When we find ourselves in situations in which the duties imposed upon us here in the US clash with our Heavenly duties, we must fall back on Paul's teaching in 2 Timothy 2:4: "No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him." I have struggled with what that verse means for many years. Notice that the verse doesn't say we do not participate at all; that would be a violation of John 17:15-19 and 1 Corinthians 5:10, because to truly be non-participants, to completely shun interaction with an unregenerate world, we would have to leave the world. So it does not mean that we completely disengage from ALL activities (particularly political activities, as so many in the church have maintained for so many years) here in this present life. It means that we need to guard our allegiances; we avoid entanglements - becoming SO involved with the activities of this life that extracting ourselves becomes very difficult, that we lose sight of the ministries to which God has called each of us. And for some, that ministry means participation in the political process itself. After all, Romans 13 tells us that government is ordained by God, that officials are ministers of God (Romans 13:1-7). So God calls some to ministry within the context of politics. It is illogical to conclude that God ordains government, yet forbids His own to participate in it, that the running of that government is to be turned over to the unregenerate. But as is true of all other contexts, one must be cognizant of the possibility of entanglement. When we find ourselves in situations in which there is a clear choice between evil and good (as has been the case in most of the elections up to this point), that decision is easy and we can avoid entanglement. But when we find ourselves in situations in which we are told that we must choose between two evils - no matter what, or who, they may be - that conflict with God's laws, and we believe it, we have become entangled. Our only course is to remove ourselves from the entanglement and align our lives with Biblical teaching, regardless of the consequences. That is the teaching of Acts 5:29: “We must obey God rather than men." Remember, when given a choice between evils A and B, the Christian still has the obligation to choose the good of choice C. In the context of this discussion, that means that the Believer exercises his or her prerogative to vote for neither candidate.
And that is where I find myself this election.
You see, our obligation to obey God's laws, the laws of the country of our true citizenship, supersedes our so-called "obligations" to any earthly authority when those two law-sets come into conflict. And on that basis, I reject the notion that failure to vote for Romney constitutes a vote for Obama. I am voting for the truth of God's Word.
The church in the US has placed itself in a precarious position. God's Word is our final authority in all matters of faith and living, and yet, all too many Christians with whom I speak have chosen political expediency over the clear teachings of the Bible. "We live in the 'real world'; we HAVE to vote for one of the candidates." No, the Real World is Heaven, the world in which our citizenship as Believers resides. But then again, on that basis, maybe too many who call themselves "Christians" really are living in their real world.
For Christians, then, to vote for either of the major party candidates this year, one of whom supports homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion on demand, and illegal immigration, while the other is the very spirit of Antichrist, a man who believes that he will one day be the god of his own planet, whose primary religious text teaches that neither people of color nor women can ever achieve the highest exaltation offered to white men, is to fulfill the warning of 1 Samuel 8:5-7,
"...Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them."It is time for true believers here in the US to return to their first love, to once again recognize where their true allegiance lies and to disentangle themselves from "civilian pursuits." It is time for us to recognize that, when society's dictates are at-odds with those of our heavenly, theocratic country, the laws to which we default are those of Heaven.
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