Election 2020: Opportunities and Challenges

I want to share my heart and the reason for writing this long blog post. This political season offers a singular opportunity to teach by word and example what it means to engage the world and to change it for Christ. But changing the world requires that our good ends are accompanied by good means and good character.

We want our young people to care about politics, to wrestle with tough issues. We want them to learn to seek the welfare of the City of Man while they pursue the City of God. This is, in many respects, the heart and soul of Christian education—preparing young people to take biblical principles and learn to apply them with humility and respect to practical day-to-day realities. We want them, by God’s grace, to make a difference in our schools, our communities and our nation by being different from the world around them. 

We want them to experience the warmth and joy of Christian community rather than the heat and hurt of tribalism. We want them to care about their character, their Christian witness, and people more than their politics. We want them to embrace the truth that people are more important to God than our politics and that Christian character is more important to God than our party or our candidate.

Setting the Table

When my wife prepares to formally entertain family or friends she spends considerable time and care in preparing the meal and in setting the dining room table for dinner. The table cloth is washed, ironed and spread. The fine china is set out, the silverware is arranged, the centerpiece is prepared and the candles are lit. Everything is set in order so that the dinner table reflects our desire to honor our guests and to set the mood for an evening of fellowship around a scrumptious meal.

I am writing to help set the table for how we engage with each other after this year’s presidential election. No matter the outcome there will be members of our communities who are happy with the result and those who are saddened by it.

Before us are two paths we can take in our response to the outcome of the election. Down one path is a response of despair, cynicism, anger, conflict, and discord. Down the other is growth, humility, trusting God’s providence, and the opportunity to love another despite our differences.

I am writing to encourage us to walk down the latter path by sharing biblical principles and practical advice for helping our students, our parents and each other engage in vigorous but always virtuous political discourse. I do so because in his wise and good providence, God has put before us a challenging test of our character and an opportunity to display the power of the Gospel to our neighbors. We have an opportunity to teach our children how followers of Christ engage in rigorous debate, navigate differences, and participate in the political process while being guided by God’s word and demonstrating Christian love and respect. 

This is our great challenge and our equally great opportunity.

Biblical Principles

Engagement in the Political Process is Important and Good

We are citizens of two kingdoms—what Saint Augustine called the City of Godand the City of Man. We have responsibilities to both, as Jesus said, “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Luke 20:25)

In the City of Man, public policy affects the quality of our lives, the character of our culture, and the security of our country. Policy promotes virtue or vice, advances justice or injustice, impacts our economic welfare, and enhances liberty or restricts it and so much more. 

Followers of Christ must care about such things and seek to promote through public policy that which is biblical and therefore good, true, just, and beautiful. For the faithful Christian citizen, vigorous and thoughtful engagement with public policy and in the political process is good and necessary for as Edmund Burke is attributed to have said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

We are Different but One in Christ

We come from different backgrounds. We do not all look or think alike. We have different life experiences that shape our perspectives and our politics.

Differences are a blessing. As a community of believers we are better able to prepare our young men and women to serve Christ in an increasingly diverse and complex world.

Differences, however, create challenges. It can be difficult to consistently reflect the unity that Christ calls us to (John 17:21), especially when modern politics, politicians, and pundits seek to demonize and divide, rather than to honor and unite.

While we are different, we are told repeatedly in Scripture that we are one in Christ.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:1–6)

Our ultimate and highest allegiance is to Christ and his kingdom—the City of God—not to political party or candidate—the City of Man. We must be prayerful and careful that our politics do not fracture our unity. Ultimately, we are not Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals or something between; we are first and foremost brothers and sisters in Christ.

Neither Politics nor Politicians are our Hope

We do not place our hope—personally or nationally—in a political party or a candidate. Our hope lies with the transforming power of the Gospel and God’s sovereignty. Daniel 2 tells us that God sets kings up and takes them down. Before the beginning of time, he knew exactly who will be President on January 20, 2021, he ordained it.

Our ultimate hope is not in this life or in this nation. Earthly kingdoms rise and fall, come and go, but God’s kingdom is eternal. We are citizens of this better and eternal kingdom. We are pilgrims in the City of Man seeking a better and eternal City. As John Bunyan wrote in Pilgrim’s Progress, 

I seek a place that can never be destroyed, one that is pure, and that fadeth not away, and it is laid up in heaven, and safe there, to be given, at the time appointed, to them that seek it with all their heart.

This emphatically does not mean that political engagement is unimportant. To the contrary, it is of immense importance and can be a noble enterprise. “At its best,” write Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, “politics is about the right ordering of our lives together. It cannot be unimportant because justice is never unimportant.”

A practical way to love our neighbors is by seeking justice and righteousness through public policy, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream … He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Amos 5:24; Micah 6:8)

Martin Luther King Jr. exemplified the noble fight for justice and righteousness through public policy. In his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, King wrote,

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

God expects us to engage in causes—including political ones—that promote righteousness and justice. But our political engagement is not our ultimate hope and is always to honor the dignity of others—regardless of their political persuasions.

Practical Guidelines

Our Christian Witness in Politics is Challenging but Essential

Being politically astute and engaged while maintaining a gracious Christian spirit has always been hard. In today’s political climate it is particularly difficult. Jesus never said it would be easy to be his follower. In the heat of the political moment, it is easy to passionately defend our political position or our candidate and perhaps win an argument while losing our witness. This is a serious matter. We are stewards of the Gospel. Our words and our actions are either a positive or negative witness to the Gospel, they either build up or they tear down, they either advance the Kingdom or they hinder it. We are called to engage in the political process in seeking the welfare of the city but not in a manner that compromises our Christian witness. Our Christian witness is more important than any party or candidate for as Christ warned, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.” (Matthew 5:13)

Honorable People have Honest Disagreements

I often learn the most when engaged in group discussion and debate. The dynamics of group interaction stimulates one’s thinking as ideas ping pong around a room. But this is true only if we are listening and seeking to learn from others just as we hope they are listening and learning from us.

There is a crucial difference between debating ideas and debasing others.

While we may have strong opinions about any given policy or candidate, we should be circumspect in our advocacy. A generous, humble, and courageous Christian demeanor is one in which we fight for justice and righteousness but are open to differing perspectives on what that looks like on a given issue and how to achieve those noble ends. The scriptures are inerrant, we are not. It behooves us therefore to adopt a listening and humble posture.

I am reminded of Stephen Covey’s advice, “seek first to understand and then to be understood.” I don’t know if he intended it, but this is a helpful paraphrase of James’ instruction, “let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” (James 1:19–20)

The essential point is that there is a vast range of ideas on policy on which the scriptures do not give detailed guidance. Honorable people will disagree. Vigorous debate is healthy and good for as we are told in Proverbs, “Iron sharpens iron as one man sharpens another.” We can and should sharpen each other. But, let’s be careful not to stab each other in the process. 

Hope and Gratitude

I have tried to set the table for how we as a Christian community can engage with each other during this election season. With the table set, I invite all of us to:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:4–9)