An election opus: The thinking behind this Christian’s vote

Oct 8

I’m really not a political person. I don’t think Christians should stay out of politics altogether, but it’s such an unholy realm — see here for why — that I try to avoid it as a topic. The way I see it, a presidential election is like fleas running for president of the dog. God is sovereign over it all.

But 2024 will be the third straight presidential election that has taken on a dominant, pervasive prominence in the visible church, largely because of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

So I feel compelled to address the election and explain why, for the third straight time, I’m not voting for either major candidate.

Why it cannot be Harris

First, let me emphatically state up front that I have never voted for a Democrat in my life (going back to 1992), and I’m not about to start now. I am and always have been politically and theologically conservative. I’m writing this from the right.

The Democratic Party champions the legality of slaughtering unborn children, which is the most horrifying atrocity in the history of the world. A vote for them is a vote for unrestricted abortion. That alone makes any Democrat unthinkable. That’s all I need to know about Kamala Harris to make her a hard, automatic no.

Some Christians are voting for Harris only because they see the threat to democracy that Trump is, and because they believe it’s best for conservatism in the long term to be rid of him (which I don’t dispute). But to them, I would pose this hypothetical: Say there was a party whose platform called for the re-institution of Jim Crow-era, back-of-the-bus racial segregation, revoking the civil rights of people of color, and including the legalization of lynching. Basically, the KKK. Would you vote for that party to oppose Trump (or under any circumstances)? If not, then why is killing millions of babies more acceptable?

Is there any moral line we can never cross in how we vote? That’s why I cannot support one evil candidate to oppose the other.

Casting a vote for a presidential candidate is giving your assent to that person being the chief executive of America and the leader of the free world. It makes the voter responsible for whatever that president says or does. And when the voter is a Christian, his assent is tied to his identity as a representative of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that everything we do is to be in His name (Colossians 3:17) and for His glory (1 Corinthians 10:31), including our votes. We cannot compartmentalize our faith and make voting a strictly political act.

That’s where my reasoning begins for what I will do with my vote.

Kingdom before nation

While we are citizens of the United States, our primary citizenship is of the kingdom of God. We are Christians first, Americans a distant second. We are ambassadors of the kingdom living in a world that is not our home. “Here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come” (Hebrews 13:14).

Therefore, again, the Lord’s name and glory are our overwhelming priority in everything we do. His everlasting kingdom comes before our worldly nation, which will someday perish in judgment (Psalm 2:8-9, Revelation 19:15). The purpose of our existence on earth is to glorify Christ and carry out His great commission to preach the gospel of forgiveness of sins, making disciples of peoples from all nations.

We’re also called to love our neighbors, and that’s a common factor in many Christians’ reasons for voting. But the witness, holiness, and integrity of the church are infinitely and eternally more important than the welfare of the nation. The highest way we love our neighbors is to give them the good news of reconciliation with God and let nothing be an unnecessary stumbling block to that.

Now, there are necessary stumbling blocks — the gospel itself is an offense, and no Biblical truth should be sacrificed to make it more palatable to the world. For example, we must never compromise on the grave moral issues of abortion and Biblical sexuality to be more “winsome.” The fallen world hates Christ (John 15:18), and there’s nothing we can do about that no matter what doctrines we sweep under the rug.

But the Scriptures also teach us that we adorn the gospel with our holiness, which is itself a witness (Hebrews 12:14). Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Paul wrote that those who hypocritically dishonor God make Him look bad: “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24). Our conduct can be the difference between someone glorifying God or blaspheming Him, and it can close off the only way to eternal life.

Sermon: God’s priority for His people

This includes our political activity. The integrity of our witness must be the dominant factor in how we talk about politics. We must make sure that Jesus is the only name we proclaim to the world and the only name we want associated with us. We must never let our support for a candidate be an unholy reproach to us and therefore to Christ. Why should anyone listen to us about Jesus when we exalt a dishonorable politician? That’s not worth it.

Of course, all elections involve flawed candidates. Every race between two sinners makes us choose “the lesser of two evils.” We may never agree with everything a candidate says or does.

But while most elections include a candidate whose flaws are acceptable, the past eight years have been different. The elections of 2016, 2020, and 2024 have presented a choice not between the lesser of two evils, but between acceptably evil and unacceptably evil. For the third time, the candidates of both major parties are unacceptably evil. They are disqualified from my assent. They are unworthy of the support of the children of the King.

Never Harris, Never Trump — Harris for the reasons stated above, and Trump for the reasons to follow.

