Hope Is a Choice, a Decision.

Get ready.

We simply don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, or after election day. All the polls and prognosticators tell us how closely tied and deeply contrasted the election outcome looks right now, the day before a moment that could change the country and our lives–as a “jump ball.” And that is making so many people I have met on the road, likely many of you, and those in my own family feel very anxious and stressed. And the lack of better conversations about controversial moral issues in our politics, and the loss of trust in the system of wealth and power over democracy, especially by many alienated young people, further complicates a very bad situation. 

I have had to go back to wisdom taught to me by a dear mentor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that hope is not the same thing as optimism, but goes much deeper. He said that optimism is often a feeling, a mood, or even a personality type–cup half full or cup half empty. But hope is different, not a feeling but a choice, a decision we make because of our faith. 

During this election season, I have often wished that I  could call Desmond. I suspect he would say it is time to live into that hope right now, even regardless of the election outcome, as the deep matters that divide America and the churches will be with us after the election. He might say, get ready. 

A close friend of mine from another country, as many international Christians are feeling the same anxiety that many of us are, texted something to me this morning that Dietrich Bonhoeffer said while awaiting execution, which appeared later in the book, “Letters and Papers from Prison,” where he talks about conversations he had with fellow Christians in Germany who had succumbed to the support of Hitler in the Chancellor’s election that gave him ultimate power–that’s right it was an election.

The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead it seems that under the impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward emerging circumstances…In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.”

He goes on to say that person, “will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”

Ring a bell, my friend asked? 

Regardless of the outcomes of key voting blocs, or canary in the coal mine polls, or unexpected surprises one way or the other, the chance of the kind of demagogue the founders of the nation tried to protect us against, the promise of a populist dictator who mobilizes fear, hate, violence: and persistent systemic racism-is now upon us. 

No matter who wins, it's clear that Donald Trump and the white Christian nationalists who support him are committed to winning by any means necessary, and will reject the peaceful transfer of power if they lose the election–by suppressing and intimidating voters, strategizing to corrupt the electoral progress, and even turning to violence. Get ready.

Gratefully, I did get a chance to spend some time with another one of my mentors for many years–Rev. Otis Moss Jr, who was part of Dr. King’s inner circle. The now elderly Black Church and civil rights leader preached this summer at the Alex Haley Farm, in rural Tennessee, which is now the annual site of a historic Black preachers week sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund. Pastor Moss pastored us by saying, “No matter what happens to us in the Black Church, we will keep standing up.”  Even when we don't have democracy or when America turns against democracy, as might happen in this upcoming election, “we will remain standing.” And there he was still standing very tall and still preaching, now in his nineties.

I cannot predict what will happen in this election, or what happens afterwards, but we can continue and persevere in choosing hope and living by that choice. Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And still, my best paraphrase of that Hebrew text is, “hope means believing in sprite of the evidence and then watching the evidence change.”

Donald Trump is running on the worst in America and the worst may win. As hard as so many of us have worked and will continue to do through election day and after, we are not in control. It is a time to remember what the Psalmist says even to exhausted and frightened people, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) which could lead us to a new level of trust. Take some time with that. 

A final text that another friend gave me this week is now close to my heart: “Pay close attention to yourself and to the teaching: persevere in these things, for as you do this you will save yourself and those who hear you.: (I Timothy 4:16)  Right now, we need to watch our own life and our faith very closely and persistently. 

God bless you all and, yes, God Bless America.