David McElroy

As the November elections get closer, I feel as though I’m living in a place waiting to get slammed by a destructive hurricane.

Anxious and angry people all around me are preparing for the onslaught of pent-up political energy. Most people fall into one of two camps. Those in one group are eager to stick it to a politician they hate. Those of the other group hate that first group.

All of them are completely sure that the bigger evil is on the other side.

I’m one of the few who is only mildly interested in the approaching hurricane — because I know it won’t matter which side wins. Not in the long run.

I say this as a political expert, but not the kind of “expert” who gets quoted on television or in newspaper stories. It’s true that I worked for 20 years as a political consultant, so I could give you a pretty realistic analysis of what’s going to happen in the congressional elections in about six weeks.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not going to tell you who’s going to win or how it’s going to affect U.S. politics between now and the 2028 presidential campaign. I’m going to predict something far more certain.

Nothing that happens in the November elections will fix the world around us, no matter what happens.

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As I locked the door of my office to drive home Monday, the parking lot was deserted and quiet. It was only 7 p.m., but the last light of sunset was almost completely gone.

Something in the air felt different tonight.

It was getting dark a little bit earlier. I noticed flashes of lightning in the distance. And then it hit me. There’s always a moment in the early autumn when the air feels different and I know change is almost here.

Autumn is coming. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming. I feel it.

For years, this annual moment has been evidence that nature’s wheel is still turning, just as it always has. The wheel has oriented us for months to the growth and the green of summer and it’s about to push us to the beautiful harvest time — a time of reds and golds and browns — that comes just before nature goes dormant until time for another rebirth.

This almost imperceptible feeling in the air always gives me comfort. It reassures me that everything that’s happened for many millennia before I was born is still happening.

As I’ve gotten older, it’s also felt like evidence that nature is marking off another year for me — claiming just a bit more of the life I was granted when I was born many years ago.

Nothing about this felt frightening. Everything felt normal. Everything was as it should be. I was where I should be. Something much larger than me was in control.

Despite all of man’s efforts to control nature — to control our environment — nature was still in control. The return of this feeling lets me know once again that the God of nature is still supreme.

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If you know the story of this website, you probably know that I started writing for an audience that was obsessed with politics. Over the years, I have almost completely rejected addressing the partisan political world — for reasons that I’ve explained before.

In the last couple of years, I have increasingly focused more narrowly on the question of how people who see the world as I do can (and should) live in a culture which has completely abandoned us. As I’ve grown more confident about precisely the things I want to express, I’ve realized that I don’t know how to reach the people who need and want to connect with the ideas I’m expressing.

As a result, I recently commissioned a market study to look at what I’m writing and tell me how best to connect with people who should be the natural audience for my ideas. I’m not allowed to disclose the identity of the firm that did the analysis, but I can say it’s a major West Coast firm that many of you have heard of.

I realize that this won’t be especially interesting to many people who simply want to read the articles and move on, but I thought it would be interesting enough for a small subset of you to reproduce the executive summary of the report here.

I should point out that the notes included with the study suggested that its use of the term “Christian” here shouldn’t be interpreted in its strict theological sense, because the research said that many of the people included in the category would be people who have a broad Christian worldview — as expressed in a broader western philosophy — not just those who would claim overtly Christian theological beliefs or practices.

I just received the study Friday and I’m still studying the details, but it feels validating so far to see that a third party firm sees a viable niche readership for the things I’m writing about. The question remains about how to specifically reach potential readers who have no reason to ever realize that this website exists.

With all that said, if you’re interested, keep reading to dive in to the executive summary of a report that I’ll be contemplating (and hopefully acting on) as I go forward.

As always, I do appreciate the thousands of you who read my work regularly. I never take you for granted. Keep Reading