I'm Not Voting "For" Any Presidential Candidate. But I Will Be Voting "Beyond" One. By Darryl L. Fortson, MD

Dear Mitchell,

  Sorry, it has taken so long for me to reply to your statement on a mutual friend's Facebook page, "at this point, I don't know how anyone in their right mind could vote Democrat!" Your statement, to many Republicans, is rhetorical, and to many Democrats, absurd. But I think it is a statement that is much deeper than it appears on its face. It shook me; to be honest, it stopped me in my tracks.

  But it is a statement that demands a reply, not because of the political moment our nation finds itself in, but because of the spiritual moment. It is crystal clear to me that this election will rejuvenate America and the notion and aspirations of it, or it will end it. Neither the nation's ascent or decent will be immediate, but the former will be possible, or the latter may well be inevitable depending on the choice we make for the next President of the United States of America.

  I write you this in the wake of having watched Testament: The Story Of Moses. This Netflix documentary is presented as a confluent dramatic presentation combined with a theological analysis of Moses and his deeds from the perspective of the three faiths that predominantly acknowledge him - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this depiction of the great leader of the Jewish people, the theatrical "supermanship" of Charleston Heston's Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments is done away with, and we are instead presented with an utterly human Moses - a man orphaned through perilous and persecutory circumstance from the moment of his birth, lifted out of the Nile River from his Judaic roots into Egyptian princehood; dispossessed of his status by a murderous pique of rage that imposes his exile into the wilderness and to yet another band of non-Hebrews (the Midians) of another faith and race, where he lives a humble life herding sheep. He marries interracially and grows old but is divinely summoned back to Egypt to free the people of his birth. He is insecure and inarticulate. His anger gets the best of him. His Black wife and father-in-law give him sagacious instruction along the way to turn him away from hazard and to encourage the better angels of his nature. Despite all this, he sees his lifelong goal for himself and his people from afar instead of experiencing the Promised Land himself because of a procedural error between him and the Lord regarding a stick, a rock, and some water.

  What you see then in Moses is a man with a profound, history making, destiny-determining calling on his life who is, in so many ways, not really fit for the job at hand. He has baggage and deficits and insecurities and limitations. He is old, he has a past, and he has flaws of character and execution. America is similarly situated now with regard to its presidential choices, and I guess that is why I had to "go and come again" in order to answer your question.

  This election feels far too important to vote for any particular candidate or party on the primary basis of that candidate or that party. It is crystal clear to me intellectually who the superior candidate is for President, but it is crystal clear to you as well, and you and I don't agree. I am not "out of my mind," but neither are you.

  Moses' resume had a lot of "red flags" in it - a criminal record, a humble occupation, and even the potential for racial discord and conflict - not to mention the fact that he wasn't leading his people to another established city or nation, but into the desert to get to another desert that they would have to cross a large body of water to get to - without boats - while under unarmed pursuit by a huge contingent of the Egyptian Army! The Jews had problems. They had big problems. They had problems no man could fix, especially not a stuttering, convicted murderer, with anger management issues who smelled of sheep.

  America has problems. It has big problems. It has problems no man fix - at least not on his or her own with their own hands. The planet is getting hotter and spinning slower. A North Korean man is teeing up ballistic missiles. He met a few months ago with the President of Russia, who possesses the supersonic technology to get the North Korean man's bombs to us literally before we know what hit us. That same Russian is threatening to deploy them on the Eastern European ally we are helping to arm. The Chinese are hellbent on getting Taiwan back and America is seemingly bent to the same destination to prevent it. The Iranians are almost tumescent in their nuclear aspirations within a stone's throw of Israel and who knows what the hell India and Pakistan are going to do with their nuclear arms and to each other. The total national debt stands at about $25 trillion dollars. Uyghur slaves pick cotton now in China. In North America, women are trafficked on this side of the border and people are enslaved in trafficking and narco-oppression on the other side of that same border. Sex trafficking (enslavement) makes its way through Europe among the Roma and other immigrants of color. 500,000 human beings live among twelve refugee camps in Syria. 1.5 million Palestinians are packed into the open-air sardine can of Gaza, which is wholly contained within the larger nation of Israel, surrounded on every side but one by people who, in no small number, wish to drive them into the sea that sits on the only side they aren't surrounded by. Meanwhile, Africa is trapped by radical Islam, tribalism, and colonial forces old (Europe) and new (China). Here in the U.S., you used to worry about getting shot in a Black neighborhood. Now you have to worry about getting shot at an elementary school, high school, college, Walmart, movie theatre, or gay night club in a White neighborhood, and in a Black neighborhood as well. And we are all living with the nagging sense that the world economy is a shoe that is about to drop. White people aren't living as long as they used to. The average American sperm count is decreasing. And now, as of January 6th, 2021, the U.S. Capitol became a Bastille to storm.

