Presidential candidates I won't be voting for

As I still don't have any readers that I know of, this seems like the safest time to offer my perspective on the presidential options as they stand now.  If I did have any readers they will certainly depart after this post.

One Facebook friend asks of all those who "could never vote for Hillary," why is that?  A popular response was "she has an annoying voice," which, I grant, is certainly a place to start.  Four years of that may just lay waste to whatever remnant of sanity remains in our country.  However, I responded with "because I don't want her to be the president."  You see, over time, I have gravitated towards this wild idea that one should vote for the candidate he actually wants to win the election.  Imagine that!

Whoa there.  Did I just say I want Donald Trump to be the president?  No way, and I won't be voting for him either.  I offer some reasons below.

However, I am increasingly convinced that "lesser of two evils voting" is a trap.  The more people are convinced we have only two choices and must pick the least awful one, the more we are cycled into a something like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  For the time being, we still have the freedom in this country to vote for anyone we want.  It's high time we used it!

On a similar note, it's fallacious to say "to not vote at all is a vote for X."  No, to vote for X is a vote for X.  If not voting for anyone means a vote for X, then actually casting a vote for X would have to somehow be equivalent to two votes for X, which obviously doesn't add up.  (Am I the only one who thinks about this stuff?)  To vote for X means a vote for X.  To vote for Y means a vote for Y.  To not vote means neither gets a vote.  Basic concepts here...

But let's change the subject just a bit and approach this matter from the standpoint of religious presuppositions.  If I am to call myself a consistent Christian, I have to look closely at what the Bible says about the matter of voting.  In doing so, I note two things.  I may note more things in the future, but we'll start here.

1. Much to the dismay of right-wing Christian organizations, there is no mandate in scripture to vote for whomever the popular republican guy/gal is.  In fact, there is no specific mandate that one is required to vote at all.  It's entirely possible for not voting to be the best possible option.
2. Furthermore, scripture does in fact set forth standards for those who would "judge the people"--for the sake of brevity, we'll hone in on just one verse, Exodus 18:27: "You shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain, and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens."  Although the immediate context here is ancient Israel, we can reason by analogy that such leaders held similar positions to our rulers and judges in the modern world.

Now someone is going to say, but that was ancient Israel, and these standards don't apply anymore since we no longer live in a theocracy.  OK, fine.  But is there something wrong with those standards?  Can anyone come up with a good reason why we shouldn't want leaders "who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain"?  In the new and better "church age," why aim lower than Moses and Jethro?  If anything, we should aim higher, being more advanced and all that.  Even if you're not a Christian, you ought to be a fan of two out of three of those standards.

This leads me to respond to the popular "we're electing a president, not a pastor" mantra from brain-dead Christians who haven't thought through their views consistently.  (Was that nice of me or what?)  Of course, a president =/= a pastor.  But anyone who thinks a politician's spiritual condition doesn't come out every time he addresses our nation is living under a rock.  Do we want someone who feels free to concede right and wrong to popular opinion, or personal whims, rather than be guided by scriptural principles?  (Hey that's about what we have now.)  Furthermore, a president, having been elected by (more or less) popular vote, can be said to represent our nation before God.  We're telling God we elected him and this is guy means us.

So I say we aim high.  We vote for who we want to win.  And we examine presidential candidates according to biblical standards.  And we will find that they fall very short indeed, even more so than usual this time around.

We'll start with Donald Trump, an imbecilic windbag who is popular because he plays off people's fears.  I have reason to suspect he does not fear God, and I am not entirely convinced he is a man of truth or hates dishonest gain.  In fact certain evidence points to some of his gain being dishonest.  His idea of truth seems to be whatever he can make up to appeal to his fan base.  Evidence of not fearing God includes remarrying without having divorced on biblical grounds.  The only thing that makes him purer than Bill Clinton is he hasn't lied about his unfaithfulness under oath.  Anyway, no thanks.  (Although, I have to admit, I don't think a Trump presidency would be a major disaster.  He wouldn't find consensus among politicians to get a lot accomplished (that's a good thing), and too many people just plain wouldn't take him seriously.  I could see personal liberties sustained at their current levels under a Trump presidency.  So there's that.)

Then we have Hillary Clinton.  I'm not even going into the whole emails thing, or Benghazi, because I don't need to.  Clinton supports "a woman's right to choose," code language for the wholesale slaughter of unborn children.  If she feared God, she might stop to ask herself, how will I answer to God once I die for championing this evil in our country?  (To be fair, Trump's record on this issue doesn't seem to amount to more than saying whatever is popular at the time, and/or just commenting without thinking about it.)

Now to Bernie Sanders, who I suppose is only still in the race because he is hoping Hillary will be indicted soon.  I could never vote for Bernie because I am not a socialist, and because he too is pro-abortion.  But I am almost secretly rooting for Bernie.  I stand with Bernie on prosecuting big banks, removing our troops from foreign countries, and a couple other things.  But most importantly, Bernie is sincere, reasonably consistent, and actually convincingly believes in what he is about.  Let's look at those biblical standards again.  Does he fear God?  No.  Is he a man of truth?  Well, he hasn't been caught lying much, that I have heard.  I've seen a few places where he has been caught being inconsistent (i.e. his voting record), but much more rarely than the others.  Does he hate dishonest gain?  Yes, very much so; unless it's government doing it, then it's OK.  But again, one might argue that restricting dishonest gain to government only is better than enthusiastically accepting it across the board (Hillary, Trump, everyone else).  Again, Bernie will not get my vote.  But because he is honest, I could sit down and have a beer with Bernie.  Not so with Hillary.

