What To Do About Christians Who Vote Democrat?
My wife and I really liked what Steve Gregg has to say about the upcoming November election. This is something you can share with your Democrat friends who call themselves Christians.
David Martinez is apparently a caller to Steve Gregg’s The Narrow Path Radio Program. Steve Gregg is a Bible teacher my wife and I like to listen to. His bio.
The video is below the transcript.
Transcript
David Martinez: I’ve been horrified and haunted by the thought of a President Harris future. So I was wondering about what pastors and people in ministry can do to avoid that. I have been to services where pastors sing the national anthem and have the American flag and do all the pro-America stuff. But I was wondering, is there any version of that that you think, okay, I would put up with it or have any kind of biblical basis to that kind of patriotism, right? For the sake of trying to motivate and inspire people, Americans, from giving their vote to evil people that are going to shed innocent blood and things like that. You know what I mean?
Steve Gregg: I don’t know that you’d have to appeal to patriotism per se to convince people that one candidate is going to be a better choice than another. I don’t know if I’d call myself patriotic or not. I’m thankful. I’m thankful to God for America. I’m thankful that I live in America and not somewhere else. I certainly pray for America.
I desire for freedoms such as we’re accustomed to in America to continue perpetually. So, I mean, if we call that patriotism, then that’s what it is. I don’t know that the church is a place for flag-waving and singing songs of praise to the nation, since our whole purpose of gathering is to focus on our praise of God. And the nation certainly is not God.
I would just say I’m thankful to God for America and for being privileged to have the benefits of living here.
Every advantage that Christians have in any country at any time is an advantage from God. It says every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above. So, God has given us gifts. Some of those are financial. In the free world, in the Western world, we have a lot more money, many of us, than third world people typically do. So, we are more and more responsible for stewardship of that money. But we also have other benefits others don’t have, including freedoms that others don’t have, and a say in who governs us and things like that. I mean, these freedoms are advantages every bit as much as financial prosperity, if not more so. And whatever advantages we have are talents or pounds or stewardship that God has given us. So, I would speak in terms of the need to steward opportunities and that God is going to have us give account for our stewardship.
I would read Luke 19 or Matthew 25. The master distributed his goods to his different servants, went away for a long time, and when he came back, he made them give account of it. And I would say we are going to give account to God for how we steward the advantages we have.
What would stewardship be aiming at? Well, the promotion of the kingdom of God. Well, America is not the kingdom of God. No, it is not. There’s no nation on earth that is the kingdom of God. But there are certainly nations whose policies are more just and that allow more freedom, certainly where the spirit of the Lord is. There’s liberty. That’s a value of God’s. Liberty is a value of God’s. Justice is a really major value of God’s.
It’s clear that some governments of some nations exemplify justice and liberty more than others. In fact, even in our country, some political parties and political candidates and their suggested agendas would exemplify justice or liberty more than another. And since justice is what Jesus called the weightier matters of the law, a very important priority, and liberty, even if it wasn’t a high priority with God, if it was a low priority with him, it’s an awfully enjoyable thing, and it seems to benefit the kingdom of God for us to be able to preach without being put in jail for it, to protest abortion in a clinic without being thrown in jail for it.
I mean, certainly liberty is a precious thing. It’s not something that the church can’t live without, because many churches have lived under totalitarian governance and didn’t have liberty. The church can survive without all these benefits, but we’d rather not.
The church has had to survive without these benefits in times and lands where they had no say about it. But we do have a say about it, and that advantage is a stewardship responsibility.
If I were running a church, I would not wave a flag or sing patriotic hymns. I would strongly say with an election coming up, or even when there’s not an election coming up, we are here to be advocates for Christ and for his values. I would point out how the Bible indicates in Isaiah 42, which is quoted about Jesus in Matthew 12, that he will establish justice in the nations, and the islands will await the justice he’s going to bring. He will not fail or be discouraged until he’s established justice in the earth. This is something that Jesus—that’s his mission. That’s basically what the Bible says he came to do. Now, of course, he came to redeem us too, but for what? For a kingdom of justice, and for a kingdom of righteousness, and so forth, and of love.
And so, I would point out that the Messiah’s agenda is justice. And if we have opportunity to promote that agenda, and we sit on our hands and don’t do it, or worse yet, we vote for candidates that we can be pretty sure are going to do things that the Bible says are unjust, well then, well, we’re going to have to answer to God for it.
