Why Encourage Others to Vote?

 

Why Encourage Others to Vote?

Many of us wonder why we seem to constantly read and hear encouragements that we are to exercise our “right to vote” and we even get the impression that this is God’s will!

We know that many people are just looking at this from a humanistic or secularistic perspective. They just know that there are millions of people in the population and this becomes the wise and prudent thing to do. In fact, if the person has a “Christian” background, they may say that this is our “sacred duty.” We must do this to please God!

Others go farther than this and emphasize the fact that if it is clear (from a Christian viewpoint), we must do the “Christian” thing and vote for the welfare of the party, to make sure that the better candidate wins, and that the opposing candidate loses. In the current election year, probably most of our readers are professing “Christians” or Evangelicals and they are convinced that President Trump must win over Joe Biden. At least, this is what they would tell us.

According to our heading above, we ask the question, “Why encourage others to vote?” Think about this for a moment. If we are sure that our man (or woman) is of God and if we are convinced that the opposing candidate is not of God, or has terrible policies, or has a negative record, then we ask the pertinent question, what are we doing by encouraging our fellow-Christians to go to the polls and vote? Why should we promote the general public to vote in the upcoming election—or any other election? If our promotion should work and through our efforts, millions more go to the polls, why would we want this? If a wicked candidate “wins” over the opposition and promotes a positive candidate, can we not see our blame in this?

Yes, it would make sense if we are totally convinced that a candidate is a person who should be promoted by the Christian and if we are convinced that our efforts to have others vote for this candidate will be successful. But a broad promotion of “voting”? No, in no way! If our efforts were to promote an evil candidate (if we are convinced that Biden is such a candidate), would this not be a mistake?

In fact, would it not be sinful on our part? What right do we have to sinfully encourage others to vote a wrongful candidate into office? In this case, if Joe Biden and his running mate (Kamala Harris) are wrong, what right do we have to encourage others to help put them into office? (The same would be true of Donald Trump and Mike Pence).

We know that it is an “American thing” to encourage others to vote in a Presidential election. As some might put it, it is the “Christian” thing to do. But can you see that it makes no sense! If you were to promote a sinful candidate and—through your efforts—10 million more people voted for this person, can you see what you have done? Through your efforts, millions of people were emboldened to vote for an evil candidate! How can we escape blame?

Consider a little example here. Suppose we learn that Biden promotes the murder of one million babies a year, would this mean anything to you? If you promote this, how could you escape blame? How could you be innocent if you only consider the killing of this many babies? We know that both major candidates hold to many different policies, but this is merely an example. Further it is interesting and well-known that the Democratic Party does promote manifold evil and sinful policies as part of their agenda.

So we ask this very simple question: “Why encourage others to vote?” When we promote sin of any kind, God says that we are guilty ourselves (Romans 1:32). We say or do something that will promote an evil cause. Do you really think that we can escape blame?  We find it better to allow God to decide the election and put His man or woman in the office (cf. Daniel 4 and 5).

You can find other general articles on politics on this website. Or you can click here to find an article on the Christian’s relationship to the government:  A Christian as President.

We have a number of other articles on various aspects of politics and we hope that you will check them out!

We hope that none of us will encourage others to vote—especially if the candidate is evil.

–Richard Hollerman