Q: In our grossly politically-divided nation and world, what should be the response of Christian believers who are expected to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils’. I don’t vote since ‘both sides of the coin’ are evil in my view. I wish I could put Jesus on the ballot!
A. Thank you for this very relevant question. No doubt, you have lots of company, including a friend who reportedly did write-in Jesus as a presidential candidate! I believe there are relatively clear answers as well as lessons to be learned from how other believers have addressed these issues, but first let’s review some basics to clarify the context in which we Christ-believers are to operate in our politicized world. (Apologies in advance for a lengthy response to your short question.)
Politics is all about the processes of discerning, sifting, sorting, proposing, negotiating, deciding, formulating, legislating, monitoring, assessing and modifying governing policies for a society. Applying this in a democratic framework is boisterous and messy, and is especially so in America where there are only two political parties. Your reference to sides of a coin are somewhat relevant. However, I prefer to perceive politics and governing policies as stretching along a lengthy spectrum. Media across our nation continually report, on most major issues, the majority of Americans tend to cluster around the middle of this political spectrum, and only relatively small fringes cluster around the extreme ends. Keep this in mind.
Divisive, devilish spirits have long worked to separate and divide humans, first from God Almighty, then from each other, whether by race, gender, age, income, wealth, religion, role in the family, etc. Politically, they accentuate the extremities, and work to tag each ‘side of the political divide’ with the traits of their relevant, but small extreme clusters. These spirits easily tempt and manipulate both politicians and citizens alike to join in the fray. The end result is magnification of the extremes and diminishing of the HUGE, bi-partisan middle! Go figure! Christians on both sides of the middle get caught in this trap, and then begin falsely to tag believers ‘on the other side’ with the traits of their associated extreme. I have also been so tagged several times. So your question is very relevant: How should we respond?
We have been graciously saved ‘out of the world’, then commissioned (sent) ‘into the world’ to support preaching of God’s Gospel of salvation in Jesus as Christ, and to live ‘salty lives’ before an on-looking, God-rejecting world. Imagine a large slab of raw, unrefrigerated meat that can only be preserved with a generous amount of salt. Even so, no amount of salt will keep it from eventually rotting. From God’s spiritual perspective, our sinful world is like this meat, and saved Christ-believers are His salt to help retard the decaying process. Salt does not, and cannot force any part of the meat, itself, to become preserving salt! But that seems to be what may be happening in our political sphere!
To my knowledge, God has only called and ordained ONE nation ever to be a theocracy – ancient Israel. All other nations, including the modern state of Israel, have been and currently are secular nations. America was founded based on clear separation of church-and-state. This infers segregation of God’s moral laws, and the codes of civil laws that govern secular states. While all civil laws are in various ways derived from God’s moral laws, they are not and should never be intended to achieve a quasi-theocracy. Any attempts to do this will meet with growing popular resistance, and will eventually fail, keeping in mind the rotting meat metaphor. The notion that America was or is ‘a Christian nation’ is a fallacy. It has always been a nation of people from vastly different backgrounds, beliefs, cultures, etc., and though The Constitution references The Almighty, the lives of ‘we, the people’ since its inception have been woefully ungodly. These are undisputed facts, not simply opinions. As such, there are clear, critical roles and lessons to be learned for Christian believers in a secular nation and world, roles and lessons that stop short of pushing for a quasi-theocracy. God’s own predicted theocracy will be here soon enough, and it won’t in any way resemble any of the past authoritarian or democratic governance systems of the past, or those in our day. It will be an iron-rod monarchy, and that says a LOT! Until it arrives, our critical roles are to be good, salty Christian citizens who:
--Support the spread of The Gospel of Jesus Christ
--Are patient for the Kingdom to arrive, physically
--Rejoice in hope and knowledge that It has already arrived within us, spiritually
--Let our salty lifestyles be an en-LIGHT-enment to the onlooking, God-rejecting world
--Find ways and means to encourage and admonish each other in this patient hope
--Become and remain adequately informed of the socio-cultural issues of our day in light of the many scriptural predictions about our decaying world
--Perform our personal roles as informed, salty citizens, the least of which is to vote
--As The Spirit leads, help others (Christians and non-Christians alike) to perceive issues and opportunities around which citizens might be able to coalesce and, therefore, help to tamp down the ire on both sides of the political extremities
--Resist temptations to push ‘the decaying meat’ to become ‘God’s spiritual salt’
This, I believe, is Godly wisdom, and it definitely demands God’s GRACE to engage. But wherever GRACE abounds, demons show up to counteract it, even and especially among Christians, the supposed salt.
Centuries ago in America, only a tiny caste of people (white, educated, landed, slave-owning, so-called ‘gentlemen’) could vote. All others were deemed incompetent and unworthy to engage in the affairs of state, including voting. Though that picture has flipped considerably, many in our nation remain disengaged politically because they only see hopelessness, despair and defeat. Thus they ‘effectively vote’ to return to the old days in which only those in a small caste can vote. Or some Christians vote based on a few key theological issues, side-stepping or ignoring the truckload of other civic issues crucial to national governance. Perhaps they may not be, or may not care enough to become informed, and through the study of God’s Word and prayer, seek His wisdom to develop personal, informed positions. If so, I believe that is a serious failure of our Godly citizenship duties, and is a lesson from which we could learn. When citizens are motivated to vote based on a single or very few issues, they make it easy for shrewd politicians to tailor their bait to get folks hooked. A broadly-informed, educated electorate will not easily fall into such traps, but will demand much more of those contending for votes.
For sure, citizenship responsibility of formulating balanced opinions on principal civic issues is real work, and Godly citizenship responsibility adds EXTRA work on top of that. That said, I believe in a clear separation of church-and-state, and between moral and civil laws. A key lesson is that major problems arise when Christians think they should push to conflate ‘personal’ Christian beliefs and practices with ‘public’ governance laws and practices. Rather, God intends His requirements to be personally and willingly embraced, not to be forced on everybody else, especially folks who don’t believe He even exists! He will not judge us based on how ‘Christian’ we made a secular government, but on our personal walk with Him, a walk that ‘speaks volumes’ to the on-looking, unbelieving world. Recall what happened when He tried, unsuccessfully, to legislate moral behavior. He never intended the Church to legislate or to use other civic machinations to prod or force Godly morality across rotting, secular societies, but only to enhance our spiritual saltiness, and be His grains of salt in our personal lives, demonstrating Godly morality to a sinful nation, and thus, in small ways, retarding the rot, as His Spirit wills. Sadly, too many Christians have gotten this ALL WRONG. Now the world scrutinizes our gross hypocrisy as we zero-in on a few sins we ‘really hate’ that other people practice, while ignoring the truckloads of other sins we, ourselves engage in and benefit from, including sins that negatively impact so many others, especially non-Christians. It is krazy. As a result, our salty light has diminished considerably across the American society, the testimony of Godly people is increasingly shunned, and Christians largely stay in their own echo chambers, having less and less effect in a dying world. This is what Jesus calls a loss of our saltiness or salt’s effectiveness. I don’t know which is worse, a loss of saltiness that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 5:13 , or lukewarmness that He spoke of in Revelation 3:24-22. I perceive both are now occurring, and I wonder whether they may be related.
Life, both spiritual and civic, is really all about the gradual unfolding to the multi-millennial, strategic plan of God for humanity, stitched together like a patchwork quilt across the pages and ages of The Bible. Only by deep, Spirit-guided study, prayer and meditation can we piece it together and discern where we are, and what our roles and responsibilities are in its forward march.
Again, thanks for this pivotal question!
