Column by Dr. Ann Hollingsworth
If you are a Baby Boomer or older, you probably remember Watergate and Chuck Colson as one of the players in it. He spend some time in prison for it, and while there got saved, then after prison, went on to do ministry focused on prisoners.
Several years ago, I had the privilege of going through the Colson Fellows program that was started by him as a lay ministry. In his book with Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?, he shared many words of wisdom on life. A favorite of mine was about those of us who say we are Christians living out what we believe. Here are his key pointers.
Christians must be good citizens. He pointed out that we should do out of love for God what others do because they are forced to by the law.
Christians must carry out their civic duty in every walk of life. Once my mother said that if we as churches were doing what we should do, there would not be the need for the government to take of this “civic duty+ for us.
Christians must be engaged directly in politics. The starting point is to vote. While we may not want to tackle serving or even running for public office, we can be proactive to keep our elected officials accountable to doing the will of the people who put them in office.
The church must act as the conscience of society, as a restraint against the misuse of governing authority. We have double power if we will but use it. We have the power of our numbers and we also have the power of God within us. Christian power made a difference in some previous presidential elections – it is high time for us to use that power again to help our country.
When we walk out what we believe, we make life a whole lot better for ourselves and everyone else.
