Decision Making in the Voting
Booth
Lesson #2
Once again, we are in that 4-year cycle that Americans love so much,
celebrating our freedom and our right to vote and participate in choosing our
leaders. I hear many people who are rather tired of this whole election
cycle. It seems like we have had people running for president ever since
the last election four years ago. This gets to be such a serious subject
sometimes that we have to have a little humor now and then. I always like
Maxine because she has a way of communicating one kind of wisdom. “They
hold elections in November because it is the best time for picking a turkey.”
As Christians, we need to learn how to think about every area of life
from a biblical framework. That word framework is a very important
term. What that tells us is that within the Word of God, there are things
that are taught, things that are revealed that address every area of life in a
broad sense, so that that gives us a structure for thinking about everything
that may not be specifically addressed. The Word of God gives us a value
system for evaluating things and making decisions. The Bible emphasizes
words like discernment and wisdom which have to do with taking
what God says in His Word and then applying it in a skillful manner to all the
different things that we face in life.
When it comes to an election, we are going to make a choice. We
choose one of several candidates, in some cases, which is the one we believe to
be the best one. We make various value statements such as, “This is the
best candidate,” “This one is qualified to be in this particular office,”
“This is a good choice; that is not a good choice.” Whenever you use any
of these value-judgment words, you imply that there is some sort of system,
some standards that exist outside of us to which we appeal in order to make
these kinds of decisions and judgments. If you are going to say one is
better than the other, on what basis are you making that choice? What is
the information, what are the facts that go into making an informed decision
that one is better than another, one is worse than another, one is good and one
is bad?
It is through a study of God’s Word from Genesis to Revelation that we
build this kind of a framework for understanding everything within God’s
creation. There is a framework for understanding law or
society and the way society should function. Because there
are oughts and shoulds
and musts in the Scripture, that structures
that framework for us so that we can make decisions that are consistent with
the oughts, shoulds,
and musts in Scripture. That gives us an ethical standard for
evaluating God’s Word.
We get into books such as Proverbs, which are considered wisdom
literature. That word wisdom that we have there is a Hebrew word
that means skill at living. It is the ability to take the raw data of
Scripture, to put it all together, and then to make decisions that are
consistent with that. The best way to use an analogy on this is thinking
about natural science. When God created the earth, He loaded the earth
with all these natural resources - beautiful plants and animals. Yet, it
was just, as it were, raw data as far as man was concerned.
When God created Adam, there was no data on God’s creation; there was no
information, categorization, or even vocabulary because Adam had not yet named
the animals. So there was no categorization, classification, or
analysis. God told Adam to name the animals. He began to name the
domestic animals within the garden. That was the initial idea, but we are
still doing that. We discover new species, new animals; we are still
categorizing and classifying those animals. We are still in the process
of discovering all that we can about God’s creation and taking all of that
data, putting it together, sifting it, and coming up with new information, new
applications in areas of technology, medicine, science.
By analogy, the Word of God is the same way. God reveals this to
us in the context of narrative literature, history, wisdom literature, legal
literature, epistolary literature, poetry. The beauty of the way God has revealed this to us is that if He had just
given us a systematic theology with all the doctrines categorized, we would
read it all through once, say “Good, that answers all my questions,” close the
book and put it on the shelf. But because God gave it to us the way He
did, we have to mine that data bank of the Scriptures over and over
again. Each time we go back to it, we discover new things, we see new
relationships and correlations, and we build this structure of doctrine or
theology. It is out from that we develop applications. That falls
under the category of wisdom or skill (hochma)
at taking that and then applying it within our life.
The area we are working on application right now is one that is very
real to every American citizen, or should be, and that is in the area of
voting. How do you make decisions in the voting both, especially when you
may have two good candidates, and the choice is between one that is good and
one that is better. Or as is so often the case
it seems, one that is not good and one that is worse.
I wanted to establish a basic understanding of my premise and basic
rationale in this series. I’ve summarized this in three syllogisms.
The first rationale. The major premise - All
citizens of the
All Christians have this as their responsibility. It is not just a
responsibility to vote wisely and intelligently but to do so within a biblical
framework of doing it to the glory of God. Not just doing it because that
is what you do as a citizen, but because you are a believer, you have a
transcendent motive.
The second rationale. The major premise – The
U.S. citizen, like the
By the way, the U.S. Constitution has been in effect for 221
years. In that time
What is it that gave this sort of stability to our government? I
am arguing that it derived its fundamental principles from the Word of God.
