Should we worry about Biden's, Trump's vision for America?
"Where there is no vision, the people perish," says Proverbs 29:18.
A more literal version reads that where there is no vision, the people (a nation or social group) "cast off restraint."
We now have from Donald Trump and Joe Biden plenty of displays of their personal ambition in the current race for the White House, but a lack of comprehensive vision based on the most important of concerns.
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Trump's MAGA is a vision of sorts, but blurred at the edges: Is the MAGA quest a reaction to contemporary attempts to re-order the world, a competitive response to China and other nations who see themselves potentially as the core of world order through military, technical, and other means of dominance?
While Trump and Biden focus on the disability and ineptitude of the other in contrast to their own noble dreams and aspirations, vision for the nation is lacking in what may be the most dangerous moment in its history.
Perhaps the avoidance of vision is because of what the presidential candidates themselves see and hesitate to discuss. Like the elder George Bush, perhaps they struggle with that "vision thing." Apparently, so do Trump and Biden.
Or maybe Biden does have a national vision similar to that of a left-socialist state, a new version of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society."
Meanwhile, is Trump envisioning a Theodore Roosevelt big stick bully America?
Are we electing the czar of a new socialist system or the potentate of a swaggering empire? We must understand how the two men see themselves, and each other. We need to know their grand visions before we cast our ballots so that we see what we are getting ourselves, our families, and our country into, especially in consideration of the literal words of Proverbs 29:18-19 — that business about the citizens casting off "restraint."
Chillingly, that word is from the Hebrew terms seen first in Genesis: "tohu-bohu," "formless and void." The term infers chaos and disintegration, incoherence of thought and expression.
A perfect description of contemporary political and social displays.
The Bible tells us that without a certain quality of vision, everything falls apart. Vision, as spoken here, means seeing things as they really are, bad as well as good, and the positive possibilities as well as negative threats and obstacles — the whole dream rather than only the big-ticket illusion that could bring about the collapse of the whole nation.
Most importantly, vision as described in the Bible sees and considers the transcendence of God and accountability to Him, otherwise, ambitious leaders view themselves as God. That is the most terrifying possibility of all. Tohu-bohu take over when God is ignored, and removed from the center, leaving only the fallen human being — a finite ruler — in charge.
What do Trump and Biden really think about the Transcendent One and their relationship to Him? That is the most important question if we are to avoid the horrors of chaos.
So, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, tell us your vision of the kind of nation you want to lead us to be in this perilous age and show by your lifestyle the way you see God in your role as leader.
Wallace B. Henley is a former pastor, daily newspaper editor, White House and Congressional aide. He served 18 years as a teaching pastor at Houston's Second Baptist Church. Henley is author or co-author of more than 25 books, including God and Churchill, co-authored with Sir Winston Churchill's great grandson, Jonathan Sandys. Henley's latest book is Who will rule the coming 'gods'? The looming spiritual crisis of artificial intelligence.
