Last Updated on March 4, 2022 1:03 AM by herald
Sooner rather than later we, as Christians, are going to have to come to terms with the results of the election on January 19 Barbados general elections which gave the BLP and Mia Mottley another clean sweep of the polls with 30 seats in the parliament.
If you are feeling a little scared, I do understand. However, we are not of the household of fear. In fact, we have already shown too much fear with respect to covid-19 pandemic.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:7 NLT
I am aware that many of you, like us at the Barbados Spiritual Shadow Cabinet, prayed and battled in the spirit realm against just such an election outcome. Based on what we have been able to gather, members of the body of Christ did receive votes.
So, I want say to you that you have not failed! You have done all that you could do. As always, God is in control.
But let us focus on understanding what has happened here so that we do not fold our hands and do nothing because that is not a Kingdom option either. Jesus, our Commander-in-Chief, has expressly asked us to “occupy” until He comes.
As we try to explain what happened, we must remember that as a general principle, the things that are seen are made from or caused by things which we do not see (Hebrews 11:3).
For ease of presentation let me state the theme or thesis or core concept of what I will be explaining here. It is this:
The people have not rejected us Christians, they have rejected God.
Sounds familiar? Yes, here is the Scripture that you are thinking about:
And the LORD said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you. For it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king. I Samuel 8:7 BSB
As you may recall, this was God’s response to Samuel when he was in a bit of a pickle over the fact that Israel wanted to be like the other nations around them by having a human king. Prior to that, the nation of Israel was a theocracy with the priests and prophets playing the key role in administering the affairs of Israel as they heard directly from God.
We know that we are on point with this interpretation because some Barbadians actually did use word “theocracy” in commenting on social media about Christians being involved in government in the lead up to the election.
If that were not bad enough, there are Christians who still adamantly believe that it is not the place of believers to have any role in elective politics. I am not going to debate that here because we have rejected that notion and have rebutted it fully in an article here .
Background
To understand the results of the 2022 election and how our thesis relates to it, we need to flash back to the debate on Barbados becoming a republic especially in the last quarter of 2021.
As you may recall, a segment of the population, consisting mainly of younger people, argued strenuously against the inclusion of God in the new republic because as they contended, “Barbados is a secular society. Again, we rebutted that not in one, but two articles the first of which can be found here.
Calling the election at the precise time it was called was a stratagem that exploited two major psycho-spiritual forces.
The first was the fear of the elderly of exposing themselves to so-called “new” omicron variant of covid-19 pandemic. All along they have been told to “stay at home”. Well, it worked! Much of the traditional support of the DLP as you know, is with the elderly.
The second is the fear among the youth, more imaginary than real, is that Barbados would move too far to the right and therefore, put a damper on their freedom to “express themselves” especially on the sexual dimension.
Allied to that is the promise by the Mia Mottley administration to make Barbados a “modern state” by which she means making it like other countries that have made legislative provision for same sex marriages, free reign to the LBGTQ community and the worship of a pantheon of spiritual entities.
Add to that the promise of expanding opportunities to make money in technology, particularly crypto-currency, and we can begin to see why the results are as they are.
For some people, the move was a stroke of marketing genius; for us we must see it as diabolical manipulation. So why did all of our prayers see not to work?
Just remember that our will is sovereign; God is not going to override anyone’s will regarding the choice of voting or anything else, including salvation. If this were not the case, then all humans would have been saved already!
I think we need to repeat this: our will is sovereign; God is not going to override anyone’s will regarding the choice of voting or anything else.
But whereas one has the sovereign right to choose a course of action, one does NOT have the ability to choose the consequences. That’s the catch. As we explained elsewhere, consequences are so to speak, “hard-wired” into our choices.
As local calypsonian, Red Plastic Bag put it:
If you plant potatoes, you will reap potatoes
That is what they mean when they say:
You reap whatever you sow.
Fortunately, this is not just good poetry; it is sound Bible truth:
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Galatians 6:7 NIV.
Messiah Effect
In a very recent unofficial think-tank Zoom meeting, retired journalist David Ellis made the point that Barbadians always seem to be looking for a Messiah. Mr. Ellis did NOT say this but in our humble opinion it would seem that in Mia Mottley, a segment of the population has found such a Messiah.
We are not saying that everything that Ms. Mottley is seeking to do is evil, in other words we are not trying to demonize her. But as Christians we know the consequences of adopting the attitude that she is a “saviour”, a status which she has unashamedly ascribed to herself with her famous “big works” speech in the St. George by-election.
Our message to you is that now the election is over, our work as Christians has now begun! This country is going to need more spiritual help than ever as we brace for the anti-Christian legislation that has been promised to the country. Now is not the time to give up. Giving up is not an option.
Therefore, in part 2, we will begin to outline the strategies Christians must adopt over the coming years of this administration. For one, we have to become more practical with our Christianity. Jesus himself often charged his disciples with being not as wise as the children of the world:
And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light. Luke 16:8 NLT
I saw quite a lot of this “unwiseness” on the part of Christians in this election but now is not the time for reproof.
In the meantime, as one of our favourite Youtube Christian broadcasters would say: “Remember, never hold your peace!”
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