Where should you put your cross?

Tomorrow’s General Election will be a tricky one for us Christians. The general public will probably do what it seems to have done most often in modern times – vote for change, without knowing precisely where change will lead them, either as individuals or as a society. Our British electorates do not major on reading party manifestos, probably because manifesto promises soon evaporate and can be taken largely with a pinch of salt. This probably explains why electoral turnouts have been steadily declining over recent years. The average turnout in the recent council elections just about managed to reach a third of all those eligible to vote, a depressing percentage that should give us all cause for thought.

For Christians the choice will be much more complicated than merely opting for change. St. Paul reminds us that we have a duty to pray for those in authority over us – and that presumably involves us in praying for the Lord’s guidance in the way we cast our votes through the democratic system in which we are lucky to find ourselves.

Now that society has largely turned its back upon God’s laws, we can hardly expect the political parties to offer us much hope. They will set their sights upon pandering to the majority, whose moral compass is now largely delineated, not by God’s Ten Commandments, but by the demands of their own desires, which hinge in the main around getting hold of lots of money and thereby being able to relax and enjoy an easy life. Neither of these aims accord with God’s intentions in the Old Testament, let alone in the New. Jesus tells us it is more blessed to give than to receive and St. Paul tells us to cultivate the great Christian virtues, which he itemises in great detail in Galatians 5. And of course, Jesus calls us to work while it is day because the night is coming when nobody is able to work. That may indeed apply principally to our need to roll up our sleeves in proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus’s amazing salvation, but it must surely also apply to how we conduct our normal secular working lives. Our daily work, whatever it may be, has dignity and value in itself and is meant both to bring glory to God and to benefit our neighbour.

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