It's not whom you vote for; it's the questions you ask to determine your vote

I think it was all the way back in 1980, when, during one of his presidential debates, Ronald Reagan faced the camera and asked, "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?" He boiled the entire election down to this single question. Reagan's question - and, I suppose, the huge landslide victory it led him to - really bothered me. It seemed to make presidential elections all about "me," as if the only thing that any of us should consider when voting is which candidate or party will enhance "my" economic and material well-being. Even as a 19 year old, this question struck me as way off the mark, particularly for those of us who try to follow Jesus. So I came up with a few of my own election year questions, questions I wish voters would ask themselves before making up their minds:

Under which candidate/party will the poor be better off and better 

served?

Under which candidate/party will the homeless and hungry be housed

  and fed?

Under which candidate/party will the environment - God's creation - 

be protected, respected, and properly stewarded?

Under which candidate/party will people from other countries be 

valued and respected  as equals, as fellow children of God, deserving 

of all the same rights we, ourselves, treasure?

Under which candidate/party will those of us who "have" be 

challenged and asked to sacrifice for the good of those who

 "have not?"

JFK's famous remark, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country"certainly comes closer to the kind of thing we should be asking during an election year. It's far less selfish than Reagan's query, far less materialistic, and it at least hints at the fact that individuals ought to be willing to sacrifice for the good of a larger community. But, for me, even Kennedy's famous quotation is a bit too narrow in its scope for the global and interdependent world we inhabit in 2008. In this age when our neighbor is an Afghani Muslim, our kid's teacher is a German Jew, our family doctor is a Pakistani Hindu, and our business partner is an Irish Catholic, putting our nation above the world and America's children above China's or Iraq's seems both ethnocentric and short-sighted.

As our nation prepares to vote on November 4, my prayer is that people will ask the right questions, questions that look out for the well-being of those Jesus spent most of his time lifting up - the poor, the hungry, the widow, the prisoner, the orphan, and the disenfranchised. We may disagree as to which party or candidate will most effectively lift up the downtrodden or protect the environment, and that's ok. But if we're at least asking the same questions - the compassionate, unselfish, and global questions - we can all have reason to hope that the next four years will be more pleasing to God than the last eight have been. 

And as I continue to wrestle with what the Church will look like in the future, I have to believe that we will not shy away from political engagement, even though so many of our parishoners continue to insist erroneously that "Jesus wasn't political." Instead, we must find ways to enter the political fray, asking the questions that reflect Jesus' chief concerns AND behaving in ways that bring him honor and not shame.