No one’s going to answer to God for whether they were patriotic or not, or at least, let me put it this way, God is not going to fault anyone on the grounds that you weren’t patriotic, but he may very well fault a lot of us for saying you had the opportunity to pass along a more just, and free, and godly society to your children, just as earlier generations passed it on to you. You had the opportunity to do this for your children and grandchildren, and why didn’t you do that? That was what your stewardship responsibility was.
And I would speak that way, because then you don’t get off into politics. You don’t get off into,, patriotism. You’re just talking about the things of God, and pointing out that there are, in fact, candidates, and I wouldn’t even mind naming them if I had to, but I think everyone would know who you’re talking about, who would not stand for justice for the innocent. They don’t stand for justice for the unborn. They don’t stand for godly sexual norms. They stand for wickedness.
I also point out, Paul said to Timothy, don’t lay your hands suddenly on anyone, neither be a partaker of other people’s sins. He’s telling him not to ordain somebody to the ministry prematurely if you don’t know, if you haven’t vetted them, because they may end up committing sins. Then you’re responsible. You’re partaking in their sins, because you launched them. By laying hands on them, you basically authorized them to go out and do what they do. If what they do is evil, that’s on you, because you prematurely ordained them.
When we vote people into office, we’re voting people into the ministry, Paul said. Paul said that the government officials are ministers of God to promote justice. If I vote for somebody who goes out, and with my vote they get empowered, and they go out and promote injustice, that’s like me laying hands on a person to be a minister, and he goes out and rapes girls. I’m responsible. I’m responsible for my stewardship.
David Martinez: That’s what I would say. Steve, real quick, I heard of a pastor. I think he was from California, who was actually disciplining some of the members of his church because they were voting, I think, Democrat or something like that.
Steve Gregg: If they’re watching mainstream news, the mainstream news have been doing an all full court press to make Kamala seem like the salvation of the nation from monster Trump, okay? Now, people who only watch that news, they might think, well, God certainly would want her. The low information voters, they don’t know what she stands for. If they know, “Well, she’s kind of pro-abortion rights. Well, shouldn’t we be compassionate toward pregnant women who don’t want a baby?” That’s how these low information, low logic people are, and Christians can be totally uninformed. That’s why we need to disciple them.
I wouldn’t say anyone who votes Democrat, leave this church, or we’re going to discipline you. I would say we’re going to have a special Sunday school class for Democrats. For the next 12 weeks, if you’re a Democrat, we want you to be in this Sunday school class, I’ll tell you what’s going on.
If they know that they’re voting for an abortionist, or for someone who’s going to pervert young children, or confuse children, put stumbling blocks before them, certainly if a child is confused about his gender, and you confirm the confusion rather than alleviate the confusion and correct it, well, how is that not putting a stumbling block before one of these little ones? How is that not deserving a millstone around your neck and be thrown into the sea?
We’re not talking politics. We’re talking justice. We’re talking about morality. These are not political questions. The Democrats have often politicized them, and so have the Republicans, but they’re not really political issues. They’re God’s issues.
The question of whether it’s okay to confuse children so that they end up losing their faith or their minds because you chop body parts off them and give them mind-altering drugs to confirm their confusion, that’s hell-bound stuff. I mean, that’s absolute wickedness. And the fact that any significant number of people in our country do not know that only tells us how far the church has failed in discipling people and letting them know what God is about, and that’s what we need to be doing. If people in our churches are voting Democrat, I wouldn’t say kick them out. I’d say the preacher’s failing.
Instead of talking about patriotism and politics, I would definitely, I’d have a special class for Democrats, and then I’d ask them, why are you voting Democrat? Do what their party stands for on these issues and so forth? You could have a special class for Republicans too, and if they say you’re going to vote for Trump, why are you doing that?
What are people voting for when they go to the ballot box? Are they voting for a church elder? Are they voting for even whether someone can be in the church or not? This has nothing to do with the church. We’re talking about how the secular government is run, and as far as I know, we’ve never had in my lifetime a candidate in either party that I was convinced was a disciple of Jesus. Now, it’d be wonderful if all the people running were disciples of Jesus and we could just pick the one we liked, but I don’t know that we ever had that choice.
So the thing is, okay, well, I’m not voting for someone to get Christian of the Year Award. I’m voting for someone who’s going to make policies that Christians and non-Christians will live under, including my children and my grandchildren. So the question is, what policies do I want my children and grandchildren to have to endure? And I’m awfully glad that generations before mine chose the kinds of policies that I have had to live under because it has been pretty easy. But if I had been raised in the Soviet Union, I would have found it much more difficult, especially as a Christian. And by the way, we have two socialists right now on the Democrat ticket. That’s not me saying so. That’s them saying so.