The Narrow Path of Christian Faithfulness in an Election Year

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
(Matthew 22:37-39)

Faithfulness | The Narrow Path

It’s an election year in America and the political temperature is rising. The next few months will include a torrent of debates, yard signs, “bombshell” reports, social media arguments, polls, and eventually a winner. If history has taught us anything, we should buckle up now, it’s gonna be a wild year.

Before we get too deep into all the heat and haze an election year brings, it’s good for us to remind ourselves of some of the salient biblical truths that ought to guide us through such a time. We will need cool heads–with eyes fixed on our God and His Word–in the months ahead. That’s what this blog is about. Notice, as indicated in the title, this blog is about Christian faithfulness in an election year. This isn’t about how you should cast your vote on Election Day. It’s about something much more important than that.

In the throes of an election year, most Christians will feel pulled. The noise and drama around us will either draw us in to fixate on the election or repulse us and move us toward political indifference. In short, we either obsess over politics or get sick of it. Eventually, we make one of these poles our true north and follow it all the way to the extreme: political abdication for those who are apathetic and political idolatry for those who are obsessed. But, powerful though these magnetic attractions are, we must resist them both; neither the impulse to abdication nor the one to idolatry represents a godly approach to an election year.

The path of Christian faithfulness is narrow, with errors on both sides, and the devil doesn’t care which way he knocks us off. It does no good to flee one cliff and go careening over another. We need to see and beware of the errors on both sides. More importantly, we need to chart a course to keep us on the narrow path. Thankfully, our Savior has given us our bearing.

When asked to identify the greatest commandment, Jesus gave two answers. First, love the Lord your God. Second, love your neighbor (cf. Matthew 22:37-39). These two commands provide the orientation for all Christian political engagement.

Abdication | The Monastic Temptation

“I’m so tired of it all. I just don’t care anymore. Maybe I’ll go live in a cabin in the woods so I don’t have to deal with politics.” Maybe you’ve said or felt something like this (I certainly have). Elections are messy, uncomfortable affairs. I once heard someone define politics like this: “poly: more than one; tick: blood-sucking parasite.” Wouldn’t it be better to just disregard it all and focus on my relationship with Jesus? Isn’t God in control of everything anyway? While it certainly sounds nice to live in the bliss of political ignorance, God simply does not give us this option. This is a monastic temptation–to sequester ourselves from the filths of society and focus on spiritual work instead, like monks in their monasteries. We must resist this impulse because it neglects our Christian duty to love our neighbors.

Jesus lists “love your neighbor” as the second greatest command in the whole Bible. That’s a big deal. He’s not just giving us a suggestion for our free time. He expects us to take this seriously. And obeying this command will require action and intentionality. We just can’t do it if we choose the cabin-in-the-woods, monastic mentality. Put simply, loving your neighbor in an election year means leveraging whatever political clout you have for the good of your neighbor. The results of an election may contribute to your neighbor’s flourishing or inhibit it. In our nation, we’re blessed with the opportunity to play a role in that process (voting, lobbying for a policy, donating to a candidate, etc.). At a minimum, part of loving your neighbor in an election year means caring deeply about elections.

Politics are not morally neutral. Elections have consequences. There are real-life issues at stake. The results will affect you and your neighbors–from the rich to the poor, the elderly to the unborn, the foreigner to the family member. Weighing these issues requires wisdom, but we have to at least put them on the scales. Apathy and abdication are not options. God has commanded us to love our neighbors; therefore, we have a responsibility to wield whatever political influence we have for their good. Loving your neighbor during an election year means engaging in the political arena.

Idolatry | The Materialistic Temptation

Politics represent a meaningful opportunity to love our neighbors. As such, they are important–but we must also remember that they are never ultimate. The second greatest commandment must stand under the first. We shouldn’t disregard politics, but neither should we obsess over them. My hunch is that this is the cliff most of us are leaning over–or have fallen off. Part of that is because the issues at stake in an election naturally generate passion, another factor is the overheated nature of contemporary politics, but the main cause is the human heart’s inclination toward idolatry.

When Eve stood in the Garden and considered the forbidden fruit, she wasn’t engaged in an internal debate about whether she should choose to follow God or Satan. No, she simply “saw that the tree was good for food…and ate” (Gen. 3:6). She saw the goodness of the food and her desire for that good thing began to outrank her desire for the best thing: God. When that happens, you’ve got an idol. When it comes to politics, even “love your neighbor” can be elevated to an unhealthy position if it crowds out the one commandment that transcends all the others: “love your God.”

Years ago, I was obsessed with politics. My views weren’t extreme, but I held them in extreme ways. I hoped for political victory like it was salvation–the solution to all our problems. I believed my candidate could do no wrong, whereas the opposition was a half-step above the satanic. Losing an election felt like a personal hell of despair. I use theological terms to describe it because that’s what it was: my political interest was worship. I had an idol.

While political abdication errs toward monasticism, political idolatry errs toward materialism. A materialistic worldview focuses on the tangible stuff of the earth: power, influence, money, and the like. It’s all about the here and now. The best political agendas can become idolatrous if they’re not tempered by the conviction that none of this is ultimate, none of this will last, and there are far better things to live for. How did God free me of my own political idolatry? He showed me a hope that was infinitely superior to an election victory.

If you are in Christ, this world is not your eternal home. You are a “stranger and exile…seeking a homeland…a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:13-16). Think about that: you have a better country to live for. America, like all the kingdoms of the world, will someday fall to ruin while one Kingdom stands and one King reigns forever (Daniel 2:44). To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, how could we settle for the mud pies of political victory when the seaside holiday of an eternal Kingdom is offered to us?

If “love the Lord your God” is the foremost impulse of our hearts, our political hopes will be framed with the glorious reminder that the results, whether good and bad, are always temporary. Our hopes for joy, confidence, security, and satisfaction must rest in God and God alone. No president or political party can give them to us.

Paradoxes and Politics

A Christian’s primary duty to politics isn’t to be a lobbyist, strategist, analyst, or even voter. Your primary duty is to be an ambassador (2 Cor. 5:20). Think about that image. An ambassador is, by definition, not at home. He pursues the interests of his home country while away (so love your neighbor!), but his ultimate hope and goal is always for his home country (so love your God!).

There’s something paradoxical about the narrow path of Christian faithfulness in an election year. On the one hand, you should care deeply about politics. On the other, you shouldn’t care too much. We must “honor the emperor” and yet “fear God.” (1 Pet. 2:17). We should “seek the welfare of the city” we’re in (Jer. 29:7), and yet “look forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). We have a narrow path in front of us and it will be hard to walk. But it starts with seeing the cliffs on either side. We shouldn’t abdicate, but neither should we idolize.

So, what should you do? First, love the Lord your God. Second, love your neighbor. Don’t put your hope in politics, but don’t tune them out either. We need the sober recognition that this stuff matters, but it’s also fleeting. The most important political question is not What candidate should I vote for? The most important political question is What King should I live for? As we step into another political season, let us walk the narrow path of faithfulness–loving our neighbors, and loving our God most of all.

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END NOTE: If you want some more help in forming a biblical approach to politics, I recommend two books: How the Nations Rage, by Jonathan Leeman and Counterfeit Gods (especially chapter five) by Tim Keller.