Should Christians Vote?
Stats show that many Christians choose not to vote in our national elections. Pew Research Center found that the number of Christians who register to vote has dropped 15% since 2008 while the number of unaffiliated voters has nearly doubled.
Many Christians take the attitude that voting is getting involved in the world system and feel that Christians should refrain from such involvement. On the other hand, Jesus had a simple response to this issue. To the religious leaders who were trying to trap him with a similar question of involvement with the world’s government, He simply said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17).
Jesus seemed to be telling them that we have obligations to the world system in which we live as well as an obligation to the God we serve. We live on earth but serve a heavenly Father who dwells in our lives and desires our devotion. So we can render our tax obligations while giving our lives fully to our Lord. We can do the things required of us as citizens of heaven while being citizens of a nation on earth.
There are kingdom issues that have an earthly counterpart in our lives on earth. Some of these issues come from God’s desire to express justice and righteousness in our lives and can be affected by expressing this through the voting privilege we possess.
Abortion may be the most obvious issue that results in justice or injustice depending on the vote of citizens.
It may seem like an injustice for a young lady to have to bear a child for nine months when it is difficult for her. However, a greater injustice takes place when an unborn child is denied the right to live for the convenience of the mother. Of course, the fate of the unborn eventually fell to our Supreme Court whose members are chosen by the president who is elected by our vote. Thus, voting becomes of paramount importance.
In overturning Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court did not make abortion illegal but simply returned it to the states in keeping with the Tenth Amendment which reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Abortion was never an issue dealt with directly in the Constitution so it should always have been reserved to the states and the people of those states. This is what the Supreme Court decided.
A final point on the matter of voting is summarized for us by Paul:
I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner — not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “PUT AWAY FROM YOURSELVES THE EVIL PERSON. (1 Cor 5:9–13).
Here Paul is telling Christians that we have no business judging the morality of people outside of the church. We have a responsibility of exercising God’s judgment within the church but people outside of the church should be left in God’s hands.
This is not to say that the morality of a candidate never matters but simply to make the point that voting would be extremely difficult if morality was the sole item of our judgment.
As I said in my last message, this next election will be a serious turning point for this country. Seek God’s help through prayer and vote accordingly but by all means, do vote.
