Using God’s Transcendent Ideals of Governance in the Bible
The Biblical Pattern for Evaluating Candidates Before Voting
Elections and voting are ideas that came from God. The Bible indicates that after Israel was released from slavery in Egypt that Moses gave to the people the right and duty to vote for their local city governors (called “judges” – Deut 1:9,13). This democratic component of Israel’s government began about a thousand years before democracy was attempted in pagan Greece.
It was God’s idea for holding government leaders accountable and empowering citizens. In the New Testament era the right to vote was only available among the Greeks and so the Apostle Paul seems to encourage Christians in Corinth to use this freedom to find better judges (1 Cor 6). And one of Paul’s assistants named Erastus became an example of this when he became treasurer of the city through an election (Rom 16:23).
If God’s people today have the freedom to vote then they also have a duty to use this for the best possible good in the governments of nations. But sometimes the best possible good is uncomfortable. The person or party we help is far from perfect, but the alternative is worse. And the idea that we cannot in good conscience vote for someone who does not meet all the standards we hold to, only helps someone who is even further away from our standards. It perhaps makes us feel good about ourself to withhold our vote from an imperfect candidate, but it only harms our nation and our fellow-man.
How Did God Grade Government Leaders in Israel?
We have to get over our discomfort, because the enemy of the good is the idolatry of the perfect. In this world, we have no perfect nations because all men are sinners and all political systems are less than ideal. Israel in the Bible was chosen and led by God in one sense but was always a seriously flawed and sinful nation with government leaders who ranged from decent to horrific. Yet God still identified with them and did not let idolatry of the perfect keep Him from helping His chosen nation. Why should we?
Every king in Israel was given a grade. In Chronicles it summarizes their political actions and then ends by saying that either they did “right” or they did “evil.” It almost never says they did “good” – only “right.” There was a reason for this term. God did not expect a sinner in power to be “good” – only God is good. And in fact, often even kings who committed adultery or some other personal sin (such as David with Bathsheba) still received a grade that he did “right” meaning straight or within the guidelines.
How was the evaluation then determined? What were the guidelines for making a good grade? It was all based on if the king and his government lived in alignment or within the limits and purposes laid out in the Hebrew Constitution, otherwise known as the “Book of the Covenant.” A king’s personal life was important but not part of the criteria God used for the evaluation. So also, Christians today in our nations should not be voting for someone based on things in their personal life. It is not God’s main measurement for governance.
So when comparing the USA presidential candidates (Harris and Trump) our vote has nothing to do with their marriages or their words or their manner with people. It is all about public policies. Are their proven actions while in government in the past in proximity to a Biblical worldview of governance or not? Or which of the candidates come closer to that standard when evaluating their stated proposals or expressions of agreement with various political issues? Our modern nation does not have a constitution written by God Himself as Israel did, but is still a relatively useful standard for measuring candidates.
Ten Transcendent Ideals of Governance
God never expects us in America to copy every law in Israel’s constitution for our modern governance. However, we can use the transcendent and universal principles for good government that were summarized in the Ten Commandments. These Ten principles were not strictly laws but a preamble (Exod 20:1-17) to Israel’s complete constitution (Exod 20:18-chapter 23). These general ideals of good governance can be an evaluation tool for all nations today.
In previous blog posts I have explained that the Ten Commandments were not given primarily for individuals to know how to live. Rather, they were given to government leaders in Israel so they would know how they should govern. And mainly, they were stated negatively (i.e. “you shall NOT” do something) to put limits on government power and protect individual human rights. It was to maintain a small state which is the most basic difference of thinking today between pagan socialistic governance and Biblical government. [The way I interpret the Ten Commandments I found from various ancient Christian writers whose books are out of print. One rare modern book is Democracy and the Ten Commandments by Shinkoskey, although I differ with him on several points.]
So, without explaining here the details of each commandment as I did in earlier posts, I offer below a restatement of them in the form of questions we can ask ourselves.
Which candidate seems more inclined to use state power to:
…mix pagan or secular worldviews into their policy ideas? (Commandment 1; no other gods)
…favor unnatural or immoral sex, or require people to support or at least be silent about their beliefs or practices contrary to such activity? (Commandment 2; no images)
…undermine free choice in the marketplace; causing inflation, controlling prices, increasing taxes, etc? (C. 3; no misuse of God’s name)
…hinder parents from home-schooling or religious schools; or hinder access to communications/media that contradicts ideologies favored by the state? (C. 4; no work once a week so that families can “remember” causes of slavery and freedom)
…protect and strengthen the rights of parents especially in education, sexuality, medical choices, etc? (C. 5; Honor father and mother)
…violate or fail to prosecute those who harm the life of citizens? (C. 6; no murder)
…violate or fail to prosecute those who harm the private property of citizens? (C. 7; no theft)
…violate or fail to prosecute those who harm natural marriage among citizens? (C. 8; no adultery)
…violate or fail to prosecute those who harm the justice system with false witnesses or biased prosecutions? (C. 9; no false witness)
…violate or fail to prosecute those who harm the private decisions of citizens in regard to everything else such as spouses, children, employees, property, speech, religion, etc? (C. 10; no coveting)
Take time to answer these and do research from reliable sources
For many people it is not easy to find trustworthy data to accurately make these evaluations. Almost certainly, you will not find it from random posts on social media! But there are some Christian organizations that compile comparisons of the candidates stand on certain issues. These can be helpful but are also not nuanced and can be biased. Another helpful evaluation is a comparison of the party platforms for general worldviews likely held by the candidates. But if you are diligent, you can do your own research.
