Sometime in the evening on Tuesday night last week, a familiar feeling returned. It’s one that I thought we had finally been able to lay down and move on from sometime in late January of 2021–a burdensome feeling, full of dread and uncertainty. 

If I am honest, I would admit that that feeling has been lingering in the shadows of my mind for months now. I think we all have wanted to move on, to think that the chaotic years from 2016 to 2020 were some kind of fluke or accident of history, that Donald Trump, by pure dumb luck, had somehow gotten himself elected as President of the United States of America. Once that presidency ended in 2020, it was easiest to think we could just return to not having that feeling anymore. 

Since Tuesday night, when it started to become clear that the election was going the way it was going and that feeling of dread was surfacing again, I tried to analyze how things are different this time around.

In 2016, it was so shocking to think that this absurd candidate actually would become the President, and no one knew what would happen. This time, none of it is shocking, and I think we all have a pretty good idea of what is coming. I think about all those whose lives will be qualitatively worse: immigrants and asylum seekers, LGBTQ2SIA+ persons, women, people of colour, people who practice a faith other than the ones that support Trump, people who believe this is new totalitarian administration or anyone who invokes the ire of the new wanna-be “tyrant king.”

I also think this result is not surprising for many reasons, most of all since many of our political leaders around the globe appear to have been too long in the pockets of the ultra rich. Our politics might technically be democratic, but our economics look a lot like feudalism. We live in a world where a small privileged few control just about everything, and the vast majority of people are left to fight over the scraps. But this time around, the kings and privileged few are better at hiding our slavery from us. Instead of making us slaves, having us till the land which we do not own and grow food which we aren’t allowed to eat, the small group of billionaires have given us just enough distraction to make us think we are free –smartphones, crumbling hospitals and schools, endless entertainment like the gladiator games, but delivered to phones, tablets and TVs–and the illusion that the people we vote for are stark and different choices when instead they are more or less the same choice no matter what. 

Kamala Harris represented an interminably broken system that will not fix itself, while Trump represented change. That is change in the form of total destruction of the system, but change nonetheless. Given the choice between interminable brokenness and change through destruction, I am not surprised that so many opted for change. It is the same instinct that has led to every revolution and the overthrow of kingdoms, empires, regimes or other oppressive systems. 

Now, not being surprised by what happened is not the only difference this time around. 

Lately, I hear Martin Luther in the back of my head a lot. He lived in a time of oppressive and evil rulers, too. Popes and Emperors wanted him dead. Jesus also lived in that kind of world. That has been the normal state of the world for much of human history. We have been fortunate to have lived so long in a world where we (privileged North Americans) could sleep comfortably at night without wondering if some tyrant was going make life worse tomorrow. 

In the face of this kind of world, Luther would tell us to turn to God and God’s promises. The Gospel is the only hope that we truly have. This Gospel includes God’s forgiveness of sinners, Christ’s salvation enacted on the cross and Christ’s resurrection from the dead. There is no human effort that will save us and no political power, no king or queen, emperor or empress, no president or prime minister that can bring about our salvation or reconciliation. 

Yes, the world feels heavy and full of dread this week. But our hope and salvation remain what they have always been – the One who does the thing that we cannot do ourselves, the One in whom we die to sin and death and are raised to new life. 

Photo: The last bits of Berlin Wall. On November 9th, was the 35th anniversary of its fall. The movement that led to it being knocked down was begun by a group holding prayer meetings in St. Nikolai’s Church in Leipzig by pastors who were heavily influenced by Martin Luther’s writing The Freedom of a Christian. Within weeks, the meeting grew to be silent, candle-held protests of hundreds of thousands, which led to the wall coming down.

A reminder that tyranny can be resisted and overcome…