A number of issues confront voters in the United States today.

Personal one-liner comments on some of them:

• Poverty: God cares deeply for the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, and the displaced, and calls us to do all we can do to alleviate poverty.
• Systemic Racism: The Gospel is fundamentally opposed to any form of racism. Racism is embedded in virtually all our institutions. Christians need to work to eradicate racism at all levels. 
• Original national sins – genocide of Native people & enslavement of Africans:As a nation, we need to officially repent and right the wrongs via restorative justice. 
• Mental health, including addictions and suicide in vets and teens: Mental health issues, including addictions, are killing American veterans, American teenagers, and those in poverty, both in the inner cities and in the rural countryside. Again, as followers of Jesus, we should be supporting programs to prevent suicide, heal mental illness, and bring recovery to addicts.
• Access to medical care for everyone: God is all about life. I am strongly pro-life, which includes promoting free national high quality accessible healthcare for all. Tying healthcare to employment is absurd. 
• Food deserts: Many people do not have access to healthful foods. Everyone should.
• Creation care is a huge issue – it is the first task God gave to humanity. Christians should be greener than green, leading the way in caring for our environment, moving us beyond fossil fuels and artificial substances. Deep concern for human-caused global climate change should characterize us.
• Abortion: As I said, I am pro-life, but the way to lower and maybe eliminate abortions is not through coercion, laws, or threats. 25% of American women have had abortions. Are we really ready to declare them all murderers? It is hearts we need to win. Our focus should be on adoption, healthcare, and poverty. Our number one job is to love. 
• Immigration Policy: God calls us clearly to welcome and care for the alien and the stranger, not wall them out, separate families, or ship people back to probable death. 
• Cabinet appointments: Not really a biblical issue other than all those in government should be honest, of good character, experts in their fields, and seeking the good of all. 
• Judicial appointments: see above
• Character of candidates: see above
• Economy: An economy needs to benefit everyone, not just an elite few. Unregulated capitalism is based on greed. It worships Mammon. 
• Fair and equal treatment of all: Amen
• Freedom of religion: This phrase has become code for denying equal rights to others, as in, if I own a business and don’t want to serve African–Americans, or Native people, or the LGBTQ community, I don’t have to. True freedom of religion separates church and state. 
• Freedom of speech: I’m all for it as long as it is peaceful.
• Gun ownership: Jesus said to love your enemies and not resist evil people. Jesus’ love is cruciform love. I’m in favor of turning all weapons into garden tools. It seems absurd to me that a person has to have license to drive a car but not to stockpile military grade weapons.
• Law and order: Nixon-era code for oppressing black people, mass incarceration, and ensuring white dominance. 
• Black Lives Matter: No one suggests other lives do not matter – the phrase means black lives should matter also. Responding to BLM with “all lives matter,” or, “blue lives matter,” is like having a house on fire in your neighborhood and protesting to the firefighters “all houses matter.” Of course they do, but only one is on fire. BLM is nonviolent and is calling us to stop police brutality, profiling, and discrimination.
• Defund the Police: An unfortunate phrase. No politician would come close to getting rid of police forces. What is being called for is a shift in priorities – less money militarizing police and more to alleviate poverty, for example. 
• Military strength and policy: The US spends almost a trillion dollars a year on national security, more than the next ten nations combined (including Russia and China). We have the ability to kill every child, woman, and man on the face of the earth 15 times and eradicate all biological life. None of that sounds like the Sermon on the Mount.
• Peace among nations will only come when we care about other nations and use our wealth to help lift others out of poverty and chaos.
• Sanctuary cities are a great idea, although I think we need a sanctuary country, as in the Statue of Liberty
• Social Security is all that keeps massive numbers of older Americans from being homeless. 
• Covid-19 pandemic response has been dismal, in fact, the worst in the entire world, which is why the US leads in cases and deaths. Our leaders lied to us and minimized a lethal threat. They have blood on their heads. 

On Tuesday, I am voting for the poor, the hungry, the mentally ill, the broken, the refugee, the homeless, the sick, and the incarcerated – those Jesus called “the least of these my sisters and brothers” in Matthew 25.