I wasn't planning to stay up this late, but someone asked for my opinion about the election. Publicly. On Facebook. After my last blog post.
I'm not sure whether the Facebook comment was a request for advice or an attempt to persuade me to change my mind. Maybe it was a little of both. (I was tagged in a comment on a pro-Trump article.) Either way, I feel like I should respond out of respect to my brother who asked.
The article is all about the Supreme Court. You can read it here, if you are interested. In summary, it says that we should set aside everything else we know about the candidates and focus only on what each says he or she will do on Supreme Court nominations. According to the author, we should ignore third party candidates because they have no chance of winning.
There are several problems I have with this article. First of all, I don't think we should set aside everything else we know about the candidates. The other things we know are relevant not only to their job performance in general, but also to the specific issue of how much good or harm they would do to the Supreme Court. This article does a good job of explaining not only why the Supreme Court is not a strong argument for Trump, but why it even works against him.
The Bible does have something to say about the character of office-holders. Exodus 18:21 is a good starting point: Moses was advised to appoint "able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness." We could develop this idea Biblically, and we could also develop it by considering what a representative system of government requires both to survive and to thrive. Perhaps I will try to do that and provide resources at a later time. For now, though, I will just say that to ignore the things the author of the Trump article tells us to ignore is not only not common sense: it is not even good sense. It is one thing to say that a candidate for political office does not need to have a pastor's character or even be regenerate to earn our vote. It is another thing altogether to say that character qualifications for political office are irrelevant.
The second issue I have with the article is the dismissal of the conscience objection. That is directly contrary to Scripture (Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 8), and it aims to confuse God's people by substituting pragmatism for obedience. Our consciences need to be informed by God's Word, not ignored. Never tell someone to ignore conscience.
The final issue I have is that the idea that the survival of everything good in our government depends on having the right nominees (or avoiding the wrong nominees) to the Supreme Court is absurd. I would refer you again to the above rebuttal, which shows the built in limits on the Supreme Court's powers. Even with the damage that has been done to the balance of powers in our country, there are things that can be done in each branch and at every level of government to restrain an out of control judiciary. If the Supreme Court were the only thing standing in the way of our losing freedom forever, the battle would be lost already.
I admit that conservatives who object to Trump are in a difficult position. Congressional leadership and every Republican presidential candidate this year who has a credible claim to be conservative has endorsed Trump. They have given reasons why they believe we should not only vote for Republicans down ballot, but also vote for Donald Trump.
I realize that to break ranks with the candidates we voted for in the primaries can be a difficult step. I don't want to get into an involved discussion of the morality of their endorsements at this late stage. I do think, however, that it is important to realize that they are playing a game (or games) of political strategy that we are not involved in ourselves. They are not always the leaders of their constituents. Sometimes they are the followers. We are the ones who have to decide who gets our support and our vote. We have to decide what direction we are going to lead, if they are willing to follow. If they are not, we have to be willing to take that direction without them. That is the responsibility of a government official. We are officials, because we are electors. I am confident in my decision, and I encourage you to consider making the same decision.
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