An Election Prayer

Lord,

Our nation has gravely sinned. We ask you and beg you and plead with you to forgive us our trespasses and our transgressions, for we have gravely sinned.

We have nominated two people for President that our country collectively hates. We cannot comprehend how they possibly could have risen to power. They disgust us. Indeed, O Lord, we hate them not because they represent us so poorly, but because they represent us too well.

We, The People, have lusted. We have filled our lives with pornography, adultery, rape, sodomy and promiscuity. We have used women for the pleasure of our men and have destroyed our marriages and families by refusing to be obedient to our spouses. We have divorced and separated to make it look like we are not committing adultery when we chose to desire another. We blame the other spouse when the insufferable damage to our children results in their acting out, blaming the “other” for the high crime, low grades and bad behavior that our children so often exhibit when we willingly and hastily choose to break our own homes.

We give our athletes and celebrities a free pass to do what they will because they make money and are popular. We allow football players who beat their wives to suit up on Sunday because it raises TV ratings. We allow celebrities and the media to portray women as objects of sexual use. We demand that they “put out,” and if they don’t, we demand they leave. We give out birth control so that we can have as much sex as we want, and if that doesn’t work we have an abortion so that we are not inconvenienced by the human person we brought in to the world. We dismiss crimes against women because we have accepted that “boys will be boys” and promoted their continued degradation by featuring highly sexualized women in every media format possible and available at every minute.

We start careers and businesses to make money and claim that is their sole purpose. We stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that both were not originally meant for our personal gain or profit but to support our families and build our communities. We have been absentee fathers and mothers, working 60-hours per week and weekends in the name of providing for our families. We have conveniently forgotten that supporting our families includes loving them by being present to them in their lives. We have allowed our lust for career-achievement, the big sale, the pay-raise, the bonus, the promotion and the “deal” to supersede the boring, hum-drum and yet very real role of being a parent and spouse.

We have chosen to turn a blind eye to the reality that cutting-costs by overworking and underpaying our employees strains their families and harms their children. We have put profits ahead of people and pretend that skimping out on the employee benefits plan doesn’t put moms and dads everywhere in the horrible position of having to choose between feeding their children or getting them adequate medical care. We have forgotten that our employees, bosses, presidents, CEOs and custodians all have people who love them, all have their own mothers and fathers, sons and daughters and that the guy who gets cut down and cursed out at the office will somehow have to have a smile on his face when he walks through the front door of his home when his 5-year runs up to give him a hug.

We continue to refuse to offer a hand-up to the people around us who genuinely need it. We have dismissed discussions of race and poverty by claiming that we have a right to send our children to the schools we want them to, claiming that living in neighborhoods with people that don’t look like us aren’t “safe” and making sure that our tax dollars come back to us through “refunds”; refunds which are produced by a complicated tax-code created by an upper class which serves them under the false pretense that they must have lower taxes to “drive the economy,” when in reality they simply wish to keep their excess so that they can buy bigger houses and drive nicer cars instead of supporting the schools and civic services which have been scientifically and sociologically proven to aid those who only want to get out from under the overwhelming burden of poverty. We claim that the poor deserve to be poor, that every rich man pulled himself up by his bootstraps and that everybody gets what they deserve. We pretend like privilege doesn’t exist by claiming that the problems today are so much better than they were yesterday, while being ignorant to the facts that so clearly state otherwise.

We claim that we aren’t part of the problem. We create foundations and charities which serve more as tax-shelters and self-righteous, narcissistic propaganda machines to push our own ideas and beliefs instead of serving those who need help, especially if they don’t agree with us. We claim that somehow every homeless man must be miraculously cured of their drug addictions and medical afflictions before they can receive our help. We choose to blame the policies and ideas of those who don’t think like us as the reasons why our world’s problems still exist instead of simply listening to what they have to say. We have stopped listening to understand and have started listening to respond. We have forgotten the most obvious and observable feature on our own faces; namely, that we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

We claim that we are “right” when we know we are wrong. We won’t conserve or save our fuel and energy because we think it is too inconvenient. We won’t change to clean technologies or even place our recyclables in the recycle bin because walking the extra five-steps to get to the one past the trash can takes us too far out of our way. We claim climate-change isn’t real so we don’t have to change our ways or lifestyles, innovate our businesses or spend more money at the pump. God forbid that we would adopt a strategy where we more efficiently use our transportation by building close to our city centers, for that could bring our kids too close to the aforementioned people who don’t look like us and thus put us in harm’s way. We ignore the people and countries that are most affected by climate change and dismiss such realities as their problem, not ours.

We pretend that we are perfect. We claim that we are “the greatest” or that we have the best ideas when there is no empirical data to prove it. We pretend like we have no problems and spend egregious amounts of time and money on Botox, PR departments, makeup and lawyers to cover up our blemishes, mistakes, scandals, crimes and adultery or even the simple fact that we don’t know the answer to a tough question. We spend more time making sure that we look good than we do to make good. We’re professional wordsmiths, not blacksmiths; we patent, not produce; we talk, not act. We frequently claim it’s “not our job.” We have convinced each other that having conversation is progress, leaving somebody else to take an action. We never admit somebody else was right. It makes us look weak.

We build walls to keep people out who are different from us. We see “them” as a threat not because they rape our women or bring in drugs, (we already do that to ourselves) but because their ideas, ethics and strengths might be better than our own and thus prove we aren’t as great as we thought we were. Our intolerance of being anything but on top promulgates our desire to ensure others stay below or stay out. We continue to fail to recognize anybody beyond their skin color or vernacular. We can’t even see “them” as human with their own flaws and sufferings, joys and families. We are unwilling to share our prosperity with those who simply want to give their families a better life, so we fortify our borders and arm our police with military-grade weapons to keep “them” out.

We hate our presidential nominees because they are a perfect reflection of our country. They exemplify the lives we have chosen to lead. When we stare in to the eyes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, we see ourselves: Misogynistic, profit-driven, self-centered, scandal-laden, adulterous, ignorant, narcissistic, power-hungry, blame-shedding, lying, vulgar, polarizing, pompous, arrogant, attention-seeking, money-hoarding, pleasure-seeking, apathetic, bigoted, fat and unhealthy hot-air bags that have literally become unable to recognize the humanity in the people they see and work with every day. Our two major political parties have done exactly the job they were supposed to do: They have come up with two people who fully embody “We, The People,” and being the good Americans that we are, we express our disgust in them so that we don’t have to face the disgust we have in ourselves.

Yes, Lord, we have gravely sinned. On this Election Day, we beg you and plead with you to forgive us. We beg you and plead with you to save us. We beg you and plead with you to look down on our country in your mercy and slowly warm our stone-cold hearts and open our clinched fists so that we may once again be capable of recognizing worth in each other; that we may be capable of fully loving one another; that we may bring peace to our homes and communities and then to our world. Open our hearts to charity and our ears to understanding. In this Year of Mercy, grant the United States of America the courage it needs to change its ways. We know we do not deserve this mercy, Lord, but we implore you to grant it to us anyway, lest our foul decisions lead to our deserved demise.

Be Merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
Be Merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.

Amen.