Schizo Thoughts on the Election

This election season is one of the most painful for me. I honestly do not know where I fit in. I cannot join in to celebrate either candidate because both of them grieve God in so many different ways. I find myself fearful of messing up my Christian witness by cheering on either candidate publicly, so I have made my choice and am doing so privately or as quietly as possible.

I have decided to view this choice outside of a religious decision because both of them are hurting the name of God. When we align our faith with politics, we dilute the majesty and holiness of God’s name. The most important thing for me is to ensure that every action and my character always reflect the love, grace, and beauty of God.

Instead of writing a piece celebrating the first Black female Democratic nominee or one celebrating how Republicans support a few Christian values, I am going to write about how conflicted I feel by both parties. This struggle is because both parties pose a danger to values that are very important to me. I will elaborate on several main ones.

School Choice

As a Christian educator, I have come to value the cause of school choice. It is surprising because I attended Christian schools my whole life (preK-12th grade) and my brother and I both experienced blatant and harmful racism at every single school. What made it more painful was that in chapel, we would learn about the evil of abortion, but in Bible class, we were taught that God made Black people inferior. In chapel, we were taught that anyone who votes Democrat is not a Christian. Yet, these same schools banned any gospel music or representations of my culture, even forbidding any celebration of Black History or MLK Day. When students put up posters about Black History Month, the principal would go through the halls and tear them down. When we wanted to sing a gospel song in chapel, we were told our music was sinful. This same school that taught it was important to value the unborn also felt that my life and the lives of my people were less important than a fetus. Despite this experience, my passion for Christian education grew when my parents decided to create their own Christian school where ALL children and their cultures were made to understand they were fearfully and wonderfully made by God. I saw how powerful, unifying, redemptive, and SAFE a Christian school could be. I realized that the Christian schools I attended were not truly anointed by God because they failed to teach us about God’s love for the WORLD. However, my parents’ school revealed that Christian education gives me a unique opportunity to show all children the love of Christ and to educate them in a way that is not hurtful but edifying. This type of education could change the trajectory of many young people’s lives. My greatest fear is that if Democrats had their way, this opportunity would be lost, and children who would flourish in a school with a Biblical worldview would be forced to go to schools that may not be spiritually, emotionally, or mentally the best for them.

As an educator, I also see that school choice is many families’ last hope for their child. All schools do not work for ALL children. I am frustrated that school choice is not a BIPARTISAN cause because many children cannot learn in a school with 20 or more kids in a class. Many children need one-on-one or small class sizes, not because they have special needs but because they learn differently. Many children need alternative ways of learning because kids are like snowflakes: they are all different and need options to be in schools that best suit their needs. No matter how much money you throw at public schooling, you will never make public schools work for ALL children. Not understanding this contributes to our society creating children who grow up to be menaces to society. Most children experience their trauma in schools, leading to long-lasting mental and emotional damage. No matter how loving their families are, the environment of some schools is unhealthy for children. I have seen public schools get angry at parents who try to find a school that helps their child grow healthily. The notion of school choice has become a divisive political issue, and CHILDREN are caught in the middle. No matter what people think or feel about me, I will ALWAYS be an advocate of school choice, and therefore it gives the illusion that I am choosing a side. The only side I am choosing, however, is the side of the CHILD.

Support for Marginalized People

This one covers a wide range of political stances. Whether the person is an immigrant, a person of color, poor, disenfranchised, or part of a group that is often discriminated against (women, LGBTQ+, Black people, Latino, and others), America is a hard place to thrive in. This is not spoken from a paranoid or even political place but from my lived experience. I have lived it as a woman, offered a salary $20k less than the man I was replacing (he only had a BA, while I had three master’s degrees, was working on my PhD, and had more experience). I have lived it as a Black person experiencing extreme racism in Christian schools, ministries, and other Christian spaces. I have lived it as a Black person working in predominantly White spaces. These experiences are not figments of my imagination; they have consistently happened throughout my life, even within this year. I have witnessed it happen to others, for example, when a student at a Christian school was bullied for appearing to be part of the LGBTQ+ community, and the school and parents of the bully faulted the victim. Even though the victim had done NOTHING wrong. He was literally just being bullied for no reason. This broke my heart. No matter our moral stance, we cannot excuse the oppression, discrimination, or mistreatment of ANY person. Those who think they are carrying out some righteous judgment have not read about the life of Christ, who was furious with Pharisees for this behavior toward those they judged. There is a way to teach the laws of Scripture without hurting and bullying people. Jesus did it all the time. Since he is my example, I feel the same rage about this issue that he did when he turned over the tables in the temple. I have witnessed it when people are mocked for taking government assistance. Families I have worked with have often used these resources to get ahead and give better opportunities to their children.

