Cast your Ballot . . .

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die . . . 

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.” ― H.L. Mencken

“Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far riskier — and much, much harder.”― Suzy Kassem

The experience of what’s called an election is still fresh in our minds.

Simplified, it’s a population’s opportunity to choose the candidates that will represent them in the nation’s governance body for the next four years. But it can’t really be that purely defined, can it? Candidates are not just our representatives, they owe allegiance to parties that engage in a variety of tactics making the entire process resemble a sports tournament more than a thoughtful, communal process for choosing the best managers of those affairs we citizens hold in common.

The dilemma in a democracy can arise from an assumption that individuals’ choices are backed up by a studious knowledge of what’s at stake. Some things a voter can’t know, of course, like whether or not the coming four years will see a crop failure, for instance, or the onset of a recession, or massive forest fires. But, a voter can make a judgment given good information and thoughtful consideration of that information: the science of climate change, the appropriate level of our country’s participation in refugee resettlement, the adequacy/inadequacy of healthcare, the fairness of taxation rules, for instance. An uninformed population very easily reverts to voting on the basis of party allegiance, to cheering on a party “team” as if it were a favoured sports team. Go Roughriders! Go New Democrats!

For Christians, Jews and Muslims to take “Biblical” direction on “how to be” in a democracy requires more guidance than, for instance, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” (Mark 12:17) Politics during Jesus’ time (or Mohammed’s or King David’s for that matter) was autocratic, militaristic; a citizen’s duty was to be an obedient slave and tax-payer for the benefit of religious and temporal privilege.

In Canada’s democracy, George Epp’s vote has the same weight as Justin Trudeau’s. Surely that fact alone makes it both a privilege and an obligation to become knowledgeable about national affairs. For Christians, shining light and sprinkling salt at election time (as well as at any other times) becomes highly significant.

Clearly, churches are loathe to open the subject of voting in the current climate. Who needs yet another reason to quarrel? But I would contend that even though most of our voting is influenced by forces outside everyday Christian dialogue, consideration of our essential values should be fully engaged, especially regarding how we behave during political campaigns, how we talk about “political” subjects during the often-confusing, always-frustrating circus that precedes voting days. The temptation to be dismissive, divisive, doctrinaire at such times is strong. But surely withstanding such temptation falls close to key central themes of the gospel.

Parliament is suspended at the dropping of the writ—the Sermon on the Mount . . . isn’t.