Casting a Vote

Given that tomorrow we vote, I think this is worth stating today. My purpose, as John Piper noted in his blog, is “to point to a perspective that seems to be neglected.”

To begin, we as Christians have focused on agenda over character for years. This is why we have focused on agenda based discipleship, why we have excluded people from the church, and why we have disregarded the character of leadership and ultimately have been co-dependent supporters of unhealthy and non-biblical character in so many churches. This is why so many outside the church and many who have grown up in the church have clearly seen the wizard behind the curtain and decided to have nothing to do with church.

As Piper notes, there seems to be a view especially within Christian communities that we can vote on agenda rather than character. As he says, “The justifications for ranking the destructive effects of persons below the destructive effects of policies ring hollow. I find it bewildering that Christians can be so sure that greater damage will be done by bad judges, bad laws, and bad policies than is being done by the culture-infecting spread of the gangrene of sinful self-exaltation, and boasting, and strife-stirring (eristikos).

We have neglected what is clearly evident in the biblical text in order to focus on these agendas. We have effectively created an evangelical Christian theology in which we chose what was more important. It is not a small thing to note that those theological things we have disregarded over agenda are all focused on character.

As Piper mentions, “it is a drastic mistake to think that the deadly influences of a leader come only through his policies and not also through his person.” But we have been doing this very thing for a long time, and not just in politics. We have focused on what not to do in our own lives over the character formation that Jesus invites us into. It is much easier for us to gauge our own walk with God based on things we are against versus the internal character we are called to. And honestly, it just makes us feel better about ourselves. No wonder we would think this was normal both for our churches and for our politics.

Very simply, there was a group of people in the first century who also based their decisions and theology on agenda – the Pharisees. This is what Jesus confronted. He stepped over those lines created by the Pharisees to focus on the people in front of him and invite those very people into relationship with God. And they hated it. Jesus pushed the focus passed agenda based theology to the inner life. And they hated it. Jesus did things that checked all the wrong boxes on their agenda list. And they hated it.

So how would Jesus vote? I mean, we really are casting a vote as a follower of Jesus to represent who we believe Jesus to be. And to be honest, in some ways we have been telling the world that the inner character of a person doesn’t matter as long as they are for the right things. Is this really what Jesus freed us for?

So here is the bottom line…Christians argue that they like the results but can disregard character. And that is the problem with the church. Jesus came to bring whole life transformation. While the world sees the church continually focus on agenda and results over character, it is no wonder why the world is confused about the gospel message the church preaches. And to be completely honest, agenda and results are simply not the gospel Jesus came to bring and frankly they are not attractive to the world. What is attractive to the world is Jesus. The person, character, love, grace, presence of Jesus. What is attractive to the world is the opportunity to be invited into relationship with God no matter where we are in life. It should be obvious to us that being on the right side of an issue is not a qualification.

The Kingdom of God is not a set of agendas. It is a sphere of God’s way that includes a Kingdom ethic and Kingdom worldview that is defined within a relationship with the King.

Therefore, you can vote any way you feel led. But at the end of the day, don’t be offended when people don’t want to have anything to do with your agenda based Christianity. And don’t be surprised that people in our churches focus on agendas as an evaluation of their own relationship with Jesus. This is what we said following Jesus looked like.

If you would like to reference the article by John Piper, you can find it here: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/policies-persons-and-paths-to-ruin