You don't have to be able to read tea leaves, or interpret the star charts to see it coming. It's possible, already, to predict the narrow focus of the upcoming mid-term elections. In fact, if you were a betting soul, you might make a profit if you wagered that most issues of interest to voters will be argued under this broad banner, "family values."
We'll likely hear politicians say that school restructuring, tax reform, health care costs, improvements in the criminal justice system, road construction, economic development, and homeland security all relate to values.
At one level that's on target. If the economic pie is only so big, it's our shared values that help us decide how big, or small, to cut the pieces.
But there's more to value here than slicing and dicing. Do we value the so-called free market system where legacy, birth-right and luck rule? (That's a clever use of Darwin's “law of the jungle" that most backers of Intelligent Design often decry.) Or is there another value-set available, offering a more wise and just option?
Clearly, I'm not the first “preacher" to call on believers to vote-their-values. That's because I believe that who we say we are as Christians, and what we do and say in the name of Jesus, is a very public matter.
Standing in, with, and under the banner, "Christian,” means going public with our on-going relationship with God. The God, in Jesus - who I speak to and listen for today - is not the same God who I asked to prove "his' love by giving me answers to a math test for which I had not studied.
It's necessary to say, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13). It's just not sufficient. The value of that truth must be balanced with these others: Sing to the Lord a new song (Psalm 98); From this time forward I will make you hear new things (Isaiah 48); For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth...(Isaiah 65); See, I am making all things new (Revelation 21).
Jesus' values in favor of the poor and oppressed were spoken out and acted out in the public square. That's why Jesus' words and deeds made big differences in the lives of individuals, families, communities, social institutions, cultures, and the world. His followers, still speaking and acting as he did, can take the wager and bet on receiving the grace necessary to fend off the powers and principalities that stifle the dignity and worth of ALL those who live and vote in the world that God is still eager to create anew, save again, and, bless once more!
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