Presidents aren’t the leaders of the Free World

This has been an unusual election cycle. Our elections are known for being wild roller-coaster rides, often with last minute, “October surprises” flipping the script. Every election holds the potential of great change, for good or ill, for our society, nation, and for the world, so there’s a lot riding on the outcome; who will become the next “leader of the Free World?”

This year, the events leading up to our election have been unprecedented, for both parties. We’ve seen underhanded tactics, assassination attempts, switching out a major party’s candidate in the last four months…and we weren’t even to August! It makes us ask, “What next?” Because we know there’s something more coming down the pike at we, the people.

In 2005, Dr. Kerwin Swint, professor of politics at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, wrote, “Mudslingers: The Top 25 Negative Political Campaigns of All Time, Countdown from No. 25 to No. 1. As the title suggests the book revealed some of the nastiest campaigns in American history. In an interview he said,

“One of the reasons I wrote the book was that every time we have a presidential election, people seem to think, this is the most negative campaign I think we've ever had. You always hear, and you see that printed, and it's almost never true. Because historians and books like this prove that the worst campaigns really were in the 1800s.”

But Swint has acknowledged in other interviews, that he would have to rewrite the book given what’s happened since 2005, and that we’re living in another “Golden Age” of negativity.

I’m not sure if it’s more comforting to know that elections have always been nasty, or less, but at least we know that our nation and her freedoms has suffered viciousness in the past, and survived. My message for this article is one that, I hope, will be encouraging, which is that, regardless of who is elected President of the United States, Jesus Christ is the Leader of the Free World, and he’s carrying out a good and loving plan.

Psalm 107:3-6 says:

“Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground: on that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed is he whose help is…the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them – the Lord, who remains faithful forever.”

And in the last book of the Bible, John, the Disciple, wrote of the glimpse he was given into the plan God has for humanity.

He wrote:

“Then I saw a new heaven a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea…Then I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with humanity, and he will live with them…He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or sorrow or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

(Revelation 21:1, 3a, 4)

Just as we’ve forgotten so many of the world leaders who have “returned to the ground,” the world will forget those who are on the ballot this fall, but we won’t be able to forget Jesus. So, no matter how nasty this “old-order-of-things-world” gets, our hope is in the New One that’s on its way, presided over by the King of kings; the real “Leader of the Free World.”