Christians: Yes, Let’s Vote Our Values
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On the whole, I’ve written a lot less about the voting choices before us in this particular election cycle. From my point of view, it’s pretty much 2020 all over again, only with more clarity about the cultural and character factors.
More clarity? I’m sure many don’t see it that way. I’m not saying people are seeing more clearly. Subjectively, things seem more muddled than ever. Objectively, though, the character and positions of the candidates are even more clear than in 2020.
In this post, I’m reacting a bit to Kevin Schaal’s post over at P&D the other day, and many others like it (e.g., Jerry Newcombe’s similar list over at Christian Post). I don’t disagree with much in that post, but I would differ in emphasis.
First, I fully agree with this:
Some Christians do not live or vote by biblical values. And some Christians have not been taught how their faith should impact their voting choices.
Then we read, “These are the values that are at stake in this election.” The list that follows isn’t bad. I’m all for freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, sanctity of life, individual stewardship, biblical marriage, and just balances.
My own full list of values to vote for would include those things. There are some values at stake in this election, though, that are upstream of several of the above.
My own short, prioritized list of values to vote for would look more like this:
1. Vote for the gospel.
I’m not in favor of expansive and ambiguous uses of the term “the gospel.” The gospel is the good news that Jesus died for sinners and rose again. But this news has far-reaching implications. What do I mean by “vote for the gospel” here? Vote with the goal of helping churches and ministries retain or regain their understanding of what their focus should be in society: effectively adorning (Titus 2:10) and proclaiming the gospel.
The conflation of political tactics, policies, and candidates with Christian belief, practice, and mission is a serious problem.
I anticipate an objection: “We can’t vote for gospel clarity. It’s not on the candidates’ agendas.” I’m not sure it isn’t, indirectly, but let’s say that’s true. My recommendation, across the political spectrum, is to look at candidates’ stated agendas, remove everything they are not actually capable of achieving (because Congress would have to do it, or an amendment would be required, and every state would have to do it). Then look at what’s left and ask, “How much of this is just pandering?”
After that couple of filters, there might not be much agenda left!
Assuming something remains, it’s time to ask: If results are so important, what are some likely unintended results of the candidates’ agenda? What kind of backlash policies—or, more importantly, cultural shifts—might we see?
We really didn’t think overturning Roe would result in “abortion rights” becoming an issue that is not only actively supported by one party, but now passively supported by the other as well. But here we are.
Voting for results is a tricky thing, none of us being prophets.
But if we’re going to vote for results, surely increased clarity about what Christianity really is, and is not, should be a result we prioritize.
2. Vote for rule of law.
We live in a system of governance that, by design of its founders, has law at its center. When the colonies decided to part from the authority of England, they created a document with representative leaders as signers.
Later, they experimented with the Articles of Confederation and insisted on a ratification process. Why? Because of the conviction that the best way to govern a society is for the governed to create law that then has authority over those who made it.
Eventually, the Constitution was ratified in place of the Articles. Every office and branch of the U.S. government now derives its authority from that legal document. Lesser roles and requirements derive from the laws passed through the representative-legislators legal framework this Constitution authorizes.
In short, in a republic, the law is king, and all other rulers are its deputies.
If we’re going to vote for results, we should vote for candidates who seem likely to respect and nurture the rule of law.
3. Vote for truth in public discourse.
In the U.S., we have a long tradition of messy public discourse. For as long as I’ve been paying attention, that has included a fair amount of misrepresentation, exaggeration, and outright lying about political opponents.
And that’s not even including the candidates’ claims about themselves.
I’ve occasionally been accused of idealism, but I don’t expect “honesty in political rhetoric” to become a real thing.
That said, before 2021, did the U.S. ever have a sitting president try to hang on to power on the fantasy that the election had been stolen from him? I may have read that something similar has happened before in U.S. history, but at best, it’s been a very long time.
For Christians, does anything matter more than truth? We could make a case that several things are equally important. Of course, we’d insist that the God of all truth is more important than truth itself. It ultimately has little importance without its connection to Him.
That established, Christians, of all people, ought to treasure truth anywhere and everywhere it can be found. We ought to despise lies, useful or otherwise. We should loathe the kind of exaggeration, distortion, and sloppiness that ends up being little better than outright lying. We should be repulsed by the intellectual laziness that lumps dissimilar things together, overgeneralizes, and prefers increased vehemence over increased accuracy. That doesn’t promote truth either.
