Christians, Don't Vote Your Values
For the past few months, Christians have constantly been told by their pastors and politicians to "vote your values.” They’ve heard this phrase used to allude to the notion that their values aren’t being represented. The only problem is, what exactly are "your" values?
This phrase may seem insignificant for many, but for Christians the wording is consequential.
The importance lies in the implication: values held by professing Christians are inherently biblical.
The word “your” is important because it draws no distinction between what is right and wrong or what is scriptural and what is not. Phrased this way, the scope of the argument is broadened, essentially lending credence to a cognitive dissonance for professing Christians. “Your” values are not always biblical values.
Instead of clarifying, in plain terms, what Christian values are, we have gone the way of our culture in prioritizing bite-sized messaging. This has resulted in the oversimplification of more nuanced issues and a failure to distinguish between biblical and personal values.
With that said, there will be those who think I am merely arguing semantics, but a look at the current state of evangelicalism in America would say otherwise.
Let’s take social issues for instance. With regard to same-sex marriage, Pew Research shows that Christians have become more accepting of the homosexual lifestyle in recent years with only 44 percent approving in 2007, to 54 percent approving in 2014. Since then, this trend has only increased among mainline Protestant denominations. This should lead many on the conservative-right (in biblical interpretation) to wonder, “is this a value Christians can indiscriminately encourage?”
And what about abortion? Progressive Christian organizations like Vote Common Good have openly advocated voting for candidates who support pro-choice legislation. Can born-again believers honestly encourage other professing Christians to vote "their" values if those values are indifferent to murder?
The problem we have lies at the source of man's values, his heart. As early as Genesis 6 we are told that God, in looking at the wickedness of man, saw that “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” In Jeremiah 17:9, God refers to the heart of man, calling it “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.” In Romans 3, Paul speaks to man’s depravity by citing a series of Old Testament passages, stating, “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God...no one does good, not even one.” And in Mark 7:21 we are told that “from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit....” Though not an exhaustive list, these verses, at the very least, warn man never to lean on his own understanding.
What’s most surprising is that for a majority of us, Christian or not, we understand this. We understand how fickle the mind is. Looking back on our own lives we understand that what we valued in our teens is not necessarily what we value now, or even what we valued in our twenties. What we thought was proper yesterday doesn’t seem to be proper now. Besides death and taxes, it would seem the only other guarantee is a change of values.
This is where Christians should understand that outside of an objective biblical framework, man’s sense of “values” is nothing more than conjecture. If we wish to be faithful to our convictions, it is important that we look past our own understanding of right and wrong and look to the One who has objectively outlined what is right and wrong.
With regard to voting, it’s clear that not all aspects of politics are clearly defined in scripture, but of the ones that are, we would be foolish not to obey. For us, this would mean holding to a strict sense of social values as outlined in scripture.
In Genesis 2:24 we are given a clear understanding of the institution of marriage when God says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” In Psalm 139:13 we are taught the sanctity of life when we are told: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb...” In Ephesians 5 and 6 we are given an image of the nuclear family when Paul describes the relationship between a husband and wife, and parents and children. And in 1 Corinthians 6:18 we are told the importance of sexually pure lives when Paul says, “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”
Of the many issues for Christians to consider this election cycle, these would stand paramount to the rest. So, as we head to the polls tomorrow, the onus is on us as Christians to vote for “biblical” values and not our own.