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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Dave,
Vote counting in the US is one of the fastest counting mechanisms in the developed world. Remember, most countries do not allow citizens to vote for the countries leader. At this point in time, I can't think of a developed country in which the citizens vote for the leader of their country, except for the US. Compared to places like the UK, we are exceptionally fast. We could be faster, but each county decides its own election processes and many counties have concerns with fraud and so they may be more manual than others. Remember the last election, everyone got in their head that the votes from machines were going to foreign countries, being modified and then sent back to the counties. That craziness almost amounted to everyone going back to paper ballots which would have gone back to taking days to count.
Bert, Sorry I did not clarify. I wasn't talking only black voters in my last paragraph. You are absolutely right that there were more black voters in 2008 than 2020. By the way, I live in an inner-city neighborhood that's become gentrified over the past 15 years with a majority of white progressive hipsters (but still multi-ethnic). These Progressives utilized their momentum of anger and fear, directed towards Trump, which personified the system which they deemed evil and racist,
>>I can’t think of a developed country in which the citizens vote for the leader of their country, except for the US. Compared to places like the UK, we are exceptionally fast.<<
This is still not enough of an explanation. According to the NBC election results site as of just now, here are the totals for California:
6.08 million Harris, 4.20 million Trump
Here’s Florida:
6.10 million Trump, 4.67 million Harris.
The Florida counts were 99% in the next day. California is currently at 65.7%, and even of the votes that are in, they have counted less than Florida. Of course, California has more people than Florida, but at 54 electoral votes vs 30, it’s not even double the population. So give them twice as long as Florida. However, it’s been 3 days since the election, not 2, so there’s still no good explanation for California (a supposedly highly-educated, high-tech state) to be this far behind. It’s going to be days longer before they get to 99%.
This represents either outdated processes, laziness, incompetence, or That Which Cannot Be Named. In any of those cases, reforms of the process are long overdue.
Dave Barnhart
Dave,
It is because the vast majority of California voting is done with mail in ballots. They have to be counted in a more manual process. Signatures need to be validated. If they don't match, voters need to be contacted to make corrections. California also offers provisional ballots, which takes longer to verify. Places like Norway allow people to create their own ballot and mail it in. And yes it takes up to a week to count votes in those elections. There is no provision to mandate anything at the federal level and there is no requirement to name a winner on election night, because technical the citizen is not voting for the President. They are voting for electoral votes. It isn't until the electoral college votes that it is official and there is plenty of time for that. So there is no real provision or requirement to go fast or be like Florida or any other state. They are only required to have everything completed by January 6th.
You are correct that I left the category of lax election laws off my list, though I referred to it in an earlier post. Though I’m sure you disagree, I believe that absentee/mail balloting should not be universal but reserved for those cases that really need it. I still remember when I voted during college, I had to send in an application for a mail ballot (for the state of Maryland, no less), and I had to provide a reason that was considered good enough to qualify. Different times, but better in that respect, IMO.
It wasn’t all that long ago that both the left and right agreed that mail balloting allowed the most possibilities for fraud, and that was why its use was limited. Clearly, that’s no longer a consideration (for some).
Dave Barnhart
They are only required to have everything completed by January 6th.
I seem to recall years where California didn't bother to count it's absentee votes (deemed unnecessary as not sufficient to change result). This was when absentees were mainly military, prior to the absentee push.
So when you say, "required to have everything completed," are they able to not count for reasons like above?
Trump culture…
Trump has brought a culture along with him in his rise to power. It includes placing a low value on truth, a highly selective regard for the rule of law, a lot of muddling of faith and politics, an emphasis on victimhood/grievance politics, and several other problems I could list.
Trump brought to the GOP what the progressives brought to the Democratic party a very long time ago in every single one of those areas you just listed. He played the "beat you at your own game" card well. Now he can go on to govern in what will likely be a very similar fashion as he did during his first term, driving policies which were, almost entirely, big wins for those who believe in the Constitution as the rule of law and who believe firmly that classic liberalism is far superior to what America's progressives have been pushing.
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
JNoel,
"big wins for those who believe in the Constitution"
Except for the $7.8 to $8.4 Trillion that Trump added to the national debt. There used to be a time when Conservatives thought the national debt and government spending should go down, not up. Trump claimed he would pay down the national debt in 8 years (https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/275003-trump-i-…). Regardless of pointing fingers and saying Obama or some other progressive was worse, this is just something that is an issue irrespective of anyone else.
Some of this big government spend, contributed to inflation. When Trump spent $2T on the CAREs project (Treasury printing $2T of money and sending it to everyone in the US), is pretty much macroeconomics 101 on creating inflation.
dgszweda,
I did say "almost entirely." ;)
Economics - financial economics, specifically, is a very complex subject. I am no economist, but I know that many have been saying since the end of the Reagan administration that America was going to collapse due to the national debt. And even with Clinton's budget surplus, the National Debt was still high - and it always will be, as most of it is publicly held debt. The national debt isn't the most important thing. Far more important is our financial standing in the world, and, for that, we're still in better shape than almost every other developed nation.
