Why I Won’t Be Voting

I have no idea what the date of this will be, but the polit­i­cal signs and ads in yards and on tele­vi­sion indi­cate that it is approach­ing rapid­ly: Elec­tion Day. But when­ev­er it is, I won’t be at the polling place when it rolls around. For me, it is sim­ply anoth­er day. It comes and goes with­out caus­ing me a bit of anx­i­ety. I can­not help but snick­er at how uppi­ty peo­ple get regard­ing elec­tions. Chris­tians who shy away from defend­ing the gospel will express all man­ner of strong emo­tion when it comes to polit­i­cal races.:”(This seems to be part and par­cel with being a Chris­t­ian, unfor­tu­nate­ly. Chris­tians get emo­tion­al about music, edu­ca­tion, pol­i­tics, and all sorts of oth­er things while for­get­ting all about bold­ness when the sub­ject turns to Jesus Christ and His mes­sage.)”: This behav­ior is strik­ing to me. 

When I was spir­i­tu­al­ly young, I thought that to be a good Chris­t­ian meant I had to be a patri­ot and love Amer­i­ca, sign all the right peti­tions, and vote for all the right(-wing) peo­ple. I myself got uppi­ty when I came across Chris­tians online who did not share my zeal for eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal “bat­tle.”

Well, all of that was before the begin­ning of the sola Scrip­tura epoch in my life.

You see, it is one thing to be a Christian–to be born again, to love the Lord, and to be active in activ­i­ties called Chris­t­ian. But it is entire­ly a dif­fer­ent thing to be a Christian–to be born again, to love the Lord, and to hunger and thirst for His word and the activ­i­ties it prescribes.

Plac­ing the Bible in such a place of promi­nence is seen as odd by some. Accu­sa­tions of “wor­ship­ing the Bible” might even be tossed around. But the Lord Him­self has mag­ni­fied His word above even the name by which I am saved (Psalm 138:2); because my Sav­ior is wor­thy of all my praise, I can find no harm in mag­ni­fy­ing the Bible in my life either. It is impor­tant to God, and I would be fool­ish to let some­thing else super­sede its place in my life.

So what does that have to do with why I will not be vot­ing? Sim­ple. The pol­i­tics of the world are just that–of the world. In order to serve Jesus bet­ter, I choose not to entan­gle myself in the affairs of this life (2 Tim­o­thy 2:4). Now, cer­tain­ly, there are cer­tain activ­i­ties of this life that I am oblig­ed to–providing for my wife, work­ing so that I might eat, prop­er­ly han­dling my finances, and so on.

But pol­i­tics is not a nec­es­sary pas­time for me. I know full well that the pow­ers that be–the gov­er­nors, mag­is­trates, pres­i­dents, and princes of this world–are there because God has ordained them to be so (Romans 13:1). That word “ordained” is the same as the one used in Acts 13:48, which states that those who were “ordained to eter­nal life believed.” God has cho­sen who will receive eter­nal life before­hand, just as He has arranged the gov­ern­ing of this world.

Now, before any­one calls me on this: God has cho­sen who will be saved, but He still tells us to preach the gospel; isn’t that anal­o­gous to us still vot­ing even though God has already cho­sen who will win the elections?

That anal­o­gy works at first glance, but it falls apart quick­ly when one con­sid­ers a sim­ple fact: God has cho­sen to make us a part of the sal­va­tion process through evan­ge­liz­ing, and He has told us to do so. Nowhere can such a com­mand be found in the Bible relat­ing to pol­i­tics. Nowhere does God even insin­u­ate that He needs or wants our help in plac­ing rulers in power.

And that is why I won’t be vot­ing. Whether I do or not won’t affect who will be elect­ed. The choice has already been made, and the Choos­er does not ask for my help imple­ment­ing it.

If this makes me a bad Amer­i­can, that’s fine. The moment I die, that isn’t going to make a bit of dif­fer­ence in my after­life. I’m cer­tain­ly not apa­thet­ic about who will win; know­ing that who­ev­er is in pow­er was cho­sen by God is a bit more com­fort­ing than know­ing that my vote helped put some­one there who could poten­tial­ly mess things up bad­ly. Does this mean that those God ordains won’t mess things up? Of course not. But it does help in the real­iza­tion that things are hap­pen­ing accord­ing to God’s greater pur­pose and plan. The world is being guid­ed toward the events of Rev­e­la­tion every­day, and it is not because some Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats wast­ed count­less mil­lions to get some votes.

It is because God is Sov­er­eign. And that is why I won’t be voting.