This is an amazing article written by my cousin’s husband (hence, my cousin) Joel. It is posted on his own blog, but I wanted to reprint it here as well.
Just to preface this article, I ask that you PLEASE read the entire thing. I would rather you read it all and send me lots of angry comments than for you to just stop reading if you disagree. Thanks!
In order to approach the topic of how we should vote, we must lay a foundation of understanding two key principles–moral relativism and situational ethics. Moral relativism is something that plagues the church today, but at least in theory most Christians would recognize that it is wrong. Moral relativism says that there is no absolute moral truth that applies to all situations. For example, relative morality says that watching a TV show that endorses sin is okay as long as it’s not nearly as bad as what most people in the church watch. Or that wearing a tempting bikini is okay since it’s not nearly as revealing as what all the other girls are wearing. While many believers fall prey to moral relativism, I have found few foolish enough to argue it is Scripturally warranted.
Then we have situational ethics. This is where many Christians often tend to fall into the trap of pragmatism, but I am convinced it is not scriptural just as moral relativism is not Scriptural. Situational ethics say that there ARE absolute moral truths but that sometimes they must be set aside in certain situations to accomplish some greater good. It’s the concept that the end justifies the means. This leads to people justifying lying when they fear that the truth would be offensive. It also is the leading reason of why people vote for the ”lesser of two evils” rather than voting for a candidate that most closely aligns with Godly principles expressed in the Bible.
Neither of these can be true. Scripture clearly teaches that God is Truth and that He is unchanging–the same yesterday, today, and forever. God never in His Word teaches that we should measure ourselves by the way others live their lives. The choices in our lives are only measured against the holiness of God.
How does this apply to how you vote?? Think of it this way… if your vote were the only one that mattered–if YOU alone picked our next president, would you vote for McCain or Obama? I pray that if you know the Bible even a little, you have the sense to emphatically say, ”NEITHER!” Neither of these candidates come close to God’s standard of morality. When there is a Godly candidate like Chuck Baldwin, why would you ever want someone like McCain or Obama in office?
I ask you then… if only your vote mattered and you know that the right thing would be to vote for someone other than McCain or Obama, then why should your standard change just because of how you know everyone else is going to vote? Does the fact that only McCain or Obama has a shot at the presidency make it acceptable to not vote for the best candidate? Pragmatists like to call this “throwing away your vote” but I think it’s more of a throw-away when you do not heed the Biblical standards of a Godly leader.
Imagine this… what if you had McCain, Obama, and Jesus running. Jesus is an independent and you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt He has no chance of actually winning. Wouldn’t you still vote for Him? Of course–He’s the best candidate! Now, this is only an analogy and I recognize that no candidate is perfect like Jesus, but I think the analogy is a useful one for helping us recognize we should vote for the best candidate, not the lesser of two evils who at least has a chance of winning.
You might say “well, you could vote righteously for the next 100 years and it probably won’t make any difference. An independent still won’t get into office.” And you’d probably be right. I am not here to argue that point. But God’s moral standards are absolute, not relative. Where in Scripture are we called to act morally only if the outcome is what we want? I’ll tell you what we find in Scripture. God tells His people to follow His values and to trust that He will take care of us. We do not need to compromise our values in order to help God take care of us or our nation; God doesn’t call us to be pragmatists. God is in control no matter what. What we have to keep in mind is that we will give an account for every godly or ungodly choice we make. And on judgment day we cannot say “but doing the right thing wouldn’t have mattered in that situation.”
God calls us to choose righteousness. Period. If I vote for a candidate who is the lesser of two evils, am I choosing righteousness? No! Can we expect any candidate to be fully righteous? Clearly I am not saying that. But when there is a clearly MOST righteous candidate and we as Christians do not choose him, we are intentionally choosing unrighteousness.
If you really think that Obama or McCain is the MOST godly candidate running, then by all means vote for them. But if you don’t, I’d ask you to please think before compromising your values for the sake of going with the crowd.
P.S. - I present all this to you in humility. If anyone can indicate to me where in Scripture where God indicates that the ends do justify the means, then I would be more than willing to admit I’m wrong. However, if you can’t find any Scriptural backing for voting the lesser of two evils, I beg you to not do it because it’s what you’ve always done or because it’s what most Christians do.
