The KISS Guide to Christian Voting
How many words have been spilled over the problem of Christian voting? Too many. Voting in a U.S. election, in a fundamentally Christian way, is actually quite straightforward. There really is a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) approach to voting that is easy-peasy and biblical to boot!
STEP 1: MAKE YOUR EXPECTATIONS OF GOVERNMENT MATCH GOD’S EXPECTATIONS OF GOVERNMENT
According to Romans 13, governments exist to do one thing and one thing only:
“For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” — Romans 13:4
They do not exist to promote active good or care for the poor or educate children. Governments exist to stop bad people from doing bad things to others.
Christians have an unnecessarily complicated view of voting because they have an unnecessarily complicated view of government. Governments exist to establish negative liberty and have absolutely nothing to do with establishing positive liberty.
Many people don’t understand the difference between negative and positive liberty so let me make a quick attempt to explain. Negative liberty is a way of talking about keeping others from hurting you, enslaving you, or hindering your freedom. Positive liberty is a way of talking about your interior capacity to make good choices. According to the Bible, the government exists to keep people from hurting one another (negative liberty). They do not exist to keep people from hurting themselves or building up their sense of right and wrong in a certain direction (positive liberty). If you’d like to learn more about negative and positive liberty, check out this article in Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
STEP 2: SEE YOURSELF AS A KIND OF KING
In this democratic republic, the once consolidated power of kingship has been radically decentralized into different entities: presidency, congress, judiciary, state, local, etc…(which is one reason why laws matter more than leaders). But ultimately, the power that appoints those powers is placed in the hands of the citizenry. This relatively radical development in government turns the citizen into a kind of king.
Therefore for American Christians, the proper application of Romans 13 involves recognizing yourself as the king in Romans 13.
Is it slightly more complicated than this? Yes and no. There’s another sense in which the constitution is our king (in a way that is similar to the Christian view of Sola Scriptura). But functionally, when it comes to voting, this is all you need to think about:
You da king… vote like it.
STEP 3: PUNISH THE EVIL DOER
And what does the Bible say a king should do? We just covered this. That’s right, a king (a government) exists to “punish the evil doer.” So, that’s how you should approach voting.
Before you go to vote, use the Bible to come up with a list of social evils you see at work in this country (either because they are happening or are likely to happen if action is not taken).
Here’s mine:
Abortion
Abuse of Children in Various Forms
Socialism
Eroding of First Amendment Rights
Lack of School Choice for Inner City Families
Unjust, Unnecessary, Prolonged Wars
Government Corruption
Progressive or Regressive Taxation
China’s Internal Brutality & External IP Theft
Draconian COVID Lock-Downs
Like pretty much all top-10 lists, people (in this case, Christian people) will disagree with the ordering and perhaps a few inclusions/exclusions, but will mostly agree with the things that belong on the list. Your list is going to be different than mine to some extent, but if you are a biblical Christian, then you and I will have several of these in common. The point is that our function of governmental kingly authorities, when combined with God’s clear expectation of such people (punish the wrong doer), makes voting a purely negative function.
Voting isn’t about hopes and dreams.
Voting isn’t about personalities.
Voting is about swinging the sword of justice in a just way.
Voting, if it is going to be a purely biblical function, is about executing judgment on the wrong doer and almost nothing else.
Therefore all one must do to vote in a distinctly Christian way is to walk into the ballot box with a clear sense of what God expects from government (punish wrong doers) combined with a clear sense of “Romans 13 America Style” (I am the king), combined finally with a clear and proportional sense of which evils must be punished most urgently.
Proportionality and urgency, or the wise triage of evil, is essential. You can’t swing your sword everywhere. You’re going to have to pick your battles. So pick the evils which are the worst and swing there.
Don’t do this…
So for the Christian, voting is pretty simple. All we are doing is attempting to shrewdly vote for the people who we think are mostly likely to kill, punish, curtail, forestall, or execute vengeance upon the most obvious evils in the world today.
We might say that Christian voting can be summarized with a different KISS acronym: