Obedience will reveal itself as we
interact with the world. We live in a country that allows its citizens to vote
and participate in establishing policy together. Obedience to God’s word and
Christ’s example will shine in our support and opposition to various issues and
political parties. God’s word tells us what he expects, what he values, what he
loves and what he hates. We have clear direction to aid us in evaluating most
if not all of the controversial issues that we face. God has spoken to us about
personal responsibility and morality, yet many in America openly defy God’s
direction.
The freedom that we enjoy in the
United States requires each individual to exercise responsibility in every area
of life. Each of us depend on each other to respect the law, to work hard, to
be honest, and to raise our children to do the same. If this expectation were
ever to generally fail, our nation would crumble. When we drive in our
vehicles, we obey the law and we trust that the vast majority of the people
will also obey the law. When we shop at the mall, we trust that the vast
majority of the people will respect each other’s persons. We depend on each
other when we engage in business, when we go to work, when we drop our children
off at school or send them on a plane to their grandparents. Benjamin Franklin
said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more
corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Without virtue, the
nation will descend into lawlessness and chaos. The authorities will then need
greater and more severe forms of force to maintain order, and then the country
forfeits its freedom.
Personal responsibility manifests
in public policy. When government happily provides for many basic needs, men
ignore the duty they have to provide for themselves and their families and rely
on government. God has commanded us to be diligent workers. Bonhoeffer writes,
“It is God’s will that there shall be labour, marriage, government, and church
in the world.”[1]
Solomon says in Proverbs, “Poor is he who works with negligent hand, but the
hand of the diligent makes rich” (10.4). Welfare benefits and other entitlement
programs contribute to an increase in crime.[2]
Welfare benefits enable fathers to abdicate their familial responsibilities and
surrender them to the state. Children without fathers are twice as likely to
commit crime.[3]
Out-of-wedlock births are also linked to welfare. Michael Tanner writes, “By
removing the economic consequences of an out-of-wedlock birth, welfare has
removed a major incentive to avoid such pregnancies.”[4]
Welfare discourages out-of-wedlock mothers from marrying in the future.[5]
When fathers do not participate in the rearing of their children, the children
lack direction, instruction, and moral guidance. Many believers contend that
welfare is “compassionate” and “Christian”, while they fail to realize that
Christ did not command the state to care for the poor, but the individual
believer (Matthew 25.31-46; Luke 18.22). He commands us to visit the prisoner, and
feed and clothe the poor. Compassion does not involve surrendering our taxes to
a wasteful state to distribute without wisdom to whoever holds out their hand
or refuses to work.
Compassion also requires a measure
of wealth that surpasses meeting our basic needs. Christ says that we will
always have the poor (Matthew 26.11), but we cannot show compassion if
government assumes responsibility for meeting the needs of all its citizens.
Currently, two economic systems battle for dominance between the two political
parties. In socialism, the ideal of the Democrat Party, the citizen gives the
majority of his wealth and income to the state, and the state redistributes
this wealth as it sees fit. In capitalism, men earn according to their ability
and diligence and keep the majority of their wealth. Socialism destroys both
diligence and compassion by destroying incentive. We are selfish by nature, but
if we keep little that we earn, we have no reason to work nor do we have
anything to give. Paul says, “If anyone is not willing to work, then he is not
to eat” (2 Thessalonians 3.10), and “he who sows bountifully will also reap
bountifully” (2 Corinthians 9.6).
Emotionalism substitutes for
compassion in modern politics. The left side of American politics weeps and
wails over the plight of citizens of other countries, and supports their
illegal entry into this one. Christians who oppose illegal immigration for
being an illegal and illegitimate way of solving a problem are condemned as
“unchristian” and “not compassionate”, but if anyone challenges these accusers
to travel to other countries and feed the poor or clothe the naked, they sit in
silence. Weeping and wailing, while causing no discernible change in the world,
pacifies the lazy conscience of the leftist. In the household where Bonhoeffer
grew up, “Emotionalism, like sloppy communication, was thought to be
self-indulgent.”[6]
Indeed, emotionalism contributes nothing to the current discourse. Emotionalism
complains, and complaints without solutions only serve to anger and frustrate.
