Our Thanksgiving of (Obama) Hope

The election of Obama goes far beyond the political. This was an act of national contrition. Contrition leads to repentance and repentance leads to salvation. This is our Thanksgiving of hope.

This Thanksgiving we have a new brilliant, wise, kind, calm, even tempered, exemplary father and husband for our President-elect because millions of Americans did not vote along traditional party lines. Millions of us crossed party lines and voted for Obama even though many of us -- such as myself, a white, middle-class, middle-aged former lifelong Republican and former Religious Right leader -- had always voted for Republicans.

Millions more of us had been apathetic and not voting at all and we came to the polls. Millions of Evangelicals decided to vote for hope rather than for theological slogans, for competence rather than for someone being "correct" on all their social issues. Millions more voted for the first time. And even those who had always voted for Democratic candidates participated in the democratic process with a new vigor, sense of purpose and dedication. Tens of thousands of them knocked on doors and made calls. Millions of us contributed money to the Obama campaign when we had never contributed to a campaign before...

This was no mere election. This was a spiritual great awakening.

When we look at the context of our vote -- an unnecessary war, a necessary war gone bad, an economy in free fall, our standing at the lowest that it's been in the world in living memory, the quality of our schools deteriorating, our family's lives falling apart, statistics on single parenthood and other social pathologies rising, a neighbor of ours (Mexico) being destroyed by our drug habit -- the fact that we turned to an untested young black candidate was a giant mea culpa. Electing Obama is a public statement of "we've been wrong," a national confession, a repentance for the sin of racism, of slavery and oppression, of indifference; a giant "I'm sorry" to the world for our hubris and folly.

There are no second chances without repentance, because a person or country can't change until they admit they've been wrong. We just did.

What have we just repented of?

- Imperialistic preemptive war.

- Racism.

- The "me" syndrome.

- Settling for living lives with no sense of higher purpose.

- Smugly waiting for the other guy (for instance our all-volunteer military) to do all the heavy lifting while we just go shopping.

- Standing by impotently while our wealthy get wealthier and our middle-class sinks below a tsunami of dept.

- Turning away from our poor, our uninsured, our military families stranded, strained, terrified, breaking up, while the rest of us just go about our business.

- Ignoring our men and women in uniform who are returning wounded physically and psychologically from deployment after deployment to a broken veterans health care system wherein their reward for heroism is filling in mounds of paperwork and waiting interminably for the care they earned.

- Reducing freedom and the American Dream to nothing more than consumer choice.

- Making a virtue out of not being our brother's keeper.

- Electing George W. Bush -- twice -- this most incompetent of all our presidents and standing back and letting him ruin our country and our reputation, and run our future into the ground.

- Turning into a divided "red/blue" country that hates the "other" half.

- Turning inward and rejecting those not like "us" be they immigrants, or our gay neighbors.

- Becoming a decadent, mindless entertainment culture besotted by celebrities and distracted by the bells, whistles, and trinkets of literal and figurative bullshit with our state and national lotteries, expanding casino business, turning every learning tool, from computers to telephones, into another means of entertainment, and letting this firestorm of triviality distract us from actually doing anything about our lives, our spirits, our country, our communities and finally losing touch with reality itself.

- Forgetting that the life of the spirit, the mind and heart is what makes our careers, money and all that stuff we accumulate mean anything in the first place.

- Literally consuming the Earth, becoming a people with 3% of the Earth's oil reserves who consume 25% of its energy, and setting a disastrous example of consumerism that the world has followed as our planet warms and we destroy our grandchildren and their chances for survival, all for a few more minutes of "fun."

How do we save ourselves?

We have made a good start by electing the most unlikely candidate. We have elected a man with a big heart, a brilliant mind, and a humble spirit. We have voted counter to type -- the white guy lost, the established order was overturned. We have confounded not only our own low expectations, but those of the world.

We reached outside the usual cast of characters who've been living in a political cocoon and instead elected one of us to president! He is a man of we the people, not part of a political dynasty. Our new president was, only moments ago, driving to work as a community organizer in a rusted out car. He is someone with ordinary connections to an ordinary community. He knows the first name of his barber and the woman at the local deli who served him his coffee.

We have elected a man who combines the extraordinary brilliance of a once-in-a-lifetime leader with a down-to-earth connection to all those things that make up the sum total of a human life worth living: the nodded "good morning" to someone you always pass on your walk, the pat on the shoulder to the man who cuts your hair, the swooping lift of a child to a kiss when you come home from work, that series a quiet and faithful decisions that is the foundation of every good marriage, that humility of spirit which takes a higher path when greed and a lower road would be easier.

