The Horizon
The end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023
The sun is setting on the year 2022.
Quote of the Year:
I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to with any contrived desire towards deflection of my deep foundational desire to follow God's will, as I believe he led my conscience to embrace. How else will I ever approach Him in the wilderness of life, knowing that I ask this guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course he led me to take.
This was a journal entry by Rusty Bowers, Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, read aloud while he testified before the January 6th Committee on June 21, 2022.
Bowers faced enormous pressure to “play with laws” governing our elections following the 2020 presidential election. The leaders of his party were badgering him constantly. Online mobs were harassing him. Angry people showed up outside his house. He refused to bend. He took his oath of office seriously, and for this I am grateful.
Bowers doesn’t like to be bullied, so instead of retiring as originally planned, he decided to run a 2022 campaign for state senate. He lost the primary, accepted defeat, and moved on.
These days Rusty Bowers is back to work as an artist. His paintings will be exhibited in the Larsen Gallery in Scottsdale in February.
There are different theological currents running through our politics these days.
During her campaign for governor, former television newscaster Kari Lake often repeated this refrain: “We need to bring God back.”
She said we need to bring God back into our society, into our culture, and into our hearts.
This message was paired with angry rhetoric about the godless communists in the Democratic Party, the weak-kneed and corrupt establishment in the Republican Party, the fake news media, and our shoddy rigged elections.
When it appeared she might lose the primary, Kari Lake claimed voter fraud, offering no evidence, and then forgot about the particulars after she won.
Fast forward to the general election. Broken record.
This time she lost.
Righteous anger erupted during official county meetings to certify the general election outcome. During the Maricopa County proceedings, people took to the microphone during public comments to excoriate the Board of Supervisors. One person said, “This is a war between good and evil, and you all represent evil.”
Lake's election claims snowballed into a lawsuit.
In the courtroom — the hallowed civil ground where evidence and reason still matter — a judge rejected Lake's attempt to overturn the outcome of the 2022 gubernatorial election.
I don’t think we can “bring God back” into our society because I don’t think humans have the power to control God.
That’s just my personal opinion.
In America, it is perfectly legal to believe whatever you want about God.
Some claim we were founded as a Christian nation, but this is an oversimplification.
Many early American settlers were Puritan Christians, and this fact heavily influenced the culture. Hard work. Hierarchical. Strict moral code.
The first American celebrity was an itinerant outdoor preacher named George Whitefield, who captivated audiences of all social circumstances, drawing people together to experience an emotional connection to a personal God. He posed a challenge to hierarchical churches, fostering a spirit of independence throughout the American colonies.
The Founders of the United States were varied in their religious beliefs.
Thomas Jefferson made corrections to the Bible. He spliced out different segments of the Gospels, compiling them together based on his own editorial judgment for what the human Jesus actually did, without the supernatural stuff. He called it The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, with its talk of natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Jefferson also owned slaves. The original sin of the nation.
Christians were divided. The Bible was used both to defend and condemn the institution of slavery.
In the 1860s, the Confederates prayed for victory over the Yankees in the Civil War.
In the middle of a bloody, seemingly endless war, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected president. He struck religious tones in his second inaugural address. He reflected on the issue of prayer, North and South:
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
Due in large part to the political influence of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, president Lincoln was convinced the Civil War must be prosecuted until slavery was eradicated from the nation. If this meant total destruction, then so be it:
Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
Knowing that, if victorious, the nation would need to be re-built under the same roof, Lincoln ended his speech saying:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds…
Looking back, victory by the North seems inevitable.
The moral arc of the universe may indeed bend towards freedom and justice, as Martin Luther King Jr. believed.
But this is not guaranteed.
So we begin a new year full of hopes and dreams and resolutions and uncertainty.
We begin a new year with intense civil strife in our rear view mirror, not knowing what awaits on the road ahead.
In 2023, may wisdom gain influence over trolling; may integrity become cool again; may inspiration supplant resentment; and may reason overtake hysteria in the minds of the people.
Great article, Billy. 👍🏼