About 80% of Evangelicals have been voting for Republicans for about thirty years now for a reason. This consistency shows that it is not about the person as much as it is the policies and philosophy of governance that has convinced Christians to vote in this consistent pattern for a while now.
For paid subscribers I am including below an article written by my friend Joseph Mattera on How to Use the Ten Commandments as a Guide to Vote this November. It is based on the more common way of understanding the Ten Commandments which I actually think is a secondary application for individual lives, not the primary way as I have applied them above for governance. But Mattera’s way of interpreting them has value also. See Mattera’s article below:
The content below was originally paywalled.
How to Use the Ten Commandments as a Guide to Vote this November
by Joseph Mattera
As a non-partisan Christian, I have been encouraging Christians to vote for their values instead of voting based on groupthink and party affiliation. To do this, we have to go to the source of our ethics and values: the Bible.
God could not have made His standard for societal law any clearer than when He wrote His law in the Ten Commandments and gave it to Moses on Mount Sinai, as noted in Exodus 20. He laid them out in the order of importance as His top-ten list. These moral laws were given as a corporate blueprint to frame a policy for Israel and all nations so they may experience national blessings.
These commandments are also the standard in both the New and Old Testaments for personal holiness and ethics. They are repeated almost verbatim in the New Testament (e.g., Ephesians 6:1-3). Although we are not saved by obeying the works of the law (Ephesians 2:8-9), they serve as the ethical behavior the Holy Spirit empowers us to walk in (Romans 8:4) when we yield to His grace (Titus 2:11-12). Although the ceremonial aspect of the law has been done away with in Christ (John 1:29; Hebrews 9:1-10:14), the moral law is still the good, holy, and righteous standard for us to live by (Romans 3:31; 7:12, 14, 25).
As we look at the Ten Commandments, we find two primary components related to our obligation to obey the law: the first four commandments relate to our vertical obligation to God, and the last six commandments relate to our horizontal obligations toward our neighbors.
To save space, I will not quote all the commandments but will focus on several relevant to the upcoming election.
The first commandment is to have no other gods before Him (Exodus 20:3).
This is the most important of all the commandments because if we follow it, all the other commandments will naturally fall into place. Hence, I will only use this verse as related to our four stated commandments towards God.
Having no other gods before Him means that God has to be first and foremost in our lives, even as Matthew 6:33 instructs us to put His kingdom and righteousness first. In Matthew 22:37-38, we are called to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Regarding the upcoming election: This means we are to put God’s standards and Word above our ethnicity and gender (e.g., it shouldn’t matter whether a candidate is black, white, yellow, brown, or male or female), and we should put biblical values above our party affiliation.
As Dr. Martin Luther King alluded to in his “I Have a Dream” speech, we should judge candidates based on the “content of their character rather than the color of their skin.”
The last six commandments are about how we are to live in relation to fellow human beings. This was summarized in Matthew 22:39-40 when Jesus instructed us to love our neighbors even as we love ourselves. Thus, the first four commandments connect to Matthew 22:37-38, and the last six commandments connect to Matthew 22:39-40.
In reference to the last six commandments, we need to see how they directly relate to the public policy positions of each of the political parties as well as each individual candidate.
“Honor your father and mother” (Exodus 20:12) is the most important commandment regarding human relations because it connects to the nature of marriage and procreation. Marriage (Genesis 2:23-25) is the basic human building block of society and existed before human government, (which started with God delegating capital punishment to humans in Genesis 9:5-6), before Israel, the Law of Moses, and the church.
It is also important to note that this commandment mentions both “father” and “mother,” not “mother and mother” or “father and father.” Thus, according to God’s top-ten list, biblical marriage is the most important human institution we need to protect and honor, and is even mentioned before murder, adultery and economics!
Thus, political candidates who support same-sex marriage are in gross violation of the fifth commandment (which is also the first commandment related to human relations!)
The sixth commandment is “You shalt not murder” (Exodus 20:13).
God so hates the shedding of innocent blood (Proverbs 6:16-17) that murder is number two on His list of the remaining six moral commandments related to human obligations.
