THE CHRISTIAN VOTE

"It will be conceded ... that a Christian's first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code of morals to the polls and vote them. Whenever he shall do that, he will not find himself voting for an unclean man, a dishonest man ... If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease ... Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidate upon any ticket, and graft would cease ... If the Christians of America could be persuaded to vote God and a clean ticket, it would bring about a moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country." – Mark Twain

Before we Christians carry our morals to the polls to "vote God" and save the country, as Mark Twain envisioned, we should reflect upon four things that seem to have been forgotten: (1) The nature of our government; (2) the nature of career politicians; (3) the nature of the electorate; and (4) the nature of one vote.

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." – George Washington

Our government was established to protect our lives, liberty, and property from foreign powers and criminal predators, and the Constitution was written to protect us from our government.

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort.... This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own." – James Madison

Whereas God established a military dictator to rule Israel in the first century, A.D., in the eighteenth century, God established a representative democracy to be ruled by the people ... not by a king, president or a bureaucracy. Our founders had the faith to guarantee each individual's God-given liberty, and the audacity to put restraints on government.

"Does it ever occur to evangelical Christians in this country to ask who is Caesar here? Who is Caesar in America? Who chooses the ministers? Who decides who is going to make the laws? Who decides who will have the power to put folks on the bench, and decide in courts how those laws will be applied? Who has that ultimate authority in our land? Who is it who is God's anointed, in a temporal sense, to rule over this land that, by His providence, has been raised up in the history of the world? Who is it? It's us! We, the people of the United States!" – Alan Keyes

The thing that sets government apart from private groups or public corporations is its monopoly on the use of force. Government is given the exclusive privilege to carry out its will by coercion. Perhaps that is why George Washington regarded government as "a dangerous servant."

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." – 2 Corinthians 3:17:

Perhaps that is why God encourages free, honest exchange among individuals and discourages central rule. God is not only the author of our liberty but He seems to make His contempt for kings and governments known in 1 Samuel 8:10-18.

"Once we understand that government is an abstraction that only possesses the power of legal plunder, our whole political perspective changes. The founders of this nation understood it. We seem to have forgotten it." – Ron Paul

"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God." – Romans 13:1

"The Bible does not speak in the vocabulary of a representative democracy ... thus we must make Biblical applications to our democratic context very carefully. Submission in our Republic is primarily to laws and constitutional processes and not to persons. Our officials are actually our employees." – Christian radio host, Chuck Missler

"Politics is evil. Ten years ago I thought politics was misguided. But the events of the past decade . . . indeed, of the past 10 or a dozen decades . . . have proven me wrong. The sum and substance of politics was expressed in the 1860s by Nicholas Chernyshevskii, a prescient Russian radical: ‘Man is god to man.' And politics violates the other nine commandments as well. Politics could hardly function without bearing false witness. Likewise, without taking the Lord's name in vain. In the modern era politics has taken the place of mere tyranny. The result has been more killing in one century than in all the preceding centuries combined. Covetousness and stealing define redistributive politics. Without redistribution politics would have no political support. Graven image is as good a name as any for the fiat money by which politics operates. Politics' insistence upon involvement in every human activity, 24-7, is more anti-Sabbatarian than golf. The Social Security system is no way to honor thy father and thy mother. And as for adultery, there was, and there may be still, Bill Clinton. Observe our national politics. Observe politics around the world. Observe politics through the ages. Does it look like God's handiwork?" – P. J. O'Rourke

"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." – Voltaire - 1764

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." – George Bernard Shaw

Career-politicians ... both Democrats and Republicans ... have learned to thrive on a vast system of taxation-theft. A system that Christians should find no less immoral than abortion, homosexuality, child pornography or President Bill Clinton's lying and adultery.

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves" – Edward R. Murrow

Are we one nation under God, or one nation under government? We seem to stand at a point in time similar to that of the Israelites in 1050 BC. Even though God told them they should rule themselves according to His laws, the Jews demanded to have a King to "fight their battles for them." Now, 213 years after having been granted liberty, we still cry for government to fight our battles ... e.g., feed the poor, educate our children, provide for our retirement, pay our doctor bills, buy our prescription medicine, give us affordable housing, keep our kids off drugs and keep our daughters from having abortions.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years." – Lord Alexander Tytler, writing on the fall of Rome and the Athenian republic.

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet' and ‘Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free." -- John Adams

"There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as caring and sensitive because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he is willing to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he will do good with his own money ... only if a gun is held to his head." – P. J. O'Rourke

We have become a strange electorate. We seem outraged that God has been kicked out of school ... and, perhaps, out of the Pledge of Allegiance and our holidays ... but, seem pleased that God has also been kicked out of charity. We call housing "affordable" when someone else is coerced to pay for it. We view taxation-theft as a virtue when it provides "entitlements." For, real or imagined, financial gain, we ignore 2 Corinthians 3:17 and accept the lie that free trade creates oppression, and that the suppression of free trade creates prosperity.

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness ..." – Isaiah 5:20

When a self-ruling electorate requests that their servants perform sinful or coercive acts in their behalf, we should assume that it will be the master that stands in judgement, not the servant. When Christians make that connection, perhaps we will be ready to "vote God and a clean ticket."

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." – Plato

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." – Edward Abbey

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, you may cherish the sweet reflection that your vote is never lost." – John Quincy Adams

1) Don't vote; 2) Remain uninformed; 3) Trust party sycophants and false teachers; 4) Vote for the party rather than the individual; 5) Vote for the "lesser of two evils"; 6) Leave God and faith out of the equation and rely on worldly political outcomes.

God does not require that the Republican or Democratic Party be in power to carry out His will. He requires only that His faithful citizen-rulers put Christian principles ahead of political self-interest, and obedience to His teaching into practice in the voting booth.

"If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." – 2 Chronicles 7:14

Scrimmage Line

October, 2002