There’s an old saying: “Politicians are like diapers. They need to be changed often and for the same reason!” While intended to be humorous, the saying nonetheless rightly reflects how most Americans feel about their elected officials.
Recent polling shows that 65% of Americans are “exhausted” when they think about politics with 55% feeling angry. In part, this is due to how much elected officials are held in extremely low regard with 63% who say all or most ran officials ran for office “to make a lot of money.” More than 80% of Americans now believe elected officials don’t care what people like them think and 70% of Americans believe that “ordinary people have too little influence over the decisions members of Congress make.”
You’d think then that American politicians frequently lose re-election campaigns and have to work extra hard to earn the continued support of their voters. Sadly, this is not the case.
Incumbent politicians often win re-election overwhelmingly. In fact, reelection rates in the U.S. House of Representatives have never dropped below 85% and the U.S. Senate has never dropped below 78% since 1986.
Why this disparity? If American are so frustrated that their politicians aren’t working for them, then why do they nonetheless re-elect them?
While I won’t be able to provide those answers within my limited space, I would like to argue that the answer lies, in part, to the fact that most politicians have what I call the “King Hezekiah Mentality” and American voters do not often have the incentives or will to use their substantial political authority to hold their leaders accountable.
In what follows, I’d like to lay out a brief description of what the “King Hezekiah Mentality” is, show how you can tell if your elected officials have this mentality, and finally offer a few brief ideas on how Christians can hold their leaders accountable in every election season.
What is the King Hezekiah Mentality?
One reason Christians can trust Scripture is because it speaks to reality and matches our own experiences of how mankind behaves, including the story of King Hezekiah.
In Isaiah 39, King Hezekiah receives envoys from Babylon and shows them all of Israel’s wealth and treasures. What follows is a disturbing, but enlightening exchange between Isaiah and King Hezekiah:
4 The prophet asked, “What did they see in your palace?”
“They saw everything in my palace,” Hezekiah said. “There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them.”
5 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord Almighty: 6 The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. 7 And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”
8 “The word of the Lord you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my lifetime.” (Isa. 39:4–8, emphasis added)
This is a shocking statement. The King is content with the collapse of his kingdom and the death, destruction, and captivity of his own children so long as it doesn’t impact his position as ruler or his own peace and security.
This is what I call the “King Hezekiah Mentality.” Why do our elected officials and political rulers so often act for their own self-interest and take positions that are seemingly contrary to those they claim to serve or the next generation? Ultimately, like King Hezekiah, they are content as long as they grow “their brand” and seek short term “gains” (no matter the long-term consequences) so that they can remain relevant in their own elevated position and have “peace and security in their lifetime.”
How Should You Evaluate Your Elected Officials?
I lay out this concept so that you might use an elected official’s King Hezekiah Mentality against them. You do this by exercising your political freedom and swaying your elected official to align their own self-interest in preserving their position with governing according to what is Biblically true. Your elected official will act for themselves—often in a manner contrary to Biblical principles—if you sit on the sidelines by not voting.
But how can you, as a voter, consider whether your elected official has the King Hezekiah Mentality? And how can pragmatically seek to hold your official accountable? It comes down to reviewing and persuading.
Review the Record
If your elected official is an incumbent, every voter should review their official’s record to determine what they value and what they prioritize. There are many data points you can consider, but here are two brief considerations:
1. Long Term Policy Considerations – Does your elected official talk or discuss how their decisions will impact the next generation of Americans, including your children or grandchildren? Is their focus always on making sure current status quo needs and pleasures are met without regard to long-term implications?[1]
1. You can track the speeches and public statements of your elected officials on their public websites and social media pages. Every member of Congress and most state legislators all have public websites with sections dedicated to speeches, press releases, and communications. These pages also link to social media pages, which can contain helpful information. For Members of Congress, you can visit house.gov or senate.gov for links to the government websites for each federal elected official.
One pragmatic consideration is asking how your elected official views the financial health of the country, state, or locality that they govern? Do they give lip service to making sure government lives within its means, but fail to advocate or push legislation or other actions that will right our fiscal woes? Do they take responsibility for the financial health of the nation or place blame on others?
Answers to these questions help determine whether an elected official wants to preserve the status quo or endure the short term difficulty required to make helpful change. These questions help you to discern if they are thinking fifty years from now, or if they are ignoring long-term consequences so long as there is “peace and security in their lifetime.”
2. Legislation, Amendments, and Policy Priorities – In our country, we often judge an official’s effectiveness by how “edgy” they sound on the news or whether they “dunked” their opposition with a biting social media post.
These are all charades that attempt to make you believe a politician is a “fighter” for you. Most politicians can give speeches and issue press releases that create a persona that they are working for you. However, the true mark of an official is their record—what did they do, how did they vote, and what positions did they take?
