice. We assemble. We protest. We resist. We seek to give Christ's voice a platform on the public stage.
We open our doors to the stranger so we might feed them and keep them safe. We work diligently and intentionally to better educate our children on critical topics -- pulling books out of the fire -- that our government may no longer be willing to teach. And to my American siblings south of the border in 2018, and to my fellow Ontarians in four more years: We organize, we register others, we speak at the top of lungs as the Spirit gives us words; we vote, we make our ballot count, we achieve our own set of consequences.
Because having watched the last few months, and as I prepare myself for the next -- make no mistake -- elections have consequences. They are right in our face.