So it’s Trump v. Clinton.

And every (non-compromising) Evangelical is now asking: How then shall we vote?

From my vantage point I see 12 voting options (a list made with the help of friends):

1. Political apathy, skip the vote altogether because it lacks Christian priority to begin with.
2. Refuse to vote based on a settled conscience-based objection to the major presidential options.
3. Refuse to vote to send a message to a politician or a political party for reform, and vocalize the decision.**
4. Refuse to vote as act of “settled judgment” on America, and vocalize the decision.
5. Refuse to vote for president, but vote on issues and congressional races and everything else.
6. Vote for a third party or write-in candidate with no hope of winning, and vote on everything else.
7. Rally around one particular third party or write-in candidate who could perhaps be given a chance to win, and vote on everything else.
8. Vote for cancellation by casting a vote for the candidate opposite the one you most oppose, thereby cancelling out one of their votes.**
9. Vote utilitarian by choosing the major candidate by using a lesser-of-two-evils mentality.*
10. Vote utilitarian by choosing a major candidate based on who would appoint the best SCOTUS judges.
11. Vote utilitarian by choosing the major candidate who would most likely avoid global warfare and the death of civilians.
12. Pack up and flee before the wall is finished.***

In thinking through the options:

1. This strikes me as lamesauce neighbor-neglect and potentially disastrous for local issues on the ballot, not to mention for solid republican candidates running for any one of 469 congressional seats up for election in November.
2. Perhaps; but this again seems to ignore all the issues and all the candidates on the table.
3. Perhaps useful in encouraging future reforms going forward, but I think the point has been made.
4. This runs the risk of projecting to our culture a false gospel: Our ultimate hope is in the right Republican candidate.
5. Realistic.
6. I could do this.
7. Maybe; but this one candidate would need to be chosen fast and chosen unanimously and backed by all his/her closest rivals. How would this be done? Has it been done? Could this be the prime purpose of the convention?
8. I cannot imagine voting for someone I am not for.
9. Based on whose rank of evils?! Which evils get stopped? Which evils get a pass? Abortion? Gay rights? Arrogance in the leader himself? And how staunchly pro-life is Trump?
10. Perhaps; but it remains difficult to know how many SCOTUS judges will be selected in the next four years, maybe only one (to fill Scalia’s vacancy). After last summer I have a hard time believing SCOTUS, in any forms, is little more than a codifier of public opinion.
11. Perhaps the pro-life argument could extend to the candidate “least likely to lead us into war,” but if they’re also pro-abortion it’s a moot point.
12. Very attractive. I hear Ecuador and Panama are beautiful this time of year. In seriousness, it has been suggested to me that a presidential election catastrophe, like the one we may soon face, could help shake confidence in this nation and make it easier for young Christians to uproot, leave America, and join foreign missions work.

So I guess I like options 5, 6, 7 in this scenario.

How about you?

[Suggestions from * Justin Taylor, ** Joe Carter, and *** Joe Rigney.]

In 1981, Francis Schaeffer scratched his head over two questions about the prevailing emphasis of secular humanism (man is the measure of all things) in the dominant forms of news reporting.

(1) Why did the anti-abortion worldview get ignored and downplayed?

(2) How has secular media (and especially television) played such an incredibly powerful role in the political process?

Schaeffer then scratched out A Christian Manifesto (here quoting from his Works, 5:447–50).

First on the abortion question, he came to understand:

If we are going to make judgments on any such subject we must not get our final judgments uncritically from media that see things from this perspective [humanism] and see it that way honestly. Most of the media do not have to be dishonest to slide things in their own direction because they see through the spectacles of a finally relativistic set of ethical personal and social standards.

On the second question, he simply came to this reality:

The media and especially television have indeed changed the perception of not only current events, but also of the political process. We must realize that things can easily be presented on television so that the perception of a thing may be quite different from fact itself. Television not only reports political happenings, it enters actively into the political process. That is, either because of bias or for a good story, television so reports the political process that it influences and becomes a crucial part of the political process itself. . . .

We must realize that the communications media function much like the unelected federal bureaucracy. They are so powerful that they act as if they were the fourth branch of government in the United States. Charles Peters, editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly, in his book How Washington Really Works, writes that the media, instead of exposing the “make believe” of the federal government, are “part of the show.”

Television (and the communications media in general) thus are not only reporting news, but making it.

Five years ago Jonathan Leeman was asked to address the problem of political cynicism and apathy among Christians. What he wrote was later published in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology [11/4 (Winter 2007), 108–111]. I’ve copied his words into this blog post.

