The word “pundit” comes into its contemporary English usage from Sanskrit via the British Raj in colonial India. According to the Wikipedia, “the term originates from the Sanskrit term pandit, meaning “knowledge owner” or “learned man”. It refers to someone who is erudite in various subjects…”
We refer to a pundit as someone who self-identifies as wise or knowledgeable and who shares his or her wisdom and knowledge with the world through newspaper columns, blogs, podcasts, or broadcast commentaries. The Wikipedia article lists Al Franken, Bill Maher, Bill O’Reilly, Geraldo Rivera, Greta Van Susteren, Lou Dobbs, Rosie O’Donnell, and Rush Limbaugh as examples of pundits, which doesn’t make me want to trust pundits.
Anyway, the pundits, whoever they are, say that next year’s presidential election is most likely to pit the current incumbent against the most recent previous incumbent. Not that we should believe all the pundits say, but if what they say is right, I have it easy. My vote is already decided. No to both. Never the one and never the other.
If you’d like to contact me privately to discuss the specifics, feel free to do so, but don’t expect your whataboutism to change my mind. I’ve been at no and never for eight years now and see no need to change.
It’s not that I don’t care about our country and its leadership. Like the sticker on our furnace, I see “Warning!” “Avertissement!” and “Advertencia!” at every political and cultural turn. But I still say no and never.
No and never really are the easy part. If this is the best we can do, count me out. No. Never.
My struggle is with yes and always.
Calling someone a yes-man is not a complement. It’s just one of our nicer ways to describe a person who has sold his or her soul in trying to please a boss or superior. The gospel, however, calls us to be “yes” people in a “no” world. Being such yes-people is pleasing to our “yes” God.
In Christ, says Paul, “we find not Yes and No, but always Yes. (In fact), all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” 2 Corinthians 1:19 -20
Having heard God’s “yes,” we are always to abound in the work of the Lord, always rejoice, always give thanks, always seek to do good to one another and to everyone, always be sober-minded, always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in us.
Feel free to talk to me about my no and never about what the pundits predict for next year. But don’t expect me to change my mind. I’ve got better things to do working on yes and always.