Spoiler alert: I don’t think Antifa was behind the assault on the U.S. Capital.  I think it was Trump supporters.  No doubt there were some bad actors there.  On the same day, January 6^th, a Trump rally was held at the Utah State Capital.  At that rally, both QAnon and the Proud Boys showed up in full force.  Agitators are on the rise in our country, fueled by a growing sense of frustration and discontent. 

I don’t excuse what happened, and I don’t deny it.  I think President Trump bears some of the blame; I don’t think he carries all of the blame.  I don’t think he gets a pass; I don’t give his opponents a pass.  I think we are in a real mess right now, and I don’t see relief on the horizon.

Sorry if that feels too gloomy for you.  Generally speaking, I am an optimistic person.  But in this case, we need to face reality.  We see a rising tension in our country that threatens to explode at any moment.

Immediately after the media projected Joe Biden the winner of the Presidential election, newspapers from Australia to Arizona ran the same headline, almost verbatim: “A Time to Heal”  The message was clear: a Biden presidency can bring healing to our nation.  I find it uncanny the way the news media can present the same story in almost the same words across the board.  I have often wondered whether there is a central agency that provides all the mainstream media with the verbiage for their news reports.  Perhaps if we could find that agency, we could make TV news watchable again.

The left believes that with the removal of Donald Trump, we can experience healing in our nation.  The tension in Washington is all his fault, after all.  He is a dictator, a tyrant, unhinged, a rogue, a Russian agent, Putin’s pawn.  He colluded with Russia.  He stole the 2016 election.  He is bad for democracy.  He sought a quid pro quo with Ukraine.  He is the problem.

And Joe Biden can bring healing to our land.

Trump supporters are a basket of deplorables.  Unhinged.  White supremacists.  Transphobic homophobes.  Alt right.  Conspiracy theorists.  And after January 6^th, insurrectionists. 

And Joe Biden can bring healing to our land.

Claims that the election was stolen are baseless, unverified.  Never mind that 80% of Republicans and 30% of Independents believe that there was widespread election fraud.  Their doubts don’t deserve an answer.  “False information.”  Get in line for your vaccination.  The courts have repudiated these claims.  There is no evidence of fraud.  Quityerbellyachin.  Shut up and dialogue.

And Joe Biden can bring healing to our land.

Trump supporters just want a fair hearing, where facts are examined in a non-partisan way, where questions about the election are answered objectively.  What really happened in Fulton County with those briefcases?  We don’t want to know what the Facebook “fact-checkers” claim about it.  We want an independent investigation.  How did Joe Biden make up a 700,000-vote deficit in Pennsylvania with more than 90% of the remaining vote?  Where did the vote dumps come from in Wisconsin and Michigan?  As voters, we believe we have a right to know.   Can we verify voter signatures in Georgia?  Please tell us.  We want to know that our vote counts, that we have not been disenfranchised by voter fraud.  All we want is a fair hearing.

And Joe Biden can bring healing to our land.

We accepted defeat in 2008.  We accepted it in 2012.  Barak Obama was our President.  He was going to unite us too.  He turned out to be one of the most rabidly partisan presidents in our history.  And Joe Biden was his vice president.  But we swallowed our medicine like good soldiers.  We endured the scorn of our President.  We soldiered on when he weaponized the IRS against us.  We sucked it up when he labeled the tea party an extremist hate group.  He was our President.

And Joe Biden didn’t bring healing to our land.

We endured through the last five years of all-out assault on our President.  We listened as more than 70 House Democrats refused to attend Trump’s inauguration.  We watched as Democrat after Democrat embraced the “not my president” movement.  We observed while celebrities announced their desire to kill President Trump.  We tolerated four years of Russia collusion.  We gave the claim a fair hearing, treated it as if it could be legitimate in the interest of transparency and a desire for integrity.  We learned that it was all a hoax, an actual Russian collusion on the other side of the aisle.  We discovered the fraud on the courts to secure FISA warrants.  We traced it back to the Obama administration and their concocted “insurance policy.”  We learned that the Logan Act was Joe Biden’s brain child.

And Joe Biden didn’t bring healing to our land.

We watched while the Democrats invented crisis after crisis in order to kill the Trump Presidency.  We tried to believe the best when they announced draconian measures in order to “crush” a virus that can’t be crushed by any government measure.  We responded in good faith when they used the virus as an excuse to destroy our economy and turn millions of Americans out of their jobs.  We let them have their way when they told us that it was too dangerous for in-person voting.  We gave our consent when they said “believe the scientists,” and we turned a blind eye when they ignored those same doctors. 

And Joe Biden promises to bring healing to our land.

