Unity in “Election Season”
We are entering into the season of American life together known as “Election Season”, where we are no doubt about to be faced with all kinds of invitations and opportunities by media outlets, political candidates, and political opponents to be outraged. Outraged about the state of the country. Outraged about a certain political candidate’s message. Outraged about the culture or the sin we see all around us. And though there is much that could be said about how the Christian is to navigate all this, I want to offer us as a church some simple and humble exhortations from God’s word for how we ought to conduct ourselves in this highly politicized and polarized time we live in. These are in no particular order, and they are certainly not exhaustive, but my hope is that it will fuel faithful gospel witness, charity and unity for us as a church with diverse views, backgrounds, and perspectives as we enter into this season together.
1. Remember that you are a Christian first, which means your first citizenship is in heaven. This is not to dodge or diminish the importance of what happens on earth or in politics, but to remind us that all the kingdoms of the earth shall pass away, and so we are urged by Christ to seek first the kingdom and his righteousness. Your primary heavenly citizenship should relativize the importance of your earthly citizenship.
2. Remember that in the times that the Bible was written, Christians did not live under a representative constitutional democratic-style republic like we currently live under in America. This is clearly a tremendous blessing. American-style constitutional government has afforded us many wonderful privileges that we enjoy, many of which are a result of the Christian worldview taking root. But, this means that parsing out how a Christian ought to vote in today’s world is not clear-cut in all cases. It requires wisdom, humility, sometimes weighing what is perceived to be the lesser-of-two-evils, and a willingness to extend charity to those faithful Christians who may vote differently than you.
3. Remember that human governments are capable of doing great good and committing great atrocities, and we have many clear examples from the Bible and history of both. And so how you view the government’s role in your life could be in large part shaped by these valid examples. We want our political voice and our vote to encourage the government toward doing good, and discourage the government toward the bad. Paul encourages the Galatians to do good to everyone as we have opportunity, and voting in a democratic election is certainly one small opportunity among many for Christians to do good to everyone.
4. Remember that we are called by God to both submit to and pray for those in positions of government authority. We do this joyfully because we understand that all authority comes from God, and almost any government is better than no government. And so we must pray for those God has placed over us that we may live quiet lives of dignity, that the gospel might continue to grow and flourish unimpeded, that they might execute their God-given task to promote justice honorably and with wisdom. And here, I want to specifically exhort you, church, to pray for those political leaders that you don’t agree with. Do this as a healthy exercise for yourself and your own heart, but also because we do want God to guide our elected leaders, regardless of whether they have a D or an R next to their name.
5. Remember that the gospel we profess together is of first importance, and that Jesus bled and died to purchase our unity with one another in the Spirit. We aren’t all going to agree on the best healthcare policy. We aren’t all going to agree on what the tax rate should be. We aren’t all going to agree on the proper border policy or which foreign policy stance is best. But we have covenanted together around our statement of faith, which we confess together is a good summation of Biblical teaching on essential issues that provide for our unity as a church.
And so we pray to this end and ask God that he would give us wisdom and humility to think Biblically together on these important issues we face in our country, but more than that we rejoice in and fight to maintain the unity we have together in the gospel, not confusing our mandate to together worship Christ and make disciples of all nations.
I wonder, has politics occupied too big of a priority in your life or your thinking? Have you demonized or judged your brother or sister in Christ who may approach non-gospel issues of politics differently than you do? Let us take a moment now together to confess our sins in this area privately, asking God to remove all malice and divisiveness from us and grant us humility, love and wisdom toward one another so that we might together show the world that we are in fact Jesus’ disciples.