Reflections on the elections

The elections have consumed so much of our energy as of late. Before we close the door on the 2024 elections, it’s good to consider some wisdom from our founding fathers and other noteworthy Americans on voting.

I read a joke recently wherein a surgeon, an engineer, and a politician were arguing as to which one of their professions was the oldest. The surgeon said, “Surely, mine is. Since God did surgery on Adam to produce Eve.”

The engineer said, “Yeah, but before the creation of Adam and Eve, the chaos was made into order. Making order out of chaos is the work of the engineer.”

“Yeah, but who created the chaos?” asked the politician.

Shouldn’t Christians stay out of politics? That’s what many people seem to advocate these days. And yet one man had the temerity to say this: “Providence has given to our people the choice of their ruler, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

Oh, my goodness. Who said that? Jerry Falwell? Alex Jones? Atilla the Hun? No, actually it was said by John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. He was appointed by our first president, George Washington.

Again, it’s the duty and privilege of Christians to prefer Christians as our political leaders, according to our first chief justice. Wow. How far we have fallen. Now we have a crisis where many Christians don’t even bother to vote in modern America. Some aren’t even registered to vote.

But Patrick Henry warned us: “It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.”

Well, it has been said that in America, we get the kind of government we deserve. Historically, Christians in America applied their faith to virtually every sphere of life, including their politics.

While the founding fathers were not all Christians, the vast majority of them were, and more importantly they had a biblical worldview. Our two key founding documents are the Declaration of Independence, which says our rights come from God, and the Constitution which explains how this government is to work. The founders believed the biblical witness that man is sinful. So, they designed the division of power very carefully.

What made America so special gets back to our Judeo-Christian foundation. But this fact has been lost on so many Americans who now view the nation as a happy accident and who view Christians as interlopers in an otherwise blissful secular state. Furthermore, our history has been rewritten and God has been erased.

The great 19th-century Christian statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852), senator from Massachusetts, once declared, “If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be.”

Webster also stated: “If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; If the Evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and  darkness will reign without mitigation or end.”

Nature abhors a vacuum. If we as Christians are not involved in culture, including politics, then ungodly men and women will be. Abraham Lincoln said: “Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion can change the government practically just so much.”

He also noted this — a statement that I think about in light of the ACLU and other secularists trying to rob us of our liberties and our rich Christian heritage: “A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.”

Lincoln’s successor, the 17th president, Andrew Johnson, was the first president to be impeached; but he was saved from expulsion from office by one vote. Nonetheless, he recognized that our rights are God-given. Said Johnson: “This is the peoples’ Government; they received it as a legacy from Heaven, and they must defend it and preserve it.”

Our 26th president was Theodore Roosevelt. He reminds us of the arduous task government is for “we the people”: “The noblest of all forms of government is self-government; but it is also the most difficult.”

“We the people” need to remember who is in charge. Theoretically, the politicians are our servants and not vice versa. 

As Teddy Roosevelt worded it, “If people cannot rule themselves, then they are not fit for free government, and all talk about democracy is a sham.”