“Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (John Adams, Second President of the United States)

“To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.” (Calvin Coolidge – 30^th president of the United States)

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“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” (Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England prior to the Second World War)

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize” (Voltaire)

“Righteous government is public policy of which God approves and the election to public office of those with that agenda.”

Righteous government is easy to articulate, but hard to achieve.  It is hard because, while Christians are really the only ones who actually understand righteousness, they for the most part have not shown interest in government because, spoken or not, many of their pastors practice “pietism” which teaches that since we are citizens of heaven we have no business dirtying our spirits and souls with the nastiness of politics.

Many will point stiffly to the passage that says to pray for kings and those in authority so that we may have a peaceable life in all goodness and honesty (I Tim 2:1-3) and say that nothing further need be done or said.  This is very convenient because the modern Christian world shrinks from controversy and this is an easy road by which to escape and thus evade responsibility.

But there is more to this that serious Christians should ponder. There is the issue of context. Paul lived under one of the cruelest and most bloodthirsty of Roman emperors. Protest or even meeting to discuss civic affairs could readily get a person killed without trial, in many cases on the spot. As a persecuted, even hunted minority, the only thing those Christians could do was pray.

A wise pastor I knew once said, “Righteousness is meeting the demands of a relationship.” It is a brilliant definition because it covers everything. Relations with spouses (e.g. be faithful and supportive), employers (e.g. do an honest day’s work, don’t steal), friends (e.g. don’t backbite, keep confidences), neighbors (e.g. be friendly, trustworthy, helpful) to name a few key relationships. But the good pastor never spoke of one of the key relationships that all people have – that of our relationship to our civil government.

That was odd, since that relationship is one of the most important we have: civil government can, and in some countries does, take away rewards, freedom, even life itself, when challenged.  Americans, as the most blessed people on earth when it comes to this, have been given the greatest governing document ever devised by man – The Constitution of the United States of America. It provides explicitly for equal justice under law and codifies more individual rights than any other such governing instrument on earth.

So if a Christian, or a Christian leader wants to be righteous toward civil government there are, as in the other relationships above, certain requirements. They put no great burden on a person and are easy to carry out. Rather astounding then that so few Christians bother with them. Reliable surveys indicate that only 50% of American citizens who claim to be Christian are registered to vote, and only 50% of those registered actually cast ballots. If we are looking for answers to why this country has become, in many areas of our society, a cesspool of greed, immorality, incivility, deception, and other things that destroy nations, this might be one of them.

There are only three requirements for an American Christian citizen to be righteous toward his civil government. 1. Be registered to vote in whatever party you believe God would want you to be registered, and if you have no answer to that, register NPA – no party affiliation. 2. Discover enough about the people who will appear on your ballot to make sure that you are not doing the devil’s work for him, as many ignorant people do. 3. Cast your informed ballot at every legal opportunity. This is surely not too heavy a burden when it comes to keeping the greatest nation ever to appear on earth governed by wise and honorable leaders.

The words of the great 19^th Century statesman Daniel Webster are relevant here: “Hold fast to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what happened once in 6,000 years may never happen again.”

Pastors can urge this upon their congregations without fear of repercussions. No political position is taken. Teachers can urge this upon their students as a matter of sound instruction for those who will be citizens charged with leading the nation forward through their votes. And parents should urge this on their young and older teens simply as an aspect of good parenting.

We as Americans have the glorious right to chart the future of our country through our votes. If wicked leaders come to power they can be removed, but only if we make use of the powers that God has given us. There are many areas of righteousness.  Let us not neglect this one.

Share your prayers for righteous government in the comments below!

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