The third rationale. The major premise – The
thought system which is embodied in the founding documents of this nation
derives from Christian theism broadly and the Bible specifically. Minor
premise – All Christians who are citizens of the
The assumption that I am bringing to this that underlies this entire
approach is that in order to understand and interpret the Constitution, we have
to understand its original historical context and the culture out of which it
came in order to preserve and protect that. Interpretation depends on
literal, historical hermeneutic.
(Chart) Today we live in a world where there has been a
battle. It developed out of the thought systems that came into existence
in the 19th century. The view on the right of the chart is
that one interprets the Constitution in terms of its original intent, called
the originalist, strict constructionist, textualist, or conservative. The view on the left of
the chart is the loose constructionist, revisionist, or liberal.
I was pleased to note that after the last class, I had five or six
people in the congregation email additional information to me that this last
Thursday (Oct. 16), the Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, in his Wriston Lecture to the Manhattan Institute stated, “Let me
put it this way; there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution –
try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up. No
matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless interpretive
methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more
basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores. To be sure,
even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the
framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies and human
institutions are, but at least originalism has the
advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial.”
Because you are dealing with original intent, it has a standard, and
there is objectivity. That is what the justice is saying. That is
something we can all appeal to. This was the role of judges and the role
of the Supreme Court up until the early part of the 20th
century. Because there was this huge culture shift or worldview shift
(you have heard the term culture wars) that occurred in the 19th
century (which was exhibited in naturalism, secular humanism) away from
objectivity and certainty of knowledge and away from a biblical way of thinking
that had characterized the founding fathers and the generations of the 17th
and 18th centuries and no longer characterized a majority of early
20th century Americans. This lead to a gradual erosion of originalism and strict constructionism
in the Constitution and began to change our culture.
I pointed out that Bible-believing Christians believed that the Bible
should be interpreted literally, and, by extension, literal interpretation,
which includes the author’s original intent, is the way that all writings
should be interpreted. Whether you are trying to interpret a
Shakespearean sonnet, the instructions for your tax form, instructions to
submit to FEMA in light of the recent hurricane or whatever it is, you are
interpreting those documents in terms of authorial intent. You are
saying, “What do they mean by this?” That is how we interpret things.
Think back when you were 16, 17, 18, or 19 years old, and you got that
first love note from someone you were interested in, you looked at it and said,
“What do they mean by that?” You understood innately, because that is the
way God made us, that to understand something, we have to understand what the
author intends, and we cannot read into it whatever we want to. We cannot
just make it up out of whole cloth.
(Chart) We have two presidential candidates: McCain, on the
right, is an inconsistent originalist, but he rejects
judicial activism, at least theoretically. But on the left, we have Obama, who is a consistent revisionist and has voted
against originalists on the two times he had serving
as a senator. He affirms judicial activism. I believe that this is
the single most important issue in this election where a president only serves
four or perhaps eight years, but his appointments serve for several
decades. I believe if Obama is elected as
president that he will change the Court in such a way that we won’t win it back
for two generations, if ever. This is the most important aspect of this
election, I believe, the most important criteria.
If we are going to understand why and how the founders produced these
incredible documents (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the
Bill of Rights, various state constitutions, various other founding documents),
where did they get these ideas? When this question was posed by the next
generation to John Adams in 1860, he said these ideas came from the pulpits in
Benjamin Rush, one of the founders, signer of the Declaration of
Independence, and served in three early presidential administrations, said, “My
only hope of salvation is in the infinite, transcendent love of God manifested
to the world by the death of His Son upon the cross. Nothing but His
blood will wash away my sins. I rely exclusively upon it. Come,
Lord Jesus! Come quickly!” This was expressed by dozens and dozens
of the founders who signed the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution.
In 1776, after they signed the Declaration of Independence and they
passed it around to the colonies, the place where they sent it was to the
churches. They didn’t send it to the town hall, town square, town crier,
or to the mayor. They sent it to the pastors to be read in the
pulpits. But they knew once word was out (and the word spread quickly)
that this country had declared its independence from
Men like Samuel Adams helped write the
The Delaware State Constitution stated, “Everyone elected and appointed
to office shall make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: I do
profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, and in the
Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forever more, and I do acknowledge the holy
scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine
inspiration.” This is not to go to seminary or Bible college;
it is to serve in any elected position or any appointed position anywhere in
the state. Notice the emphasis is on the character and belief system of
the individual – that is what is important. Not how many degrees he has
or how much experience he has serving in office but on his character and belief
system.
