Letter: What the Bible teaches about Election Day choices

For many decades Americans have been told to consider their choice on Election Day with the question, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Is this the best way to frame your discernment?

For some people religion is a private matter, a personal issue. For those who study the Jewish and Christian scriptures, religion is much more than a private concern. Religion calls us to care for our neighbor and to welcome the stranger. Anyone who bases their beliefs on these scriptures should take seriously the call from God to be our brothers' and sisters' keeper, to see service to others as the way we answer God's instructions about how to love and serve our God. 

For people of faith, the question then is not, "Am I better off?" but rather, "Is our society working to become fairer, more equitable and more inclusive?" For people of faith an election should not be about how responsive candidates are to our religious preferences but explaining how our values are lived out when we raise our voice in public spaces.

We are reminded to always seek the welfare of the most vulnerable. The prophet Isaiah tells us, God has a devotion we are called to: God often puts such things as a question to us:

Is it not our calling "to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in."

This Election Day, if we seek biblical wisdom as we weigh our choice, let us heed the call to consider the freedom, equality and opportunity enjoyed by our neighbors no less than our own.

Pastor Jim O'Hanlon

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church

Rye Brook