My good friend, Mark, wrote an article on his blog about voting Christian values. Please go read it. His writing is better than mine stylistically and he's nicer than I am. His writing, however, has made me think about politics and this is what has come to mind.
Would you like to know a cold hard fact? As a believer in Christ, there is no viable candidate for me. Romney is a Mormon and while he may agree with my mind about some social issues, he is not of like spirit and my heart is troubled. Obama is liberal socially so while I want to support the poor, the plethora of things that go with supporting the poor under his first term make it difficult to support him for a second term (see disclaimer below).
That leaves believers without a viable alternative. Like it or not, fellow Christian, there is no viable candidate for us!
Yet my beloved Liberty University, when urging us to get out and vote, suggested for a while that only the Republican candidates were viable options for us. I can’t find that link now, so clearly they took it down. It was a call to vote and the GOP elephant was the only picture. Sending a message maybe? Me thinks so. LU suggests, as does Billy Graham, that we vote Biblical values above all else! YOU CAN’T! This is his biggest mistake in a long, mostly fruitful ministry career, and it is about to become the church's mistake too.
I don’t care if you vote next Tuesday. Doesn’t bother me one bit. But don’t claim that you’re voting Biblical values. You can’t be, otherwise you wouldn’t vote at all. There are no candidates for us, and the ones that are out there are so tainted with the world’s point of view that we can’t move forward.
Furthermore, the GOP has a lock on the Christian vote. I realize that it’s not the entire Christian vote, but most of the Evangelical Christian vote. This makes me sick. We support the GOP and buy into the oil drilling, the tax breaks for businesses, and the idea that the rich should get to keep their money, whatever that means, when we say we believe in Christ alone. See what we have to do to get abortion rights taken away? We sell ourselves out to the highest bidder.
And this business of voting for a Mormon makes my stomach turn. Vote for who you want to vote for, my friends, but stop thinking you’re voting your Christian beliefs into office. You’re just voting for Exxon’s next tax break.
Disclaimer: These thoughts are written as a Christian, not a military member. If President Obama orders me to do something as a Sailor, I will do it. I follow the orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed over me. This means that no matter what happens next week, I will support the President of the United States. I simply mean to establish a point of view that as a believer it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide on a candidate.
Would you like to know a cold hard fact? As a believer in Christ, there is no viable candidate for me. Romney is a Mormon and while he may agree with my mind about some social issues, he is not of like spirit and my heart is troubled. Obama is liberal socially so while I want to support the poor, the plethora of things that go with supporting the poor under his first term make it difficult to support him for a second term (see disclaimer below).
That leaves believers without a viable alternative. Like it or not, fellow Christian, there is no viable candidate for us!
Yet my beloved Liberty University, when urging us to get out and vote, suggested for a while that only the Republican candidates were viable options for us. I can’t find that link now, so clearly they took it down. It was a call to vote and the GOP elephant was the only picture. Sending a message maybe? Me thinks so. LU suggests, as does Billy Graham, that we vote Biblical values above all else! YOU CAN’T! This is his biggest mistake in a long, mostly fruitful ministry career, and it is about to become the church's mistake too.
I don’t care if you vote next Tuesday. Doesn’t bother me one bit. But don’t claim that you’re voting Biblical values. You can’t be, otherwise you wouldn’t vote at all. There are no candidates for us, and the ones that are out there are so tainted with the world’s point of view that we can’t move forward.
Furthermore, the GOP has a lock on the Christian vote. I realize that it’s not the entire Christian vote, but most of the Evangelical Christian vote. This makes me sick. We support the GOP and buy into the oil drilling, the tax breaks for businesses, and the idea that the rich should get to keep their money, whatever that means, when we say we believe in Christ alone. See what we have to do to get abortion rights taken away? We sell ourselves out to the highest bidder.
And this business of voting for a Mormon makes my stomach turn. Vote for who you want to vote for, my friends, but stop thinking you’re voting your Christian beliefs into office. You’re just voting for Exxon’s next tax break.
Disclaimer: These thoughts are written as a Christian, not a military member. If President Obama orders me to do something as a Sailor, I will do it. I follow the orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed over me. This means that no matter what happens next week, I will support the President of the United States. I simply mean to establish a point of view that as a believer it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide on a candidate.
1 comment:
Very well put! I tell people all the time that if they vote with their morals and "Christian" values, they are always going to contradict themselves. Secondly, in a secular-democratic country, I try to separate the government from religion. I'm not voting for a religious icon; rather, I'm voting for the leader of the free world. Unfortunately, a lot of people can't see the difference.
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