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
JNoel,
I wasn't making a point on whether the world will collapse or not. Classic liberalism would be against a hefty national debt. And conservatives were ardently opposed to increases in the national debt. Unfortunately Trump's practices and even those Republican presidents before him have increasingly merged with the lefts approach to the debt. Debt is not bad, but the significant increase should be alarming to most people.
The economy was top of mind for most voters this election cycle, but it was missed that Trump's policies contributed in varying degrees (depending on your monetary viewpoint) to the increase inflation. When government prints money and injects it into an economy (especially one frozen by COVID lockdowns) it creates inflation. 2 Trillion was the largest injection of money from the US government into citizen's pocketbooks in history. I am no fan of Biden at all, but many miss the fact that Biden accomplished a "soft landing" from a high inflation that he inherited. That is also pretty much unprecedented, and one that most countries were not able to achieve today. Not all of it was related to Biden himself. A strong Central Bank helps the US out significantly.
dgszweda,
Of course - and, again, that's one reason why I said "almost." Our current gov't debt situation is far too large. Some debt is necesary and even healthy, but we're far beyond healthy.
As America is right now, it is impossible for any President to zero out the national debt, or even reduce it significantly. Even keeping it static is likely impossible, and there are a lot of factors that tie into that, not the least of which is the aging/retiring boomer "takers" and the very small Gen X "investers." For every 10 boomers that move from investing into the economy (toward retirement) into taking back out of the economy while retired, there's only 1 or 2 Gen Xers in the heavy investing years of their lives putting money into the economy.
No candidate can run on any policy right now that will drive down the national debt and expect to win; however, in about twenty years, when the dominant retiree "takers" are the very small Gen X, and the boomers have all but passed on, and the larger-than-X Gen Y is in the investing period in their lives, the entire outlook for American finances and the national debt at least has the potential of being completely different. Of course, that assumes China, Russia, Iran, and nK haven't thrown us all into WWIII. If that happens, none of the current conversations about the National Debt will matter. :)
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
The thing that bothers me about mail in ballots is that there are cases (e.g. Nevada) where election authorities are "bending" on whether the postmark must be there and legible, and there are also questions on how well signatures are being verified.
Moreover, when you allow election authorities a week or so to count ballots, that is a wide open door to vote fraud. Things you could never do with a vote scanner at the polls are straightforward when you've got ballots sitting around for a few weeks. "Let's fudge the postmark to make it look like this one was mailed on time", "let's argue around the reality that the signature doesn't match the one on file at all", etc..
Agreed to a great extent on the national deficit and debt, though. We need a serious look at which programs are necessary at all, which goals the government should and should not have, and how we ought to achieve those goals.
One correction, though; Biden did not inherit high inflation, but rather helped create it. It was 1.2%in 2020 and 3.4% in 2021, but passing of the $1.9 trillion "American Rescue Act" of 2021 resulted in a 8% inflation rate in 2022. That is all on Biden. Thankfully a return of the House to GOP hands slowed things a little in 2023, easing inflationary pressures, along with tighter money by the Fed.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Well, he still has 4 more years to finish what he begun - but I don't think it's fair to say he should still be able to eliminate it because he didn't have 8 straight years, and there was also a pandemic.
I say all of that a bit tongue-in-cheek. There was exactly zero chance of eliminating the national debt in 8 years, even without the pandemic. There is only one way to take that statement - the same way you have to take almost everything Trump says. It's part of his brand. And, no - I don't like it. Claims like that are nonsensical. No president will ever eliminate the national debt - we will always have one, and it's okay that we do - it's healthy to have some debt.
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
Listen, both parties are terrible at the deficit. The Republicans used to have controlling spending and either stabilizing or reducing the debt as a platform priority. But that is no longer the case. The Republicans are just as bad. Given a lot of the tax cuts that Trump is proposing without an compensating reduction in government spending is going to create an even bigger problem.
I don't disagree with Trump's generalized approach, but his chaos approach may end up causing problems. I am all for reduction in government spending, but a wholesale reduction of government spending right away is going to create large problems across the economy. I remember the days of watching the national debt go down under Clinton (again not a fan of Clinton nor was it solely related to him). IF we can just hold hte debt steady that would be a huge win. Nobody has to eliminate it.
Is, of course, stop digging. Personally, if Trump were to halve the deficit without destroying essential government services--that means real public goods like national defense and border security, among a few other things--I would be ecstatic. With an official national debt of over thirty trillion bucks (GAAP debt is over $100 trillion), pigs will fly before we get a serious dent made in that.
And regarding Trump's chances at doing this, he's going to have to curb his spending instincts. It is not for no reason that his businesses have had several bankruptcies.
And really, on both sides, real progress requires the guts to say "I know you want to continue program X as it is today, but the actuaries say it's unsustainable. Let's figure out a way to get a reasonable amount of what we have without bankrupting ourselves."
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
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