Angry or dissatisfied, three in four

One · What happened

A poll of the mood and a count of the seats

Reporters for the Associated Press wrote on election night, in a story PBS NewsHour carried, that roughly three-quarters of voters in the AP Voter Poll felt angry or dissatisfied with the direction of the country. The same poll found about half of voters holding a very or somewhat unfavorable view of the Democratic Party and about six in ten holding that view of the Republican Party. NBC News exit polling of more than 79,000 voters found more than three-quarters disapproving of Congress. The Congress that so many of them disapproved of is the one whose membership changes in January.

The count came in two stages. Near midnight the wire service reported that Democrats had retaken the Senate and that the House was too early to call. NBC News updated its projection the following morning to say that Democrats would take both chambers. NBC put the House at no fewer than 258 Democratic seats against the 218 needed, a total it said could change by a few seats. Seven Senate seats had changed hands in its count. CBS News listed Alaska and Mississippi as uncalled when it updated before dawn. The studios started the argument over what the night means as soon as the polls closed, and a reader can leave it to them.

Two · What it is doing

The morning after, for the winner and the loser

A man picks up his phone on the morning of 4 November before he is out of bed and opens the Senate map. By the time his feet reach the floor he has settled on a feeling. If his side won, he screenshots a concession and sends it to the group chat with a laughing face and a line about the other side’s tears. On the losing side, he reads the same map as the end of something. His regard for the neighbors who voted for the other side sours with each state that changes color. The poll counted anger and dissatisfaction, with no number for what a map does to a man’s opinion of the family two doors down.

Luke recorded the target of one parable in its first line, some who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous” (Luke 18:9) and treated everyone else with contempt. Two men went up to the temple to pray. A list was running in the first man’s prayer, with extortioners and adulterers on it and a tax collector standing within sight. The group chat after a good night keeps a list of the same kind. After a bad night the list carries different names. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men” (Luke 18:11).

The other morning is quieter than the first one. A woman reads the projection and closes the laptop. She tells her husband the country has made its choice and she does not know how to live in it. Then she sorts her relatives by how they voted. She works out which of them she will sit beside on 26 November. The senator who lost her seat in Maine ended her part of the night with a sentence of thanks. Susan Collins, conceding that night, said, “It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Maine in the United States Senate.”

Both mornings feel like clear sight. The winner takes his pleasure for a conviction about justice. The loser takes his dread for a sober reading of facts the other side keeps missing. Paul told the church at Ephesus, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26).

Three · Where the ground is

A citizenship the count does not reach

“It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man” (Psalm 118:8). The psalmist who wrote those words had the nations pressed in around him and no ballot to cast. He was settling where a man should put his weight. In the next line he says the same of princes (Psalm 118:9).

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1) is how Isaiah 40 opens, a word to a people who had watched an empire break their city. The prophet went on to say what the nations amount to before him. “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales” (Isaiah 40:15). The exiles lived under a power that looked permanent. Isaiah gave them no explanation for the empire’s rise, and the passage offers a reader no explanation of a Senate map.

Philippi was “a Roman colony” (Acts 16:12), and citizens of Rome there carried a standing the others lacked. Paul sent his letter to the Philippians from prison and did not tell them to give that standing up. He told them where their citizenship was held. “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).

“Remind them . . . to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people” (Titus 3:1-2) was Paul’s instruction to Titus about the churches on Crete. The ground he gave for the courtesy looks back at the believers themselves. He did not rest it on the neighbors’ behavior. He wrote, “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3).

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13) is the prayer of the tax collector in the Luke 18 parable, who stood far off and beat his breast. Jesus told the parable to people like the Pharisee, the man who kept the list. Paul’s next sentence in Titus turns to the Savior, “when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us” (Titus 3:4-5). The cross answers the contempt of the one who gloats and the dread of the one who despairs, since Christ died for sinners of both kinds and was raised on the third day.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Every one of these needs only a pen or a dinner table, and no recount changes any of it.

1. 01

   Delete the concession screenshot before it is sent.

   Open the camera roll and the saved clips from election night and delete the screenshot of a concession and the meme with the other side’s face on it. If something has already gone to the group chat, tell its recipient it was unkind to send. The men and women in those clips have names, and Titus 3:2 asks for perfect courtesy toward them.

2. 02

   Put a neighbor’s name on an index card.

   Write on an index card the name of a relative or a coworker who voted for the other side. Beneath the name write two facts about him that are unrelated to the ballot, such as his work and his child’s name or his dog’s. Keep the card in your Bible through the next week. When a thought about the other side’s voters arrives, read his name and the two facts.

3. 03

   Confess the contempt to God, and to the person if you voiced it.

   Sit with Luke 18:9-14 open. Tell God, in your own words, the specific things you said or thought about the other side’s voters this week. Ask for the mercy the tax collector asked for. If you said any of it to the person himself, or about him in a message, go to him and ask his forgiveness for it.

4. 04

   Pray by name for those elected and those defeated.

   Write the names of your two senators and your House member on one page, along with the winner and the loser in any race that mattered to you. Pray for each of them by name for a few minutes a day through the next week, and ask that the winners receive wisdom from God and the losers a steady hand. Peter wrote to churches living under an emperor and told them to “Honor everyone” and to “Honor the emperor” (1 Peter 2:17).

5. 05

   Tell an elder what you were hoping the count would fix.

   Ask your pastor or an elder for fifteen minutes this week and tell him which result you were hoping for, and what you expected it to change in your home, your work or your church. Ask him to read Psalm 118:8-9 with you and to pray for the place where your weight has been resting. On the Lord’s Day, take a seat near a person whose vote you suspect differs from yours and greet him by name.