Oct 20, 2008

Electing God’s Way

By Terry James

This presidential election has come down to one issue, according to most pundits who pontificate on the process of electing the nation’s top leader. It’s the same as the time of electioneering that first brought Bill Clinton to the presidency. “It’s the economy, stupid,” was the slogan that powerfully influenced the outcome for the Democrats of that election. It is the issue of economy that is driving the polls toward electing this political season’s ultimate winner.

Pocketbook exigencies once again are the focus of American voters. Money is what most of us believe to be the “natural” concern, because our lives--within United States society and culture--revolve around the ability to buy, sell, and influence others in that commercial process. If nothing else, the current economic crisis demonstrates that America and the world have become an inextricably linked fiscal entity. Global economics brings about through computers, satellites, and lightning-fast communications of other kinds a one-world financial community. This structure is geared toward electing governments based upon what they promise to do in making our lives monetarily richer. Economy is the primary criterion in considering for whom to cast our ballot. But, this is electioneering humanism’s way, thus Satan’s way, not God’s way.

God’s Word affirms without reservation what should be mankind’s priorities for conducting life while upon this fallen sphere. Not one of those top priorities includes figuring in the love of money and what money can do for making our lives better, in the sense the Creator of all things defines the term “better.” As a matter of fact, the Scripture tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil –not of anything good.

Yet economy is again, like always, at the top of concern for the American voter. Thus, economy is the top politicking point for those who seek office in order to continue to use government to tell us what is “better” for us than God or anyone else can determine.

Conversely, electing leaders God’s way is electing to choose the moral over the financial –and every other factor that involves our personal or national lives. God’s way is to elect righteousness over comfort, expediency, or the pursuit of pleasures--whether civilized or debauched. We are promised that if we pray for those leaders, we are more likely to lead peaceable lives.

Of course, God gave this prescription for living righteously to those who know Him--i.e., those who are in His eternal family through accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. They are called the Ten Commandments, and all of those prescriptive ingredients for living righteously were fulfilled by Jesus, who came to earth from heaven to provide the only way to God the Father for reconciliation and redemption.

Again, not one of those commandments glorifies or aggrandizes the accumulation or administration of earthly wealth. Jesus said that at the apex of that list of prescriptives for electing to embrace righteousness over monetary or any other of life’s ingredients is: “…Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matt. 22:37).

No matter how attractive the candidate in this or any presidential, state, or local election, the prescription for electing righteousness is always in play for the Christian. No matter the appeal of the promises to add money to the voter’s financial coffers, electing God’s way is to choose righteousness over all other considerations. Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. That is the top priority, according to the Lord of heaven.

Loving God with all of our hearts, souls, and minds means choosing what He considers righteous, not what we consider comfortable, expedient, or pleasurable. So, using this template for electing God’s way rather than the humanistic (Satan’s) way, when going into the voting booth, we must look at the issues, candidates, and the political parties with God’s righteous instructions in mind.

With all of that brought into the picture for the presidential election in which you and I are about to cast our ballots, I remind you that we must look past the humanistic issues. We must go directly to the most important questions involved in this election milieu–God’s priority issues involving His righteousness. No two issues are more prominent in that regard than those that news provocateurs want left out of the mix this election year. These are issues surrounded by God’s righteousness. And, neither Rapture Ready, Todd, nor I, are going to be deterred. Abortion and homosexuality are those two primary issues. God’s Word says that the shedding of the blood of innocents is something He hates. Murdering 50 million babies in the wombs of their mothers is shedding the blood of innocents of the most heinous sort.

God calls homosexuality an abomination. He hates that lifestyle (not the individuals involved in that lifestyle) so much that He included in His Law for the Jewish people the command that all who participate in that lifestyle be put to death. I didn’t say that those who engage in that lifestyle be put to death; the God of heaven, in His Word, the Bible, said it.

To the Christian–the person reading this who has been born again into the family of God through the shed blood of Christ (and that’s the only way anyone can come into God’s family), I can tell you upon scriptural authority that you must never support a candidate, nor a political party, that is in favor of abortion in any form, or who supports in any fashion making homosexuality an acceptable human activity in America or anywhere else on the planet.

Elect God’s way, rather than fallen mankind’s way, when you step into the booth this election season.