Gary Johnson, the libertarian nominee, has taken positions (on abortion, for starters) leading me to conclude that he does not meet the aforementioned biblical standards.  However, I think his track record of vetoing spending bills as governor of New Mexico suggests he has the potential to move our country in the direction of vastly improved financial responsibility (though what are the odds this would last beyond his presidency?).  Without going into details, I would rate Gary highly on truthfulness, poorly on fearing God, and so-so on hating dishonest gain.

So who to vote for?  Austin Peterson was interesting, but he's out.  Since he's not a Christian, I wasn't quite as excited about him as some of my peers.  Darrell Castle may be worth watching, but I don't like him as much as the previous Constitution party guy, and the CP needs to do more to get itself together.  Although they might have made much better candidates than our current options, I'm not excited enough about Cruz or Paul to write either of them in.  May as well write in myself.

So for now, I'll give it a few months and see how things play out.  There is time yet for Hillary to go to prison, Bernie to die of a heart attack and/or Donald to spontaneously combust.  And if I'm still not inspired to vote for anyone at all, I'm not going to feel bad about it.

Christian education and the future of Christianity

In a previous post, I offered a brief outline of the case for Christian education, and elaborated on the impossibility of neutrality within the educational system.  (As a side note, "neutrality" is not possible in any other area of life, but that is another can of worms.)  I'm sure I'll blog about Christian education again before too long--perhaps a more detailed expository series is in order to reinforce my case that scripture prescribes it--but after this post I'll probably move on to some other topics for a bit.

In this post I ask the question, how should church leaders and/or pastors approach this topic?  The answer, I believe, is actually quite straightforward: they should preach and teach about education just what the Bible says about it.  I have shown earlier in brief that a distinctly Christian education is explicitly prescribed by scripture.

A complication, however, is that many churchgoers still have their kids in the public schools.  Their children are receiving an education that falls short of the scriptural ideal for education.  What do pastors say to them?

Some pastors may have the concern that if they preach that the Bible prescribes Christian education, many parents will move on to another church because they have children in the public schools and thus find this message to be offensive.  They may see this as an affront to their parenting abilities. They might think, how dare you question my choices as a parent?  Aren't I doing my best?

Some pastors may even go as far as to think to themselves, if a lot of folks leave because I'm saying something that bothers them, there goes the tithe money that runs the church, and then I'm out of a job.  I'm certainly not picking on any one specific person, since no pastor or church elder has ever told me they think that, nor said anything explicitly leading me to think that is their line of thought.  Most of those pastors I have spoken with about Christian education who are not fully supportive of it seem either ignorant or confused about the matter.

But just in case you are a pastor who has this fear in the back of his mind, I wish to make a case that you are thinking completely backwards about this.  Why?  Let's take another look at Deuteronomy 6:10-15.  As we do so, we'll remember that, while a lot has changed since God spoke to Moses, God has not changed; and the basic principles which applied to ancient Israel are still valid today.

"So it shall be, when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant—when you have eaten and are full— then beware, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. You shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you (for the Lord your God is a jealous God among you), lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth."

Let's recall what the context of this verse is.  The most important commandment is to love God (v. 4).  An important aspect of this is teaching our children to do the same, all the time (v.7) by obeying God's standards.  And what happens if we don't?  Well, the above excerpt pretty much describes it.

1. We enjoy great material wealth relative to our forefathers.  These become a distraction.  This has already happened.
2. We forget God as a society.  This has already happened to a large extent.
3. We go after other gods, the gods of the people who are all around us.  This has already happened in our society to a great extent.  We don't even need a god in the ancient style; we seem to be able to make gods out of anything dumb.  Sports.  Fashion.  Music.  Sex.  Whatever. 
4. God's wrath is aroused against us.  Most conservative pastors believe God's wrath is now aroused against our nation.  They exposit Romans 1, citing it as evidence, and they get it.  They just haven't connected the dots back to Deuteronomy and Christian education.
5. God destroys his people from the face of the earth.  Are we there yet?  That isn't meant as a goal to aspire to.

So, back to the point.  Does our hypothetical pastor, worried about offending people by teaching what scripture says about education, really have a future career as a pastor if Christians are wiped off the face of the earth?*  By doing all he can to promote Christian education, does he not make the future of the church, and by extension his own future, more viable and not less?

In short, teaching our children to love God is an investment in the future of the church.  Want  more people to come to church?  Want more people to take it seriously?  This is the key.

Sure, God is sovereign.  But he does not work in a vacuum.  What we teach and how we act have consequences in society.  We should do all we can to work for God and not against him.  Let's start by being honest about the case in scripture for explicitly Christian education.

We can even see this principle playing out on a smaller scale, in many of the liberal mainline denominations such as the PCUSA.  Why are their congregations so rapidly shrinking and aging?  Well, they certainly have a number of major problems.  But chief among these must be failure to teach their children to love God as scripture instructs.  A lot of these feel more like social clubs where scripture is interpreted as loosely as necessary to validate the fashionable sins of the day.  One can hardly be surprised when children grow up and realize they don't need to take that kind of hypocrisy seriously.

All right, let's wrap this up.  Do we want the church to grow and become increasingly influential in society over time?  Christian education is the ticket.  Do we want the church to shrink and come under increasing persecution?  Let's keep neglecting this part of scripture and see what happens.  Actually, let's not.  But if we do, let's remember it's our own fault: God warned us way back in Deuteronomy 6.  If we don't teach children to love God and abide by his standards all the time, we're not allowed to be surprised at the consequences of our failure, many of which are upon us now.

*I need a footnote here to state that I hold to an optimistic eschatology that does not expect Christians will be wiped off the face of the earth.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  However, the principle still applies.  God can do without hypocritical American Christians and will raise up Christians from elsewhere if we turn our backs on him.