In our case, emotionalism drives one side to the voting booths so that others
will pretend to solve the problem, when in reality the elected authorities have
no interest in solving problems, but only in maintaining power. Lazy
emotionalism continues.
God commands his people to love him
from the heart, but also with the mind. He has given us a mind and also his
spirit to discern right from wrong and know how to act. God commands all
believers to love each other and to clothe and feed the poor. God does not
command us to support illegal activity as a means of compassion, as some people
confuse illegal immigration to be. God does not command us to murder our unborn
children or our sick, in order to improve our quality of life or prevent a low
quality of life.
The Democrat party supports
abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, transgenderism, open borders, and
government entitlement programs, among many others. Every single one of these
positions openly defies God’s commands. Abortion destroys a person, when God
commands to not murder (Exodus 20.13). David said, “In sin my mother conceived
me” (Psalm 51.5). Every person has a soul from conception, and the Democrat
party relishes the power that abortion gives them over life and death. They
find the same power in euthanizing the sick and elderly. Doctors in Belgium
euthanize children with cystic fibrosis, a treatable disease.[7]
Doctors are allowed to terminate the life of any child who makes the request.
God alone has the authority to give and end life. He says to Israel, “There is
no God besides me; it is I who put to death and give life” (Deuteronomy 32.39).
When we usurp his authority and take a life, we declare ourselves independent
of his authority and we return to the Garden of Eden to eat again of the Tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
God has defined marriage as the
union between one man and one woman (Genesis 2.18-24). He has defined gender as
male and female (Genesis 1.27). Paul says that as believers, our body is a
temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6.19) and he exhorts us to glorify God
in our body (1 Corinthians 6.20). Liberals defy God by supporting gay marriage,
homosexuality, and other forms of sexual perversion. I do not even oppose the
legal unions of men to men and women to women, but to call that “marriage” is
open defiance to God’s word. Certain groups advocate men having sexual
relationships with boys.[8]
Transgenderism, formerly known as gender dysphoria, has gained traction as an
acceptable state of being, rather than a mental illness. Paul condemns these
distortions of sexual identity (Romans 1.24-27). God created man for a purpose,
and his biological sex defines his purpose as much as his relationship to God.
We relate to God as men and as women. God has defined our responsibilities to
each other in terms of our gender. God commands men to sacrifice (Ephesians
5.23, 25) and women to submit and trust (Ephesians 5.22; 1 Peter 3.1). When we
confuse our masculinity or femininity, we confuse our duties as believers to
God and each other. Elisabeth Elliot writes of the “glorious distinction” of
sexuality. She says, “I dare to call it even a glorious inequality, so that we
may understand how important it is and how utterly noninterchangeable men and
women are. If we understand it, we will rejoice in it.”[9]
Many of our nation’s founders
believed in God. Many Americans do today also. Most settlers came to America
searching for the freedom to practice their religion.[10]
Historians Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen write that “America … operated on
an understanding that the nation would adopt an unofficial, generic Christianity
that fit hand in glove with republicanism.”[11]
As Benjamin Franklin said, a free nation requires virtue. True virtue requires
faith in God, yet if America opens its borders indiscriminately, we weaken our
national beliefs because not everyone believes as we do. Democrats support open
borders as a means of maintaining power without regard to preserving a culture
that largely values law and order, personal responsibility, or respect for life
and property. Though illegal immigrants are not allowed to vote, many do[12],
and of those who do, 54% identify with the Democrat, party, as opposed to 19%
who identify with the Republican Party.[13]
Europe has largely adopted a policy of allowing the entrance of thousands of
immigrants who do not share the values of the permitting country. Dramatic
increases in riots[14],
rape[15],
and various other forms of crime[16]
have resulted. If America pursues the same policy of indiscriminate
immigration, we will face a similar future. Illegal immigrants break the law by
definition. If they have no respect for the law when they enter the country,
how can we expect them to respect the law after they have entered it?
