Four pre-election cautions

With only a few days left on the calendar before we head to the polls on Nov. 4, will you give me a special license to repeat a few things I’ve said here before?

The debate—if you can even call it by so polite a term—has once again gotten so ornery, and the campaigning so viciously negative and dishonest, that we may wonder along the way whether we properly think of ourselves as a civilized people. It’s small comfort for historians to offer examples of how crabby and ill-tempered politics has often been in America’s past.

But aren’t Christians supposed to be different? Isn’t it part of our redemptive task to sweeten the flavor and soften the tone? When the anger seems as hot in your church’s fellowship hall just before morning worship, and when the decibel level is as shrill at the Thursday Bible study, as it is at a precinct caucus, aren’t we missing something important?

That’s why I’m asking if I can point again to four specific ways we believers can indeed contribute positively to the national conversation over the next few weeks.

1) Refrain from all “he-hit-me-first” excuses. However tempting it may be for Christians to resort to such childish redirection of blame, it doesn’t wash. God always holds His people to absolute standards. He doesn’t grade on the curve. Our task is to respond to evil in a straightforward biblical manner. That means we turn the burner down. We soften the answer to turn away the wrath.

2) Facts first, then opinions. With God, facts and opinion are one and the same. There’s no slippage between the two in His marvelous, omniscient mind.

But with us mortals, there’s a whole spectrum ranging from what the Bible tells us is true, to what we think may or may not be the case, to what we know we don’t know. There’s nothing wrong with speculations along the middle of that spectrum. But things get dangerous when folks can no longer discern which category they’re thinking in—when they start treating facts and opinions as if they were interchangeable. If we want people to pay attention to our opinions, we should start by being careful with our facts. If you’re sloppy with your facts, why should anybody trust your opinions?

3) Lowered voices. I watched a pulling contest once at a county fair in Iowa between an elephant and a John Deere tractor. The tractor was noisy and boisterous—but the lumbering elephant, harnessed to a log chain attached to the tractor’s draw bar, quietly walked the big machine backward without so much as a snort.

Quiet power is always impressive. So why are we so inclined to yell when we want to make our point? Can you remember a single time when a raised voice won the day? It’s one reason our editor-in-chief, Marvin Olasky, regularly reminds us of our journalistic motto: “SENSATIONAL FACTS; UNDERSTATED PROSE.” The same holds true in political debate.

4) Esteeming others. The Bible repeatedly tells us Christians to think of each other as better than ourselves. It doesn’t go that far in telling us how to relate to non-Christians, but does exhort us to have regard even for those who “despitefully use you.” Whatever else such instructions imply, they suggest that today’s argumentation—however vigorously we pursue it—should never preclude the possibility of sitting down with our opponent tomorrow for a face-to-face discussion. It’s almost always easier to get carried away talking or writing negatively about someone we’re not likely to meet face-to-face anytime soon.

So between now and Nov. 4, remember Paul’s admonition to the Ephesians: “In your anger, do not sin.” Just summarizing these simple cautions reminds me that some of you might well point to instances in this magazine’s coverage and content where we didn’t take our own advice seriously enough. If you’re aware of such a case, just one request: Please be sweet-spirited when you write.

Email jbelz@wng.org