Thousands of votes have already been cast in the upcoming election, a campaign that many pundits are suggesting will be a razor-thin contest.

Why Americans vote and who and what they vote for is a layered matter. According to the Pew Research Center, somewhere between 80 and 90%  of teens tend to vote like their parents, though a person’s party affiliation and ideology often evolve as they grow older.

In addition to our family of origin, we’re shaped by our faith, friends, co-workers, teachers, neighbors, movies, books, news consumption and social media. Increasingly, though, it seems voters are being influenced by a timeless lure – and a master that in a darkening and foreboding culture is more destructive than ever before: selfish interests.

Warned William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate, “Selfish interest is one of the most common obstructions in the advance of truth.”

A century before Bryan was Noah Webster, best known for spearheading the modern dictionary. He observed that self-interest leads to unprincipled men in office, a corrupt government, and laws passed to feed “selfish or local purposes.”

Many of us are drawn to the historic understanding of rugged individualism – the belief that it was self-reliance and independence that made America great. In turn, we see that same philosophy as the best antidote to the woeful welfare state mentality that wants hand outs and expects the government to bail them out of every personal bungle.

But any strength taken to an extreme can become a weakness. There is healthy and rugged individualism – and then there is reckless individualism. When you come down to it, the radicals of our day are motivated by the latter.

Abortion zealots harp exclusively on the “rights” of the woman – but ignore the rights of the baby. They’re selfish.

Same-sex-marriage advocates talk endlessly about personal rights – but never want to acknowledge the cultural chaos its spawned, from children in those relationships being deprived of both a mother and father to the rise of polygamy, polyamory and a push to normalize the abnormal. They’re selfish.

Sexual revolutionaries who champion the mutilation of confused children are obsessed with the “right” to do it – but ignore the fact that the vast majority of those individuals come to their senses as they age. They’re selfish.

Radical secularists oppose any public expression of faith because they disagree with it, ignoring the country’s founding and the overwhelming good that Christian belief has had in our country. They’re selfish.

“I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction,” stated Teddy Roosevelt. “But it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.”

Teddy Roosevelt was a classically oriented rugged individualist – but he wasn’t reckless.

Our Christian faith is deeply personal and often private – but it is not individualistic. As believers, we regularly sacrifice for the good of others. From donating our resources to our time, to maybe even tolerating a different type of worship music – we’re motivated by what honors the Lord and is best for others, not simply what is pleasing to ourselves.

Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has discouraged Christians from focusing on themselves in their prayers.

“One of the besetting sins of evangelicalism is our obsession with individualism,” he stated.

“This obsession with individualism chronically besets us as evangelicals. The first-person singular pronoun reigns in our thinking. We tend to think about nearly everything (including the truths of God’s Word) only as they relate to me. This is why when Jesus teaches His disciples to pray, He emphasizes from the very outset that we are part of a corporate people called the church. God is not merely ‘my Father.’ He is ‘our Father’ — the Father of my brothers and sisters in the faith with whom I identify and with whom I pray.”

Coaches like to point out there’s no “i” in the word “team” – a clever observation that drives home the importance of the group as opposed to the individual. There are two i’s in the word “Christian,” but Jesus didn’t just die for you – but for all – and calls on us to do good works (Eph. 2:10) and reminds us that it’s more blessed to give than receive (Acts 20:35).

Image from Getty.