This Thanksgiving in the midst of the ruin we made of our country let us give thanks for President-elect Obama, his lovely wife and his lovely children. Let us pray for safety for our new president. Let us pray for an extra measure of wisdom for him. Let us ask for a new measure of humility and a contrite spirit for ourselves, so that when our President Obama asks us to sacrifice and break our bad habits and change, we can find it in our hearts to do what we know is right.

This is our Thanksgiving of hope! For those of us who are secular, let us give thanks for our great and good luck. For those of us who are religious, let us pray: Dear God, we thank You for an undeserved second chance.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy For God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back (Now in Paperback).

Comments

[Retrofuturistic]

Hmmmmmm. I agree that some mea culpa's are needed but it is not all of America that had ancestors who participated in enslaving other human beings.

I would like to see a mea culpa from religion and the religious right, in particular. It was money and support from Christianity that put us in the mess we are currently in. Bush and Cheney are in office because of Christianity. They would not be there if it weren't for Christianity. So, thank you, Jesus. (NOT.)

I do see the irony, however, after the way African-American people were treated here, of how it is most likely a (partly) black man who will save this country from the mess that white "Christians" created.

[panache]

Mmmmm...so God is the one offering you a second chance after He has given so much bad advice to Bush and the Republicans.
While I applaud the choice of Barack Obama, it remains to be seen how truly repentant America is.
I'm reminded of the story of the out-of-control father who comes to his son and says, "I was wrong. Will you forgive me." The son forgives him, but, on the inside, he is thinking, "I know what motivates you to get out of control again, so we'll wait and see."
Running down the list of the things of which you claim to have repented, I suspect you will really need your God's intervention to make this (you'll forgive me) rediculous statement reality.
Are you thanking God for your financial free-fall? Perhaps here is an intervention that God is using to bring America into the world of reality, but having said that, I add that I possess no absolute truth about God, and you don't either.
Bonne chance, America!

[lewes17266]

Our problems today are different than yesterday's.

I was so worried. I worried that Barack Obama may not be able to convince enough voters that he was more than just words. I worried about the "Bradley Effect." I worried the Religious Right would meddle and manipulate faithful, trusting souls again with scripture, demonizing Barack "Hussein" Obama to the point of ruin.

I am very thankful.

[Freesia2]

You know lewes, it's truly breath taking when you consider all the obstacles in his path. All the things that were being tossed out to trip him up. And he walked right by all of them. Somebody up there likes him. (Somebody up there likes us, too! :-) )

[ImWithThatOne]

Thank you, Mr. Schaeffer, for articulating so beautifully what has been in my heart for the last two weeks. As I was walking into that voting booth, I felt different. I'm not sure how to explain it. When I pressed that button, I felt like I was voting FOR something instead of AGAINST something. And I felt different afterward too.
I'm 32 years old, been voting since age 18, and I had never in my entire life felt this good about a vote. I would do it again, and again, and again if I had to, that's how good I felt about that vote. I had taken voting for granted, then I realized my grandmother couldn't vote until she was in her 60s and my grandfather had been taken away from me before he could ever vote. So many people had fought and died so that I would have this opportunity to have my say on how my government should be run. And yet....and yet... I had squandered my blessing.
I must say I've detected real change in my own attitude and those of the people around me. They have a real spring in their step. Their heads are craned high in the air, exuding confidence without arrogance. After coming home from my job at the local newspaper, I've been doing some volunteer work at the junior high school, lending my experiences to young people, and am considering going back to college to get my teaching certificate.

[democratbob]

Thanks you Frank. This country has a great deal to repent of, and so much of it has been done in the name of God. I for one forsook the Republican party and hard-right conservatism because I discovered the Bible wanted me to treat others as I would want to be treated and not how my church taught me I should view them, people who were not as good because they were going to hell if they didn't believe exactly like us.

[Minotaurus]

I thank GOD and ALL AMERICANS for the OBAMA MIRACLE.

[Freesia2]

I needed this Mr. Schaeffer. Because I find myself alarmed by the stories of racism alive and well across the country and the immediate action by the ones who aren't contrite already trying to lay ground to threaten us with Palin once again in 2012 - who is the poster girl for all that was wrong. I forgot to be glad that we have now and a future and that it will be led by Obama after all.

So thank you for reminding me that there is much to be grateful for and every reason to believe that our better angels are flapping their wings. We really are lucky aren't we? All things are possible. I haven't felt like that in a long time.

[LizzyTish]

So, so spot on, as usual.

I actually told myself that I would stop accepting the status quo of getting through the day to day after this election...and lo and behold in the weeks since I have found myself returning to church and developing my role in my community, and looking for a less cushy and more useful role in the workforce than the one I currently hold (going from a quiet, ineffective nonprofit into the urban public school system).

It's not so much that it feels imperative, it just feels like time.

[blaqntelligence]

"Dear God, we thank You for an undeserved second chance."
As always, thank you Mr. Schaeffer.