In need of participation
By the time this article is published, the elections of 2020 will be 25 days away. I don’t know anyone who won’t breathe a sigh of relief and hope that the constant bombardment of rhetoric dies down for some period of time. Many seem to worry that it is going to continue, and it will take months before the outcome of the elections is finalized.
Initially when I began to write this article three weeks in advance, I was commending myself for getting out in front of the due date. It was about a week before it was due that I began to get a nudge from, I believe, the Holy Spirit to write something else.
I was listening to a commentator on Christian radio that day and there was approximately 100,000,000 voters who did not vote in the last Presidential election. Many of those voters were Christians according to pollsters.
I know from my college days that Christians comprise the largest voting blocks in the United States. Christians could have tremendous influence on the outcome of every election but why don’t they? I cite two reasons that seem preeminent. One is bad theology. The other is apathy. Both of these reasons are very unbecoming of Christians.
The bad theology is the idea that politics and religion should somehow be separate. This is contrary to Biblical tenets that government is established by God. Romans 13 particularly discusses this point at length, but it surfaces in both the Old and New Testaments.
The second major reason is apathy. Apathy is not something that should characterize Christian people. Christians should manifest the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5) and none of these fruit look anything like apathy.
The question remains, “Does God care about our behavior?” I don’t really want to have a conversation with Jesus one day where He asks me why I didn’t do what I could to assure a civil and just government by voting. He could have placed my personality and my soul in a body that was born in a totalitarian country where I could have no direct influence on the government, but He didn’t. He put me in a democratic republic, and it is clear from the writings of Christian founding fathers from the Mayflower Compact to administrations during and after the Civil War that it was expected that Christians would not only vote but serve in government.
If you haven’t been participating it is high time you did. Pray, read your Bible, and vote for the candidate regardless of party that best represents Biblical values. If you disagree that is your choice. I just remind myself that I don’t want to have that conversation with Jesus later.
Bud McConnaughey serves on the staff of North Summit Church, 201 N. Division, Sandpoint The views in this article are his personal position do not reflect an institutional opinion of North Summit Church.