The law of the Lᴏʀᴅ is perfect, reviving the soul (Psalm 19:7).

“I never collect welfare, I never collect Medicare, I never collect any money from the government. All what I do, I work hard, seven days a week. I raised my kids, graduated from the college and bought a house and I bought a business all because I work hard and become an honest man.” This is how Joe Chahayed described himself to reporters after selling the winning $2.04 billion Powerball ticket this week.

Mr. Chahayed emigrated from Syria in the 1980s with his wife, two children, and around $14,000 in his name. Now a grandfather of ten, he owns Joe’s Service Center in Altadena, an unincorporated community northeast of Los Angeles. For selling the winning ticket, he will receive a Powerball bonus of $1 million. Unsurprisingly, he plans to spend it on his five children and donate some to the community.

“Uncertainty is the friend of the status quo”

In Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The Wisdom of Legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser, Dan Levy lists and discusses a number of insightful and practical axioms taught by the noted economist.

Among them is this observation: “Uncertainty is the friend of the status quo.” Levy explains: “When there is uncertainty about the value of the choices we are considering in a given decision, we tend to stick with our initial or previous choice.” He cites credit cards, bank accounts, gym memberships, and even toothpaste brands as examples.

Such “status quo bias” is often appropriate, as Levy notes: “As long as we consider the original brand we choose to be sufficiently good, and the cost of assessing whether to change not worth it, it is rational to stick with our initial choice.” However, he adds that “one can take advantage of status quo bias to help people make better choices by setting a default option that will be good for the person making the decision.”

In behavioral economics terms, this involves constructing “choice architecture” that “nudges” people toward good choices. Such defaults have been used to get people to automatically enroll in retirement plans or donate organs, for example.

Two transforming truths

As America has focused on this week’s midterm elections, we have focused in the Daily Article on the relationship between politics, culture, and religion. Yesterday we discussed the urgency of holiness for Christian leaders since “religion is the root of culture” and religious leaders play a formative role in the lives of religious followers.

Today, let’s close our series by considering the urgency of personal godliness for all Christians, whatever our leadership status. We’ll do so by applying the two narratives we’ve explored thus far:

1. In a postmodern society that measures truth by relevance, our personal character is fundamental to our cultural impact.
2. Establishing biblical authority as our “default option” will transform our personal character and our public influence.

Joe Chahayed is not the first or the last person to sell a winning Powerball ticket of significant size (though the one he sold was the largest so far). However, he made the news not just for what he did but for who he is: a hardworking, conscientious immigrant who has made a good life for himself and his family.

We are always going to be attracted to the beliefs of attractive people. (This is why celebrity endorsements remain such popular and powerful marketing tools.) However, as fallen people, you and I are more likely to live in ways that discourage rather than encourage others to trust in our holy God unless we have his help.

This is why it is so urgent that we decide every day at the start of the day to live biblically that day. When we say to God, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105, my emphasis), it will become so. When we decide that “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16), we will profit from it personally.

“Pilate was merciful till it became risky”

It should be noted that choosing against culture always comes at a cost. It is far easier to float with the current than to swim against it. Living biblically in an unbiblical culture especially requires courage, as the members of the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith” vividly remind us:

“Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy” (vv. 35–38).

In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis famously observed: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. . . . A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”

However, the further our culture turns from biblical morality, the more it needs biblical truth. The less it considers God’s word to be relevant, the more it needs to see the relevance of God’s word in our lives.

“The testimony of the Lᴏʀᴅ is sure”

Let’s close by applying our conversation personally: What is your next step into biblical obedience? It likely will require courage on your part—if it were easy, you would probably have already taken it.

But if you will decide now to make biblical living your “default option” for the day, you will say with David, “The law of the Lᴏʀᴅ is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lᴏʀᴅ is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lᴏʀᴅ are right, rejoicing the heart” (Psalm 19:7–8).

Will your soul be revived and your heart rejoice today?

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“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” —Hosea 4:6

Republicans are still on track this morning to regain control of the House, though numerous races are still undecided. Three seats are still undetermined in the Senate as well, where Republicans hold a 49–48 edge.