Why it cannot be Trump

I won’t go so far as to say Donald Trump is THE antichrist (although I haven’t ruled him out), but he is AN antichrist, or a type of one. Here are three reasons why:

His character is the polar opposite of Jesus Christ

Yes, we’re all sinners, but Trump proudly wears his depravity on his sleeve. He has normalized ghastly wickedness that used to be disqualifying in a major political figure:

He is a man of gargantuan pride, always exalting himself. Pride is the mother of all sin, and the original evil of the devil himself. Christians need to realize how much the Lord detests it. God opposes the proud.
He is a man of perpetual, venomous hate, always in a state of childish, vindictive contempt for those who don’t support him.
He is a man of uncontrollable lust. He’s on his third wife now, who’s almost never seen in public with him. He’s a repeated adulterer. He’s been featured in porn. He’s a rapist, according to a court of law. He’s committed over a dozen sexual assaults, admitted he likes to touch women’s private parts, and has even sexualized his own daughter. Here’s a roundup.
He’s been convicted by a jury of 34 felonies, taking away any claim to respecting the rule of law. He’s been further indicted for attempting to overturn the lawfully certified result of the 2020 election, which was unanimously upheld in dozens of courts. He sicced a mob on the U.S. Capitol that assaulted dozens of police officers (resulting in death for a few of them) and would have murdered his own vice president if he hadn’t escaped.

Trump scores much higher on the things God hates (Proverbs 6:16-19) than the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). But the worst aspect of all this is not who he is, but that he corrupts his supporters into defending and being like him, including many who claim the name of Christ. That’s behind the other two reasons:

He is seen as a savior/deliverer/protector

Trump is frequently likened to King Cyrus and even King David. He was elected because of existential, disobedient fear from people who demanded a strongman to protect them, like the Israelites did for King Saul. Some see him as an “anointed one” in the Old Testament sense — a messiah. A christ. A billboard paired his image with a Messianic prophecy from Isaiah: “Unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders.” A video that he shared called him “a shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave nor forsake them.” An X account called The Trump Train said he would “save the world.” Paula White, his top spiritual adviser, said, “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.” That’s in addition to many memes that pair his image with Christ’s. All this blasphemous, idolatrous glory is music to his pompous ears, and he does nothing but encourage it.

The ferocious, cultish devotion

As those examples show, many Christians’ support for Trump goes beyond political support to literally religious fervor. May Trump be true, but every man a liar. He is always to be believed; anything to the contrary is Fake News. They spin everything to make him look good. They dismiss his moral abominations with flippant phrases like “orange man bad.” Everything that doesn’t go his way is rigged (including hurricanes). Nothing he can say or do would turn his followers away. Some of them astonishingly think he’s saved. Principles and beliefs revolve around him — remember when personal morality was essential to leadership? “Back the blue” — except when they’re guarding the Capitol on J6. And that’s not to mention the many, many things Trump has said that would rightfully draw our howling outrage if a Democrat said them (see below). Some Christians turn on churches, friends, and family because of him, effectively saying that your relationship with Donald Trump is more important than your relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s sinful partiality and brazen hypocrisy that destroys our witness.

Voting for him is saying you’re fine with all this continuing.

Other disqualifying reasons

All of that is augmented by many other reasons he’s unfit for office. No former Republican president or vice president — including his own, Mike Pence — supports him. That’s unheard of. Neither do many of his cabinet picks, those who worked closely with him. Several of them are on the record detailing his incompetence. His top general calls him “fascist to the core” and says “no one has ever been as dangerous to this country.” Many Republicans who support him now used to rightfully lambaste him — including his running mate, J.D. Vance. What they really think about him is obvious.

Trump’s campaign speeches are the incoherent gibberish of an egomaniacal, sociopathic buffoon succumbing to dementia. Some of the recent thoughts that he has managed to express in English included warnings that he would prosecute Google, that Fox News “shouldn’t be allowed” to show Harris’ comments, that “people should be put in jail” for criticizing the Supreme Court, and that he would “end” crime “immediately” with “one violent day” — all showing no respect for the Constitution. He reposted a meme that accused Liz Cheney of treason and called for tribunals, just for opposing him. That’s fascism.

The only leaders he doesn’t trash are some of the world’s most evil dictators. He’s repeatedly disparaged those who have served their country, recently dismissing traumatic brain injuries suffered in an Iranian missile strike under his watch as “a headache.” Even Fox News knows that Trump “resorted to crime in a bid to cling to power” after he lost in 2020.