In the Pennsylvania State Constitution, we find the following
statement: “Each member [of the legislature], before he takes his seat,
shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz:
I do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked, and I
do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by
Divine Inspiration.” They add that phrase in there that He is the “rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked”
because they want every legislator to know that they are not just accountable
to the people, but when you die, you are going to be accountable to God.
This weighed so heavily on the conscious of John Adams that he said he feared
the fiery torments of hell because that would last a long time. He wanted
to make sure he did things correctly.
The Massachusetts State Constitution, written by Samuel Adams, states,
“[All persons elected must] make and subscribe the following declaration, viz: I do declare that I believe the Christian religion and
have firm persuasion of its truth.”
In the North Carolina State Constitution: “No person who shall deny the
being of God, or the truth of the Christian religion, or the divine authority
either of the Old or New Testaments or who shall hold religious principles
incompatible with the freedom and safety of the state, shall be capable of
holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department, within
the state.” No Jehovah’s Witnesses, no Mormons, no atheists, no secular
humanists, and nobody who works for the ACLU. None of these people could
subscribe to these kinds of documents.
When you hear the modern distortion of that - separation of church and
state, which phrase is actually not in the Constitution or Bill of Rights – you
need to remember that what they had in mind is not what has been put into
practice in the
Why did they think that? Because they understood
Jeremiah 17:9 that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked; who can know it?” In fact, both Washington and Hamilton
commented that it was on the basis of that verse that they put in the
separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches
because they knew that man was inherently evil, and it was very easy for
depraved, sinful man to turn government into a force for tyranny that would
destroy freedom and liberty. Remember that freedom and liberty are not
freedom to go do what you want to do: it is freedom from government
interference and tyranny.
They were concerned about the thought system, the belief system that
someone had, not because they were establishing a theocracy. They
understood within a broad sense that only within the framework of biblical
Christianity was there an appreciation for real freedom and liberty that could
allow for people to reject it. Of course, they couldn’t serve in
government, but they go make their fortune and own half the state and do
whatever they wanted to. They had freedom to live their lives apart from
government interference; they could be an atheist and do whatever they wanted
to. If you were going to serve in the government, you had to subscribe to
certain beliefs, otherwise it would lead to
destruction of the nation.
In 1892, the Supreme Court recognized that each of the then forty-four
states in the union had some type of God-centered declaration in their state
constitution. After citing over 60 precedents, the Supreme Court then
concluded, “There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a
universal language pervading them all, having one meaning; they affirm and
reaffirm that this is a religious nation, this is a Christian nation.”
That is not an acceptable conclusion for many people today. Both
Christians and non-Christians attempt to change this and say, “How can you have
freedom in a Christian nation?” They do not understand what real freedom
is all about. They think if you are going to have a Christian nation, that is going to force everybody to be a
Christian. They also think that this means that everybody marched in
lockstep in terms of their Christianity among the founding fathers. That
is not true. Some were Roman Catholic; some were Methodist or
Episcopalian or Presbyterian. The vast majority came out of a
Presbyterian-influenced background, but they were not forcing their views on
anybody else. They also had many other ideas that influenced the culture
at large at that time, just as it does in every generation. The vast
majority of the ideas came out of the Bible.
The founders of the Republic viewed themselves as establishing a
Christian nation and not a theocracy. For example, one of the early
representatives in Congress from
The founding fathers had a set body of beliefs that are embodied in the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and those structures of government flow
out of the Bible. They are not the only way in which you could apply the
Bible to government, but that is where they come from – the outworking of biblical
truth.
The next question that concerned the founders was how do we pass this on
to the next generation? It is very easy to lose it. You have one
generation that understands these principles and fought hard and won the
freedoms on the battlefields, and now the next generation can come along and
lose it. We have to educate them; we have to pass this on.
Education was crucial. In fact, many of them were involved in the
establishment of universities, colleges, schools, public schools, and many
wrote textbooks and history books because they understood how vital it was to
pass this information on to the next generation.
One of these men was Noah Webster. We refer to him when we refer
to the modern version of the dictionary that he originally wrote. He was
an educator, a lexicographer, founder of educational institutions, translator
of his own translation of the Bible in 1833. He served in the Connecticut
House of Representatives and also served as a county judge. In 1776, he
served in the Continental Army under the command of his father. From 1783
to 1785, he published at
He also wrote a book on American history, and in the preface of that
book, he writes, “In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and
one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to
be instructed… No truth is more evident to my mind than that the
Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the
rights and privileges of a free people.”
