by Ramesh Richard
America’s democratic selection of a young, non-white, appealing and gifted visionary with a non-traditional name (including a Muslim middle name) has set off layers of responses worldwide. Here is mine, from a somewhat globally exposed and theologically engaged perspective.
First, heartiest congratulations go to America, my adoptive homeland for living consistently with our nation’s first principles. The world wondered if America’s assertive global presence over the last 60 years included an actual application of its human(e) charter. Who would not have been moved by watching the postelection speeches of both concession and victory? With the opening of the nation’s highest office, all men (and women) are indeed equal! Many cultures and countries turn their existential wishes into empty public slogans. Yesterday, America lived out her Constitution. In that way, our sense of exceptionalism has presented itself as…well, exceptional. There’s no way for her moral authority across the globe to go except up, way, way up.
More importantly, God is obviously implementing His purpose, program, and plans. On the morning of Election Day, I happened to devotionally feed on Stephen’s legal defense before authorities (Acts 7). He starts out with the God of glory (v. 2) and ends up with decisive judgment upon those who opposed the Righteous One, the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God (vs. 52, 55-56). The God whose essence is glory, who deserves all glory, and the God which glory itself glorifies, is working his program in history and geography, chooses nations and peoples, raises leaders and deposes them, saves believers and judges unbelievers. All according to plan!
God knew the outcome of the 2008 election before it happened. Like Cyrus, the Persian king, who was likely unaware of his intentional “anointing by Yahweh” to fulfill God’s purposes,” (Isa. 45:1, 5), our winsome and articulate Presidentelect, could even unwittingly implement God’s plan for God’s own glory. The God of glory always ends up getting glory while accomplishing His plans for the good of those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28). This grand purpose not only includes our own eternal salvation, but also our involvement in dispensing God’s salvation to humanity.
So we look at all historical events through the grid of God’s human salvation program. The election of an out-of-the-ordinary President calls on us to pray that he will turn out to be an extraordinary one. We ought to pray for all those in authority so that believers will live without disturbance and that in no way the progress of the gospel will be impeded (2 Tim. 2:1-7). We subscribe to the God who wishes all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. Like the Apostle Paul, we are sworn to proclaim the message worldwide.
With this new U.S. reality meeting God’s global purpose, I am able to be grateful, as a Christian, for the following prospects:
1) That the world’s hardest to reach group and region may eventually soften its stance toward the gospel as a Western product. They may finally see that American Christians are not presenting the gospel as though from superior to inferior, and that evangelism is not sourced in a Western Christian agenda to dominate the rest of the world. All because America’s new President carries an unfamiliar non-Western name to us and a familiar middle-name to them! Those who believe they have scored a political victory for their religion in America, in spite of the Presidentelect’s consistent claims to have never been anything but Christian, should be a bit more open to Christians and Americans.
2) That this group and region may place behavioral expectations on the world’s most powerful man to downplay two issues that are anathema to them—homosexuality and abortion. I could also add liquor sales. This expectation of the second largest religion in the world would force our new President to be more distinctively American in a back-door sort of way. If he doesn’t meet their behavioral expectations, he would be considered as too secular to carry dialogical authority across the political table. And if he does tone down his acquiescence to foundational family issues by promoting homosexual and abortion-rights, then he would represent his blue-blooded Americanness after all. Either way, he would end up having to prove himself more American than his former pastor may have ever preached, and remove any doubt concerning true American convictions among a suspicious conservative segment of the U.S. population.
3) If the first job of the President is to protect the nation—a role that has been fulfilled eminently and expensively by the outgoing President, at least the new President would not be superficially accused of waging the “Christian” crusade, of continuing “Christian” vengeance, by those who do not separate religion and state, culture and state, economics and state.
4) With the apparent “set-back” and its attendant “wake-up” call, American believers-followers-proclaimers of Jesus Christ can promote repentance for the idolatrous side of their patriotism. Stephen, soon-to-be martyred, actually corrects his audience, entrenched and dripping with Jewish exceptionalism (and no other people in God’s program could have made a case for that sentiment) that no place or people, notes a commentator, is “necessarily critical to God’s short-term working in history.” Evangelicals truly must acknowledge their new minority status in America. All delusions that America is a Christian nation or run by the Christian Right may now be discarded. Indeed, we can finally and seriously view America as a Christian mission field—the world’s third largest mission-field!
God, then, is working His plans for America and the world in patient mercy. In the salvation sense, God is pro-American (just like He is pro-Iraqi, pro-Indian, pro-Iranian, pro-Indonesian, pro-Israeli), because He is pro-human. God is prosalvation.
With increasing sensitivity to spiritual matters in the middle of a global financial meltdown and a rendering down of American financial prowess, God has yet again provided a chance for spiritual salvation in America, and coming from America, a salvation made by God Himself.
God is not pro-America, any more than He is pro-India, my birth-land. But He is pro-American, more precisely, pro-Americans, for the sake of human salvation. And though I was not born-in-the-USA, and thus can never occupy the President’s office, I am thrilled to be pro-Americans and pro-humans. Spiritual salvation has never been in our hands, except to distribute it. A U.S. passport could now be seen as less provocative among antagonistic audiences who may be more open to receiving the gospel through American initiatives. I wonder if the election of a non-white, non-Western named U.S. President will make it slightly easier for many in spiritually unreached regions to accept Christ’s good news when dispensed by the servant-hands of Christians, even American Christians.
Dallas, Texas
November 5, 2008