Cain't NOBODY handle all this mess but Jesus! Unfortunately, he has not declared his candidacy for President - at least not yet. But you can still vote for Him anyway - not by name, but by spirit. When you have to choose between leaders that "don't measure up," Mitchell, you have to choose a God that does. That's what this election is about. It isn't about these two dudes, and I'm not going to vote "for" either one of them - I'm going to vote "beyond" them. I'm going to vote for the one who exhibits the most traits of a loving, merciful, and righteous Savior most consistently. I wouldn't vote for "Moses" because "he could do the job." He couldn't do the job. But he prayed. He sought God, and he climbed a mountain to get to Him. He listened to his Black queen and he wasn't up in a whole lot of other women's draws. He killed a man, but he didn't keep on killing men. He didn't keep telling lie after lie after lie after lie after lie, after lie after lie, and he didn't kick it with liars either. He didn't incite rebellion. He didn't rip nobody off. His lawyers didn't need lawyers. When the people did him wrong, even through his anger, he sought God's mercy for them instead of His revenge. Nobody went to prison for him; he himself was punished for his sins. Those Ten Commandments he inscribed? He followed them, and he taught others to follow them. He may not have been "the man for the job," but he was the man for the Lord, and that about as good as we can get from any leader, because that made him "the man for the job."

  One last thing - the man whose post on Facebook you responded to? He and his wife are among the dearest friends of my heart I have in the world. We don't speak that much. They live far away. But they believed in me, beyond race or politics, or any of that mess, and I love them both dearly. Years back, they lost their adult son to a drunken driver. I buried my mother when I was eighteen years old, but I would go to her funeral ten times more before I would wish to go to his one time again. That is how much his death hurt me. He was just a good boy, and then he was a good man. I remember standing in the funeral home at his wake with his mother and younger sister endlessly sobbing, and I was thinking "ain't gonna be no healing in this family until this boy's sister has a child." Well, she had it, as you probably know, and that little girl has brought an immeasurable amount of joy and hope to their entire family.

I have taken time to write this because I owe you and that little girl something, and it is this:

"Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” 

                                                                                                                       - Romans 13:8-14

Mitchell, I owe that baby girl what she has given her parents, and most of all, my friends - her grandparents. I owe her love and I owe her hope. The Apostle Paul above quotes the Law that the "inadequate" Moses inscribed on stone tablets on Mt. Sinai, transcribing for God. I owe her my best efforts at making a better world for her and my own children. In order to do that, I have to vote for some very human, "presidential Moses." (I can't not vote - John Lewis's fractured skull on the Edmund Pettis Bridge, and Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King's fatal gunshot wounds to the back and neck, respectively, won't let me.) I have set my sights beyond either man in order to know who to choose and how to comport myself under whatever leadership results. I know in my heart and spirit who I believe that man to be, but I will make no attempt to sway you one way or another. Heck - I could be wrong. Instead, I will ask you to look at these two men through the prism of God's Word written above by Paul and chiseled into stone ages prior by Moses. I trust that the Word will tell you which of these "inadequate men" best comports himself with God's nature of love of His people, mercy for them, and respect for the laws of both man and God. You will know and then do what is right, or you will know and then you will not. If we collectively do what is right, America and freedom in it can at least hope to endure; if we don't, it won't - it's really just that simple. It isn't about us and those two men anymore. Perhaps it never was. It is about us and our Creator. I pray you and I both will choose well.

With Love For My Facebook Friend And His Wife, His Daughter And Son-In-Law, His Grandchild, And For You,

Darryl L. Fortson, MD

Las Vegas, Nevada