Your name is on the ballot

by Rashad Gibson

With election season around the corner and while observing the confusion and dysfunction our nation is experiencing, many hope that former President Trump gets re-elected. I voted for President Trump in 2016 and 2020. Although I think he would be a better President than that of Joe Biden, I would like to place another candidate on the ballot: the American people.

Leadership is most critical when it comes to leading the most powerful nation in the world. However, what is even more vital is leadership regarding self, leadership in the home, leadership in the church, and leadership in the community. In our current day, we are inundated with headlines concerning potential candidates for office and the latest gossip concerning those in
power. Many of us get raptured and entangled in the media circus.

Meanwhile, while the latest buzz in the media or social media grips us, it distracts us from our personal responsibilities. The point is that the latest political candidate running for office will not save us from the mess we are
in. Whether you know it or not, you are running for office.

We live in a representative republic; therefore, we should elect the most capable, wise, and godly leaders to lead our country. However, shouldn’t this principle ring true within our homes, church, and community? In other words, if you are frustrated with observing the corruption of Washington, D.C., or your state capital, school board, etc., how well are you leading yourself, your family, church, or community?

A lost rudiment of our day, which our Founding Fathers spoke of repeatedly, is the principle of self-government. Having a free representative republic is noble; however, maintaining the republic would require citizens to exercise moral restraint and godly character. Self-government is hinged on the embodiment of Christian character. Christian character forms a free life hinged on individual responsibility and duty while living in a constitutional republic.

As former speaker of the House, Robert Winthrop (1847-1849) stated so eloquently, “All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint.

Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them, either by the word of God or the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries and governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is Religion which must support the State.” Indeed, since we live in a free republic, the people who live in the republic must be diligent in living virtuous and godly lives. We are not to live this way under compulsion by the authoritarian hand of the State; rather, by autonomous choice before a holy God.

If we choose not, we risk losing the liberty we inherited in exchange for tyranny. As Noah Webster, Founding Father of American education, solemnly states, “Men in republics are as wicked, and as selfish as in monarchies, and with far more power to introduce disorders, both into legislation and into the administration of the laws…

The corruption of the electors is the first step towards the ruin of republics, and when the sources of power are corrupted, the evil hardly admits of a remedy.” So if you are tired of the corruption of our leaders, society, and politics, lift a mirror and begin to examine self.

Stop sending memes and spending hours on social media perusing the latest gossip. Instead, send prayers to the Lord Jesus Christ to build spiritual stamina and renew your mind by reading the Word of God and exercising self-discipline while putting to death the passions that undermine godly character.

Remember, your name is on the ballot. How well will you govern?