Imagine driving to your job each day dreading every second of your commute. The work itself is not bad—in fact, you actually like what you’re doing. The problem is your boss. He is a nightmare—always yelling and berating and making unreasonable demands. Nothing you do is good enough for this tyrant. Every suggestion you make is met with derision, and every explanation you give is dismissed as a weak excuse. You wish so badly that you could leave, but your personal financial situation makes that sort of transition impossible. So you go to work each day, do the best you can under the conditions you have, and pray that you fly low enough under the radar that the boss doesn’t notice you.

Some of you may be saying, “Joel, when did you visit my work? That’s me every day!” If that’s true, let me encourage you to read 1 Peter 2:18-21. God can use your patient endurance to set an example and bless those around you. But imagine if living under this kind of tyrannical leadership extended beyond just your work to your whole life. Every decision you made, every course of action you wanted to take would be subject to the will and authority of someone else—a person who could be either benevolent or a despot.

This is life in a centralized monarchy. It is existence under an authoritarian or totalitarian regime. If you want to really understand the extent of the freedoms of our Western democracies, spend time talking to someone who lived behind the Iron Curtain under Soviet rule. Sit down over coffee with a survivor of Castro’s Cuba or Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Or if you want a firsthand experience, you can take a little excursion to Maduro’s Venezuela or Kim Jong Un’s North Korea.

Whether we care for our leaders or not, there are two truths that lift us high above many other nations and place us firmly in that category of “blessed”—first, we voted them in, and second, we can vote them out. Truly, that’s what makes all the difference. By the time this newsletter is disseminated, Israel will have had its third round of elections seeking to designate a prime minister. The turnout should be extremely high, either matching or exceeding the 68.5 percent and 69.4 percent of April’s round one and September’s round two.[1] Then, the day after Israel goes to the polls, the United States will hold Super Tuesday—a day in which fourteen of its fifty states will hold primaries to see which candidates will face off in the November 2020 presidential election.

This idea of one person/one vote is historically a much more recent development in world politics. While in many nations it has become an expected right, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is also a true blessing. As those who have the honor of wearing the title “citizen,” we have the joy and obligation to participate in the privilege of the ballot. This is particularly true of Christians. There is a cultural battle taking place around the world. If we, as the ambassadors of Christ to our particular nations, do not share in the electoral process, where will the influence toward God’s truth come from? We must not let inconvenience, apathy, or political frustration silence our voice of righteousness and holiness.

My encouragement to you is to become educated in the candidates and measures. Put time in so that you may intelligently vote the whole ballot. Pray over your votes. Ask the Lord for guidance according to James 1:5, knowing that his wisdom extends from candidates to taxes to members of the school board. By abdicating this right, you will relinquish your standing to complain or protest over the direction and leadership of your nation. But by making the effort to tick those ballot boxes, you will be doing your part in steering our government and culture back to morality, godliness, and truth.

—Joel

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[1] “Israeli Elections: Voter Turnout,” www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israeli-central-elections-committee.