It’s easy to be cynical about American politics. It’s easy to think we can safety check out. Many have concluded that politics doesn’t matter.
That’s a mistake. Laws and regulations form the institutional and even the physical shape of the world we live in every day, and there is no neutral institutional framework. What does the law punish and reward? What’s permitted? What’s forbidden? These are moral and not just political questions, and the answers our leaders give determine the patterns of our common life.
Wrong-headed and evil policies damage real people. How many families are poor or homeless because politicians enacted foolish economic or housing policies? How many babies have been killed, how many women’s lives ruined because our leaders permit abortion? How many Christians have been forced out of the Middle East because of our military adventuring there?
Not all of us need to be activists, but we should be engaged in politics for the same reason we put on a Thanksgiving dinner at low-rent apartments or put up a homeless man at the hotel: Because our Lord Jesus tells us, Love your neighbor.
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