Election Commentary - Part 1

Dear friends in Christ, and His children through the cross,

This newsletter should be reaching your boxes just about one month before this year’s presidential election. From coast to coast, people and organizations will spend the coming weeks putting on their final push to convince others to vote for their chosen candidate. Often times, churches will also be found engaging in this sort of activity, some even going so far as to invite one of the candidates into their “pulpit” on Sunday morning. Is this proper? How should the church handle politics, especially in relation to the presidential election? This will be a two-part article, articulating two important ideas from scripture which should guide us as Christians as we consider our vote in the coming election.

The first of these says, “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. [4] Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4 ESV) All too often, people, churches, and even denominations blindly follow one political party without considering the positions of its candidates or their opponents. Loyalty to that party can even to so far as to disrupt their relationships with their friends and neighbors who hold differing allegiances, even within the church. Paul answers this by instructing us to “do nothing out of rivalry or conceit.” Allegiance to a political party or other earthly thing should never cause division in Christ’s church. Even if our conclusions differ, they should be based on carefully considered facts rather than blind partisanship and should certainly not be valued above the unity of Christ’s Church.

More importantly, Paul goes on to say that Christians should consider others more highly than themselves and look to others’ interests ahead of their own. All too often, decisions about political candidates are made primarily out of self-interest. We are inclined to choose a candidate based on whose health care plan will save us money or whose tax cuts will improve our bottom line, but if we consider the interests of our neighbor ahead of our own, this would not be so. We would not vote based on a candidate’s position on ethanol subsidies or the inheritance tax, but rather on the basis of what is most beneficial for our nation and our neighbor.

Placing ourselves in the back seat in this way is a difficult thing to do, but we must realize that the answers to the world’s problems are not political anyway. Even the best political solutions cannot solve the problem of human sin which is the disease to which all of the world’s other problems are merely symptoms. Jesus instructs us in the Gospel of Matthew to “Seek first the kingdom of God and His Righteousness and all these things [material needs] will be added to you.” So, we as Christians should examine candidates, not in light of what they can do for us, but instead by the standard of whether they will be a righteous leader who will rule for the benefit of our neighbor… (to be continued)

[Pastor's article from St. John's Messenger newsletter October 2008]