Forget the big solutions, try little acts of love

It’s election season… yay? The time when we disenfranchise one another with our Facebook posts. The time when everybody knows what is right and what our country needs. The time when I see more self-centered, all-knowing, blathering than at any other time. The time when everybody is looking for a big solution.

            I don’t care if the big solution you are convinced will solve the world’s problems is one associated with conservativism or liberalism—e.g. whether your big solution is immigration reform, universal healthcare, ending legalized abortion, or ending the war on drugs—all of these solutions are given more importance this time of year than they should, because this is the time of our lives when we are fed a constant stream of negativity about how this or that is going to end our lives or save them. Policies don’t save us; Jesus does.

            In fact, no big solution has yet to make us more righteous. I suppose it would be one thing if there really was a war going on between good people and evil people, but that’s just not the case. There are well-meaning, devoted, faithful people who take a variety of stances on the “big solutions” for a variety of good reasons. This means that no matter what happens in November we will sit down at coffee tables, chat on bar stools, and share a bleacher at sporting events with people who think the world is going to hell alongside those who think the world has finally gotten its act together. Either way we are divided.

            Our identity as Christians is in Christ; not in party allegiance. That should be so obvious it shouldn’t need to be said and, yet, here we are, because I think too many people get that completely backwards. When we buy into party politics we allow the big solutions to frame our lives, urging us to spend more time and energy explaining to others how wrong they are, suggesting that the only way to make a difference in the world is to advocate one particular ideology, when the Gospel is calling us to something different: Little acts of kindness and love. You should vote, absolutely, and you should do so based on your faith and values, but your vote shouldn’t be the primary way of identifying yourself as Christian. That should be evident from all the little ways you care for others in your day-to-day life. Then, you will be reminded that your vote will not make you righteous and votes contrary to yours should not make you angry, because we are all in this together, struggling as Christians to find the best way to love one another.

            The only way we can prove that is in those little acts of love; those surprising moments of joy and those little lights we spark in the darkness. The only big solution that matters is God’s plan for creation—God’s telos, to use a beautiful Greek word that you should all become familiar with—God’s ultimate objective. God does big solutions; we aren’t qualified. The best we can do is make our little actions count.

            One other funny thing happens when you begin with little actions rather than grand solutions (or at least this is true for me). When I start by making a little difference I begin to discover that the big solutions don’t hold the weight I thought they did—in fact, the big solutions themselves don’t change a thing without the little actions to back them up and the changes of heart necessary to give the big solutions legs. Ultimately, I’ve found that we are grasping at different straws in the same desperate search for meaning when that search is built on the same foundation of God’s love. That love that we show one another? That’s Christian freedom, and it’s good. It’s the one thing capable of bringing light into one another’s lives. It touches us in ways policies, no matter how grand they appear to be, cannot.

            I know you will be able to point me to many policies that make a real difference in one another’s lives, of course this is true. Every one of our rights in this country is in some sense a “big solution.” The big solutions do matter; I’m not suggesting they don’t. Instead, I’m proposing that these big solutions should always flow naturally from our little acts, because, as the body of Christ, we are called to walk humbly before God and to love our neighbors first. Then, we can reason together what is the best path forward, having shown one another the foundation of our love for them, which we know in Jesus Christ. This isn’t as news-worthy as dissent, but it’s so much better.

Less big solutions; more little acts for a better world, a Christ-centered one.