Wanted to share this from Bob Russell. This is an important issue for many Christians. Please read and consider. May God guide us all.
Imagine you and your family are aboard a cruise ship sailing from Alaska to Vancouver. There is serious trouble on board. Valuables have been stolen. Several children have been molested. Two young girls are missing. Obviously some foul characters are circulating among you.
You register a complaint with the ship’s head of security and demand an immediate investigation. What if he flippantly responds, “It doesn’t really matter, you’re going to be docking in Vancouver and flying home in a few days”? That’s true, but the next three days are crucial to you and your family. You have an obligation to protect your wife and three children. You don’t want them to experience terror or be thrown overboard! You want the very best investigator to be appointed so that corrective action is taken quickly and your family can be secure and enjoy the remaining days of the cruise.
I’ve encountered an increasing number of well-meaning Christians who display an indifferent attitude toward American politics. “I may not even vote this year,” one disgusted seventy-year-old minister grumbled. “All politicians are crooked!” He argued that we shouldn’t be too concerned about who wins the upcoming election because politics is dirty business. After all, he insisted, God is in charge and He will accomplish His will regardless of who is in the White House.
The implication is that if you are deeply concerned about the election, you’re not really trusting God. Christians should have their focus on Jesus and be above politics. If you get hyped up about what’s going on in government you’re lacking faith because the Kingdom of God will be ushered in soon and Jesus will reign as King of Kings and all this won’t matter.
That view takes the doctrine of predestination to the extreme. While it’s true that God’s will always prevails – righteousness always wins in the end and evil is always defeated – it is hyper-Calvinism to imply that human decisions don’t matter in the interim. We are not puppets on a string. Sin is not programmed by God. Mistakes matter. Governments matter, leadership matters, decisions matter, wise choices matter. Solomon wrote, “When the righteous thrive the people rejoice, when the wicked rule, the people groan” (Prov. 29:2).
When Christian leaders condescendingly imply, “The election doesn’t really matter, after all God is in charge and He is going to accomplish His will regardless,” ask them if they would have the same attitude if they are shortchanged at the bank or if a schoolteacher mistreats their child. Those are minor irritations in the big scheme of things but they matter to you in the course of daily living. And they matter to God who notices when a sparrow falls.
Does it matter who leads the country?
Ask the prophet Samuel if it mattered to God which son of Jesse was anointed King. Samuel didn’t tell Jesse, “It doesn’t matter which of your sons we select. The oldest is an impressive physical specimen, he’ll do. God is more powerful than any king; He will accomplish His will regardless.” No, Samuel rejected Jesse’s seven oldest sons and insisted on bringing young David in from the pasture.
Ask the residents of Jerusalem in 70 AD if governments matter. When the Roman hordes burned their homes, confiscated their property, raped their women, kidnapped their children and murdered their babies no one in Jerusalem concluded it didn’t matter because one day the Messiah was going to return.
Ask Dietrich Bonhoeffer if elections matter. Bonhoeffer didn’t conclude, “It doesn’t matter if Hitler rules, God will see to it that he’s punished.” Bonhoeffer openly opposed the Fuhrer and conducted clandestine seminaries, because he understood as a Christian he had a responsibility to oppose evil and stand for truth. That stance cost Deitrich Bonhoeffer his life. Hitler was eventually defeated, but had more German believers been as courageous as Bonhoeffer, World War II might have been avoided and 55 million lives spared.
I visited Seoul, South Korea three years ago. While I was there I dialogued with a North Korean pastor who lamented the stark contrast between the two countries. South Korea is prosperous, bustling, growing. North Korea is poverty stricken, repressive and filled with terror for its citizens. In South Korea, Christianity is thriving. But religion of any kind is almost non-existent in North Korea, having been suppressed by an atheistic government.
Those two countries are in the same geographical area and the people speak the same language and experience similar climates. What’s the difference? One is ruled by an atheistic dictator, the other is a functioning democracy. Governments make a difference in the expansion of the Kingdom of God.
Do elections matter? Ask a number of respected evangelicals like Billy Graham, Al Mohler, Tony Evans, John McCarthur and others have taken a strong stand for what they call the primary issues that affect Bible-believing Christians: the right to life, the sacredness of marriage and the protection of religious freedom.
What do you think will happen to churches, parachurch organizations and Christian families in America if we continue down the present path of expanding abortion rights, endorsing gay marriage, overriding religious freedoms, mocking Biblical truth and calling darkness light and light darkness? God warns, “The wicked will be cast into the grave and all nations that forget God.”
Charles Colson was right when he said, “Our ultimate hope won’t come riding in on Air Force One.” America needs a lot more than a president who will stand for Biblical values. We need a spiritual revival at the core. However, one indication that followers of Christ are serious about their faith is an understanding that Jesus is Lord over every facet of our lives – including the way we vote, because elections have serious consequences. They matter.
Wayne Gruden, Theology Professor at Phoenix Seminary, recently released a book entitled, Voting as a Christian – The Social Issues. Gruden lists five erroneous views of the Christian’s role in politics and then suggests our view should be “significant Christian influence.” This view says that Christians should seek to influence civil government according to God’s moral stands and God’s purposes for government as revealed in the Bible. But while Christians exercise this influence, they must “simultaneously insist on protecting freedom of religion for all citizens.”
President Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “… freedom is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards: nor yet does it tarry long in the hands of the sluggard and the idler, in the hands of the man so much absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure or in the pursuit of gain, or so much wrapped up in his own easy home life as to be unable to take his part in the rough struggle with his fellow men for political supremacy,” He warned, “The people who say that they have not time to attend to politics are simply saying that they are unfit to live in a free community. Their place is under a despotism.”
(For the full text of President Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, see “The Duties of
American Citizenship” at PBS.org)
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