We have all been bombarded with television advertisements, phone calls, text messages, emails, billboards, posters and multiple conversations about the 2024 presidential election and all the other ceaseless appeals to vote for one candidate or another.
Mike Griffin, the Public Affairs Representative of the Georgia Baptist Mission Board made a plaintive entreaty for Christians to register and vote in his commentary in The Christian Index on September 22, 2024, declaring, “registering to vote is an act of Christian stewardship”.
Earlier this week George Barna declared that new research from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University indicates that millions of Christians are not likely to vote in this election year. He reported, “While 66% of voting age adults identify as Christian, only half (51%) of all ‘people of faith’ are expected to vote. This translates to 104 million people who are likely to sit out the 2024 election.
Here are some of the excuses people are using for not voting:
(1) Some people are disenchanted with our political system. There is corruption, duplicity, deceitfulness, attacks and counter attacks, dissimulation, and vehement and unhinged rivalry among the candidates. However, a Christian’s refusal to vote will contribute to the problem rather than offer a solution.
(2) In our current environment potential voters fear that the election results will be manipulated. However, I would like to think and hope that some of the fears and concerns of past elections have been corrected and we can now count on the votes being properly recorded and verified.
(3) Many people seem to think that the choice in many of the political races is between the lesser of two evils. While there are many good and godly people who represent us in the halls of government, I do fear that many decent, God-fearing people refuse to run for political office because of the infamy and venality so often associate with politics. Christians do not need to sit on the sidelines when it comes to running for office or when it comes to voting for the best candidates available.
(4) Perhaps Christians fail to vote, because politics almost demands compromise and promotes temptations to concede on important issues. For example, neither of the presidential candidates this year appear to have a view on the sanctity of life that matches the Biblical standard. However, study the policies and determine which one is better.
(5) Christians have placed their hope in Christ and His Kingdom and have little confidence that our political system offers the ultimate solutions to life’s deepest problems and highest values. However, the truth is that one should not preclude the other.
(6) There are those who look at the presidential candidates in the 2024 election and observe with disdain the personalities and demeanors that seems to characterize them. Once again, we are not to vote based on personality, but policies.
I suppose we could manufacture multiple excuses to abdicate my responsibility as a Christian citizen during this election cycle, but if Christians fail to fulfill their stewardship and if we abandon our right to vote we will have no reason to complain about a government that does not advocate and enforce our most cherished values, like the first Amendment to our Constitution which declares that “Congress cannot make laws that establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise of religion.”
Proverbs 29:2 states: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn” (KJV).
It is my firm conviction that Christians should be the deciding factor in the presidential race this year and in all other political races nationally, in the state and in the local communities of our land.
If we refuse to vote, we will simply get what we deserve; and “if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” This question is asked in such a way in Psalm 11:3 that it almost defies an answer. I don’t think any of us want our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to live in a land where the foundations have crumbled and there is no recourse to remedy the resultant calamity.