I think I rigged an election
Don't trust the princes. PLUS: School election shenanigans, Psalm 146, and the messiness of politics.
I’m not in a shadowy cabal, I promise.
But I think I accidentally rigged an election once. To this day, I’m really not sure.
→Welcome to the new, shorter, devotional-like version of the Smashing Idols newsletter←
As the outgoing Associated Student Body Secretary, I was tasked, along with my fellow seniors in leadership, to count the votes for next year’s election.
After a grueling count by hand, I observed the tally sheet. It was clear to me who won, who we’ll call PERSON A. Yet, policy required the vote to be “certified” by the school’s administration, and then the current president would communicate results to the incoming ASB team. So it was still a day or so until the results were public.
Then came the surprise.
The President position went to someone we’ll call PERSON B! Yes, B, not A! The one I thought got the most votes… didn’t win the presidency. Talking privately to my fellow leaders, I learned that others also thought someone different had won the popular vote.
It was a chaotic scene counting small slips of paper, working in different groups with one person reading results, one person tallying next to names. Maybe when everything was added up, the numbers came out in favor of PERSON B?
Or maybe the school administration decided to put someone else in charge! (Have I been listening to too many conspiracy theorist podcasts?)
Whatever happened, this was a good example of the messiness of politics. When power is at stake, crazy things occur. People make bold, terrible choices to protect their self-interests. Even when people are well-intentioned, they’re prone to confusion, error, and corruption.
Though I’m cautious to engage in the messy political warfare in my own country, there is no denying that the Bible is a profoundly political book. The story of God, culminating in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, has profound political applications. If Jesus is King… it means, truly, no one else is.
Though God definitely works through politics in the Old and New Testaments, and definitely has strong opinions on what they should do (lift up the poor as agents of justice) and should not do (basically anything that doesn’t help the poor), we also find a strong reminder in Scripture to not put all our chips in on politics.
Israel, indeed, only got a king because they were whining about not being like the other nations. And that came to bite them in the behinds SOOOOOOOO many times!
One thing is clear: we shouldn’t put our trust in politics.
Christian Nationalism & Tribalism - Larry Lin
In this conversation on the Smashing Idols Podcast, host Jake Doberenz speaks with pastor Larry Lin about Christian nationalism, faithful engagement in politics, and theological tribalism. They discuss the importance of approaching politics with the proper heart and the necessity of unity within the church. The episode emphasizes the need for empathy, u…
I’m not touching Romans 13 with a ten-foot pole today (but as homework, read it ONLY after reflection on Romans 12), though to be clear, I’m not calling for a rebellion or revolution.
I’m calling for a refocusing of our priorities.
Psalm 146 is a nice reflection on this exact sentiment. Toward the beginning, the Psalmist declares:
“Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing”
—Psalms 146:3-4
We are here reminded that princes—that our political leaders—are indeed human. They cannot ultimately save us. They’re human beings, after all. They won’t “save Christianity,” nor will they always be able to save our bodies or add zeros to our checking account. They are limited. They are going to die.
We shouldn’t put our trust in politicians.
The rest of Psalms 146 doesn’t mention princes again, or any leader. Instead, it shifts to talk about God. Interestingly, the things ascribed to God are political actions.
Let’s read the remainder.
“Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— he remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. 9 The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. The Lord reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord.”
—Psalms 146:5-10
In contrast to the princes who are limited, God is unlimited. In contrast to the princes who die, God is forever. We can’t always hope that politicians will care about the oppressed and give food to the hungry. They aren’t interested in setting prisoners free nor watching over the foreigner very well! God, though, is precisely in that business.
If our hope is in politics, we will be sorely disappointed. U.S. President Donald Trump is yet another example of this, as I’ve observed many of his voters suddenly be like “Wait, I didn’t know you were going to do THAT!” Honey, that’s par for the course. Don’t put your trust in princes!
Politics is messy. Any good it produces is always produced alongside a load of ugly evil. Systems break. People forget. Tallies get miscounted. And sometimes the wrong person ends up in charge… at least from our perspective.
But God is not surprised. God’s Kingdom isn’t shaken by the corruption, the scheming, the fearmongering, the backroom dealings. The Lord’s plan doesn’t depend on elections, policies, or popularity. So we can stay calm and faithful, even when the system is broken, because our hope isn’t in politics. It’s in a King who never needs to be elected.
Politics will fail us—but we serve a King who never will.
Working On
I’ll be offering some podcast management and podcast guest booking services soon. Stay tuned!
We Should Read the Bible - Joe Dea
In this conversation on the Smashing Idols Podcast, host Jake Doberenz interviews podcaster and teacher Joe Dea on the transformative nature of the Bible, discussing how many people inappropriately engage in Scripture or don’t want to engage with it at all. Joe shares his personal journey of overcoming initial hesitations to embrace scripture and goes o…
Don’t trust in princes,
Jake Doberenz
Thanks for reading Smashing Idols. Please share this publication with others!
Regardless of who runs and gets elected—especially when it's through the First Past The Post ballot system—we live in a virtual corpocracy that masquerades as a real democracy. While the FPTP may technically qualify as democratic within the democracy spectrum, it’s still particularly democratically weak.
But FPTP does seem to serve corporate lobbyists well. Perhaps it's why such powerful interests generally resist (albeit likely clandestinely) grassroots-supported attempts at changing from FPTP to more proportionally representative electoral systems of governance, the latter which dilutes corporate influence on government policy and decisions.
Low-representation FPTP-elected governments, in which a relatively small portion of the country's populace is actually electorally represented, are the easiest for lobbyists to manipulate or ‘buy’. It's largely an insidiously covert rule by way of potently manipulative and persuasive corporate and big-monied lobbyists.
Corporate lobbyists write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time writing them. The practice may have become so systematic that those who are aware of it, including mainstream news-media political writers, don’t find reason to publicly discuss or write about it. ‘We are a capitalist nation, after all,’ the morally lame self-justification can go.
Perhaps ‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine, in the film Our Brand Is Crisis, is correct in stating: “If voting changed anything [in favor of the weak/poor/disenfranchised] they’d have made it illegal.”