In every election I've voted in (and
I've voted in every Presidential election since 1976) I've never been
completely satisfied with the choices. In the election of 1980
between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, my wife and I were standing
in line to vote early that morning, and a reporter from the newspaper
was interviewing people about the election, asking them who they were
voting for. My picture ended up being in the paper because I said
“I'm a little for Reagan & a lot against Carter”. That's
almost the way I've felt about every election since then. And I'm not
sure if there will ever be an election where I don't have any
reservations about a candidate.
Many people struggle with this year's
Presidential election because they have serious reservations about
the two major party candidates. Some do not like what President Obama
has done as President, even those who voted for him in 2008. Some do
not like Governor Romney, in part because of his Mormon religious
beliefs.
Many people piously say that a
candidate's religion shouldn't be a factor in deciding whether to
vote for that candidate. Yet what if that candidate's religion
practiced animal sacrifice? I imagine many would suddenly decide his
religious beliefs were now a topic for discussion!
Some Christians will not vote for
Governor Romney because he is a Mormon, and they cannot in good
conscience vote for someone who is a practicing member of a
theological cult. Yes, Mormonism is a theological cult because,
although Mormon theology believes in a person called Jesus Christ who
died on a cross as Savior, Mormon beliefs about who that Jesus is are
very different from Biblical teaching, twisting and changing the
Jesus of the Bible into someone else.
If a Christian cannot vote for Gov.
Romney because of his Mormon beliefs, then the Christian should not
vote for Gov. Romney. Romans 14-15 discuss the application of
conscience to difficult issues, and a person should never violate his
conscience. Your conscience is more important than any election.
Candidates and elections change every two years. Your conscience will
be with you forever. You must not violate your conscience. Having a
pure, clean, Biblically healthy conscience is more important than
winning an election. Once you start crossing your conscience, you
will do it again and again until you have what the Bible calls a
hard, seared conscience, unresponsive and insensitive to moral
issues.
A Christian in that position should
also understand that we are not selecting a religious leader but a
political leader. Christians living in areas such as Utah have
struggled with this problem for many years. Will Gov. Romney's
religious beliefs affect his political decisions? I'm sure they will,
just as President Obama's religious beliefs have influenced his
social justice emphasis.
Another factor to consider is that if a
person usually votes Republican but does not vote this year because
he does not like the Republican candidate, then practically his
decision helps re-elect President Obama. Then the question becomes a
“Which is worse” situation—President Obama or President Romney.
The Bible
teaches very clearly that the Lord God controls this world, including
which people are in positions of governmental power. Proverbs 21:1
teaches that leaders are like water directed by a hand in the
direction you want the water to go, and the Lord is the hand which
controls. Second Chronicles, Ezra, and Isaiah describe how God chose
and used Cyrus the Great to accomplish certain plans.
Realistically, only the candidates from
the two main parties will win the Presidency. Third Party candidates
don't win Presidential elections today. We are not given ideal
choices in elections. In the Presidential election of 1804, only two
major candidates had any hope of winning, Thomas Jefferson and
Charles Pickney. Jefferson was the current President, and Pickney was
from South Carolina, a Revolutionary War veteran, and member of the
Constitutional Convention. But he was not as well-known nor popular
as Jefferson, who won in a landslide. You're probably thinking “Well,
Yeah, I would have voted for Jefferson too”
Did you know, however, that Thomas
Jefferson openly denied the deity of Jesus Christ, rewrote the NT to
fit his religious beliefs, believed that some of the Gospels was
absurd, and that Paul was an imposter and corrupter of Christ's
teachings? So we would vote for Thomas Jefferson but not Mitt Romney?
My point here is not to promote Mitt
Romney, but simply that, in this world corrupted by sin, we do not
have ideal choices. And we sometimes have to make a choice less than
ideal in order to prevent what we believe is a worse choice from
winning.
If you decide not to vote, you are
leaving the results to other people, people whose views may be very
different from yours. Other people are counting on your not voting so
that their views are what wins, not yours. Do you trust others
to make this decision for you? The more people who do not
vote, the results of the election are decided by those who do
vote. In other words, if most people do not vote, then the minority
decides the election. And that's not how our political system is
supposed to work. This results in government by a few, not the
majority. And those few will usually be people with extreme/fanatical
views who are highly motivated to vote and influence the country.
If you do not vote or cannot vote, you
may say “I'm just going to leave the results to God.”
And that is true---you are choosing not
to participate and trust the Lord knowing the results are the Lord's
plan. But that's almost like not praying because you are just going
to trust God to do His will. Praying is our working with God to
accomplish His will by our verbalizing requests to Him and asking Him
to do something. Voting is our working with God to accomplish His
will by our selecting who we believe is the best candidate and asking
God to work the results. So, if someone doesn't vote and leaves the
results to God, that's OK. But voting also is trusting God.
We have the privilege in this country
of voting for our representatives in government. That privilege is
not always easy. Yet liberty and freedom are not supposed to be easy.
Situations like this remind me that I am not in control of world
events, that the time before Christ comes grows more confusing, that
I am looking for a better place. Christians who are angry and bitter
about our country and how the world is changing are forgetting that
this world is not our home [Hebrews 11:13-16]. But while we are here,
before Christ returns, we have a responsibility to do our part to
promote what is right, what is Biblical, and work for freedom to do
gospel work. Let's not forget why we are here---not to promote
America, but to proclaim Jesus Christ.