It has been said that “democracy is a slow process of stumbling to the right decision instead of going straight forward to the wrong one.” As our latest exercise in democracy continues to unfold, a relevant Wall Street Journal article caught my eye today. In “Lincoln’s Vision of Democracy,” famed Princeton historian Allen C. Guelzo shows how Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” summarized American democracy concisely but brilliantly in his now-famous triplet: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

As Dr. Guelzo explains, “This wasn’t merely a rhetorical flourish. In that triplet, Lincoln lays out the three fundamental elements of democracy.” The first is consent—government of the people. The second is the people’s voice in the work of governing—government by the people. The third is government that serves the interests of the people it represents—government for the people.

President Lincoln believed that a new commitment to these three ideals would lead to a “new birth of freedom” for our land. According to Dr. Guelzo, “That new birth is the task that lies before every succeeding generation of Americans. In it, we find our way not only back to Lincoln but to democracy itself.”

How can we experience this “new birth of freedom” in these divided and divisive days?

“America’s long heroic journey”

I consider The Abolition of Man to be C. S. Lewis’s most prophetic book. In it, he consistently warns against the rising moral subjectivism that he believed would lead to the downfall of democracy. Lewis’s insights relate directly to our “post-truth” culture today.

Here’s one example: “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men [and] the solution is a technique.”

The fact that scientific techniques are more successful than magic tricks in subduing reality to our wishes makes his point more relevant. Amazing medical and technological advances have improved all of our lives immeasurably. As a result, we have been conditioned to believe that unaided human effort can “subdue reality to the wishes of men,” whatever those wishes are.

For example, in his first inaugural address, President Bill Clinton declared: “Our democracy must be . . . the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” He then called on Americans to embrace “the conviction that America’s long heroic journey must go forever upward.”

Such self-reliance lies at the heart of Western culture. Socrates claimed that to “know thyself” is the path to knowledge. Aristotle asserted, “Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”

How is such self-reliance working for us?

“Religion is the root of culture”

In a democracy, we are tempted to invest politics with the same power and authority we have assigned to science, asking our leaders to “subdue reality” to the wishes of those who elect them. But politics in a democracy cannot solve our greatest problems because leaders are elected by voters to do what voters want, and voters are just as fallen as the leaders they elect.

What, then, is the answer to our deepest challenges and needs? Richard John Neuhaus observed: “Culture is the root of politics, and religion is the root of culture.” This is why renewing America requires renewing America’s religion.

I often quote from George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address because this observation is so critical for our nation: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports” (my emphasis). Here’s the problem: in our secularized, post-Christian, even anti-Christian culture, many would divorce religion from morality. As I noted recently, more Americans think morality should be based on “what you feel in your heart” than any other source, including the Bible.

But Washington had a prophetic word for this dangerous fallacy: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Does Hosea’s warning apply to us?

So, renewing American democracy requires renewing American culture, which requires renewing American religion. Spiritual awakenings across our history have brought about such moral and even political transformation, but they always begin within the church.

God’s familiar promise to Israel in 2 Chronicles 7:14 to “heal their land” begins, “If my people who are called by my name . . . .” The Lord warned the religious leaders of Hosea’s day, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. . . . you have forgotten the law of your God” (Hosea 4:6).

In a day when religious leaders and entire denominations reject biblical sexual morality and endorse elective abortion, when just 37 percent of America’s pastors hold a biblical worldview, does Hosea’s warning apply to us?

However, I must admit that there is a personal downside to today’s article: it is tempting for me to criticize political and religious leaders for their failings and so avoid honesty about my own. I have no right to ask others to do what I am unwilling to do.

So I must ask, Is my heart “wholly true to the Lᴏʀᴅ” (1 Kings 8:61)?

Am I willing to serve my King whatever the risk?

Am I willing to do whatever he asks, go wherever he leads, and serve whatever the cost?

Are you?

