11.9.24
Hey, Calvary Fremont –
The election of Donald Trump and the Republican platform highlights the commonsense notion that existential concerns rank higher than ideological concerns with the voters. Existential means that which relates to and is concerned with existence. How this plays out is that an overwhelming number of people are more concerned with the price of milk and eggs than they are with the government advocating and normalizing gender affirming surgery.
Americans want government that is expressive and supportive of their moral values – we don’t want government determining what those values are. Americans impose their values on Washington – it’s not the other way around. This is, again, reflective of the fact the politics is downstream from culture.
How did Civil Rights legislation come about? Washington listened to the people.
How did abortion rights come about? Washington listened to the people.
How did same sex marriage come about? Washington listened to the people.
People are tuned in to existential concerns so much more than ideological matters. Interest groups have ideological concerns, but culture is moved by existential matters. Possibly, in twenty years, concerns for gender affirmation surgery will reach critical mass and become culturally existential. I doubt it. For the ideological to reach critical mass, the larger culture must adopt it as an existential matter.
A Mr. Varadaraja wrote: Ms. Harris and her party were “heavily invested in liberal cultural issues, and were even using a language that was hostile to a lot of these voters.” The Democrats “pooh-poohed concerns about crime and immigration, and thought their ‘enlightened’ views about race, gender, abortion and climate were saleable to most members of the voting public.” Mr. Trump’s comeback proves they weren’t. He says the ideological impulses that made his old workplace intolerable were the same forces that “consigned Kamala Harris and the Democrats to defeat in the election. Opinion | A Democrat Ponders a ‘Thumping Rebuke’
I don’t think that the defeat of Kamala Harris and the Democrats is necessarily a repudiation of their ideological direction as much as it is a rejection of the their existential disconnection. I think that if the Democrats were hitting on all eight cylinders of existential relevancy, their ideological direction would have been more of a speed bump instead of a wall. But their existential disconnection only served to highlight their ideological disconnection. Even as Trump’s existential relevancy moved millions to overlook his character, had the Democrats had the same existential relevancy, millions would have been moved to overlook their Woke ideology.
The election of Donald Trump doesn’t mean that the Kingdom of God has come. The reelection of Trump is not the second coming of Christ. The new American administration will merely be but another version of the kingdom of man. Yet I am grateful that the brakes have been applied to governmental advancement of a niche ideology that erodes commonsense and undermines Biblical values. Will Trump become the brutal authoritarian that once and for all destroys American Democracy? I cannot see it. Yet I’m grateful for the bullet we dodged in the Harris defeat. Let’s just pray we are not in the crosshairs of a rocket launched grenade.
Be blessed and stay healthy and follow Jesus – Pastor Tim
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