In just a few short hours from now, the last full day of voting will take place in the American elections. Around 80 million Americans have already voted, and another 80 million will vote on November 5. Like so many others, I will be following the counting quite closely, even though it is possible that a final conclusive result may not be known for a few days or more.
I have already penned three pieces looking at various aspects of this election in particular and Christian political responsibility in general. Here I will offer a mainly faith-based look at this important election. What follows are some random thoughts and reflections that have been on my heart and mind over the past weeks and months:
I am a Christian, who loves Christ first and foremost. But I also love America, the country of my birth. After a wild time as a youth in which I toyed with godlessness, Marxism and hatred of America, I am now clearly in a different place. So I can look at elections like this from both points of view. Kamala would have appealed to me back in the late 60s, and early 70s, but clearly no more! Trump, for all his faults, is the only real option here between the two.
I have perhaps prayed more for the outcome of November 5 than any previous election. All elections are important in various ways, but this one seems especially to be so. Christians of all people should always be praying about vitally crucial things like this. We must not forget that at the end of the day, this election is really just the political manifestation of a much greater and more crucial battle: this is really a spiritual battle, where good and evil is being fought out in the heavenlies. Our prayers will have an impact in all this.
But Christians must also work, and not just pray. And at the very least, voting is one key Christian work. Simply sitting this one out is not an option. As has been said, what Jesus taught in the parable of the talents about those who were given talents but failed to make use of them applies here. Burying your talents in the ground will earn you this divine rebuke: “You wicked and slothful servant!…” Every American believer should be doing their political and spiritual duty here.
So much is at stake in this election. However, it needs to be reiterated a Trump win will not usher in heaven on earth. But it will go a very long way in restoring America and fixing what ails us. A Kamala win may not mean the death of America and the end of all things. But it will make things much, much worse than they already are. So please vote wisely.
America does NOT deserve God’s mercy. But America NEEDS God’s mercy. In some ways, America is just as ungodly, immoral, debauched, wicked, idolatrous, and sinful as any other nation. But still… It began with the clear intention of being a ‘light on the hill.’ It would be wonderful if it could reclaim that mantle. “In Your wrath remember mercy!” (Habakkuk 3:2)
While a really bad voting choice in this election will not necessarily disqualify one from the faith, and while one’s political party preferences will not necessarily be a final test of faith, let me say this: I simply can NOT understand how anyone claiming to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ can in any way justify voting for Kamala, the most anti-Christian, anti-life, anti-family, anti-faith, and anti-American candidate for POTUS ever. But at the end of the day, we will all stand before God and give an account of what we did and did not do while on this earth.
Three concluding quotes
Let me finish with a few quotes. The first was made by my social media friend and Christian theologian and ethicist Robert A. J. Gagnon. On October 25 he posted this, and I cannot fault it:
Voting for the candidate who is going to do the most good and least harm is a moral act. Voting for the candidate who will do the most harm and least good is an immoral act. Failing to cast an effective vote against the candidate who will do the most harm and least good is, by omission, complicity in an immoral act.
Those Christians who say that they will not cast an effective vote against Harris because Trump is a “lesser evil,” and claim that God will protect them from Harris’s evils if they keep themselves pure from casting a vote for an imperfect candidate are ignoring a crucial fact: God is giving them a way out of a much-worse outcome of a Harris victory that does not require any immoral action on their own part: Vote for Trump/Vance.
Don’t expect God to rescue you in some other way than the means of rescue that he has already provided. It is akin to being on the Titanic and you refuse to get on a cramped, drafty, and shaky lifeboat, believing that God will send you a spacious, warm, and sturdy ship instead. You will suffer if you don’t get on the lifeboat. So too will your loved ones if they don’t get on. Do not put God to the test.
“Thirty-two million church-going Christians are unlikely to vote in this election. The last contest was decided by thousands of votes, not millions. This election is ours if Christians will do their duty and vote to restrain evil” (Seth Dillon, CEO of Babylon Bee).
The second quote worth sharing here is a bit older. On March 30, 1863, the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln issued “Proclamation 97—Appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.” Here it is in its entirety:
A Proclamation
Whereas the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and of nations, has by a resolution requested the President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation; and
Whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord;
And, insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do by this my proclamation designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby request all the people to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite at their several places of public worship and their respective homes in keeping the day holy to the Lord and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the divine teachings that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
And this final quote from John Calvin, which is even older. It comes from his commentary on Psalm 110:1:
Even should the whole world direct their machinations to the overthrow of Christ’s royal throne, it would remain unmoved and unmoveable, while all they who rise up against it shall be ruined. From this let us learn that, however numerous those enemies may be who conspire against the Son of God, and attempt the subversion of his kingdom, all will be unavailing, for they shall never prevail against God’s immutable purpose, but, on the contrary, they shall, by the greatness of his power, be laid prostrate at Christ’s feet.
Whatever the outcome of this election, we all need to pray and pray more than ever before. God have mercy on America.