Surely we ought to be people who value truth more than tribe and who refuse to reflexively accept or reject claims based on what leader, pundit, or group they are coming from.
If we’re going to vote for results, we should prioritize whatever votes might help us, as a society, value truth more.
Final thoughts
I’d be first the admit that this short list of core values to vote for could be used to argue for whatever candidate one “likes.” That doesn’t make it objectively true that they are an equally good, or equally poor, fit for both candidates (or all the rest, down-ballot).
No, I’m not trying to tell people who to vote for (or “vote against,” if they look at it that way). But I do want to encourage us to have the gospel, the rule of law, and truth on our minds as we make these difficult choices. I want to encourage us also think in terms of our culture as a whole, not just the slice that is regulated by policy.
Important policy is at stake. Bigger things than policy are also at stake.
Aaron Blumer 2016 Bio
Aaron Blumer is a Michigan native and graduate of Bob Jones University and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He and his family live in small-town western Wisconsin, not far from where he pastored for thirteen years. In his full time job, he is content manager for a law-enforcement digital library service. (Views expressed are the author's own and not his employer's, church's, etc.)
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It is interesting to see how many the church views the importance of abortion in this election cycle. No doubt abortion is wrong. For years, the church drove the case home that we needed to vote in the right candidate in order to overturn Roe v. Wade. That has happened. Abortions are up, not nearly as bad as in the 1990's, but up over the past few years. States are codifying it into their constitutions. The Republican party has shifted its stance to be more open to the possibility of abortion, and is definitely at a stance that it should be up to the state to decide. Really at the Federal level it doesn't appear much can happen one way or the other regardless of which party is in power. The Republican party no longer supports a federal ban, and it is doubtful the Democratic party could pull off an abortion ban at the federal level, especially with the filibuster rules in place.
Abortion continues to be, from many Christian pulpits, the one defining aspect of which person to choose as President. Even to the point that it isn't where one stands, but which is the least worse for abortion, as Kevin pointed out.
Trump supports traditional marriage as a political platform, but does not attend church, and does not practice it in his personal life, having been married 3 times, and been convicted of sexual assualt. Kamala Harris supports traditional marriage, but advocates for other forms of marriage as a political platform. She is a baptist and been married once.
You have one candidate that has a platform that appears to support some of the initiatives of Christians, but could care less about living those practices and flaunts it. And you have another candidate that seems to live a life more alinged to the initiatives of the church, but has a platform that allows practices quite contrary to the church.
I don't have anything to say on who to vote for, just a really interesting state to be in.
Regardless of who wins the election today, we lose.
I agree. We will have lost something today, for sure.
I've read the end of the book and we win. Regardless of who wins this election Jesus wins in the end. Let us never forget that.
I met a stranger last week and I wanted to talk about Christ and he wanted to talk about the election. He was convinced it was all over if Harris won. I told him my job was the same regardless of who won. Even if our country were taken over by communists, I would still have the same job- to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. As long as I serve Jesus, I will always be on the winning team.
Just as a side note, I met that stranger through another man I had just met. That other man wanted to talk about Christ more than the election and I never did hear who he planned to vote for. We did however have wonderful fellowship talking about Christ.
I agree. We will have lost something today, for sure.
I don’t disagree, but…
Maybe it’s just the attitude of the town I live in, but here, no matter how disappointed I am with who is on the ballot, it always feels like it was a huge privilege to get to vote. It feels like voting itself is a kind of victory.
And that’s not just sentimental optimism.
In the history of civilization, it’s a rare opportunity, and being in a place where laws and court cases have worked diligently for more than two centuries to preserve and improve the voting process is even more rare.
Yes, there are always some irregularities, some errors, some offenders. But given how human the whole thing is, it’s amazing how high integrity the process remains. And many, many people work hard to keep it that way, across a wide spectrum of political perspectives.
I’m all for scrutiny and critical thinking. Paranoia is something else. The habit of encouraging franchised people to see themselves as disenfranchised victims is one of the worst things that has happened to conservatism in the last decade.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
In the history of civilization, it’s a rare opportunity, and being in a place where laws and court cases have worked diligently for more than two centuries to preserve and improve the voting process is even more rare.