All that is in addition to his age, which many Trump supporters believed was disqualifying for Joe Biden. Yet another point of hypocrisy.

Trump is an enemy of truth, of law, of decency, of life, of America, and of God. His presidency and continued popularity may be the most unfathomable, mind-boggling development in American history. How could we be this insane?

Answering defenses of Trump

Some Christians will acknowledge all this and vote for him anyway, holding their nose because they’re desperate to stop Harris. Here are some of their most common defenses of Trump and my answers to them:

‘The lesser of two evils’

I discussed this idea above, but I just want to add Romans 12:21 — Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Resisting evil with evil is always wrong, no matter which one is “lesser.” Do you see God condoning a wicked influence and tactics among His people because it’s a little less evil than the alternative?

For us, the greater evil is the one that ensnares us and corrupts our witness.

‘Vote for the policies/party, not the man’

There are a couple of issues with this. First, we don’t know what his policies will be. He’s flip-flopped on abortion and is clearly not a champion of the unborn. He’s married to an abortion advocate. Defenders will point out that his Supreme Court picks overturned Roe v. Wade (something that would have happened under any GOP president), but the fact that the abortion rate has risen since then, reversing a decades-long decline, makes the Dobbs decision not the victory we thought it would be. He’s done all he can or is willing to do. Not only has Trump said he would veto a national abortion ban, but he’s said he opposes state laws that are “too tough,” which he said would be “redone.”

How else will he betray Christian conservatives? There’s no reason to think Trump will support our causes, because unlike his first term, he will no longer be beholden to us if he wins. He’ll never have to run for election again. He’ll never need us again. His word is worthless — he lies like he breathes — and his only true constituency will be what it’s always been — himself.

Also, the watching world does not make this distinction. When they see Christians hypocritically supporting an antichrist, an appeal that we’re only voting for his policies makes no difference to the untold damage to our witness.

‘We’re electing a president, not a pastor’

The first thing that debunks this pithy defense is that, sadly, Trump is more influential among many professing Christians than their own pastors. How many of them have left churches because they didn’t support Trump enough? That means he practically is their pastor.

That largely renders irrelevant the gist of it, which is that a government leader’s moral character is just not a big deal. Anymore.

I added “Anymore” because Christians weren’t saying that during the Clinton era. When Bill Clinton was running for president, Christians were adamant that an adulterer was unfit for office because how can we trust a man who lies to and betrays his own wife? We believed that one’s character determined his credibility. But now, not so much. We even use some of the same responses from liberals that defended Clinton: Holier than thou! Self-righteous! (Today, we say “Pietist!”) Anyone who remembers those days can correctly call us hypocrites.

Also, we see in Scripture that God does care about the character of those who govern His people. When Moses needed helpers to judge the Israelites — this was their civil government — Jethro told him to select “able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness” (Exodus 18:21). Trump easily fails that Biblical qualification.

Many Trump supporters say policy is more important than character, but consider that wicked King Saul was largely successful from a “policy” standpoint. He did exactly what the people wanted him to do — defeat Israel’s enemies. But God disqualified him from the throne because of a personal failing.

Oh, but what about King David? Christians will point to his sins to absolve Trump, but not only is it outrageous to liken an unrepentant, God-hating monster like Trump to a man after God’s own heart, but David’s transgressions had deadly consequences for his family and his nation — at least 90,000 of his countrymen died because of him. Does that fit somewhere in the analogy? Show me Trump trembling before Nathan and writing Psalm 51 before you dare invoke David.

‘We need to defeat the left’

To many professing Christians, Trump is the bulwark against the evil tyranny of Harris and the Democrats. We may not know what Trump will do, but we know what the left will do. They cast the election as an existential war for the soul of the nation, and the innocence of our children.

As I explained above, Christians’ primary concern should be the church, not the nation — and her purity, not her protection. We see that over and over in Scripture, where God clearly cared more about the holiness of His people than their political welfare or security. If there were idols in Israel’s camp, God would give them over to their enemies, costing many lives. He destroyed the nation because of their unfaithfulness. The greater threats to God’s people are always from within.

If defending the nation means we have to compromise our integrity and witness — if our two citizenships are ever in conflict — that’s an easy choice. Let America die before we blaspheme the name of the Lord. No issue, not even the horror of abortion, is worth that. If we forsake our holiness, we’ve already lost. We’ve done our enemies’ job for them, worse than anything Kamala Harris could ever do to us.

