I will venture to offer than when you make your choice, it’s not about whether they are a devoted Christ follower. It would be nice if more candidates were, but what’s critical is where they stand on issues of importance to Christ and culture. People sometimes forget that when it comes to electing a representative – a senator, a governor or a president – we’re not electing a resident pastor.
3. The key to Christian being politically active is a Christian mind wielding a biblical worldview.
So what’s the key to voting? What’s the key to political engagement?
To think and to vote as a Christian.
But that’s exactly what so many of us do not do.
What we tend to do is compartmentalize our thinking. A compartmentalized mind is one that separates life into distinct categories, such as faith, work, family, Facebook, the stock market—all without integration. Our thinking about one area never informs our thinking about another. So you can be a Christian but not reflect about an issue in light of your faith.
What does it mean to think about the sanctity of human life and its ending biblically?
What does it mean to think about immigration biblically?
What does it mean to think about issues surrounding gay marriage or gender identity biblically?
What does it mean to think about the poor biblically?
It’s stunning how few Christians even attempt to look at the issues through a biblical lens. They just swallow an entire platform, left or right, uncritically and with evangelistic zeal.
I remember reading a study that came out of Lifeway Research back in the 2016 election cycle. It found that only one in 10 Christians said the Bible shaped their political views. The vast majority said they were influenced by either friends or the media.
We must work toward having a Christian worldview. And “worldview” is a key word. Your worldview is the set of ideas by which you judge other ideas. It’s how you engage the vast range of human thought and creation from a Christian perspective.
Consider Martin Luther King, Jr. whose Christian worldview was everything in challenging racial discrimination and segregation. Reflect on his words, written from a Birmingham jail:
“… there are two types of law: just and unjust…. A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out harmony with the moral law…. All segregation statutes are unjust.”
King laid claim to a law above man’s law. No other worldview would have given King the basis for such a claim. And from it, he was salt and light in a day and time that needed it.
So the question for the Christian is not whether they should be politically active, much less vote. The key is how the Christian is to be politically active. And the answer is clear:
… do it Christianly.
This article on how to be politically active originally appeared here, and is used by permission.
