You Can’t Change America

And neither can I. But maybe that was never our job, anyway.

My family moved over the summer. I updated my driver’s license, and with it my voter registration. So did my husband. His ballot arrived in the mail last week. Mine is still missing.

Yesterday I received a yellow postcard from the country Registrar of Voters. “Please confirm or correct these changes as soon as possible and at least 15 days before the date of the next election,” they urged me… 9 days before the next election.

I grew up in the late 90s and 2000s on a steady diet of missionary biographies, short-term mission trips, and the encouragement of adults around me that my generation would be the one to guide America back to God. I was stuffed with what I had been told was “holy ambition.” I remember eagerly voting in my first presidential election, sure the colored-in bubbles on my ballot would be part of the turning tide.

Several years ago, when absolutely none of the extraordinary, world changing things I was sure I would accomplish had panned out, I began the long, slow work of untangling and reevaluating the spiritual hierarchies with which I had been raised. While I rejected the premise that harder is holier and sought grace to release the guilt of my failed missionary dreams, I found myself caught up in another flavor of the lies I had been fed: activism.

I worked for a refugee resettlement organization, attended protests to support asylum seekers and earned my MA in international refugee law. I traded street evangelism for social activism, sure that if I couldn’t change the world for Jesus, maybe I could at least change America. I distanced myself from fundamentalism, and yet I could not escape the fundamental belief that the only way to prove my beliefs, whatever they might be now, was by doing something big.

It wasn’t until last year that Scripture shocked me with a truth hiding in plain sight: changing the world was never my job, which meant changing America wasn’t either.

The Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians is commonly outlined in two parts by biblical scholars in commentaries and studies. The first half, chapters 1-3 explains a new spiritual reality, our position “in Christ.” The second half, chapters 4-6 provides practical instructions for living in that new spiritual reality. 

Ephesians 1-3 has some of the most incredible verses that beautifully describe “every spiritual blessing” we have in Christ (1:3), including the gift of the Holy Spirit (1:13-14), new life after being spiritually dead in our sins (2:1, 5), unity and belonging in the household of God (2:14, 19), open access to salvation for those of us who are not Jewish (3:8), and “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (3:19).

And then in chapter four Paul shifts to the practical instructions. In light of these incredible spiritual gifts and this new reality, how are we to live? One might expect Paul to call on the believers in Ephesus to dedicate their lives to missions, as he has. Or to get out into their city to do door-to-door evangelism. Or to organize against slavery or other injustices in the city.

But no. Paul doesn’t suggest any particularly radical ways for the church in Ephesus to live out their new spiritual reality. Instead, he instructs them in unity (4:1-16), personal purity (4:17-5:21), marriage (5:22-33), parenting, (6:1-4), employer/employee relationships (6:5-9), and then reassures them that they have access in Christ to everything they need to carry out these instructions (6:10-20). Here are some of the most boring and basic instructions included in Ephesians 4-6.

• Be humble and gentle. (4:2)

• Don’t steal. Do honest work so you can meet your own needs and also be generous. (4:28)

• Be kind and forgive each other. (4:32)

• Don’t tell dirty jokes. (5:4)

• Don’t get drunk. (5:18)

• Husbands, love your wives as you love yourselves. (5:28)

• Children, honor your parents. (6:2)

• Masters, don’t threaten your bondservants. (6:9)

This is a very different definition of “radical” than the one I was taught. It sounds like Paul is saying that in light of the incredible riches we have been given in Christ, we’re just supposed to… keep living our lives. Our physical, geographic, and demographic position isn’t expected to change, even though our spiritual position has been radically altered.

Studying Ephesians has made it clear to me that what God desires is not a handful of “radical”, “sold out”, “on fire” Christians, but millions of faithful men and women who are embodying the kingdom in their ordinary lives. And in a season of political anxiety with an election looming it has also convicted me that changing the course of America is not my job. I don’t need to convince myself that “my vote will make a difference.” It may, or it may not, but that isn’t what God has called me to. God doesn’t want my social and political activism any more than my evangelistic zeal.

Understanding this has not resulted in apathy for me. Instead, it has resulted in freedom. Freedom to speak about my experience of faith and my friendship with Jesus without feeling any pressure to convert someone. Freedom to volunteer at a homeless shelter or attend a protest without bearing the impossible responsibility to dismantle entire systems of injustice. Freedom to live in the truth that my salvation is enough, that there is nothing more I can add to Christ’s finished work, and that love, joy, and peace can be the overflow from which I serve.

If you grew up evangelical you know that being set apart to change the world was an impossibly heavy burden to bear. And maybe, like me, you have laid it down only to pick up a growing anxiety that you must make some contribution to improving America, because those who “know better, do better”, right? But Scripture offers hope for all of us angsty overachievers who are still struggling to let go of our own importance.

We can find contentment and confidence in believing that the small lives we’re living are enough.

We can set aside the exhaustion of striving to do radical things for the rest that comes when we embrace Christ’s easy yoke of ordinary faithfulness.

We can finally silence the haunting voices that whisper failure to our hearts and trade them for the peaceful refrain of “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I filled out the yellow postcard confirming my current address and dropped it in the mailbox, but it’s unlikely that it will be processed in time for me to receive a mail-in ballot. So, next week I’ll try to find a window of time between Zoom meetings and data spreadsheets and timecard approvals to drive to my closest polling place.

I’ll probably have a toddler or two in tow and have to answer an email or finish a grocery list while I’m standing in line. I’ll do my best to remember to bring a few different documents as evidence of my current address. And I’ll fill in those bubbles on the ballot, content with the possibility that the only tide I may be helping to turn is a wave of faithfulness in my own life.