I am typically loathe to comment publicly on politics, but the current election cycle has stirred up some issues that I believe to be relevant to every person, particularly people of faith.
The stage is set. Both of the major political parties have settled on their nominees for the highest office in the land. In less than one hundred days, the next President of the United States will have been elected and it will be either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
How in the world did we get here?
I first voted in a Presidential election in 1980, as a freshman in college. If you had told me then that this year’s college freshmen would be selecting between two candidates such as these, I would have questioned your sanity.
Yet, when I consider the consistent moral trajectory of our nation over the past generation, I’m left with only one conclusion: we have precisely the candidates to which our consistent choices as a people have led. To put it bluntly, we have the candidates that we deserve.
How should people of faith respond?
I’ve heard it said that we are here because the church has been silent and complacent for too long. I disagree. The church has not been silent or complacent—at least not in my neck of the woods.
My contention is that our message has been unclear and our strategy has been misguided. We bought into a political system that assumed we could trade our votes for a seat at the grown-ups table. We thought it was our job to get the right people elected so they would support our agenda of reforming the way people behave. We forgot our purpose of glorifying God and making disciples, seeing lives transformed through the renewing of the way people think. (Romans 12:2 – And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.)
People of faith should respond in this election exactly the same way we should respond in every election—pray, vote, and get back to the task of being the people of God on mission to live out the Christ-life in our communities.
Which candidate poses the greatest risk to the cause of Christ in the world?
Godly, intelligent people whom I love and respect will cast a vote for Donald Trump. Godly, intelligent people whom I love and respect will cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. Godly, intelligent people whom I love and respect will determine that their conscience will not allow them to cast a vote for either of these candidates.
Here’s the truth: the greatest risk to the cause of Christ is not what any candidate will do if elected. The greatest risk to the cause of Christ is if Christ-followers bite and devour one another over politics.
I am not in any way suggesting that choices don’t matter and all candidates are equal. I am suggesting that all candidates are equally unable to usher in a culture of Godliness. I am suggesting that far too much energy is devoted to calling into question the character, spirituality, and moral clarity of those who have come to different conclusions. If you don’t believe me, you are blind, gullible, and probably don’t love Jesus as much as I do.
I hope that last tongue-in-cheek sentence didn’t offend anyone, but it probably did. I fear we have marginalized ourselves just about into oblivion by our tendency to be offended by things that don’t go our way rather than to share God’s broken heart over a broken world.
The single greatest risk of the current election cycle is a broken world watching us fight each other instead of showing them what Jesus looks like and that their lives matter to Him.
