As Christians, we tend to approach exhausting election years with two opposing, but equally unhelpful, theologies. On one side, paraphrasing the words of St. Teresa of Avila, is the idea that God has “no hands but ours.” While rooted in beloved passages of scripture like Matthew 25, which instruct us to care for others as we’d care for Jesus himself, when these Christian teachings are taken too far, we start to feel that the burden of solving all the world’s innumerable problems falls solely on us.
Even if we recognize (quite reasonably!) that none of us can individually solve massive societal problems like poverty, racism, or war, it starts to feel like there’s a never-ending list of ways we need to do more to be God’s agents in the world.
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