In this last US presidential election, the Left promoted arguably the most corrupt candidate to ever run for office; the Right offered us (so it seemed) a brash, lying, womanizer promoting conservative values for the first time in his life; the third-party trampled basic Christian morality (pro abortion, sodomy, etc.) and consistently polled below 15%. To say there was mass confusion among US Christians about how to vote, or whether to vote at all, is an understatement; at the voting booth I was still struggling. But I think now I have an insight to guide me next time around.
The essence of loving our neighbors as ourselves is seeking their welfare; God tells us to use every opportunity to do good unto all (Ga 6:10); living otherwise is actually sinful. (Ja 4:17)
So if we have an opportunity to vote, we also have a moral obligation to cast our vote such that it will promote the most good (or minimize evil). This might be different than voting for who we like more (or dislike less). Voting for one with no realistic chance of winning is effectively the same as not voting; practically, it does about as much good. Yet the best choice, the one that does the most good, may not be obvious.
Voting for someone doesn’t necessarily mean we like them, or that we agree with everything they say and do. In a choice between a demon and the devil himself, when a choice is going to be made and we have a voice, doing good means trying to choose the lesser of the two evils.
The enemy is as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1Pe 5:8); the father of lies leverages every means at his disposal, including politics, to take us down. Through passivity, failing to resist him, neglecting opportunities to do good, we hand him real victories; we must be continually speaking and praying and living to promote the best way … God’s way.
So let’s do good by praying for this new president (1Ti 2:1-3), that God will give him holy wisdom and fierce strength to renounce and expose corruption, and to encourage righteousness and justice in our world. (Is 59:4) Let’s be aware and informed, looking past the media propaganda, willing to get the facts and both admit when he fails and defend him when he does well.
And let’s pray for those who’re thinking differently than we are, or not thinking at all … for those who didn’t vote, or didn’t vote for the collective good. Let’s listen carefully to them and try to understand their point of view in its strongest form. Let’s learn from them, yet also gently challenge them with facts, with reason, prompting them to reconsider. Let’s question them, unsettle them, and encourage them to take a step toward God.
Being wise as serpents yet harmless as doves (Ma 10:16), let’s buy the truth; let’s be informed, understanding the issues facing our nation and our world, in meekness and godly fear ready and more than willing to identify, learn from and answer every divergent point of view. (1Pe 3:15) Let’s promote the kingdom of God, one soul at a time. (Ja 5:19-20)
I appreciated the reminder that Satan uses the political system for his own ends — it is so obvious upon reflection, and yet one, we often overlook.
Nearly four years later, now in October 2020, we are at it again, enduring the turbulence of yet another election cycle. This one appears to be as much or even more problematic than the last one, if that is possible.
To set the stage, for the last four years, after unexpectedly losing the 2016 election — which appeared to be theirs to win or lose — the Left has been relentlessly attacking President Trump, leaving no stone unturned. They have evidently done their level best to discredit and undermine the legitimacy of his presidency from every conceivable angle, regardless of the absurdity: they have lied incessantly about him being a Russian agent, impeached him for unnamed crimes, weaponized and politicized a global pandemic to destroy the strongest economy we have ever known, and to promote fear, division and uncertainty among us, and they have promoted and excused Marxists and anarchists looting and burning our inner cities — under cover of racial inequality and police brutality, all to exploit their narrative that Trump mysteriously became racist the day he announced his bid for POTUS as a Republican. (Turns out that Trump was never accused of this prior to his announcement, but was very popular with the Left.) In my opinion, there has never been a more toxic, divisive, dishonest, coordinated, powerful, harmful polemic in US history.
Now, on the eve of yet another presidential election, evidently swooning under the hypnosis of critical race theory and BLM, some of our most respected and influential conservative Christian leaders are publicly falling for the propaganda, and are actually promoting the Left and their Marxist allies in this pending election. Most notably, John Piper has now attacked our President, regurgitating a litany of Trump’s personal sins, failures and faults, and has encouraged all believers to vote with and for the most radical, Marxist, anti-God agenda that has ever appeared on a presidential ballot in US history. This is no joke; it’s almost surreal.
In his article posted today, Oct 22, two weeks from the 2020 election, Piper argues that Trump’s unrepentant bragging, pride and divisiveness are more egregious, more corrupting to our culture, more morally repulsive than the radical Left’s policies promoting the murder of millions of babies, the insidious impoverishing of the Black community, the forced normalization and promotion of sodomy and transgender culture, the opening of our national borders to an unlimited flood of violent criminals, terrorists and drug traffickers, the indoctrination of critical race theory and corporate guilt into our youth through public schools and universities, open contempt and hatred for Israel, the destruction of the middle class and the bankrupting of our nation.