Yes, I agree. I've traveled to Albania for two mission trips and spoke to the missionary who grew up under communism. Hearing about the secret police, the disappearances, and visiting a museum in Tirana that displayed how the regime spied, tortured, and killed political enemies of the state made me very thankful for living in the US.
Obviously I believe the Gospel, but I do not vote for it.
In my view, proper government should provide common grace, not special grace.
Yes, I agree. I've traveled to Albania for two mission trips and spoke to the missionary who grew up under communism. Hearing about the secret police, the disappearances, and visiting a museum in Tirana that displayed how the regime spied, tortured, and killed political enemies of the state made me very thankful for living in the US.
I personally know people who have fled communism and now live in the USA. They refuse to vote democrat because it reminds them of what they left. It is one thing to hear someone like Trump who tends to be quite bombastic throw out the accusation of communism toward his opponent. It is another thing to hear it from people who lived under it.
Still, even if communism becomes the rule in our country, my job is still the same. Serve Jesus.
I was surprised to see “Vote for the gospel“ as #1 (or at all). Its place in your thinking, perhaps along with projection, might explain part of your objection to Trump.
The distinction between common grace and special grace is helpful in understanding how a person can “save” a country (or have a role in that) while not offering spiritual salvation.
Now, I’m not sure Trump can save(secular meaning) our country. I’m not sure it is salvageable.
Trump supports traditional marriage as a political platform, but … does not practice it in his personal life, …
Kamala Harris supports traditional marriage, but advocates for other forms of marriage as a political platform. She is a baptist and been married once.
I know of no charges against Trump since his current marriage. Do you? I’m not saying he has a lifetime of innocence, but you should probably change your accusation to past tense.
Harris’s sexual history and its role in the advancement of her otherwise dubious career is ignored?
Dan,
Civil charges were past tense, but I would say that having your third wife (present tense) is not part of a traditional marriage model as understood from a Biblical viewpoint. There are statements that Melania has left him for brief periods of time after an alleged affair (Kara Young), or knew of alleged affairs. Are they all true or are any true? not sure.
I wasn't laying out a whole history of each candidates sins or alleged premarital sex practices. I am not saying Harris is a saint or without fault. Just that her lifestyle is more inline with a traditional marriage lifestyle, than Trump, even though each of them have competing platforms as the champion of traditional marriage and alternative lifestyles.
Well, yes, but what do you make of it when liberal prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis who come up with novel interpretations of the law applied only to opposition politicians? One of the objections to Bragg's prosecution, for reference, is that even when the prosecution had rested their case, they had not actually named the secondary crime Trump is alleged to have committed to enable the longer "look-back" for the misdemeanor charges that might plausibly have been filed....five or six years ago.
But a judge signed off on it, just like the administrative modifications of election law used in 2020. Is that good enough? If so, why did Christians raise a ruckus about Roe v. Wade?
Somehow, I'm reminded of Solzhenitsyn's 1979 Harvard address, where he noted that there must be a rule of law, but that was not sufficient for a functioning society.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Bert,
What does that have to do with the national election? Alvin Bragg is elected by citizens of Manhattan. I don't think any of us are residents of Manhattan and therefore have no ability to voice that through a vote today. Maybe someone lives in Fulton County on this board, but I don't think that Fanni Willis was up for election today in Fulton County.
Look up "Matthew Colangelo", who left a senior DOJ post to work for Alvin Bragg. It's a serious downgrade in job title and status that really ought to be explained by....well...he's expecting a payoff, most likely coordinated from the White House and the DNC.
Long and short of it; when novel interpretations of the law are being levied against opposition politicians, injustice is being served.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
T: Regardless of who wins the election today, we lose.
From a spiritual standpoint, as someone said, no. But I think we all know that T knows that in the end, Jesus wins.
A pastor friend of mine texted me this morning: “God is sooooo good!” Yes, He is, but the goodness of God transcends a political victory.
I think we should consider T’s statement on the basis of common grace. We are promised victory, in the end. But in the meantime there will be losses. Hus was burned, Bonhoeffer was hanged, Stalin came to power, etc. God is good, even in these losses.
In that temporal sense, was yesterday a win or a loss? Will this outcome increase or decrease common grace?
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