Jenn posed the next logical question to the first installment below: how should we pick our political leaders? Here are guidelines and criteria for Kingdom voting in America, for every issue, for every candidate:
1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from becoming polluted by the world.
4. Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.
5. Your attitude should be like that of Christ Jesus.
6. Do nothing out of selfish ambition and vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
7. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but to the interests of others.
8. Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
9. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God, without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.
10. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
11. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
12. Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
I wrote in the first post that politics and economy in a capitalist, republican democracy are necessarily self-interested. We rely on adverse parties and interests balancing themselves in the marketplace, with some artificial protections erected to prevent abuse of a minority and weaker parties. This is true as citizens of the state.
As citizens of the Kingdom, however, our attitude must be like of our Lord. Jesus did not press His rights. Jesus did not appeal His unjust conviction. Jesus did not flare with anger when he was mistreated, misunderstood and persecuted. Jesus became angry when the weak were oppressed, when the powerful abused the poor, when outcasts were manipulated. He called to those whom the powerful and rich rejected and forgot. He moved among the dirty castes to call them to Himself, then He called us His ambassadors, His presence on the earth in His absence. As we inherit His mission, we inherit the burden of His compassion, selling out our own interests, our own advancement to ease the burden of the downtrodden, to reconcile the outcast, to attend to the poor, to lift the head of the malformed and misfit.
Therefore, we must vote like Christ. We should cast our ballot for those candidates and those issues that would relieve suffering in dark places, who will serve the weak, who will advance the agenda of the abused and persecuted, who are mindful of those who cannot contribute to a campaign, to those who cannot invest in the stock market, to those who can pay no taxes. We who claim Christ should vote, should shop, should drive, should buy, should march, should campaign, should speak and should stand for those who cannot stand for themselves in a crooked and depraved generation. We should not vote for our own interests, our selfish ambitions and vain conceits, but we should vote for those who would care for the orphans and widows in their distress.
(Magnusson wrote well on this subject on May 3, 2005 at his blog:
www.ermagnusson.blogspot.com, "Is It Lawful to Pay Taxes to the Emperor?")