Noah Webster served in the legislatures of two different states, and he
was one of the first of the founders to call for a Constitutional
convention. He was personally responsible for writing Article 1, Section
8 of the Constitution. He also established
He wrote, “Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source
of correct republican principles is the Bible particularly the New Testament or
the Christian religion.” This does not refer to Republican or Democrat
party; this refers to the standard that this nation is a republic and was
founded to be a republic, not a democracy. The early founders thought a
democracy was a “mobocracy.” When we pledge
allegiance to the flag and the republic for which it stands, we are affirming
that we believe this nation is a republic and not a democracy.
In his History of the United States, which was published in 1833,
he included a number of cutouts called “Advice to the Young,” which were
intended to be a textbook for young children coming up through school. In
his advice #49, he focused on the right of voting. We should pay attention
to this – such wisdom. “When you become entitled to exercise the right of
voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands
you to choose for rulers, ‘just men who will rule in the fear of God.’
The preservation of a republican government [the kind of government embodied in
the Constitution] depends on the faithful discharge of this Duty; if the
citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the
government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good
so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be
appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on
unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or
disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity
and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine Commands, and
elect bad men to make and administer the Laws. Intriguing men can never
safely be trusted.”
I am going to summarize this. He says five things with the
consequences of electing bad men to public office. Notice again that the
emphasis is on character.
1) They will corrupt government.
2) They will make laws, not for the general welfare, but for
“selfish or local purposes.”
3) They will appoint other corrupt men to execute their laws.
4) They will squander the citizen’s taxes upon those who are
unworthy.
5) They will violate the citizen’s rights.
Notice that the emphasis is the money from the citizens is the citizens’
money and not their money. I want you to notice also that he puts the
responsibility not on the bad rulers ultimately but on the voters who foolishly
neglect the divine commands, who neglect Bible doctrine. Because they
neglect Bible doctrine, they vote bad men into office. Of course, you all
noticed Webster’s last statement about do not elect intriguing men; do not be
caught up in the façade.
Benjamin Rush was another who wrote about the importance of education.
He says in his autobiography, “The only means of establishing and perpetuating
our republican forms of government…is the universal education of our youth in
the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.”
We should note three things. First, they clearly saw the biblical
principles and how those principles were connected to good citizenship.
If, as believers, we are going to exercise our responsibilities as citizens to
the glory of God, we have to understand those biblical principles.
Biblical principles are what lie behind the documents that established the laws
of the land.
Second, they clearly saw the consequences of disobeying those principles
– not the principles in the law but the principles behind the law, which are
the principles in the Word of God, principles of Bible doctrine.
Third, we see how the consequences that they outlined have come to
us. They have landed on our doorstep over the last 75-100 years, and each
decade becomes increasingly worse.
Our comfort is that God is in control. We know that God is in
control, and we know that as believers we understand the same principle they
did, that is, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his
strength, whose heart departs from the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5). We cannot
trust in men and cannot trust in anything other than God. That does not
mean that we throw away our vote and stay home and pray, because we have a
responsibility.
I haven’t notice that any of you sit outside praying for somehow the gas
to be put into your car. I think everyone of you has gone to a gas
station and put gas in your car, while you pray that God will make sure you
have gas and that you can get where you need to go. We understand, on the
one hand, we pray to God, but, on the other hand, we have certain
responsibilities that we must fulfill.
What we see in all this is that this founding generation and subsequent
generations had an extremely high view of God and of the Bible. Noah
Webster wrote, “The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the
best corrector of all that is evil in human society – the best book for
regulating the temporal [secular] concerns of men.”
Andrew Jackson, a generation later, said, “That book [the Bible], Sir,
is the Rock upon which our Republic rests.” They understood the
foundation of this government was the Bible, and they had a high view of it.
Not long after the formation of this country, at the conclusion of the
War for
Another thing that was typical of that era is election sermons.
One was preached before His Excellency John Hancock, Governor of Massachusetts,
Sam Adams, Lieutenant Governor, and the Council, Senate and House of
Representatives. The whole state government is assembled, and they would
open up their assembly every year and have a pastor come in and preach.
Sometimes these sermons would be two or three hours long, and they would pray
profound prayers – prayers that would make their hearers weep.