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 “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!” —Psalm 122:6

As of this morning, Republicans appear to be on track to regain control of the House of Representatives, though the size of their majority is yet to be known. Control of the Senate is still to be determined, with several pivotal races too close to call.

As the leader of a nonpartisan ministry, I am responding to the midterm elections with reflections that would be the same regardless of which party controls which branch of our government.

“The problems posed by living in collaborative groups”

As background, let’s consider a New Yorker article indicating that “reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.” In other words, we tend to make our decisions based on how our group makes theirs. Consequently, while we’re critically aware of the fallacies held by others, we are blind about our own.

In addition, we must rely on the expertise of others for the essentials of life (such as the function of toilets, as the article illustrates), so we do the same with our opinions, depending on the “knowledge” of those with whom we already agree. Further research demonstrates that we experience genuine pleasure—a rush of dopamine—when we process information that supports our beliefs.

These facts relate directly to voting in a democracy. Once we identify our “group,” we tend to vote in ways that advance our group’s agenda. We are much more able to see the shortcomings of the other group’s candidates than our own. We are rewarded psychologically when our side wins and the other side loses.

And democracy, which depends on the wisdom of the voters to elect leaders most capable of serving the people, is weakened as a result.

“The father of American democracy”

In 1638, Puritan pastor Rev. Thomas Hooker delivered a sermon before the Connecticut General Court advocating for popular sovereignty, the right of the people to rule themselves. This was the first time in the colonies that an American explicitly asserted such democratic ideas.

He based his sermon on Deuteronomy 1:13, where Moses instructed the people, “Choose for your tribes wise, understanding, and experienced men, and I will appoint them as your heads.” Hooker’s sermon influenced the creation of the Connecticut state constitution, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which was the first constitution in the American colonies.

As a result, he is often described as “the father of American democracy.”

Note his belief that our leaders must be “wise, understanding, and experienced.” This implies that the people who choose them must also be “wise, understanding, and experienced” so as to identify leaders who deserve their support. This is the fundamental challenge within our system of governance: as French philosopher Joseph de Maistre noted, “In a democracy, people get the leaders they deserve.”

The fact that we are fallen people explains the fallenness of our society and of our politics. As grateful as I am for those who are willing to engage in public service, the fact remains that we can only elect sinners like ourselves.

History professor Daniel K. Williams notes, “Political parties work well as highly imperfect tools for accomplishing particular aims, but they become horrific idols when we treat them as sources of our moral identity.”

“We have received Christ himself”

David implored us, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!” (Psalm 122:6). Note that he did not encourage us to “work” for the peace of Jerusalem, but to “pray” for it. The Hebrew word translated “pray” could be rendered “beg for, plead.” The grammar could be rendered “plead and keep on pleading.”

“Peace” translates shalom, a very significant word in Jewish culture even today. It describes completeness, wholeness, health in every dimension of life. David knew that the source of true shalom for Israel and for the rest of the world lies in God, not in us. We must come to him with expectant, urgent, humble, repentant faith.

And when we do, God does what only he can do.

Charles Spurgeon observed, “By an act of faith Jesus becomes a real person in the consciousness of our heart. . . . It is true that he gave us life from the dead. He gave us pardon of sin; he gave us imputed righteousness. These are all precious things, but we are not content with them; we have received Christ himself” (his emphasis).

“Preach first by the way that you live”

This is why sharing the good news of God’s love is so urgent. As pastor and evangelist Greg Laurie notes, “God’s primary way of reaching nonbelievers is through the verbal articulation of the gospel.” We are inviting others into a personal, transforming relationship with a personal, transforming God. We can actually know Jesus and then make him known. And knowing him does in us and through us what no political party or leader could ever accomplish.

However, Charles Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan from 1564 to 1584, offered an important qualification: “Be sure that you preach first by the way that you live. If you do not, people will notice that you say one thing but live another, and your words will bring only cynical laughter and a derisive shake of the head.”

Live the gospel and share the gospel. Know Christ and make him known, and long after yesterday’s elections are forgotten, your faithfulness to your Lord will echo in eternity.

This is the promise, and the invitation, of God.

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