Elections matter

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The actions one should or could have taken are one thing; the actions we can take now, in this moment are quite another. There is an old proverb that goes, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” As cultural battles intensify in our great nation, it behooves us to always remember who we are, where we came from and what our particular personal responsibilities are in light of the moment in which we find ourselves.

We are daily facing great opposition by those who wish to codify the godless influence in academia, to dismantle and destroy western civilization by inserting and promoting Marxist ideology at a record pace. The values of our Christian Biblical worldview are seen as despicable and must be banished and destroyed by the endless and mindless accusatory name calling which never has to explain itself, justify itself and define itself. It’s as if noticing and speaking truth is now a crime! Theodore Dalrymple said, “One of the ways in which neo Marxists social justice totalitarians exert control is by humiliating people into admitting or professing that something is true which they know is not true. Forcing them to say things they know to be false… that is the ultimate exertion of the power and control desired.”

Chuck Colson, toward the end of his amazing ministry referred often to Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann who was born in Berlin and at one time was a supporter of Hitler, once meeting him as a college student. Post WW2, observing the horror she began to think differently. Why did so many of those who privately opposed Hitler say nothing until the war ended and the danger of speaking out had passed? She observed what she came to call the spiral of silence. It occurs when people fail to speak up against untruth and godlessness, the price of speaking rises. As the price rises, even fewer speak out which further causes the price to rise so that fewer people yet speak out until an entire culture or nation is silenced.

Neumann explained that groups often marginalize themselves by failing to make their voice heard in the public arena. The spiral of silence is the phenomenon that media elites and opinion leaders have taken advantage of to push their ideas of morality. They broadcast, publish, and display them before our eyes as though they are already accepted into the broad culture. Since people do not like to go against the grain, they silently allow these ideas to push into their culture… As these ideas are pushed by our “friends” in the media, education, and government, over time the culture moves in the direction that they want it to go.

So, allow me to state that elections do matter to me, first and foremost, because of my grandchildren. We elect those who will make critically important decisions that will determine what kind of world my grandchildren grow up in. Dan Hart of the Washington Stand writes, “In recent days, a Vermont high school soccer coach and parent was fired for using male pronouns in reference to a biologically male trans-identifying student who watched his daughter change in the girls’ locker room, and a Pennsylvania school was found to be instructing teachers to hide the preferred names and pronouns of trans-identifying students from their parents. The incidents are the latest in an escalating clash between school administrators and parents over the transgender issue that is spilling into the voting booth. And that’s just what my grandkids will face.

Secondly, my calling will be directly affected by what happens at the ballot box in November. As my friend Jim Garlow writes, “Freedoms come in “threes.” Political freedom, economic freedom and religious liberty coexist together. Take one away and the other two will eventually disappear. One cannot exist without the other two. The genius of America is that it had all three, until recently.”

Ben Johnson recently wrote, Many Christians have found themselves the victim of ESG — the environmental, social, and governance investing movement, in which radical activists pressure banks and other financial institutions to deny services to legal, but politically disfavored, industries. Christian conservatives in the United States have reported progressively greater difficulty accessing banking services. Evangelist Nick Vujicic said he found himself canceled after he began speaking out against the abortion industry (which seemingly has no trouble banking). “I got kicked out of a bank with no warning. They froze my credit cards, froze my debit cards,” he told CBN News in July. Similarly, the CEO of Salesforce threatened to cut ties with states that enact pro-life or pro-family policies. You see, elections do matter!!!

Lastly elections matter to me because it will affect the rest of my life and possibly yours as well. For us today, looking upon a culture that has been led astray, robbed of biblical truth and starved of God’s Love… it needs Jesus. I remember my dear friend Talmadge Johnson who said often, “The world at its worst needs the church at its best!” How very true and how very needed. Again, I remind us all elections matters! May we here and now rise to the occasion, sound the alarm and make the difference!

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