Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Mt 5:8-9).

On Not Voting With a Divided Mind

When voting, you carry some brand of hope to the ballot. Always dissatisfied in some way with the present, human nature wants a solution. Human nature also wants a particular human being to embody that solution. In the USA, we call the primary person in that role the President of the United States. We want a president whom we can count on to fulfill our hopes as citizens. 

But suppose you are also a Christian. That does not make you much different: You still face this perpetual dissatisfaction, this sense that something is wrong with life. You also turn to specific human beings, clergy or a spiritually gifted friend. Ultimately, of course, you turn to Jesus Christ. 

Is there any tension there? Do the President and Jesus Christ coexist in perfect concord, complementary bearers of our hopes for a better life? Many Christians express hope by voting for the President to take care of national security and economic growth on one hand. They they turn to Jesus Christ to take care of inner peace and ultimate destiny after death on the other. 

So many Christians in America nicely separate out their hopes and assign them to the proper savior. They compartmentalize hope. It is an old habit of thinking and living that likely will not die soon. And it is misleading in several ways. 

First of all, Jesus and the Jewish tradition he loved considered everything God’s business, not just inner peace and a place in heaven. Jesus gets into our finances, calling the man who gathered up a barn load of financial security a fool (Lk 12:13-21). Jesus gets into our idea of political relations by calling the rival enemy (Samaritans for his hearers) “neighbor,” and one who sets the better example of neighborliness (Lk 10:25-37). 

He taught us to hope in the coming kingdom of God, a political image. And no emperor, king, dictator, or president would usher in this kingdom. God’s hand would in God’s time. In this political arrangement, today’s first become tomorrow’s last, and today’s last, tomorrow’s first (e.g., Mt 20:16). Furthermore, while we live eternally in the kingdom, he also bids us pray for it to come on earth as it is in heaven (Mt 6:10). So much for assigning God to a separate domain from politics.

Voting For a Human Being, Trusting in God

Furthermore, no President ever came close to fulfilling our hopes because no human being can. Presidents have precious little control over the price of gas, groceries, and real estate, although on the campaign trail, most of them enable the illusory belief that they do. They oversee the executive branch that enforces the law, but they depend on the legislative and judicial branches, which can also override the President.

The presidents we deem great were flawed human beings who, by God’s grace, responded to crises with courage, care, and wisdom. None of them departed without leaving messes for the next one to clean up. 

Yet, many of us want a president who will fix every problem, who will run the government like a successful business. Successful businesses, by the way, are more like dictatorships than democracies, operating top-down with a minimum of checks and balances on the CEO. Moreover, businesses with their priority on profit do no better in caring for their customers than politicians with their priority on power in caring for their constituents.  

The kingdom of God is not a successful business but a community of those who “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8). Biblical justice is measured not by the largesse of the powerful but by the wholeness and security of the most vulnerable. Lovingkindness in God’s reign is the opposite of dividing people against each other; it extends hospitality for the stranger and alien. Walking humbly with God is the opposite of saying, “Trust me, only I can fix all your problems.” Any candidate who says that does not offer himself as a servant of God but as an alternative to God. 

When voting, we want to believe that some human being can fix it all for us, so many Christians fall for it. But if we take Jesus seriously, we know there is no Christian party, no candidate who is God’s anointed. We do much better to consider the kingdom and voting for the candidate we think more likely to put ego aside and dance to the rhythm of God’s movement. We need the candidate most focused on serving God’s ends, not standing in for God.

Voting With God’s Purposes In Mind

Psalm 146 admonishes, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help” (v.3). Then it offers a short list of God’s political purposes:

• stewardship and care for the planet (v.6),
• justice for the oppressed (v.7a),
• food for the hungry (v.7b),
• freedom from whatever imprisons us (v. 7c),
• vision of beauty and truth (v.8a),
• support for the emotionally distressed and afflicted (v.8b),
• honoring those who devote themselves to love and justice (v.8c),
• community for the lonely and isolated (v.9a),
• security for the weak and powerless (v.9b), and
• consequent defeat of all that would subvert God’s peace (v.9c).

Voting as a Christian entails serious consideration of those purposes of God. When voting with Christian hope, consider which candidate seems better prepared to serve God toward those ends. Remember the candidate is only human. Just be sure the candidate knows that too.

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Public domain photo (depicting young African-American woman voting in 1964) by Unseen Histories on Unsplash.