For the next year we’re going to hear often about the evangelical vote, and their desire to vote their faith. I’m a little nervous about what form that is going to take.
If there’s anything I feel like I’ve learned in the past eight years, it’s that old adage about actions speaking louder than words. It’s the old faith vs. works thing – doing good doesn’t necessarily make you a Christian, but if you claim to be a Christian and aren’t doing good, one has to wonder whether your faith is genuine or not.
I’m not about to make a judgment call on whether our leader’s faith is authentic or not – for one thing I’d be an enormous hypocrite, as I do things contrary to what I claim to believe with regularity (albeit on a slightly smaller stage.) But I do think it’s important to remember that just because someone (even myself) claims to be a Christian, it doesn’t mean that they are. Just like I can claim to be a ham sandwich, but that doesn’t make it so. Hitler claimed to be a Christian as well.
There will be a lot of politicians out there who claim to have a very personal relationship with God. They may even go the next step and claim that their policies are informed by their faith. After the last election, I pray that we learn a little discernment.
I hope that we can recognize that, more often than we’d like to think, politicians (and people in general) will use their faith as a tool to advance their agenda, and that agenda will often contradict the values they claim to hold dear. My faith, for one, is supposed to be about turning the other cheek, about forgiving easily, about loving my enemy, abhorring death, and working for peace. My faith tells me that the Gospel can be summed up in the commands to love my neighbor as myself and to give to the poor.
I hope that evangelicals and the church as a whole can have the wisdom to vote for someone whose actions and policies aren’t contrary to their beliefs. I hope that they have the wisdom to vote for a leader and not a ham sandwich.
