The theology of politics
27 Oct 2004 
terribly early in the morning 
Matt Winckler
Last week I read a post in alabra’s LiveJournal that was in response to somebody posting about how voting for third parties is not throwing your vote away. I’ll preface this with the statement that I don’t have a clue who alabra is, nor who it was that sparked his rant. However, he seems to present himself as a Reformed Christian, and he does not permit replies in his LiveJournal, but his views seem sufficiently misguided to warrant a response from someone who is voting third party tickets on Tuesday. To get the full effect of this post, you must first follow the above link and read alabra’s monologue. Furthermore, nobody is unbiased about anything, and I’m particularly biased about this topic, so you might as well read about what I think of politics in general so that you know just where my biases are coming from.
That done, I could go through his missive point-by-point and indicate where I disagree on each little bit of alabra’s post, but that always strikes me as confrontational and is usually reserved for people to whom I wish to grant no quarter. In this case, I think a broader approach is called for, and I hope to respond to ideas rather than sentences, so to speak. But to begin with, he writes that “Obviously, there’s still a lot of confusion out there, and from Christians, no less.” On this statement, at least, we can agree, if not upon the immediate context surrounding it.
One of alabra’s big problems with the third-party voters against Bush are that they are making too big a deal out of specific, isolated incidents of idolatry on Bush’s part. Specifically, alabra mentions the incident at the Shinto temple in Japan. He suggests that instead of shunning Bush for idolatry, we ought to “exercise true Christian charity and FORGIVE him”. Certainly we must forgive our Christian brethren when they sin against us. But when do we forgive them? We forgive them when they repent of their sins. There has been no such repentance from our president. He has embraced polytheism with the abominable ceremony on 9/14/01 in the National Pantheon, he has honored our spiritual arch-enemies the Muslims by observing the month of Ramadan in the White House, and he paid religious honor–more than a meaningless, polite bow–at the Shinto temple in Japan. He has consistently demonstrated that he does not hold faithfully to serving the same God I do, for he is eager to please the men of this world ahead of pleasing his God. Does God forgive the unrepentant sinner? No. He does not.
Moving on, alabra admonishes us because to vote for Nader or Peroutka (I have no idea why he consistently bunched these two together) is throwing our vote away, since neither is even remotely electable. According to alabra, we are actually the idolaters ourselves, since we refuse to vote for Bush in the interest of the “country’s greater good“. He argues that we will not have a clean conscience when John Kerry becomes president, thanks to us not voting for Bush. Our own “myopically narrow dogma” has become our idol, born out of “erroneous dominion theology” and postmillennialist detritus. (In case you missed it, here’s how I feel about postmillennialism: Part I, Part II, and Part III.) We who refuse to vote for Bush are narrow-minded, we can’t see the forest through the trees, and we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
This sort of thinking really arises from a misunderstanding of what it means to vote. Think about what a vote means, and what responsibilities it carries. By casting my vote for a candidate, I am identifying myself as being “in his camp”, in favor of his policies, and voicing my support for all his actions. There is no such thing as a “75%” vote if you agree with 75% of a candidate’s issues. It’s all or nothing. By casting my vote, I am saying to the world that I fully support the candidate whose name is punched on my ballot.
We get the leaders we deserve, and we are responsible for electing them. We are, to a certain extent, responsible for their actions. In the hypothetical situation, if I vote for Joe Q. Public, and he signs an executive order banning Christianity as a religion, I share in the responsibility for banning Christianity. Likewise, if I vote for George W. Bush, and he embraces Islam as a religion on equal ground with Christianity and worthy of national respect, then I share the responsibility for acknowledging that my spiritual enemies are just as morally justified as I am.
Do not misunderstand me: I am not saying that we are personally responsible for all the sins our president commits. We certainly do not take the blame or discipline for his personal sins. However, we share the responsibility of the sins he commits through the execution of the office we elected him to. We are responsible for our president in a similar way that a husband is responsible for the conduct of his family. The husband does not carry the blame for his wife’s personal sins, but he does carry the blame for any abdication of his duty that led to his wife sinning. We carry the blame for wilfully voting for candidates with whom we know we fundamentally disagree with.
…their reasoning shows a profound naivete, a lack of faith in the sovereignty of God, a poor understanding of modern political realities, AND of a key principle of Christian philosophy: the principle of incrementalism, i.e., that some good gained is better than no good gained; or, worse, of evil gaining and overtaking the good.
Here is the most disturbing part of alabra’s diatribe. Profound naivete I can deal with. Poor understanding of modern political realities–fine, though I will address it briefly in a moment. But a lack of faith in the sovereignty of God? This I cannot tolerate, for that statement is utterly, one hundred percent, patently and absolutely false.
It is a lack of faith in the sovereignty of God that leads people like alabra to believing that if Bush isn’t elected, the cause of the Kingdom will somehow be halted. It is a lack of faith in the sovereignty of God that thinks the election of a Democrat will irrevocably undermine Christian advances in this nation. It is a lack of faith in the sovereignty of God that twists the heart into believing that God would rather have us elect the lesser of two evils rather than voicing our support for the good. It is a lack of faith in the sovereignty of God that believes that politics is our saviour.
I have news for alabra and anyone else who thinks that we are morally obligated to vote for Bush: God does not need us to accomplish His sovereign and divine plan. It does not matter who is elected next week. The kingdom of God is going to prevail regardless. Do you honestly believe that anything man does can stop the Gospel? God’s will is going to be done no matter what. It is a lack of faith in the sovereignty of God to think anything to the contrary.
Regarding “modern political realities”, anybody who thinks this matter through ought to see that voting for the lesser of two evils is a foolish short-term strategy at best. Conservatives are only three years behind the liberals anyway. If you’re going to vote for an evil, why not vote with the liberals? That way we can get on with the destruction of our country in a more expedient manner, get it over with, and start over sooner. Doug Wilson (you know, the heretic postmillennial dominion theologian) has used a quip that I like to steal: “If the Democrats proposed a bill to burn down the Capitol, the Republicans would counter with a proposal to do it over three years.” Conservative politics is never going to get us out of the hole we’ve dug; it’s just going to shuffle dirt around with its feet while liberalism does the real digging.
I’m voting for Peroutka. From all that I have seen, he is a man who understands these principles and has his priorities straight. I know he’s not going to be president. But I also know that God holds us accountable for our actions. A vote places us within the camp of the candidate we vote for. I’m going to do my best to see to it that when I’m called to account for my voting record, I will have nothing to be ashamed of.
Sola Fide. Soli Deo Gloria.