Mark Shepard
Is voting Democrat an evil act in God’s eyes? That question rose from a recent Sunday-school lesson on 1 Kings 21, where King Ahab wanted Naboth’s vineyard, but Naboth would not sell. Then without the king’s participation, Queen Jezebel arranged a plot to kill Naboth. Then she took possession of his vineyard and gave it to the king who willingly accepted it. Though the murder and the initial taking of the land were done by the queen, God held Ahab as responsible as Jezebel for both.
The question raised is a most serious question, especially for those who seek to follow Jesus. Before getting into that, consider what this narrative teaches about the nature of God and His views toward humanity, both as individuals and as civilizations.
The God of the Bible is a God of justice. God values people as individuals, not simply as a collective. Godly order includes individual property ownership and even a king has no right to someone else’s property. While a person’s property includes material property, it also clearly includes earnings, creations, designs, and even our conscience that guides how we live. Taking a human life is not only an act against the person, but an act against God, the creator and redeemer of all human life.
Like so often with teaching on biblical narratives that relate to government, this lesson missed important applications for citizens in a nation where citizens are part of the government.
Nations are set up by God and are under God; America is no exception. American governing authority is derived from the people, not from a king. As such, those we elect are agents we empower to carry out the governing tasks.
As seen with Ahab, God does not give a pass for government to commit evil acts. Neither does He to those who empower government bad-actors. Yet every election, politicians who advocate for policies that embrace what God calls evil are elected to public offices by the votes, or lack of voting, of millions of Americans who claim to be God-followers.
The cost of this neglect is incomprehensible as adult Americans have thrown aside self-governance and sought self-indulgence. Among other evils, over 60 million defenseless pre-born Americans have been legally murdered while stripping buying power from the younger generations with our debt-scam deflating the value of the dollar. Seduced by promises that government will make life easier, tens-of-millions of Americans willingly vote thieves and murderers into public offices throughout our nation.
How can we be surprised when so often it feels like a choice between evils? The road to better options requires that we study our candidate options, including the political party that winning will empower. A party is simply a vehicle; who controls the vehicle and where they a driving it is of utmost importance.
While human-rule will never deliver utopia, and candidates that embrace evil ideas can be found in any political party, it is the ideas presented in and through party platforms, conventions, and top candidates that make clear the acts that our vote will empower.
Today’s Democratic Party completely rejects Biblical teaching on morality and human nature – that man’s fallen nature cannot handle great power. Rather, it embraces pagan ideas, including the state being supreme. As such they work to shift power (responsibility and control) away from the smaller governing spheres of individual, family, church, community, etc. to higher and higher governing levels, including unaccountable international bodies.
The Democratic Party platforms and actions present an agenda that includes:
- Abortion with no limits.
- Doctor-assisted suicide for those deemed as not worthy of normal legal protections.
- Rejecting of God’s design of marriage and creation of male and female, thus exploiting and indeed creating sexual and gender confusion.
- Destructive life-altering hormone and surgical procedures in children of all ages.
- Creating destabilizing unrest and divisions among Americans, with current efforts dividing by wealth, skin color, gender and sexuality.
- Disenfranchising legal voters through weakening voting laws
- Greater state control of individual healthcare decisions.
- Suppressing the Christian-informed conscience.
- Producing godless citizens through public schools where children are essentially drafted into the front lines of their war against God.
So while there are politicians of every party that we must stand against, how can voting to empower such evil not put one in a place very much like Ahab? It would be a grave mistake to pretend that the God who called Ahab to account for the evil he empowered would overlook evil we empower with our votes and other support.
Ahab repented and God relented. Indeed, God is a God of mercy, but God’s mercy was a response to Ahab’s repentant heart. While Jesus did not condemn the woman caught in adultery, he did say: “go and sin no more.” A pathway for a new beginning is both unique and core to Christianity. Only those who do not have faith in the work of Jesus to completely cover their past are trapped in their past.
While some may claim that this column advocates for a theocracy, a theocracy goes much further than using a religious book as a guide for morality and good governing practices. A theocracy dictates religious beliefs and practices. The fact is it is the Democratic Party that is all too eager to force and coerce its pagan beliefs and practices on the entire population.
© Mark ShepardThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.