Scripture asserts the need for
borders. When the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, God commanded them to “utterly
destroy” all the inhabitants (Deuteronomy 7.2). The Canaanites worshipped other
gods, they sacrificed their children to their idols (2 Kings 16.3), and God
knew they would turn the hearts of the Israelites away from him (7.4). When
King Solomon married foreign wives and took foreign concubines, he began to
turn away from God and the nation followed with him (1 Kings 11). Countries
have borders to preserve their values and customs. If there are no borders,
there are no countries and no people. A government protects its people by
protecting its values and its borders.
“The cross is laid on every
Christian,” says Bonhoeffer.[17]
Christ commands us to seek him in his word, yet many prefer to trust the words
of anyone else, rather than, with reason, diligently pursue a Christian
worldview. If we don’t know what to believe, someone else will tell us what
they want us to believe. In 2006, I began working at Kern County for the
Engineering and Survey Services Department. I rode in an enormous survey truck
with a coworker who listened to conservative talk radio. As I listened, I
realized that I agreed with everything these people had to say. Previously, I
agreed with the men and women who preached “compassion” through shallow
emotionalism. Conservatism takes its stand largely from Scripture, though
obviously conservatism does not equal Christianity, or discipleship, or the
sacrifice Christ calls us to. Those ventures across Kern County greatly
influenced my political mind, but God had already began work on my spiritual
mind and heart years earlier. I “grew up” spiritually reading about Elisabeth
Elliot on masculinity and the sacrifice of her husband Jim Elliot, reading John
Piper and Thomas Watson talk about God’s passion for his glory, and reading
J.I. Packer tell of theology as the grandest study of all. Bonhoeffer writes,
“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”[18]
I choose to vote as a conservative, but I choose to live as a disciple.
Glorifying God as a disciple involves trusting Christ and obeying his word. It
requires the daily death of humility in acknowledging sin, of diligence in
seeking Christ, of trust in God as we surrender ourselves to love other people
who may not love us in return.
[1]
Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 204.
[2]
Michael D. Tanner, “Relationship between the Welfare State and Crime.” Cato
Institute (June 7, 1995). https://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/relationship-between-welfare-state-crime-0
[3]
Tanner.
[4]
Tanner.
[5]
Tanner.
[6]
Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr,
Prophet, Spy, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2010), page 15.
[7]
Charles Lane, “Children are being euthanized in Beligum”, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/children-are-being-euthanized-in-belgium/2018/08/06/9473bac2-9988-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html
[8]
North American Man Boy Love Association, for example.
[9]
Elisabeth Elliot, The Mark of a Man,
(Tarrytown, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1981), page 30.
[10]
Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A
Patriot’s History of the United States, (New York: Penguin Books, 2007),
page 96.
[11]
Ibid, 97.
[12]
Rowan Scarborough, “Study supports Trump: 5.7 million noncitizens may have cast
illegal votes”. The Washington Times,
June 19, 2017. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/19/noncitizen-illegal-vote-number-higher-than-estimat/
[13]
Eileen Patten and Mark Hugo Lopez, “Are unauthorized immigrants overwhelmingly
Democrats?”, Pew Research Center, July 22, 2013. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/22/are-unauthorized-immigrants-overwhelmingly-democrats/
[14]
Brett T., “WARZONE: Those ‘youths’ in Sweden seem to be rioting and torching
cars again”. Twitchy, August 13, 2018. https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2018/08/13/warzone-those-youths-in-sweden-seem-to-be-rioting-and-torching-cars-again-video/
[15]
Tom Wyke, et al, “Migrant rape fears spread across Europe: Women told not to go
out at night alone after assaults carried out in Sweden, Finland, Germany,
Austria and Switzerland amid warnings gangs are co-ordinating attacks”,
DailyMail, August 15, 2018. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3390168/Migrant-rape-fears-spread-Europe-Women-told-not-night-assaults-carried-Sweden-Finland-Germany-Austria-Switzerland-amid-warnings-gangs-ordinating-attacks.html
[16]
Grace Guarnieri, “MIGRANTS IN EUROPE LINKED TO SOARING VIOLENCE AND CRIME IN
GERMANY, STUDY FINDS”. Newsweek,
January 13, 2018, https://www.newsweek.com/migrants-europe-violence-crime-germany-study-770105
[17]
Bonhoeffer, Cost, 89.
[18]
Ibid.
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