Votes matter, of course, but oftentimes legislative bodies don’t set themselves up to take votes (or even difficult ones), so if you’re reviewing a legislator’s record, look at the list of bills and amendments they introduced.[2]
2. Most state legislatures have public websites where you can look up the records of your state officials. For Congress, you can visit congress.gov, which aggregates every bill, amendment, and roll call vote for each member of Congress.
One area that is often neglected in reviewing a member’s record is how they use their committee assignments, which is where most of the lawmaking actually takes place. Does your legislator offer amendments to bills considered before the committee? If so, do they seek votes on their amendments or do they just “talk” about their amendment? Reviewing the record and activity of a politician is important to understand how best to hold them accountable and what they value.[3]
3. Most elected official’s websites (state or federal) include a list of the committees that each official is a member. Most of the time, the public official’s website will link to the website a of committee where you can view the votes, debate, and amendments offered and adopted by each elected official during that committee’s meetings. For Congress, you can see online a list of the committee websites for the House of Representatives and the Senate committees.
Persuade and Influence Your Elected Official
What if your elected official is not prioritizing policy that reflects Biblical wisdom or is directly undermining Christian convictions? First, pray that God would direct the hearts and minds of your elected official (Proverbs 21:1), and then use your freedom to influence your official.
Here are some brief, practical ways to steer your official toward good, Biblical policy positions and away from the King Hezekiah Mentality.
First, talk to your neighbors and reason with them. While most would say you should avoid discussing religion and politics in daily interactions, these are some of the most important conversations you should have. Christians are not to shy away from sharing the gospel with their neighbor, nor should they shy away for discussing current events facing the community through a Biblical lens. As I’ve written in a previous essay, talking to your neighbor and reasoning with them is the first step in fostering grassroots change in the values of a society, which ultimately impacts your elected official who is downstream from culture.
Second, individually or in a group, contact and talk with your officials—they generally have a online home page with avenues for contact. Elected officials often attend community events, hold town halls, and are often looking for photo opportunities to show that they are “active” in the community. These are often open to the public and are attended by local press outlets.[4] With respect (and I do mean with the utmost respect), ask them publicly about their positions. Encourage an elected official if they are doing the right thing, and respectfully disagree with them and make your position known.
4. To learn more about events that your elected official is hosting, you can check their government website, campaign website, and social media pages. However, the best way to receive notices about upcoming activities is to sign up for your elected official’s newsletter or email updates, which is where they usually provide a list of upcoming events. If you can’t find a list of events this way, you can always call the office of your local official and request a schedule. If you are contacting your member of Congress, call the local state office (not the Washington, D.C. office) for this information, since staff in the state are often the ones who plan local events.
Officials and their staff take notice of trends in public opinion, particularly if they want to ensure they keep their office, which influences how an official reacts. You’ll often find others in your community feel the same way as you, which helps compound the impact. This can move an elected official to do what is best for the community.
And be sure to follow up with your elected officials, consistently. Most of the time, an elected official will wait to see if there are multiple negative news stories or whether there is a negative trend on a matter before weighing in. They often expect that one bad news story will fade with the next “breaking news” story, or that voters lost interest. They are usually right, which is why it’s important to continue to show up to events, send them emails, and call their offices. It doesn’t have to be a long conversation or email—politicians and their staff are only looking for general positions on an issue represented by hundreds or thousands of individual data points.
Third, officials always care about how they are publicly perceived by their local press and local community. Consequently, politicians and their staff closely monitor news stories trending in local press outlets because presumably it has the ability to shape public opinion and thus influence future votes. Write letters to your local paper’s editor. Hold public events about issues in your community and invite the local press to cover it. Pitch stories about issues of the day to the editorial boards of your local news. These are all proactive ways that you can help shape local press in your area and influence the direction of your elected official.
Fourth, vote. It goes without saying that voting is the ultimate way to hold your official accountable. If you don’t vote or participate in the electoral process, you will ensure that the direction of your official will not change. If you are frustrated with the positions taken by your official or would like to see them move in a different direction, staying on the sidelines will all but ensure the status quo will always continue.
Conclusion
As long as we live in this sinful world, our rulers will often be shaped by the King Hezekiah Mentality. They will often look to protect themselves and their own peace and security over the present and future interests of those they are supposed to serve.
But unlike those in King Hezekiah’s day, American Christians today are blessed with incredible political freedoms to influence and impact the rulers of today through our vote and our participation in the political process.
The timeless Biblical truth of human nature embodied in the King Hezekiah Mentality will not change, but American Christians can use this reality to impact our community, hold our officials accountable, and seek to influence leaders to act according to Biblical truth. Will you?
