Why Real Christians Don’t Vote

I walked past a neighbor’s house that was festooned with half a dozen “Vote for…” signs, all bearing names of people I’d never heard of. He was on his porch, so I asked him: “Do you know all these people?”

“Personally? No.”

“Then why are you advertising their campaigns?”

“I’m Republican. So are they,” was his answer.

Sure didn’t seem like a good enough reason to me, but thankfully I managed to bite my tongue.

As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, I don’t vote. I'm not registered to vote. I made a conscious choice long ago to never vote. I work hard to have no opinion as to who should win or lose.

A person may abstain from voting this time around simply because they don’t like either of the candidates. But that doesn’t mean they have rejected the system of a government run by individuals who won election.

You may be promoting a candidate; or you may be less than thrilled with any of the candidates but believe in the process, so you vote for the 'lesser of two evils'. In either case, until you separate yourself from the system, you are the system.

A renowned scholar of the 19^th century, Herbert Spencer, noted that whether a person votes for the winning candidate, votes for a losing candidate, or abstains from voting, he will be “deemed to have consented to the rule” of the winning candidate because of his tacit approval of the system.

Even if you don’t vote? Yes. Why? 

In parliamentary procedure, which also applies in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate - really most groups or classes that make decisions by voting - a member may be required to abstain from a vote in the case of a real or perceived conflict of interest, or may choose to abstain for ethical reasons. (In reality, most politicians have proven that they have no ethics. They are most likely to abstain from voting on a thorny issue for fear their constituents back home might hate them for voting for or against it.)

But: abstaining from voting doesn’t mean they are no longer a representative or a senator. Their simple presence provides a quorum; it makes it possible for the vote to go forward.

But you’re not a senator or a representative. Does the “quorum” rule apply to you? Yes, it does.

For example, let’s say you were a registered voter in 1968. You could have voted for Richard Nixon, voted for Hubert Humphrey, or voted for George Wallace. You could have tried to vote but found the lines too long at the polls; you could have been too sick to get to the polls; or you could have chosen to abstain from voting that year because you didn’t like any of the choices. Still: if you were part of the political system you were at least partially responsible for the 543,000 U.S. soldiers Nixon ordered to Vietnam in 1969, 11,780 of whom never returned. “But I wouldn’t have voted for that!” Doesn’t matter. You were part of the system. It's called Community Responsibility which I addressed in another column.

But, we've all been told that voting is a civic duty. Does voting really go against Christian principles?

When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus about his kingship Jesus replied, “My Kingdom is no part of this world. If my Kingdom were part of this world, my attendants would have fought that I should not be handed over to the Jews.” (John 18:36)

Being a Christian, then, means being “no part.” I am not for Trump; I am not for Kamala; I am not leaning toward one or the other.

But Bill, I can hear someone saying, until the kingdom is established, don't you want to have some say in these political decisions that might affect you?

No. None of those political decisions will have any effect on the kingdom I support. Here’s what I care about: The Bible told us what to look for in these last days: Major wars, check; Earthquakes in one place after another, check; Food shortage, starvation and inflation, check; pandemics and plagues, check; rapidly increasing lawlessness and loss of love of neighbor, check; ruining planet Earth, check. (Matthew 24, Luke 21, Revelation 6 & 11) Those prophecies have all been fulfilled. 

And they were fulfilled regardless of who was in office.

The next big thing I’m watching for will be a major outcry of “Peace and Security!” followed almost immediately by a governmental attack on religion.  Will that happen if Trump is president? Yes. Will it happen if someone else is? Yes. The simple fact is, it will happen regardless of who is in office.  

My stand is quite adamantly that this system does not work, cannot be made to work, and is no substitute for Christ’s kingdom. It isn’t a ‘back-up plan’, it isn’t some sort of God-approved band-aid to fill in until the kingdom is established.

Daniel 2:44 says very clearly that in our time God’s kingdom ‘will crush all these kingdoms.’ It does not say that somehow these governments are going to help establish the kingdom. "Crush." Picture the kingdom as a locomotive. In comparison, the world's governments are an ant standing on the tracks, trying to demand the train go around.

I don’t want to show even grudging acceptance of any of these man-made kingdoms that God is about to crush. I want to be as far away from all these kingdoms as I can get. 

Feel free to leave a polite comment. To read another of my columns on a similar subject, click here.

 

Bill K. Underwood is the author of several books, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.