American voters are divided over many issues this election cycle, but we’re united in a deeper expectation for our political parties: They promise—and we want them to promise—the control of time itself.
This promise takes different forms for different politics. Some candidates pledge to bring a better future. Others say they’ll return us to a better past. The direction of the promise matters less than the fact of it. Once we have decided that time can be thus managed, it’s just a matter of picking which time we prefer.
The two leading contenders this year have particularly obvious, dueling notions of time. The Harris campaign’s catchphrase, “We’re Not Going Back,” rejects the past, while the Trump campaign’s promise to “Make America Great Again” lurches in reverse. Despite their policy divides, both campaigns trade on dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and both look to some other time as the solution.
As a political strategy, it’s effective. Discontent with the present, Americans ask when, if ever, life was better than this—and both candidates have a ready answer. Former president Donald Trump’s reply is a particular rendering of the past, one that omits historical wrongs and insists old greatness can be recaptured. Vice president Kamala Harris peers into the mists of the future. She may not be able to offer certainty about what the future holds, but whatever its challenges, she assures, it’ll be better than what’s behind us.
This sense that the best kind of politics comes from some time other than now has become so common in American elections that we scarcely notice it. In 2012, it was in Barack Obama’s “Forward” and the Mitt Romney–linked “Restore Our Future” (the latter of which manages to look in both directions at once). The parties’ chronological orientations were reversed in 2004, with John Kerry’s “Let America Be America Again” and George W. Bush’s “A Safer World and a More Hopeful America.” Whether we visit the 1996 election, with Bill Clinton’s “Building a Bridge to the 21st Century,” or “We Are Turning the Corner” in Herbert Hoover’s ill-fated 1932 campaign, time—and how we conceive of it—is always on the ballot.
Across these varied campaigns, we should notice two common commitments. First is the assumption that the present is worse than some other time. Whether that time is decades beyond anyone’s remembering or in a future yet to be named, that time is not now. Imagine a candidate saying, You know what? This is pretty good. Let’s not change anything and just stay here. You can go ahead and declare that candidacy dead.
Second, these promises assume time moves in a straightforward manner. Life is either getting better or worse. We are in either a climb of progress or a slick decline. Republicans and Democrats alike presume that time can be reliably managed. What worked once will work again, or what is working now will only keep working better in the days to come. If we simply pick the best time and work to reach or return to it, we’ll have the lives we want.
But in the sober days of nonelection years, I think we really do know better. We know that time does not work this way. Time is full of ambiguity and reversals. It never lives up to its promises. Sometimes, a new thing appears, something no one saw coming.
Kamala Harris Against History
For readers of Scripture, it should be a truism that time is not straightforward, that what is past cannot be repeated, that the future is out of our hands. That recognition is basic to what it means to be the people of God. This does not mean quietly suffering injustice. It does mean that, for Christians, living well within time requires getting comfortable with the fact that no time—past and future just as much as the unsatisfying present—will fulfill our hopes.
Consider a moment from Numbers 11 which encapsulates this dynamic. As the people of God traveled through the desert, they became discontented with their journey. They longed for the past—and the leeks and onions—in Egypt, forgetting that Egypt was also the place of their enslavement (v. 5).
The manna of the present lay amply before them, and God’s guidance was close at hand, but the people longed for quail. They wanted food that belonged not to the desert present but to the coastline they had not yet reached (v. 31). And God provided the quail, a food from the “future,” but it wasn’t a gift. It was a judgment on the people’s discontentment with the provisions of the present (vv. 31–34).
We can read this passage as a judgment against grumbling, but it strikes me that it’s better read as an exhortation to refuse wishful thinking about the past or future.
The past may well have had goodness—the food probably was better in Egypt!—but it also had suffering we’ve forgotten or been unwilling to acknowledge. Likewise, to “Make America Great Again” by somehow returning to the past would mean recovering the morals of a lost world and also its prejudices and injustices.
And the future may well have its glory—Israel was not wrong to look forward to leaving the desert!—but the future will also have its unfulfilled promises, its limits and fresh failures we have not yet anticipated. Hurrying to an unknown future may not bring the relief and liberation suggested in “We’re Not Going Back.”
Perhaps a Christian view of time should look less like yearning for leeks and onions or milk and honey, giving ourselves to whomever promises to transport us to the desired past or future. Perhaps it should look more like recognizing the goodness of the manna God continually gives.
The Gentler Side of Providence
In that spirit, let me offer three proverbs for resisting the false allure of political promises to control the direction of our times.
Time is filled with ambiguity. Christians believe God will accomplish a good end for the world. But that does not mean the future will unfold as we want or expect. For even when Christ came in “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4, ESV), the coming of the Lord occurred alongside the death of the innocents (Matt. 2:16–18) and the continued rule of Rome. When the words of deliverance came to Isaiah (14:28), it did not mean Assyria had disappeared. None of this means God is absent, only that no time will be all we’ve hoped until “the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4).
Time is an occasion to learn to trust God’s provision. Our best times offer signs that we can trust God to provide in full. The bread in the desert, given in time, anticipates the Bread of Life, given to sustain us eternally. Moments of justice appear in our politics, and the setting right of wrongs is to be celebrated. These are exceptions which will one day, in God’s kingdom, be the rule. Celebrate them for what they are, and do not despise them for being incomplete.
Time is full of surprise and reversal. When Israel was being led through the desert, water appeared from rocks, manna from the sky, and quail from far-off lands. Walls were overtaken by horns, and spies were rescued by women on rooftops. God provided for Israel’s common life out of nothing, defying predictions of demise.
But good times are interrupted, too. God is with us, but time is complex and, for us, unpredictable. Israel’s return from exile in Babylon was followed by conquest by a Greek empire, then another brief reprieve, then conquest by the Roman empire.
God is always working within time, and he is not surprised by its twists or even its hairpin turns. We often are. We can’t foresee when a terrorist attack, depression, or global conflict will set aside the best political aspirations. Historical trends are one thing, but history is another, and only a fool will say that time runs in one direction.
In this light, Christians in America (or anywhere politicians promise to deliver the past or future) should be patient in the face of time’s ambiguity. These proverbs invite us to be temperate in our celebrations, to avoid mistaking temporary goods for permanent ones, to celebrate blessings while planning for leaner times. They invite us to learn to trust in the God who provides for his people again and again—the God who is with us in all times, even now.
Myles Werntz is author of From Isolation to Community: A Renewed Vision for Christian Life Together. He writes at Christian Ethics in the Wild and teaches at Abilene Christian University.
