Disclaimer: This are only my opinions, presented to generate discussion on the issue. It is completely fine if you disagree. I respect the fact you may have another opinion and ask you respect mine. Comment on any part of this, whether you agree or disagree. Again this is presented to generate discussion.
Originally this post was going to mainly deal with if Christians should become politicians however after having a brief talk with Chris Boggus and him being interested in Christians involvement in voting and the political processes. So I will address both issues, being a politician and participating in the political process.
First should a Christian be a politician? No, because the responsibilities of being a politician lie outside your roles as a Christian. This argument is in very similar to the one in part one of this series. As a politician you are responsible to your constituents, which in a sense makes them your master. Say you get elected and your constituents decide they are pro-abortion but you are not. You can go against their wishes and anger them or you can compromise on your own position and vote according to their wishes. While the first view is completely viable it will kill your chance for reelection. So many politicians compromise on their position to appease their constituents in hopes of reelection and future gains of power. While the corporate world may not be much different I believe a political office only increases a person’s drive for more power and in any way possible. When you begin to look at this in a Christian perspective it goes completely against it. While I realize that a Christian can be in a political position, I greatly fear that compromise will over take them.
This issue is something I have thought long and hard about, especially since I considered becoming a politician while I was in High School and the early bits of college. However as I grew in my walk with God, I realized these two ideas where greatly contrasted. As I grew to love God more I realized that I would not make a great politician and would be troubled by going against my constituents wishes. If you are a Christian and you are considering politics please take a great bit of time to assure yourself you will not compromise your Christian beliefs to appease your constituents, which will most likely hurt your chances for reelection.
Now moving on to what should a Christian’s participation be in the political process. Should I vote, should I openly support candidates, should I lobby, etc. I think there is a fine line here that we have to walk. I do think we should vote, I not sure if we should endorse a particular candidate though, and limited lobbying could be okay. Voting, I believe we should vote because the people running for office do ultimately affect us and our daily lives. We do want to make sure we continue to have our rights that we need. Take for instance, doctors currently are a private practitioners, we do not want them to be force to perform abortions if they do not believe this is a correct practice. Voting can help us keep the rights we do already have. (I do want to mention though, we as “american” Christians take our rights for granted and abuse them. We allow them to make us docile, I feel Christians in countries that preaching and witnessing are illegal are more authentic due to their situation. This has led me to question my above stance on voting but has yet to change it.) Openly supporting candidates I think is a wrong move. People change (and politicians have been known to lie) and we do not want to be publicly endorsing someone that turns out to be against us. Instead we can openly support ideas that candidates endorse. Also I believe endorsing a candidate can lead to a bit of two master syndrome as well. Finally, lobbying, I think limited lobbying is okay. This goes back to endorsing ideas and not candidates. We can lobby to let it be known what stances on certain issues we hold and are likely to vote on. However this is fine line here because we should not fixate on one or two issue but all the issues. Currently gay rights and abortion or the two issues we continue to focus on while ignoring military, health care, treatment of the poor. Our problem seems to be we have decided that even if a candidate is all for helping the poor, providing health care, working to broker peace, but believes in gay rights versus a candidate who is against gay rights but believes first action is to strike back, ignores health care, and is only interested in giving tax breaks to the wealthy, then we tend to vote for the latter candidate. Is this right for us? I think not, we should be informed and make informed decisions based on the candidates entire resume versus two issues. Personally, with the trends in both parties, I currently support half the Republicans agenda and half of the Democrats agenda.
I think now I should discuss whether or not a certain party should be supported over the other. I believe not. We should support the candidates that promote the most correct stances on the issues, whether Republican or Democrat. I do not think it is our place to choose a side, for I choose to be a Christian not Republican or a Democrat.
Please comment with your opinion. See next week's part the Bible.
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