Satisfaction

My father is visiting for a few weeks; he likes westerns, so westerns we’ve been watching – a rootin’, tootin’ passel and posse of ‘em. The ending of one we saw the other day lingers on my mind.

A group of men on a stagecoach find themselves in the unnerving position of trying to protect an older woman and her ailing daughter, traveling with them, from a mysterious pursuer, determined to kill them. One by one, the men opt to fade away and leave the women – stranded and defenseless – to face the killer alone.

Incredibly, though, the ladies manage to defeat their enemy, and reach the town to which they were traveling safely. There, on a public boardwalk, they encounter one of the men who deserted them.

“You made it?” he says, astonished.

“We did,” the mother says, her face cool and expressionless. “Goodbye.”

They start to move past him, but he stops them. “I am glad you made it,” he says. “And, as you predicted,” he adds, sadly, to the older woman, “I am finding it difficult to live with myself.

“If,” he concedes, “that gives you any satisfaction.”

“It gives me no satisfaction,” she replies. Then turns and walks away.

I wonder if, someday, the people who – in enormous, even record numbers, in virtually every city, state, and county, all over the country – voted this week to toss the reins of our government, our ancestors’ legacy, and our American Dream, over to people who are openly bent on destroying them, will one day feel bad about that.

Wonder if there will be any breast-beating, any true confessions, any mea culpas whispered tearfully, should we find ourselves standing together – huddled masses, yearning to breathe free – in the ashes of our once-great country.

I’ve read that, in many parts of America, a significant contributing factor to the mid-term election results was the fact that a great many Christians elected to stay home from the polls.

Wonder if, some day we’ll hear, at long last, a call to prayer for our shattered, suffering people, from the pastors who found no need to lead us in such prayers in the months and weeks and days leading up to this last election. Who found the needs of a nation antithetical to their own narcissistic concerns, and to those of their more myopic brothers and sisters in the faith.

Wonder if there’ll be any mentions of regret, as individuals, for all the prayers we did not pray, in our warm and cozy quiet times, for the politicians who offended us, disappointed us, despised our urgent concerns in their quest for power and fawning profiles from the countless media professionals bent on smothering the God-given truths we once held self-evident.

I wonder if any of us will have the grace to feel sorry.

Probably not. I read a debate in a magazine online this week between editors eager for us to learn from the terrible mistakes of these last few days / weeks / months / years / decades … and others who said, no – people don’t learn. People never learn.

Have to say, in many ways, the latter group made the stronger argument. Most of us feel bad, eventually, for the poor and selfish choices we’ve made – and we trust that feeling bad will cover the check. Nothing has to change. I don’t have to change. I just need to squirm a little, rue a little, maybe confess a little. And then perk up and move on.

Regret comes easy to the human condition. Repentance, sad to say, does not.

The famous verse says, “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

We'll probably hear a lot of that one in days to come. Christians love to pull that one out, now and then, like a fast gun from a holster, when we grow a little depressed with current events. Most pastors, most churches, speak it as a kind of gentle “tsk, tsk, tsk” to their immoral fellow citizens and inconsequential political leaders.

“We just need to look to God again,” it’s suggested. “And He’ll pat us on the heads and ruffle our hair and say, ‘You little rascals – how 'm I gonna stay mad at you? Y’ know I love ya, you scamps.’” He’s such a great ole guy, that Almighty God of ours, huh? Say, what’s for lunch?

But the Lord has His fine prints: “… and turn from their wicked ways.” If you listen close, it almost sounds like the click of a trigger being cocked. 

That turning point is the sticking point. What does it take, to gain Christians’ attention? To turn aside our stampede toward self-righteous self-destruction?

My wife and I were talking about these things, in the days before last week’s vote. About how churches got away, at some point, from the idea of prayer meetings and revivals. As if the need for such ardent praying and preaching somehow vanished along the way. As if our increasingly Christian country had long since outgrown any need for such urgent, persistent calls to Christ.

“Actually,” my wife said, “we don’t need a revival. We need an awakening.” She’s right. And the difference is worth thinking on.

But last Tuesday was nothing if not a mass snooze alarm. For now, a lot of us dream on, and try not to trouble each other with our snoring.

It’s possible something will happen – bad enough, big enough, piercing enough to shake us out of our sleep and complacency. That things will change for the better, without our having to change much at all. Perhaps, in spite of so many ferocious enemies, America, somehow, will “make it.”

Maybe, then, we’ll be sorry to remember that, when freedom of speech and religious liberty and a nation full of souls God made and died for were all in deadly danger, we gave those who wanted to destroy them a free hand, and full rein.

We’ll confess that, and feel sorry, and tell the Lord how awful we feel about what we didn’t do.

He’ll forgive us. May even deliver us.

But I wonder, at that point, if our sorrow will give Him much satisfaction.