Leeman is the Director of Communications at 9Marks in Washington, DC, a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and of SBTS.

Here’s what he wrote:

SBJT: What should the Christian’s posture toward the state be?

Most people, whether Christian or not, assume a posture toward the state somewhere on a spectrum between an old man’s cynicism and a young man’s optimism (picture Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”).

Thoughtful Christians commonly warn fellow believers against the latter end of this spectrum—against over realizing their eschatologies and over equating the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. Salvation will not come from the state, and a pastor’s job is to preach the gospel. Period. Whatever opinions he harbors over health care, minimum wage, or immigration, he has the authority to preach the Word and not one word more (2 Tim 4:2; also, John 7:18).

So cautionary tales are told about the leftward and rightward ventures of mainline Protestantism and the Moral Majority, respectively. (Of course, Emergent and New Perspective stump speeches make one think this tale should be rehearsed more often!)

Postmodern Cynicism

But in our postmodern and media-saturated era, I wonder if the more common sin among the saints is cynicism and apathy. Those are the sins of my post-Vietnam generation, anyhow. Where the modern man had ideological delusions of political grandeur, whether of the Marxist or liberal variety, his postmodern progeny is (ironically) the older cynical man on the spectrum (See Timothy Bewes, Cynicism and Postmodernism [London: Verso, 1997]). The Enlightenment ideologies that formerly claimed the faith of the nations were blown to smithereens when the real story was leaked: “It’s All About Power Says Postmodernism.”

For once, the Christian with his doctrine of original sin can embrace this bit of wisdom from the world. We know that every ideology, whether the West’s or the East’s, is a form of idolatry (See David T. Koyzis, Political Visions & Illusions [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003], 15, 22–34). We know that every political hero is deeply fallen.

In the late nineties, the window of my office in Washington overlooked the entrance to Monica Lewinsky’s lawyers’ building. My colleagues and I probably lost several hours of work watching the DC paparazzi swarm as she came and went. In retrospect, what’s more remarkable to me than anything Clinton did through the entire affair was the fact that the Republican speaker of the house leading the impeachment charge against Clinton was simultaneously having an affair of his own, as he recently acknowledged.

Sure enough, patriotism is harder to find today than it was in my grandfather’s day. It feels clichéd to list off Watergate, Iran-Contra, “Read My Lips,” Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and Abu Ghraib, but these clichés have transformed America’s political culture. Cynicism and apathy are in. Why waste your time with politics?

Biblical Response To Cynicism

In jarring contradistinction to such cynicism comes Paul’s admonition: “I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (1 Tim. 2:1–2). His words strike our condescending ears for several reasons. First, praying typically involves a commitment of the heart that is anything but natural toward those in authority over us. Second, Paul urges Christians to pray with expectation: “that we may live peaceful and quiet lives.” In other words, pray to the end of effecting change in the political mechanisms responsible for yielding peaceful and quite lives. Prayerfully involve yourself, Christian, in the affairs of the state. Third, Paul surely had more reason to be cynical about government living under Caesar than anyone in the democratic West.

And Paul’s example is not the only one which commends a supportive posture toward the state. Joseph’s posture was loyal, diligent, and hard-working as he prepared Egypt for famine. Daniel’s posture before Darius the Mede was downright reverential, as evident in his exclamation, “O king, live forever!” (Dan 6:21), even if that was a common salute for a king (see Dan 2:4; 3:9; 5:10; 6:6). Even Jesus’ command to render to Caesar whatever belongs to him exemplified a certain kind of deference.

In short, Christians should not regard the state with disdain, contempt, or apathy, but with prayer, honor, and reverence. As Paul said speaking of the governing authority, “he is God’s servant for your good” (Rom 13:4).

Both the young man’s tour-bus naivety and the old man’s back-room cynicism result from the same failure to trust Christ. What is cynicism, after all, but the fruit of placing one’s hope in the wrong place to begin with.

Like Non-Christian Family Members

The appropriate posture of a Christian toward the state can be analogized, I believe, to a Christian’s posture toward non-Christian family members. We Christians desire for our family members to know Christ. But even if they never do, we still hope they will live morally, act justly, work legally, and show compassion. And we act in their lives toward this end, as when we teach our children to be law-abiding citizens, whether they embrace the gospel or not.

We may not be called to love and care for the nation to the same extent we are called to care for our family members, but the command to love our neighbors as ourselves obligates us to seek the nation’s good, including, as occasion permits, through the mechanisms of the state.

