On the Eve of Election

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re gonna have a political election soon. There seems to be more passion, at least expressed in media coverage, advertisements, and partisan rhetoric, than I can remember in recent presidential contests. Maybe, with the economy the way it is, people feel there is more at stake even if there is not actually so. Some of you eagerly discuss your positions and your candidate with anyone who will listen, some of you speak guardedly, and others of you can’t wait until November 5 when things will presumably get back to normal.

I find myself somewhere toward the latter of those sentiments. As you may know, I have made it a point in my ministry not to tell others who to vote for, nor to tell you who I am voting for. This reticence on my part is not because preachers and/or religious folk shouldn’t speak their minds. We should. More on that in a few minutes. No, I don’t often talk specifics for two reasons: First of all, I want you all to think for yourselves. Think for yourself and don’t depend on the pastor to tell you who the “real Christian candidate” is. Think for yourself and don’t react against someone else’s position, mine or your neighbors, simply because you don’t like the guy. And secondly, I don’t talk politics because I have bigger fish to fry.

Don’t get me wrong – politics is important.

Politics is the activity of free persons deliberating the question of how they ought to order their life together in relation to the good. Aristotle

So at its heart, politics is akin to ethics. It is about making moral choices for the community. We often disagree over the choices and the right way to order ourselves. But disagreement does not excuse us from the ongoing task, even though there is a part of me that wishes it did.

We live in an earthly kingdom which is informed by the will of God. I say informed. This earthly kingdom is obviously not yet the Kingdom of God that He has in mind. But Scripture points to the goodness of a political order.

“Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?,” they asked Jesus. They asked maybe for the benefit of those who obviously thought it was not right to give their money to a corrupt foreign oppressor. Others among them thought that if Jesus is Messiah he will overthrow this power in revolution. At the very least, he will tell us to keep our money.

Whose head is this and whose title? Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.

Of course, everything is God’s, as Jesus implies, but the right ordering of this earthly kingdom is through the means of government. The apostle Paul spells this out in more detail to the believers in Rome. These Christians lived in perhaps greater danger of persecution and divided allegiance as believers in the seat of power that was Rome.
But here is what the apostle tells them:

Let every person be subject to governing authorities, for there is no authority except God. . . one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. . . the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them – taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. Romans 13.1,5-7

In other words, the authorities are in authority because God allows them to be. When you honor your government you honor God.

Does this mean government is beyond criticism? By no means. Submission in a just society does not mean you cannot criticize and you cannot protest. What it means is that at the end of the day, when all voices have been heard, a right ordering is attempted and all voices, both powerful and meek, agree not to tear the building down upon themselves. A healthy debate and dialogue is essential to this right ordering.

The Scriptures counsel us to a healthy skepticism when it comes to politics.

“Put not your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; and on that very day their plans die with them.” Psalm 146. 3-4

We are reminded that our true hope lies not in these temporary kingdoms, whether they are called capitalist or communist, west or east, superpower or developing power, conservative, liberal or progressive. All these powers will fail. Our true hope lies in a more lasting kingdom.

Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his anointed saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds asunder and cast their cords from us.’

He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision.


Happy are they, says the Psalmist, who take refuge in the Lord.

So what of politics? Stay engaged and make your voice heard. Politics needs you, Christian, more than you need politics. In fact, there is a growing opinion these days that people ought to leave their religion out of any kind of public discussion. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, wrote an article for Newsweek in which he not only mocks the Assembly of God faith of Sarah Palin but suggests that anyone who believes in their religion a little too strongly is unhinged and dangerous, dangerous to themselves and dangerous to others.

People like Harris -atheists, agnostics, and secularists- say that believers ought to leave their religion behind when it comes to politics and any other sort of public discussion, education, sports, you name it. But as Stephen Carter has noted, as a believer, to leave your religion at home is to leave the best part of yourself behind. As we understand ourselves, to not allow our faith to inform public debate is to eliminate our voices from the public discussion. Which, I suppose, suits people like Sam Harris just fine.

One of the driving beliefs of the twentieth century among the academics was that religion would eventually fade away completely. The more prosperous and educated the world became, the less people would believe in God. This belief has now been thoroughly discredited. The people of the world are becoming more religious, not less. But that does not prevent people like Harris from insisting on tolerance for everything and everyone except religious believers. He wishes we would just go away.

Democrats, no matter what you may think of Sarah Palin, when Harris mocks her faith, he is doing you no favors. Likewise, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity may be voices you listen to, but don’t listen uncritically. Jesus will be claimed by no party. He wasn’t in Judea. He won’t be in our time.

It’s up to us to elevate the discussion and point to the issues that matter. The Word that we gather around is the Word of the King. Christians understand themselves to be engaged in the politics of the right ordering of human life together. We should strive to be a zone of truth in a world of political polarities. Politics is also the quest for power and Christians rebuke that by pointing to the One whom all powers must eventually obey.

After this fever of election season is over, I am confident most of us will settle down and remember more important things. We will stop reading the conservative/liberal labels into every little thing. Thank goodness, the most important things we each have to say cannot be fitted into easy political labels. Beginning with, for example, “I love you.” Those who insist on knowing whether that is a liberal or a conservative statement are, after a while, not likely to hear it very often.

When it comes to politics, the poet T.S. Eliot has a wise thought:

“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”


So what did I teach you today? Maybe not much. I certainly haven’t answered the question of whom to vote for. I will tell you this. The other night my son asked me who I was voting for. And I will tell you what I told him:

“I’m voting for you, son. I’m voting for you.”