WHICH CANDIDATE DO I SUPPORT?

WHICH CANDIDATE DO I SUPPORT?

 Alan Keyes explains relationship between 'Christian and citizen vocations'


Recently, I received an email from a reader who asked, “Whom do you support? … so far no one seems to be rising to the top, or to be much different from what we have now.” In this column I will give my response to this question. But my main aim is to summarize the key elements of the deliberation that gives rise to it. That deliberation begins from premises I am required constantly to respect, as a Christian, as a citizen of the United States and as a human being committed to respect the bonds of nature by which the Creator, God, makes my life possible, in every sense of the term.

I profess to be part of the living body of Christ. I know that these days that statement leads many to think immediately of the Church, but I think first of its literal meaning. As my hand or heart are parts of my body in this life, so I profess to be a limb, organ or cell of Christ’s body, subject in all things to His instruction and the will of God, His Father. I am also a citizen of the United States, by birth but also by profession. That vocation calls for me to act as a member of the sovereign body of the people of the United States.

Thanks to the choices made by America’s founding generation, the chief directive of my Christian vocation need never be in conflict with the assumption of my American citizenship. They chose to respect the choices made by God in regard to the nature and meaning of our humanity. On account of their respect for God’s authority, I may act according to the directive of Christ’s example, whereby I am called to pray wholeheartedly to God “Not my will but thine be done.”

Of course the fact that my Christian and citizen vocations need never conflict does not mean they will never conflict. Since the 1960s, a great struggle has been underway in the United States over whether the commitment to God-endowed right is still the defining basis of our common citizenship. It is about the bonds, informed by God’s will and intention, that make our common nature possible. It is about whether to discard, in the false name of human liberation, the terms of reference that make humanity as such distinctly possible. For, as C.S. Lewis surmised, behind the pretense of human “liberation” lurks in fact “the abolition of man.”

As a Christian, I know on which side of the conflict I stand. Christ calls me to accept the will of God that I “may have life … and have it more abundantly.” Whatever bonds, whatever pains, whatever humiliation that acceptance requires, even unto death, Christ has exampled for me: in His passion, crucifixion and submission to what is death, in the eyes of men.

Yet Christ also calls me to accept God’s first and true intention for life, beyond the shadow of death. This is the life I know by my communion with him in the Spirit that informs the living body of which I profess to be a member. This is life in God’s eyes, which see beyond the horizons of human bondage to the true nature of that liberty wherewith He (by, in and through His first, last and Incarnate Word) has made us free.

The question that therefore tests and reconciles the vocation of Christ and the vocation of my American citizenship is the question of life, as God sees it. But in the perspective of God, it is not just a question about my existence as a particular human being. In His will for creation, He has already answered that question. For the Word of God is in me. Does that Word perish? Not until the Being of God comes to restore it utterly, as I am saved from perdition. The question of life is therefore entirely caught up in the question of our relationship with God, whether as individuals, as a nation or as a species.

So when I ponder the political question “Whom do I support?” the answer has to do with the preservation and perpetuation of the understanding that has, until the present war against it began in earnest, conserved my nation in its right relationship with God, by and on account of its commitment to God’s will for humanity as a whole. Do I see anyone on offer from either of the so-called major political parties, still loyal to that understanding of the American creed? I do not. As it is my citizen’s vocation loyally to preserve that understanding, they offer no one who represents me, no not one.

But if I cast aside the aim of representation in this crucial respect, what is left of the republican form of government the Constitution intends to guarantee? Nothing is left of it, except masks and shadows that turn out to be different shades of evil.

Why has this come about? Because we have failed in our duty to resist the design for despotism that is the motive and aim of the present war against our righteous and constitutional self-government. What is the institutional vehicle for that design? The elitist faction’s sham party system. By now events have proven beyond reasonable doubt that it must be altered or abolished. If not, the nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition of God’s primordial authority over right and justice will perish.

The sham party system is a bad tree. As such, it cannot bear good fruit. Does this mean there is no hope? Only to those who are more willing to abandon their country than to discard the destructive parties that are betraying it. The Constitution sees and relies upon the better hope. It lies in the faithful, courageous initiative of people of goodwill; people willing to act on their professed loyalty to God and the Constitution, in order to fulfill the intention of both when it comes to the process for electing the president and vice president of the United States.

You know the old saying “We have met the enemy and it is us.” As a Christian, as an American, I have a better observation: “We have met our Salvation, and He is in us.” He offers the hope that reconciles our faith in God with the responsibility of citizenship we are called faithfully to carry out. But to accept the offer we must free ourselves from the bondage of partisan self-deceit, in order to celebrate (assemble to honor) our nation’s bond and duty to God. From that celebration our decent liberty may rise again, ready for the renewal of God’s blessings upon ourselves and our posterity.

 Alan Keyes 

Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Joseph F Barber- https://twitter.com/toptradesmen

“We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.” “The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?” “No Big Power in all history ever thought of itself as an aggressor. That is still true today.” There is no way to peace; peace is the way.