I think that everyone enjoys a bit of suspense. A dramatic movie with a proper balance of suspense is enjoyable. A good athletic event always offers the adrenaline rush of some suspense, especially if “your” team is playing. The benefit of things such as movies and athletic events is that they generally are over in about two hours. Too much protracted suspense is just draining.
I feel this way about the elections this year. It has just been too long. I was reading the other day that in 1956 when President Eisenhower ran for re-election, he started his campaign on the twelfth of September. What I wouldn’t give for some law that limited the campaign period to two months. That alone would free up billions of dollars for debt reduction! Oh, maybe not billions but we sure could find some surplus there for some good projects.
It seems to me that the real winners here are media. They have had an abundance of fodder to fill their programming and think of the revenue they have gained in the avenue of political advertising! I rather suppose it is greatly in their interest to style this campaign as a close race (don’t you expect that affects their polling?) to keep the attention and suspense high. I am so weary of this “breaking news” that amounts to little more than some new rumor.
The real consequence of this seems to me to be the cynicism that is affected in the electorate. We finally tire of the entire process and say, “just throw all the bums out”. I assure you that is a bad and cynical reaction. Regardless of the tension of this very exhausting process, I believe it is very important for us, as God’s people, to stay engaged. Let me encourage you that it is our duty to get informed and to vote from a clearly established, Bible based bias. And please note, I say a Bible bias, not a personal interest bias. The world around us will most always be directed by a bias of personal interest, let us as God’s people rise above that and do our best to vote a Bible conscience. It would seem to me that, that alone is our real place in a process such as this as being the unique people of God’s presence in the world.
1 Peter 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:
