America stands at a precipice. President Ronald Reagan once warned that freedom “is never more than one generation away from extinction” — but now we’re just one election away. Despite this, some Christians (and others) draw an equivalence between our two major presidential candidates; that is, those who aren’t actually voting for Joe Biden.
So lamented commentator David Kupelian Monday in his piece, “Open letter to Christians who don’t plan to vote for Trump.” Writing that we’re on the cusp of the most significant election since the War Between the States, Kupelian observes that it’s “hard to imagine a greater contrast between the two choices. As evangelist Franklin Graham puts it, these ‘two vastly different directions for the future of this country’ will affect not just today’s Americans, ‘but our children and our grandchildren’ as well.”
“Ironically, though one of these possible ‘futures’ is clearly pro-life and pro-freedom, and the other is clearly anti-life and anti-freedom,” he continues, “large numbers of professing Christians intend either to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, or even more inexplicably, not to vote at all.”
In explaining why, Kupelian cites an article by popular evangelical pastor John Piper in which the minister acknowledges that Biden’s policies — which amount to “baby-killing, sex-switching, freedom-limiting and socialistic overreach,” as he puts it — are toxic and un-Christian.
But Piper also dislikes Trump, even though his policies “have proven to be overwhelmingly consistent with, and supportive of, evangelical Christian sensibilities and concerns,” writes Kupelian.
“Donald Trump is, in fact, widely regarded as the most pro-life president of our lifetime,” Kupelian elaborates. “Likewise, as president he has been the best friend of Israel in a generation, courageously recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the U.S. Embassy there — something many previous presidents of both parties promised but failed to do. And Trump has consistently championed religious freedom and freedom of speech, both under brutal attack by the radical left, which — truth be told — is essentially hostile to Christianity.”
So what’s Piper’s issue? He’s “concerned that Trump’s personal failings, specifically four things — his ‘unrepentant boastfulness,’ his ‘vulgarity,’ his ‘factiousness’ and his past ‘sexual immorality’ — are also, like abortion and socialism, ‘deadly,’ even potentially ‘nation-corrupting.’ Therefore, he said, he will not vote for either candidate,” relates Kupelian.
But Piper at least seems sincere (if self-righteous). Far worse, points out Kupelian, is a new coalition calling itself Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, which is a bit like Anti-Drug Mothers for Cheech & Chong. Insofar, however, as these people are sincere, they, first, are drawing a moral equivalence between “toxic policy” and “trying personality.”
Moreover, while the personality defects Piper cites are sinful, he perhaps should ponder that there’s, as I believe Augustine of Hippo taught (though it could have been Aquinas), a “hierarchy of sin.” Is boastfulness really as bad as neo-bolshevism?
Yet as Kupelian points out, perhaps these Christians are also overlooking that the choice November 3 will be a package deal: Our next president will choose federal judges, including for the Supreme Court; Cabinet members and department leaders; and ultimately thousands of federal bureaucrats — the whole government. This “will profoundly shape the nation in which your children and grandchildren will live for a long, long time — whether for good or for ill,” as Kupelian puts it.
Furthermore, our choice will determine the vice president, a person who has assumed the presidency 14 times in history. And the choice here is Mike Pence, a believing Christian and virtuous man; or Kamala Harris, who has expressed anti-Christian bigotry and was rated by nonpartisan GovTrack.us as the Senate’s most left-wing member — even beating out avowed socialist Bernie Sanders.
Note, too, that with Biden suffering dementia, a progressive condition, Harris will be taking his place should they win. All this said, since Piper is making a point, it may be a good idea to try to understand it better than he does.
When defending Trump against character-oriented attacks, many conservatives say that they’re voting for president, not pastor. This is the wrong answer. Contrary to the leftist line when defending Bill Clinton, character does and always matters.
Moreover, sin is corruptive, and insofar as we sin, especially visibly, we degrade the world in some way. But Christians especially should understand that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” as the Bible states. And whether choosing president or pastor, angels aren’t options.
Related to this, I’ve been asked how I could support Trump given his sexual history. My answer: Virtually everyone I’ve known has, like most today, engaged in sexual sin (e.g., fornication). Yet I still recognize many of them as basically good people and don’t think they should, simply by virtue of past transgressions, be disqualified from positions.
Note here that as famed German leader Otto von Bismarck put it, “Politics is the art of the possible.” It’s not the art of “You get exactly what you want, right now, no questions asked” — but of the possible.
My ideal president would be me (surprised?). But I’m not on the ballot. My next choice would be Pat Buchanan or Alan Keyes. But they won’t be president, either. The viable alternatives are President Trump and Joe Biden — and the choice is even starker than Kupelian relates.
The Democratic Party in recent years has stood for prenatal infanticide up till birth and occasionally beyond (Ralph Northam), defunding the police and ICE, opening our borders and amnesty for illegals, eliminating suburbs, and a full-bore sexual-devolutionary agenda that puts boys in girls’ bathrooms and men in women’s sports.
The Democrats have also been tacitly, and on occasion openly, encouraging the riots, looting, and violence tearing our country apart. They’ve turned a blind eye to worldwide religious persecution (including that of Christians) while Trump has spoken out against it.
The Democrats, and establishment in general, have also been selling us out to China; Biden epitomizes this, with his Beijing associations, the Chinese money his family has taken, and his lobbying on the nation’s behalf.
Note also that China is statistically the world’s most atheistic nation, and it shows: Its government has been persecuting Christians and other religionists. We might further note that this nation, which sometimes kills dissidents and then harvests their organs for profit, wants to dominate the world. You are in Beijing’s cross hairs.
Only Trump has taken action against this threat, rightly putting the screws to China. All that ends, though, the day Biden takes the oath of office. It stays ended, too, because Democrats intend to cement and make permanent their power by granting Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., statehood; packing the SCOTUS and remaking the entire judiciary; importing voters (via migration); perhaps eliminating the Electoral College; and making sure vote fraud and Big Tech decide future elections.
Bidengate has helped reveal that the former vice president, far from the “Aw, shucks!” Lunch-bucket Joe persona, is a corrupt, shallow plutocrat. But even if one does reckon his and Trump’s moral stature similarly, a Twitter respondent under Piper’s article put it well:
It must be nice to be like John Piper, righteous enough to exist above it all, in the ether. As for those of us on terra firma, we should realize that it’s better to have to pray for a fallen leader than for deliverance in a fallen republic.