I do not understand how a group of people can march, protest, and weep for unborn children, but have disdain and disregard for marginalized people living OUTSIDE the womb. In fact, those advocating for banning abortion often oppose the services that many of those “saved” children and mothers would need to thrive outside the womb.

Abortion

I have been pro-life my entire life. Abortion as an option has never made sense to me. These feelings intensified when I became a mother. The moment I saw the two pink lines, they were human to me. The moment I heard their little hearts beat, they were real to me. The moment I began to see them move around during the ultrasound, I couldn’t imagine someone using an instrument to go into the sanctity of the womb to destroy them. The moment I began to feel their personalities in their movements and responses to the outside world as my pregnant body moved throughout the day, I couldn’t see them as merely a pack of cells or a “fetus.” They were my children! My faith confirms these feelings when I read Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Verses like this are throughout scripture. There is NO WAY any Bible-believing Christian could celebrate and justify an abortion. Whenever I hear Kamala speak on this and hear the amount of joy around such a painful decision, I struggle with joining in this celebration. Yet, I understand that many people do not have this spiritual context, so I do not feel I have the right to take a mother’s right to make this decision for herself. Instead, I choose my freedom of religion to share my faith and the Biblical basis for choosing to keep the child on a relational, one-on-one basis. It is my hope that instead of participating in banning abortions in some general way, without giving the mom any choice, I can use my freedom to share my faith and help more and more moms CHOOSE LIFE.

Kamala Harris

Many may be wondering about my thoughts on Kamala Harris. To be honest, I am struggling. I have attempted to write on this and each time sent the draft to the trash. My feelings are so conflicted and painful! Imagine being a Black little girl, who grew up going to Christian schools where we were taught that we were cursed by God. Then imagine that little girl having to grow up learning how to cancel that narrative. THEN imagine that little girl having a little girl and watching the effect it has on her daughter to grow up in a world where a Black woman is VP and will possibly be president. There is a sincere desire to join in the celebration, to shout from every rooftop along with the sisterhood that rallies around her. Then I see that one of her first campaign events is done with music artists that contradict everything I believe as a Christian woman (Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion). I read about how she loves to listen to Cardi B before she speaks. I read about her celebration and stances on issues that are disconnected from my faith. At the same time I look at her life, and I see that she seems to be a woman of character. She has been a wonderful wife and mother. We can see the healthy relationship she has with her husband. She is more than qualified, having served all the way to being VP of the United States. I have seen her be an advocate for marginalized people. However, some of her stances, just like with the Republicans, conflict with my faith. Even though I believe and advocate for every American citizen having the freedom to live as they want to, my allegiance is first to the Word of God and Jesus Christ. What this means is that I simply cannot publicly promote her, even if I were to vote for her (and it’s none of your business if I decide to or not). This makes me more than sad because I would love to participate in the party for the possibly first Black woman president.

Trump

Even though his platform preserves some Christian values, he misses some important ones. James 2:14-17 says, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” For every child Christians THINK he will save, his rhetoric is destroying the emotional well-being of millions of people. Actually, he is stirring up so much hate that he threatens the physical well-being of millions of people. I know people who were injured on January 6th. Christians who rally around him are missing other important Christian values. Oh, how I wish Christians had a party that elevated all of the key values in Scripture.

Conclusion

I cannot promote ANY candidate. I cannot celebrate ANY candidate. I can quietly vote OR choose not to vote at all. I can privately encourage people who I think we should vote for. I can even admire Kamala Harris for the history she is making, but I will sadly have to sit out of the public Kamala Harris party because to do so would confuse the world about who Jesus is and what he stands for. Trump’s rhetoric and words are so hurtful to my community that I definitely cannot join in that celebration in ANY way. So here I am, stuck between loving Christ and wanting to be part of history in the making. At the end of the day, I will say, “Choose you this day whom you will serve…as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I choose Christ, and my voting will be done in a way where no one in the world will be confused about who He is.