I’d even propose that this analogy can be rooted in the structures of redemptive history. In ancient Israel, the mechanisms of the state and of the family were subsumed within covenantal structures. One might say that the Abrahamic and Sinai covenants assigned jobs to the nation-state and to the family. A Jew’s religion operated through the state and through the family. The three spheres overlapped. The IRS and the church offering plate worked together.

Not so under the new covenant. The people of God are no longer defined by political and familial-ethnic boundaries. Jesus’ distinction between what’s rendered to Caesar and what’s rendered to God presumed that the nation state of Israel was no longer sovereign, and the context of Jesus’ remarks in all three Synoptic Gospels demonstrates the divine intentionality behind this dramatic shift. Before and after the passage containing Caesar’s coin are parables and inquisitions indicating that the Jews’ time was up. God was bringing in a new administration. The old office holders were only tenants (e.g., Mark 12:1–12).

Paul’s willingness to appeal to Caesar over and against the Jews on a capital matter indicates this same bifurcation of political and spiritual authority (Acts 25:11ff). Indeed, it’s at first odd that the latter chapters of Acts would be so consumed with this appeal to Caesar and the movement toward Rome. Yet Luke’s movement from Jerusalem in the early chapters of Acts to Rome in the latter chapters clearly has not just missiological implications, but covenantal and political ones (See David W. Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000]). From the Israelite’s perspective, church and state were now divided.

Henceforth, no earthly emperor could legitimately claim the name “holy” or the ability to rule by “divine right.” Instead, God’s people would live in permanent geographic exile, even as they dwell permanently with God. (How deeply ironic and tragic that one significant segment of the church would identify its authority and name with Rome and, for many centuries, alternatively collaborate and compete with the emperor for secular rule.)

Did that mean Paul could blow off the old political, familial, and religious alliances with the wave of a cynical hand? Hardly. Instead, he said, “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel” (Rom 9:3–4). His heart yearned for them.

Are a Christian’s family obligations moot? Hardly. “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim 5:8).

Just as a Christian should continue to care for his family’s welfare, even though the economy of redemption has now placed church and family in different spheres, so a Christian should pray for the nation and seek its good through the mechanisms of the state, even through church and state belong in different spheres.

Render To Democracy

What specifically are we obligated to render to Caesar in a democratic nation? Pay our taxes, stop at red lights, and generally stay out of trouble?

In fact, I believe we are obligated to render to a democratic Caesar everything the command to love our neighbors requires us to render. You might say we’re to render to democracy what belongs to democracy.

Like love’s requirements generally, different opportunities and resources will require different levels of engagement from individual to individual, whether voting, lobbying, nominating, candidating, adjudicating, or even participating in civil disobedience. A failure to vote, if one is capable, is arguably a failure to love one’s neighbor and, therefore, God. Quite simply, God has placed this and other institutional mechanisms into the Western Christian’s hands for securing peace, justice, and mercy.

This means there’s no room for cynicism or apathy in a Christian’s posture toward the state. As the general public becomes more apathetic, Christians should remain civically informed and engaged. Yet we do so remembering the lines between church and state and between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world.

In the final analysis, it’s a deepening understanding of this new covenant gospel that simultaneously compels and constrains the Christian’s regard for the state, keeping us from veering toward either cynical indifference or false messianic hopes.

Peter Leithart, Touchstone Magazine (March/April 2012, page 7):

When the people of ancient Uruk complained about Gilgamesh’s oppression, the gods fashioned Enkidu, a wild man every whit equal to Gilgamesh. First rivals, then allies, the two heroes embark on a series of adventures and battles.

Goddesses appear in the epic of Gilgamesh, and Enkidu is civilized by a sexual encounter with a prostitute. Having fulfilled her function, she disappears from the story, and women elsewhere play minor roles as willing or unwilling sexual partners. Gilgamesh’s companion-in-arms has to be male because, for ancient Mesopotamians, ruling the world is a man’s work.

The Bible presents a radically different picture. When Adam needs a helper in his work of caring for the garden and ruling the creatures of land and sea, God constructs a woman. Sexuality is caught up in the public and political project of subduing creation. So is family life. So are women.

These ancients texts remain deeply relevant. Europeans mock Americans for our obsession with political sex scandals. We should grow up, they tell us, and let sex stay in the boudoir where it belongs. Prudery and prurience, sometimes both together, play their roles in American sexual mores. But our willingness to judge a man’s suitability for public office by his sexual faithfulness is also a residue of biblical consciousness, and a sign of social health.