Three truths for this year’s election

Election Day is coming up fast. I cannot write everything I would like to say about how Christians should think about this election, but I do want to lay down three principles that should guide us as we walk into the voting booth.

First, creation order is on the ballot. When we look at Genesis 1–2, we see the features of human nature, human purpose, and human freedom as intricately tied to God’s will for creation. Call this the “politics of creation.” Whether abortion, the identity of male and female, the centrality of marriage and family, and even increasing calls for censorship, all the pathologies of our civilization are traceable back to an assault on creation order. If society gets these wrong, we destabilize the foundations of social order meant to help everyone flourish. Good politics requires sound metaphysics and sound first principles. As Ryan Anderson rightly says, metaphysical commitments shape our moral commitments, which shape our political commitments. Non-Christians do this implicitly in their political pronouncements, so Christians should be free to declare ours as well.

We should not vote for platforms, policies, and candidates that will unapologetically assault creation order.

Second, the politics of fallenness means that life in a fallen world is a negotiation of imperfect solutions that almost always require trade-offs. No candidate, platform, or policy promise can totally alleviate the reality of sin’s dominion in this age. Every single candidate is a sinner, and the entire complex is marred by sin. We should never attach evangelical zeal to political wins or losses. Sometimes, politics will mean stopping the further spread of rot more than it will mean advancing good. All regimes are worldly, fallen, and shaped by real-world contexts. God does not evacuate Christians from the nations where He has placed us. This means there are real-world political allies and real political enemies. While the gospel is the solution to political disagreement in an absolute sense, in a relative sense, enemies of truth, goodness, and beauty deserve to lose elections. I want pro-abortion politicians to know Christ, but I also do not want them using their will to do evil.

To say Christians have “political enemies” makes some uncomfortable. Well, we should get over that. Christians tempted to bemoan the tactical, on-the-ground realities of messy political environments trade on the mistaken idea that politics exist in some idealized vacuum devoid of real-world attachments. No one is impressed with high-minded idealism if it means forfeiting responsibility to stop the spread of evil.

Third, “Christian politics” is neither revolutionary nor redemptive. Salvation does not come through political channels. Yes, politics is a forum for justice and loving one’s neighbor. However, the political love we show our neighbor aims at their earthly welfare (Jeremiah 29:4–7). The gospel aims for their eternal welfare (1 Thessalonians 5:9–10). Good laws and peaceful communities may make the conditions for the gospel more amenable (1 Timothy 2:1–2), but politics is not chiefly about the transmission of the gospel. A “Christian politics,” then, will look painfully ordinary. It will look creational. It will mean telling the world what is true about the world and the conditions for its flourishing, regardless of whether the world wants to learn or even hear those truths. “Grace restores nature” affords Christians the ability to reaffirm those Genesis 1–2 truths and to redirect nations to those truths, regardless of whether the society adhering to them is Christian. Politically, we must craft good laws that reflect natural law grounded in God’s eternal law.

While more could be said, the three categories above should guide our voting. It is essential that regimes respect the human person as a creature made in God’s image and as a bearer of profound dignity entitled to human rights. Law should respect the truths of our embodiment as male and female who unite in marriage. The government should respect the natural family as the foundation for civil order. It should respect and safeguard the value of political and religious freedom as a truth-seeking and truth-speaking enterprise. Because God ordains government as a servant (Romans 13:1–7), it finds its legitimacy in executing judgments under the law as an instrument to promote the common good.

The cause for justice and good requires the agency to do justice and good. For Christians in the United States, that entails the responsibility to vote. We cannot argue from Scripture that there is a moral command to vote, but voting is a tremendous issue of stewardship. It is a privilege when weighed against history’s experience with totalitarianism. But Biblically, it is an issue of stewarding society’s conditions toward just ends (the Constitution’s to “insure domestic Tranquility” and “form a more perfect Union” come to mind). To me, wisdom would always err on the side of using the available means of power to pursue justice. That means voting. But I would also defend principled abstention or third-party or write-in votes if one’s conscience requires such.

To summarize, the goal of politics is the establishment of laws and policies that respect human nature, human purpose, and human freedom. As citizens, we pursue justice as we vote for candidates who best secure these conditions. Then, we should call on candidates and platforms to always prioritize and advance these ideals as much as possible—even if imperfectly—and never directly harm them. Now, go vote!