So, Piper is essentially encouraging all fundamental Christians to collaborate with George Soros in undermining and destroying the foundations of American civilization, in order to replace it with a tyrannical new world order. Piper would rather we do this than tolerate a bravado as a president. In other words, Piper is urging us all to vote for those in league with self-proclaimed Marxists, who openly state their intention to impose their murderous, intolerant, satanic ideology upon our nation, because he finds our current president to be a sinner.
Piper wants us to vote for the radical Left instead of for a broken man who evidently loves the US and is trying his best to protect it, but who doesn’t measure his words very well, who fights back against the Left’s relentlessly malicious attacks in an impolite manner, who committed adultery and womanized decades ago, and who brags a bit too much. Yet, this is a man who still somehow managed to raise some decent, respectable children and seems to be getting along well with his current wife. Trump is clearly promoting policies that are MUCH more in line with scripture, by any measure; Trump loves Israel and is trying to do right by our allies, and is by all appearances fighting government corruption as well as can be expected.
Further, and perhaps uniquely, President Trump isn’t trying to use the office of POTUS to gain power, wealth or fame — because he doesn’t need to; he is the first, and will likely be the only POTUS who will be worse off financially and socially for his public service; he is evidently putting his personal life and well-being on the line to do his best to help us all maintain our way of life, our freedom to worship, our ability to determine our own destiny, and to live quiet and peaceable lives for a little bit longer. The only reasonable motivation we can see here is patriotism and concern for our nation. Yet Piper stands against him, using his conservative Christian platform to remove president Trump from office at the earliest.
I respect John Piper on many levels, but he is so wrong about this it’s hard to put it into words; clearly, he is either a Marxist himself (which I doubt), or he is naive and careless, being swept along by the emotionalism and feel-good propaganda of the radical Left and their progressive, Marxist, revolutionary agents.
Firstly, and primarily, Piper has zero evidence that Trump is more proud or arrogant than Biden/Harris. There is no way for Piper to measure this. On this fact alone, Piper’s entire premise fails the basic sniff test. Not even close.
Piper is evidently, like the biased media, focusing on what is politically correct, perhaps to gain favor with an inner-city, urban congregation, and missing the forest for a bit of dirt on one of the trees. This is painfully obvious to those of us who are paying attention: between Trump and the radical Left, Trump is clearly the lesser of the two evils – there is an order of magnitude of difference between them; they aren’t even in the same league.
Wrapping our minds around this kind of blatant absurdity feels a bit like trying to explain why a Brit, when comparing a smiling Joseph Stalin with a frowning Winston Churchill, would side with Stalin because he doesn’t like Churchill’s demeanor. To any thinking person, there’s a big difference between an aggressive, speak-your-mind, brash, overly-confident patriot and a half-braindead, child-molesting, genocidal, narcissistic sociopath. Which one would likely do more harm and evil as head of the most powerful nation that’s ever existed? Piper can’t seem to figure this one out. Go figure.
This election, in particular, must not be about personality – it must be about policy. Those who fail to recognize this are making the mistake of a lifetime: Piper will very likely live to regret that he ever published such nonsense as this.
Perhaps Piper’s blunder is a foreshowing of how God will send strong delusion upon all those who don’t love the truth; all but the elect will be swept up in and believe a lie. If anyone in popular Christian culture loves the truth, I would have said it was John Piper, but his actions today speak more loudly and clearly than all his former words and works.
I am grieved, especially for Piper, but I am not disheartened. Such is the power of deception when God leaves us to ourselves. God will restrain evil according to His perfect will and plan, and nothing will stand against Him. Whatever He allows will eventually glorify Him more perfectly and wonderfully than anything else we could possibly have imagined.
Even so, God help us if Biden and Harris become the next leaders of the free world. The two of them may be its last such leaders; their plan is to reduce the free world to nothing more than a bad dream, and if we actually give them the power to make this happen we deserve what we get. The suffering that will inevitably ensue upon all but the political elite, as it has in every other nation that has ever gone down this road, will likely dwarf all that has come before it, and set the stage for the final, unspeakably evil age of world history.
thayes — clearly the best article I’ve ever read on the Presidential election! Bravo!
When you look at the policies promoted by each party, it’s unfathomable that any Christian could ever vote for Biden / Harris!
Thanks David! It seems so obvious, but then I can relate to missing the obvious sometimes – at least until someone points it out to me.
That the final paragraph isn’t hyperbole, but intended as an accurate depiction of the Left’s agenda, consider this article outlining the key reasons we should not vote for Biden/Harris.
Here is a similar article by Larry Taunton evaluating the recent compromises of both John Piper and Tim Keller (noted in the corporate guilt link within the above editorial comment posted on 10/22/20). He evidently shares my concern on the grave consequences of this election.