An American husband and wife who are gracEmail subscribers ask if they must vote for a particular political candidate and his party in order to be “good” Christians. Another subscriber, who is a pastor, asks how morality should affect our voting as Christians.
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Over the years, I have voted for Democrats, Independents, Republicans and Libertarians. That said, I must add that a Christian has no obligation to support any particular political candidate or party, since all parties and all candidates are human, fallible, morally mixed and at best align themselves only partially with God’s biblically-revealed principles. That means we must seek to choose between less-than-perfect options and there is more than one way to assess which option is better and which is worse.
For example, my pro-life conviction is repulsed by widespread Democratic endorsement of abortion, but it also draws back from the apparent indifference of this Republican administration to the killing of thousands of innocent Iraqi women and children by U.S. bombs and other weaponry. The pro-gay agenda of many Democrats directly conflicts with biblical teaching regarding sexual morality, but the Republican tendency always to support big business at the expense of the individual conflicts with biblical teaching regarding concern for the poor, the vulnerable and the helpless. God expects humans to exercise stewardship over our planet, which excludes worshipping it on the one hand or recklessly destroying and polluting it on the other hand.
In the end, we do the best we can, knowing that all human decisions are less than perfect and probably also tinged with sin. Yet we choose, and choose we must, with final assurance that God is in control of our nation and the whole world. The same God has been working his own good purposes through the mixed choices of fallen humans ever since our first ancestral couple made their fateful decision in Eden and the shadows of ethical ambiguity began to dim our human perception to the pure brightness of absolute moral light.