At one time when they were sitting in Congress before they wrote the
Declaration of Independence, they had the pastor of a church in Philadelphia
come in, and he preached for a couple of hours. John Adams wrote home to
his wife that this was the most profound psalm he had ever read, and he encouraged
her to go read it.
Throughout these election sermons - sermons that related to citizenship,
government, and the right role of government – there were certain passages that
would surface frequently.
Proverbs
There is an ethical foundation to governing. It is not just a
matter of having an MBA or having a PhD in economics or a law degree; there is
an ethical standard that is inherent to leadership. Proverbs 29:4 “The
king gives stability to the land by justice, but a man who takes bribes
overthrows it.” Justice implies a standard. Where do these
candidates go to for their view of righteousness, of right and wrong? What
informs their thinking?
Proverbs
Proverbs 29:2 “When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when
a wicked man rules, people groan.” They rejoice because there is justice
in the land, true justice: the same for the rich as for the poor, the same for
the elderly as for the children.
Proverbs 29:12 “If a ruler pays attention to falsehood [Let’s paraphrase
that – if a ruler thinks according to a fraudulent worldview] all his ministers
become wicked.”
In this election, people will be concerned with two broad issues: one
broad issue is national defense and the other area is economics. For the
last 18 months, the liberal media has been screaming that we are in a
recession, although the figures did not support that. Certainly, there
were areas of the country that were slower than other areas of the country, but
now we actually may be in a recession. They have generated a
self-fulfilling prophecy where they just managed to scare the heck out of
everybody and make them think that we are in a recession and ought to throw out
the current administration.
I remember back in the 1990s hearing people who had voted as life-long
Republicans, and everything was going so well for them in the stock market in
1996 say that they for the first-time in their life had voted for a Democrat
(Bill Clinton). Why? Well, because their money was doing so well in
the market. Economics took priority over everything.
But if you look at the Word of God, the priority is never on economics;
it is on ethics, on righteousness. When the nation under the Mosaic Law
was righteous, God took care of them economically. Before the Mosaic Law,
when you had people like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob living their life before God
and had righteousness in their life, God supplied and took care of their
economic needs.
We have the same principle stated by Jesus in Matthew
There is a very important responsibility for people to go to the polls
and vote. They are to analyze these issues and vote in righteous
men. What happens when there are not righteous men? Unfortunately,
that is too often the case. We have to vote against the one who is less
righteous.
We have a high responsibility, as John Adams stated, “We electors have
an important constitutional power placed in our hands: we have a check upon two
branches of the legislature… It becomes necessary to every [citizen]
then, to be in some degree a statesman: and to examine and judge for
himself…the political principle and measures. Let us examine them with a
sober…Christian spirit.” What is the framework that we are to use to
evaluate our choices? It is going to be the Word of God and the truth of
God’s Word.
We have seen some of the ways the Bible has impacted the individuals and
has impacted their view of government. They understood foundationally
this was within the realm of ethics and morals because an unethical, immoral
people who did not understand righteousness could not perpetuate the government
that they were establishing in the Constitution.
Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, in a
letter to James McHenry wrote, “Without morals a republic cannot subsist any
length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose
morality is so sublime and pure…are undermining the solid foundation of morals,
the best security for the duration of free governments.”
James Madison, who was the fourth President of the
I can just hear a number of people screaming “theocracy” right
now. But they were not forming a theocracy. If you think this is a
theocracy, you do not understand what it is, and you do not understand Bible
doctrine. Nobody in their right mind would ever read the Constitution and
Declaration of Independence and think they were establishing a theocracy.
They were establishing a republic where there was freedom, but they understood
that that had to come out of a certain framework, and that framework was established
by the Bible.
They understood that the first control had to come from the Bible
because man’s heart was evil, and his thoughts turned to evil continually
because of total depravity. The second control was external law – the
written law of the land. They understood that law was over government and
that law had its source in God. The primary source for understanding and
interpreting the law in the English-speaking world at that time was
Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, which were the
recognized authority on law and the recognized tool for interpreting law and
handling legal problems in the U.S. and by the U.S. Supreme Court from
1776-1920. Blackstone’s Commentaries were endorsed by almost every
founding father.
Blackstone recognized that all law had to derive ultimately from the
Bible, that laws could not contradict God’s direct decrees. However, he
understood when the Bible did not address a specific area, then
we were free to set our own policy. For example, in the arena of murder,
that is expressly forbidden by the divine command “Thou shall not kill,” which
in Hebrew means “Thou shall not murder.” When it comes to developing a
law on import and export regulations, then that would be up to the individual
nation to derive laws that would be righteous and just. This was the
foundation.