‘He fights for us’

Trump has always been friendly to Christians — like an owner is friendly to his loyal dogs. The relationship has always been transactional; we’ve used each other. But as I said, our usefulness will be over if he wins.

But I want to address why Christians think we need him. When the Israelites demanded a king in 1 Samuel 8, they wanted someone to protect them from the hostile nations around them. They didn’t care about the consequences that Samuel warned them about; they believed the world’s power was essential, at all costs. God said they were rejecting Him.

Likewise, many Christians yearn for that kind of power today. They think the church needs that to flourish or at least survive. The Bible destroys that notion.

The Old Testament contains numerous warnings about trusting in the world’s strongmen for protection. Jeremiah 17:5, for example, says:

Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord.

The New Testament was written entirely during a period of brutal persecution against the young church under a godless, tyrannical regime. Those Christians didn’t have any political power; in fact, the government hunted, imprisoned, and executed them. They weren’t “winning,” at least not in the world’s eyes. But according to Acts 17:6, they turned the world upside down. They all had a power that dwarfed all the governments of the world combined — the indwelling Holy Spirit. They didn’t need Caesar, and neither do we, because we have the same power. Jesus is Lord. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. He is sovereign over every atom in the universe and every second of history. He rules in the kingdom of men (Daniel 4:32) and works all things according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11).

We don’t need a David, or Moses, or Cyrus, or Nebuchadnezzar. Christ is the greater all of them, our Deliverer, our strong tower. He’s our David. He’s our Cyrus.

Hate and fear

For many Christians, it just comes down to fear. We’re afraid of Harris and the Democrats. We’re afraid of losing the privileged status and “Christian heritage” we’ve enjoyed for so long. We’re afraid that we might have to live like most Christians have throughout the history of the church. (How awkward would it be to tell them that in heaven?)

To that fear, I only recite the first verse of Psalm 27:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?

For other professing Christians, it may be something even darker: Contrary to the command of Christ, we hate our enemies. Contrary to the example of Christ, we don’t see them as souls to save, but as threats to destroy, like the sons of thunder whom Jesus told, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of” (Luke 9:55). And so we hired a hitman to hate and destroy them for us.

If that’s the case, then maybe it’s not Trump corrupting us, but the Lord exposing our corruption through him. He’s the political end of the false church’s apostasy, at least from its right wing. The progressive church fell away long ago, and now the nationalist church is going astray in order to counter them. It’s a horseshoe of heresy.

It’s just the kind of idolatry that brought the Lord’s judgment on Israel. Many Christians appeal to the Old Testament, when God worked through kings and nations, for their political theology without asking, how did that go for them? The Old Testament is a testament of failure. Israel literally had the law of God as the law of the land, with kings chosen by God Himself — and yet they fell into sin, and were divided and conquered. The Old Testament is God saying, at least politically, this is what not to do. Its purpose is to point to the only Man worthy to be king.

This isn’t easy to hear, but it’s better for the church to be persecuted than corrupted. Romans 8 speaks of believers as more than conquerors — even as they’re slaughtered like sheep. Revelation 12 says persecuted Christians overcome even as they let their lives go. When we maintain our holiness and integrity even in the worst circumstances, that’s the greatest witness. That’s winning.

Those who say we have no choice but to pick one of the two major candidates are submitting to slavery. It’s saying we’re helpless and voiceless otherwise. It’s saying we have no power other than politics. It’s saying we’re chained to a worldly, unholy system. Slavery.

How did I vote?

In case you’re wondering, my vote was for Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party. I don’t agree with them on everything, but they’re pro-life. They clear the low bar of decency that the other candidates don’t.

If you say that’s a vote for Harris, as if Trump is my default, I say I owe no man or party my allegiance. Only Christ owns me.

If you say that’s a wasted vote, I say nothing is ever wasted on your conscience. A vote for an antichrist is the wasted one.

If you say that’s losing, I say we’ve already won. Our greatest problem — death — has already been solved.

If you say I have to use my God-given, blood-bought vote on a viable candidate, I say I’m not going to dishonor the Lord or those who have died for my rights (who Trump would call losers) by defiling that precious vote on someone horribly unworthy of it. They died for my right to vote for someone else.

If you say that’s giving up my voice or a seat at the table, that we need access in the White House, I say we have 24/7 direct access to the Most High King of the Universe. He owns the table. He holds the atoms of the White House together. I can voice to Him prayers that are more powerful than all the nations the earth has ever seen.

We’re children of the King, bearing His priceless, holy name. Let’s act like it. Let’s vote like it.

Keith Kraska