How To Vote; Matthew 22:37 & Romans 13:1-2
The Bible does not tell you who to vote for but does tell you how to vote. It is appropriate to take a look at what the Bible says about how to vote!
First, lets look at Matthew 22:37b, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (ESV) This passage is a quote of Deuteronomy 6:5 and is the fundamental Old Testament and New Testament understanding about the things of God.
God is God and no one, nor anything else in creation is Him! Period! His call is to love Him as the only God in the first place in life!
The first thing that the person who embraces Christ as Lord should take into account about how to vote is to vote for people who affirm that God is God and no one, nor anything else in creation is Him!
There is more than one false god floating around in the world at this moment in time. You will hear people talk about socialism today and treat it as just another idea in a bag of ideas.
Socialism, Marxism and Communism flow out of Marxist ideology. This has been around since 1848 when Marx and Ingles published the Communist Manifesto. It has been tried and failed historically over and over. This could be the most prominent false god today!
In this idea the Government becomes god, with a little “g” and has no room for the God of the Bible. Ten basic ideas make up Marxist ideology. They all revolve around the government controlling everything.
First, the government controls all banking. There are no private banks.
Second, the government controls all education, directly!
Third, the government controls all labor. Private employers have no power over labor. It is all government controlled.
Fourth, the government controls all transportation and communication. There is no private control or freedom in transportation or communication!
Fifth, the government controls all agriculture and manufacturing. No private farms or manufacturing plants. The government controls them all.
Sixth, the government takes the place of the nuclear family and has total control over families!
Seventh, the government confiscates all private property. No one has any private property. Everything belongs to the government and you own nothing.
Eighth, a large portion of your income is taken in taxes to pay for the government and to be redistributed to people who earn less than you do. The government imposes equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity.
Ninth, the government inherits everything that we typically pass on to our families. All inheritance rights are eliminated.
Tenth, the government plans all activity in regional zones and eliminates all initiative from individuals and companies.
You may have heard the phrase “Godless Communism.” That is reality because in Marxism the state is god and free expression of religion is outlawed.
Christian faith is forced underground like it is in China today and like it was in the old Soviet Union. Russia today is trying to go back to the communist idea.
In the real world, Marxist and Socialist advocates don’t impose all the ideology all at once, they chip away at it little by little!
In late 1970 I was stationed in West Germany as a member of the U.S. Army and went to Berlin for a week of training. Communism was in control of East Germany in those days.
While in Berlin I stood on the Berlin Wall and looked into the East, Communist side from the bright and vibrant West side of Berlin. Looking into the East was like looking back a hundred years. It was bleak, and dark with Russian soldiers armed with assault rifles everywhere.
My mind was taken back to 1961 news reels where young German men were shot and killed trying to escape the Marxist rule of the Soviet Union. Marxism controls people by threatening them with their life if they try to escape.
When God is a nation’s God people are free to achieve and produce. When the state is god it controls people on the threat of death to maintain power.
Vote for people and ideas whose God is God!
Second, Romans 13:12, “(1) Let every person be to subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
(2) Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” (ESV)
This was written to a world where government was under the control of people, like Kings and dictators. What was being addressed was governments of people.
The United States of America is different. We are a government of laws, not people. The authority to govern rests with laws, not people who do what they want to other people.
What is supposed to happen in this country is the people elected are supposed to implement enforcement of the laws found in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Laws passed by the congress and signed into law by the President.
We have a government of laws, not a government of people. We vote people into office, but they are supposed to run things by the law.
You will hear people talking about the rule of law on a regular basis! The trick today is whether the people talking about the rule of law will administer the rule of law or just talk about it!
The way this country works is that if you don’t like the laws, you convince the people to elect you to change the laws, then when in office you can change laws to conform to what the people who elected you would prefer.
Today, we have plenty of people who don’t like the laws, but instead of convincing you to vote for them they will try to assume authority they don’t have. They will even break the rules to gain power. That is not operating by the rule of law!
We are in the most contentious political season since the Civil War! I fear for the well-being of our country! We all need to vote! Who we elect for president, the congress and state and local offices matters; probably more than ever!
The followers of Christ need to vote. We all need to give thought to who we vote for and for the ballot measure that we vote on!
Pray through and think through who you vote for and what you vote for on ballot measures. God will guide you about how to vote.
Vote for people whose God is God and who submit to our duly enacted laws. Pray for our country as we move toward the election November 3, 2020!
Tom West works in advanced planning with Myers Funeral Service in Porterville and can be reached on his cell phone at 602.758.1168. You can listen to Tom’s messages on his Youtube channel Life In The God Lane.