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11 Questions to Ask of Your Potential Presidential Candidates3 min read

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Gordon McDonald, one of my favorite authors, has written a nice piece on what he thinks evangelicals should be looking for and asking about potential presidential candidates.  Nice.

  1. Can he/she give us a government that will recoup our reputation
    in the world as a generous and compassionate nation? And could he/she
    take more seriously the fact that a large part of this world now finds
    our country distasteful? And this goes for Christians in other lands
    also. (I’m embarrassed every time I go abroad.)
  2. Is there a candidate brave enough to influence the formulation of
    bold new initiatives regarding energy-consumption, health-care, and
    Social Security? (If there isn’t, the year 2030 isn’t going to be a
    good year.)
  3. Does he/she think they could stop putting our grandchildren in
    hock with hideous deficits? (Isn’t being debt-free a Christian value?)
  4. Would he/she take the issue of climate change and environmental
    care seriously? (It is God’s creation, and some more generations may
    have to share it.)
  5. Would he/she pledge to be so truthful with the American people
    that no reasonable person would question their integrity? Let’s
    describe this as being Lincoln-esque. (I’m tired of spin.)
  6. Would he/she renounce all forms of torture in the treatment of
    prisoners? (I’m ashamed that this is even an issue in America.)
  7. Is he/she concerned about the growing social crisis of the
    separation between the rich and the poor? (It’s becoming a gated world
    out there and one day there may be a new kind of homegrown terrorism.)
  8. Does he/she think they might rethink the exporting of billions
    upon billions of dollars to places like Iraq when a few billion would
    make a lot of difference in the education of American children and the
    absurdly rising costs of college education? (I can’t believe we are so
    silent on matters like this.)
  9. Might he/she intend to offer any form of moral influence that
    would raise the tastes of our nation in its choices of entertainment,
    the spending of its money, and its growing addiction to sports? (Or
    does Rome live again?)
  10. If there is ever again a justifiable reason to take this nation
    to war, could he/she make sure that everyone becomes involved in the
    sacrifice that war requires? To date the burden or war seems to be on a
    relatively small percentage of Americans while everyone else goes on
    living the so-called “good life?” (You destroy a nation by doing it the
    way we’ve been doing it. How did we forget Viet Nam so easily?)
  11. Could he/she see themselves being as turned on by the dream of
    alleviating diseases, suppressing genocide, and rescuing the dying
    nations (debt forgiveness comes to mind) as America once was about
    getting someone to the moon?