It’s easy to forget that you live in a rare historical moment. In human history, only a very few people have been blessed with the option of picking the people who would protect their right to rule themselves.
For most throughout the ages, and even now, it has been monarchs, despots, or warlords ruling over the people.
Jesus of Nazareth planted the seeds for the first government to ever exist for “the people” as a whole. It would take over 1700 years to bloom.
Luke 20:25 records his simple, yet unprecedented, answer to what was a trick question about paying taxes and allegiance to Rome’s dictator, Caesar. Jesus said, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Lord Acton, great British legislator and historian, wrote of this statement as defining the sacredness of government but also it’s boundaries.
Jesus simultaneously rejected governments with absolute control over people and inaugurated freedom. Political authority must have limits. The new law, spirit, and authority he proclaimed gave to liberty a meaning and a value it had not possessed in the philosophy or in the constitution of governments before this point.
The American Constitution represented the first government to draw the line Jesus proclaimed between governments and people.
Your vote is like taking part in carrying a sacred torch lit over 2000 years ago by Jesus of Nazareth. The right of American citizens to walk safely and with dignity up to a ballot box was forged at the cost of many lives.
Vote with a sense of humility and gratitude as well as with discernment for how the people you pick will honor your right to self rule.