They recognized there is this external authority of law and that there
was this internal problem of man’s sin that could only be dealt with by his
relationship with God. This was something they struggled with going back
into the colonial period. In the 1660s, the colony of
At the same time he was writing the constitution for the colony of
Penn understood that the goodness of government was not simply dependent
upon righteous laws but upon the integrity of men. He wrote, “I know some
say, ‘Let us have good laws, and no matter for the men that execute
them.’ But let them consider that though good laws do well, good men do
better: for good laws may [lack] good men...but good men will never [lack] good
laws, nor allow bad ones.” He understood that there was this internal
problem with man, so there has to be an internal check and that can only come
from the Word of God and from eternal truth.
This establishes the thinking that characterized the founders of this
nation that inform the writings of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence. This is the worldview that is embedded in those
documents. What happened? What happened was that there was a gradual erosion that occurred in the 19th
century with the influence of the Enlightenment coming out of
As you see the rise of secular humanism in that period, a couple of
things come out. One of those is the idea that religion is really
something private: it is just between you and God and is nobody else’s business.
In contrast to the founders, who clearly stated that it was important to know
the spiritual thinking of the relationship with God that a leader would have,
they said that no, that was not relevant. You just need to know their
practical skills; you do not need to know their character.
There was this bifurcation that occurred that there is the spiritual
life on the one hand and everything else on the other hand. This is
consistent with a Kantian epistemology – the idea that the Bible only addresses
salvation in the spiritual life and does not address the practical things of
life, such as budgeting, such as governing yourself or governing others,
family, nation. It does not affect any of those, just your spiritual
life, and so it does not really affect politics. That was not the view of
the founders.
The result of the 19th century and the ideas of the 19th
century lead to the chaos, the collapse, the erosion that we saw in the 20th
century. The 20th century is the result of the 19th
century. The ideas we are wrestling with now that many of us do not like
are the ideas that came out of the 19th century. What gave
this country stability, prosperity, what built its strength were the ideas of
the 17th and 18th century – those so-called archaic ideas
of the Bible, not the modernistic ideas of the 19th and 20th
century.
The Bible emphasizes the fact that character actually matters. One
of the election sermons preached to the
Rev. Matthias Burnett said, “Look well to the characters and
qualifications of those you elect and raise to office and places of
trust… Let the wise counsel of Jethro be your
guide. Choose ye out from among you ‘able men,
such as fear God, men of truth and hating covetousness and set them to rule
over you.’ ”
Another election sermon, Rev. Chandler Robbins in 1791 said, “How
constantly do we find it inculcated in the sacred writings, that rulers be
‘just men, fearers of God, haters of covetousness,’ that they ‘shake their
hands from holding bribes,’ because, a gift blindeth
the eyes of the wise, and perverteth the words of the
righteous.”
Noah Webster wrote “It is to the neglect of this rule of conduct in our
citizens [that is, not selecting Godly men for office] that we must ascribe the
multiplied frauds, the breaches of trust, peculations and embezzlements of
public property, which astonish even ourselves; which tarnish the character of
our country; which disgrace a republican government.”
Rev. Matthias Burnet said “Finally, ye whose high prerogative it is, to
invest with office and authority or to withhold them, and in whose power it is
to save or destroy your country, consider well the important trust…which God
has put into your hands. To God and posterity you are accountable for
them… Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those
rights, and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to
you.”
The problem we have today is not a new one. I think it is new in
terms of degree but not new. In the election of 1801, there was not at
that point a distinction made between president and vice president, so you
could vote for four different people, and they ended up having a runoff between
Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. It was clear that the people had
rejected John Adams; he served only one term as president. At the time,
Burr was known to be a man who was irreligious and did not care much about the
Bible and spiritual things, even though he was the grandson of Jonathan
Edwards, who was considered one of the greatest preachers and
theologians. Jefferson, who had been very close to the
This left them with a conundrum. They have a choice between two
men that many did not think were worthy. Abigail Adams, trying to think
through this issue, wrote to her sister in 1801 “Never were a people placed in
more difficult circumstances than the virtuous part of our countrymen are in at
the present crisis. I have turned, and turned, and overturned in my mind
at various times the merits and demerits of the two candidates. Long
acquaintance, private friendship and the full belief that the private character
of