- "A House Divided...Good or Bad?"

(by Tim Ewing, Publisher Rare Jewel Magazine)

Tomorrow the 2004 election season will draw to a close, barring protracted legal battles over vote-counts. On this Election Eve, I encourage all of you who have not taken advantage of early-election voting to hit the voting booth Tuesday. Regardless of who is our next president, and which party gains or maintains control of the House and Senate, I hope and pray that your vote in this election is just one part of a much larger effort to bring the influence of Christian principles back into our nation's political processes.

During this political season, we have heard often about how "divided" is our nation. Incumbent politicians and especially President Bush have been repeatedly asked to comment on why our nation is so "divided"...and it's always in a negative context...as if division is automatically a bad thing.

True, Scripture tells us, "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand." (Mark 3:25) Yet Jesus Christ himself caused tremendous division during his three years of ministry on earth. In Luke 12:51, Jesus tells us, "Do you think I came to bring peach on earth? No, I tell you, but division."

If we take a proper view of Scripture, we see division is sometimes good and sometimes bad. We should not make the same mistake as today's typical news media that assumes ALL division is by definition a bad thing.

Much of the division that we see in our nation today is good because the Christian community is becoming more effective in promoting its perspective on how our nation should be governed and by whose standard our laws should be based.

When Christians take a stand to prevent the continued immoral slide of our culture, the result in the short term will be a divided nation. Such division should not surprise us, nor should we draw back or soften our approach when we see it occurring. As long as we remain Biblical, and defend our faith and the truth of our nation's Christian heritage with respect and love, then we should find great motivation in a growing division in our nation. Though divided today, perhaps in the not so distant future we may once again be one nation united under God.

Division over important issues such as Sanctity of Life, Sanctity of Marriage, whether our nation's laws should be restored to their original Biblical standard, and the public acknowledgment of God, means the Christian message is beginning to be heard.

Citizens are being forced off the fence in order to choose between the Christian standard of absolute truth obliged by the Founding Fathers and the falsehood that today's culture masquerades as their own version of "truth," tolerance, political correctness, or whatever term it conceives to justify its devolving standards.

This year, instead of taking down our sails and battening down our hatches after the election concludes, let us take a different course. In 2005 and beyond, let us:

• Continue to pray diligently and repent on behalf of our nation.
• Continue to learn about our nation's Christian heritage and its original form of government.
• Continue the work to restore our nation's Christian foundation and Biblical standard for our public policy.
• Hold our next president and congress accountable to a Biblical standard while we raise up a new generation of leaders to replace them if they ignore us.