In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,’” he said. “This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” These abiding principles – loving God and loving others – are at the very foundation of my faith. Throughout my career in public service, these values have kept me grounded in what matters most. As a husband, father, and grandfather, they are the cornerstone upon which our family is built. Through the pain of losing my wife, my daughter, and my son, they have sustained me with eternal hope. My faith has been a source of immeasurable solace in times of grief, and a daily inspiration to fight against the abuse of power in all its forms. My Catholic faith drilled into me a core truth – that every person on earth is equal in rights and dignity, because we are all beloved children of God. We are all created “imago Dei” – beautifully, uniquely, in the image of God, with inherent worth. It is the same creed that is at the core of our American experiment and written into our founding documents – that we are all created equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights.
As a country, we have never been perfect nor free of prejudice. We’ve never fully lived up to those ideals, but we’ve never walked away from them. And, at our best, these are the values that have pushed us, time and again, as Dr. King said, to bend that great arc of the moral universe toward justice. As president, these are the principles that will shape all that I do, and my faith will continue to serve as my anchor, as it has my entire life. Right now, as a country, we are facing numerous crises, including threats to the very idea of imago Dei. It’s what I call the battle for the soul of the nation. We saw it in Charlottesville in 2017, the hatred and boiling rage of those people coming out of the fields carrying tiki torches and chanting the same anti-Semitic bile we heard in the 1930s. We’ve seen it far too often since – attacks on immigrants, communities of color, people of different faiths – violence stemming from those who would stoke hate and division in our country. It has become too easy in recent years to define our neighbors as “others” rather than children of God and fellow Americans. It has to stop. We have to strive harder to come together, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. That is the work we are all called to by God. This battle for the soul of our nation is why I’m running for president, and it’s why I’m asking for your vote. Who we are, what we stand for, and maybe most important, who we want to be as a nation are all at stake. Character is on the ballot. The character of our nation.
The core values that define this nation are on the ballot. While I am running as a proud Democrat, I will serve as a president for all Americans.
About The Author
Harrison Okafor
editor
Judith is a believer, a lover of Christ and a Gospel freak person. A passionate gospel blogger and press writer. I work with GospelHitsNaija.net Media, no 1 Gospel music platform.
