What advantage have the wise over fools? What do the poor gain by knowing how to conduct themselves before others? – Ecclesiastes 6:8

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 1, 2016): Ecclesiastes 6

It might be just the fatalistic side of me coming out, but as the election campaigns in the United States continue to heat up, and emotions are riled on both sides of the battle for the Presidency, sometimes I wonder how much it really matters who occupies the oval office. It is the dilemma facing the younger people of the nation, many of whom are simply deciding to abstain from this election. From my point of view, one of the silliest charges made in this election cycle was that Hillary Clinton was wearing an invisible earpiece and that someone on the other end was feeding her the answers. Being President of the United States is not a final exam. We don’t want a Lone Ranger piloting the nation. One of my concerns about Donald Trump is that he is not taking enough advice from the experts that he has gathered around him. I don’t care how the answer is arrived at or who is responsible, for every government in the world the only concern that I have is that they arrive at the right answer.

But in the end, in our global world economies, conflicts, the changing planetary weather patterns, and many other critical situations are simply too complex to be solved by either a Clinton or a Trump government in the United States – even if the United States is the most powerful country in the world. These are questions in which we all have to be involved. Canada was recently warned by the World Bank that its consumer debt as compared to the Gross Domestic Product was too high. Against popular opinion, the economic crash in 2008 was not caused by the evil banks – it resulted from the unserviceable debt held by the average person. That is not a new phenomenon, but the only clear answer for Canada, or many other countries, is that the people take it upon themselves to reduce their debt load. Climate change will not be stopped by government mandate, but rather by all of us being more concerned with the imprint we are leaving on the earth by what we consume things or throw them away. Governments might be able to model good behavior for us, which I am afraid that neither Clinton nor Trump have the moral capacity to do, but the change has to be put into effect by us. There is no other way. This is about all of us

And this is the message that Solomon. On all of the “big ticket concerns” that we have as citizens of the planet, we all suffer equally. The rich are as prone to disease and death as the poor. Global warming impacts both those with access to money and those without financial standing. The dwindling number of animal species on the planet will have an effect on both the wise and the fool. And no one person can change that – not even the President of the United States.

Well, maybe not no one. For those of us who are concerned about these issues, perhaps it is time that we start praying that God will change the heart of the people we share this planet with because it is going to take all of us to fix what is going wrong.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes 7