by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: June 08, 2007

Faith should not influence how one votes, but a citizen's conscience should. And I take this question, should one's faith influence a citizen's vote, to be about religion: Catholic vs. Protestants; Christianity vs. Islam; Judaism vs. Christianity, and so on. Faith is that thing hoped for but seldom seen. How else should one vote if not by faith. We have faith that our choice is right?

In voting one should vote for the candidate that best exemplifies what the office is all about. The office holder should have qualities that outrank all the other contenders, regardless of his 'faith'. Certainly, the more one knows about all the candidates for a particular office, the better one is to decide ethically. Before voting we should have a good picture of the candidate and how likely he is to do the job we are hoping he will do. If there are doubts or if his wobbling on issues that are meaningful to us, we should think twice before voting for him or her.

It may be that we will have to do some careful checking to see exactly what issues they are mainly concerned with. We don't want to help vote them in and for the next four years sit around and complain. We had our choice and our choice should have been made by our faith.

Faith is a word that implies that we believe in something, and over long use has generally come to mean religion. But, using faith to mean 'the assent of the mind to truth as declared by another' means no. With our own mind we should gather all the facts and make our own well reasoned out choices. Faith is more than a religious belief, although many have tacked that labeling onto it; faith is that deeply held belief that everything will work out and all we have to do is to do our part in seeing that it works. Therefore we vote for the choice that we believe with all our hearts is the best choice.

This question is one of those slippery slopes questions. Meaning the more one tries to rise above all doubts by climbing upward, the more one sinks deeper into the mud.
Whatever, one should have faith that the best candidate will win, and if one's own particular choice lost, then most likely, one must believe, he was not the best choice.

I suggest all pray to God to help in decision making when politics are concerned. They need all the help they can get.

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