We gritted our teeth when Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioted in our streets and burned our cities.  We let it go when they took over Seattle and claimed a part of the city in an act of insurrection.  We didn’t like it, but we didn’t fight back.  We protested when Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats supported the violence and rioting in our city.  We didn’t pay attention when anti-Kavanaugh activists invaded the Senate office building this past summer.  We didn’t fight back when they pulled down statues and attacked monuments around our country.  Instead of condemning the George Floyd protests out-of-hand, we tried to listen to the grievances that provoked it, tried to understand the frustrations of our fellow-countrymen.  We agreed that what happened to George Floyd was a travesty, a gross injustice.  We want healing and reconciliation.

And Joe Biden promised to bring healing to our land.

We all knew that if Trump won reelection, there would be riots around the nation. In fact, we braced for it. People bought guns and prepared to protect their families against what we all knew would happen. Reportedly, Chief Justice John Roberts refused to hear the case for election fraud out of fear that the left would riot once again. Not once did Joe Biden urge his supporters to remain calm in case of his defeat. As we drew closer and closer to election day, we all felt this cloud of impending doom should Trump win.

And Joe Biden promised to bring healing to our land.

And now that President Trump has promised a peaceful transition of power, now that he has agreed to step aside, we get to look forward to one final week of extreme effort to keep him from completing his term.  His presidency will end the way it began, with Democrats doing everything in their power to chase him out of the White House forever.  They want to bring healing to our land, but they don’t care that Trump’s support increased by nearly 11 million voters.  They don’t care that more than 74 million Americans voted for him and supported him.  They hate him, and they won’t give him a moment’s peace.

And Joe Biden won’t bring healing to our land.

Because Joe Biden is a political hack.  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are two of the most partisan people to ever take a seat in the halls of government.  The only “healing” that the Biden-Harris administration will even attempt in America will take the form of “re-education,” possibly at a camp near you.  You see, when you hear that Joe Biden wants to bring healing to our land, you naturally think that he wants to restore unity, that he wants to be the President for all Americans, that he doesn’t want “red states and blue states.”  That he wants 50 states (and maybe a couple more).  And Joe Biden says all of these things.  But he means something very different.  We conservatives need some healing all right – the kind that comes through disarming us, through removing our children from the “abusive” environment we are raising them in, through re-educating us out of our hateful, misogynist, homophobic, white supremacist ways.  We need to be reprogrammed so that we quit clinging to our Bibles and our guns.

Joe Biden won’t bring healing to our land.

He doesn’t want to.  Democrats don’t want to solve the problems that plague our country.  They want to capitalize on them.  They depend on them to justify their existence.  They never let a crisis go to waste.  For them, everything is power.  The world is mediated through power.  The country is administered through power.  Power is a zero-sum game.  When they don’t have it, they are reliving the Handmaid’s Tale.  When they have it, they use it to get more power. 

And this sort of thing can never bring healing to our land.

But then again, neither can Donald Trump.  Neither can the Republican party.  Neither can politics.  At all.  Because all of us – Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives and libertarians, elected leaders and voters – stand in need of the same thing.  We all share a desperate need for the salvation found in Jesus Christ alone.  There is not now nor will there ever be a political Messiah.  There is, in fact, no need for another Messiah.  Because Jesus is the Messiah, and He finished the work that God sent Him to do so that sinful man could be reconciled to a holy God.  And this is the only kind of healing that could ever bring unity to our nation.  So long as we continue in our sins, defiant against God, we will always be at odds with one another.  We cannot and will not “coexist” while we persist in our sinful rebellion against our Creator.  Our only hope for healing, our only hope for unity, comes through our surrender to God and His rightful claim on our lives. 

Jesus alone can bring healing to our land.

I will confess it: I have felt a lot of frustration over this past year.  I have felt a lot of frustration over these past four years.  In the realm of politics, I have been frustrated through many years.  George Bush and George W. Bush did little to alleviate that frustration.  And though there were some bright spots in the Trump administration, I find myself largely unsatisfied with the result.  I am reminded, and the reminder is a persistent one, that there is no salvation in any other.  For there is no other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.

And so, over the next few months while Joe Biden does whatever he does in the White House, and while we all scratch our heads and wonder who is actually running our country, I will not lose hope.  Because my hope is not in the White House.  If it ever was, it was a false hope.  While we experience the leadership vacuum that will be the Joe Biden legacy, I might feel a little a lot of frustration.  But I will not lose faith.  My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.  On Christ the solid rock I stand.  All other ground is sinking sand. 

I wish things would be different, but I know for a fact that if they were, we still couldn’t look to Washington, D.C. for relief from the devastating effects of sin.  And maybe that is the point after all.  As a Trump supporter, I see where I have put a little too much stock in the White House and not nearly enough in the Great White Throne of heaven.  It is good for us that God sent along this calling card – “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.  For I am God, and there is none else.” 

And Jesus can bring healing to our land.