Of course, if the platform of a political party or a candidate is pro-choice then they are in favor of a woman’s right to terminate the life of an unborn child within her womb. What’s even more troubling is that African-Americans and people of color have been targeted the most by the abortion industry as noted by planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who believed people of color were from an inferior race, and, because they were poor, she planned to use “colored” ministers to convince them from a religious perspective that the right thing to do was to terminate their pregnancies if they were too poor to afford them!
“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.” Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. And the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.“
Margaret Sanger’s December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, and Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
“Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.“ Margaret Sanger, April 1933 Birth Control Review.
Unfortunately, Sanger and Planned Parenthood have been largely successful in achieving their goals since data shows us that African American women are five times more likely to have an abortion than white women, and in NYC, more African American babies are aborted than are born!
We are now witnessing something many believe is worse than slavery. We are seeing legal genocide! Thus, when people of color vote for a pro-choice candidate or platform, they are (unconsciously) voting for their systemic extermination!
Regarding “after birth” issues like racism, we have to be fair and cite the terrible racist history of the Democratic Party. It was part of Jim Crow, the KKK, and slavery. It was far behind the Republican Party (the party of Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King) regarding civil rights until the past three decades. Hence, we should not blindly vote based on party affiliation but according to how the party platform and candidate accords with biblical moral law.
The seventh commandment, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14), basically teaches that all sexual acts outside of the marriage of one man and one woman are considered adultery. The marriage bed, as defined by God’s word, is undefiled (Hebrews 13:4). Leviticus 18 gets into more detail regarding how the seventh commandment is unpacked and illustrates how heterosexual sex with someone that is not one’s spouse, with another person’s spouse, with in-laws, same-sex relations, as well as sex with animals, are forbidden by God. Paul the Apostle restates some of these sexual acts as sin in Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.
Hence, same-sex marriage clearly violates two of the first three commandments related to human relations!
The eighth commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15), is related to economics.
This is where it gets sticky. Progressives claim that one of the major political parties favors the rich because, they say, they pay less of a percentage of taxes than the middle class. (The income tax percentage for the rich is higher than the middle class, but most rich people earn much of their income through capital gains, which are taxed much lower than salary income. However, all people have a right to buy and sell property and trade on the stock market. Thus, it is not a right reserved only for the rich. However, most poor people need to be financially knowledgeable or have enough money to make a living through capital gains categories like real estate and trading stocks.
On the other hand, I have heard some conservative people of color say that the Democrats are still attempting to keep their people on the plantation through entitlements and welfare programs that merely help in the short term but don’t do enough to break the generational cycles of poverty. Other black leaders have noted how people of color have more poverty today as related to marriage, intact families, and finances than before the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson started in the mid-1960s. This proves handouts and welfare have hurt more than helped people of color!
I believe a halfway approach is best: that government economic aid to the poor should continue, but that it should be redefined and restructured so there are far fewer blind handouts. I believe money should be funneled through partnerships with churches, non-profits, and charities that have boots on the ground and know how to do micro-financing, job training, entrepreneurial endeavors, and educate at-risk children. They would more likely do a better job than government bureaucrats.
With the current level of family fragmentation, non-profits, and church-based programs need to step up to the plate now more than ever because big government entitlement programs with no practical accountability have proven they cannot “parachute in” and rescue our communities!
Furthermore, by forbidding stealing in the eighth commandment, God espouses the right of individuals to own private property. Thus, this commandment is against any ideology (whether liberation theology or communism) that espouses economic egalitarianism, which is when an overreaching central government tries to force equality and the redistribution of wealth by an extremely progressive tax structure or, in communism, by the abolition of private property altogether!
On the other hand, most conservatives in this nation are against redistribution and believe in empowering individual rights and the free market. I believe this is more in line with scripture than those espousing communism and economic egalitarianism.
(I espouse a kingdom economic approach that not only includes a flat tax for everyone (i.e., like the biblical tithe) and a free market view of capitalism but which obligates Christian business owners to disciple, finance, and reproduce other business owners from among their employees. This would do more than merely create jobs in poor urban areas; it would develop entrepreneurs who can break their generational cycles of poverty!)
Furthermore, the tenth commandment, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods” (Exodus 20:17), also seems to advance the theory of private property and is against the motive of egalitarianism, which many believe is driven by the politics of class warfare and envy.
Debating economic theory and what works would take a large position paper.
However, even if (hypothetically) progressives are correct in their position, the commandment dealing with economics is number eight on God’s top-ten list, thus not as important as commandments 1-7. Furthermore, God tells believers that if they put His kingdom and righteousness first, He will provide everything we need anyway (Matthew 6:33).
Elections and voting are always a test for all believers: Are we going to vote on our biblical values as stated in God’s top-ten list, or will we vote on our race, ethnicity, and party affiliation? Suppose there is a situation in which candidates from either party fall short of these moral and ethical standards. In that case, I believe the best person to vote for in a local or national election is the one that most favors biblical faith and a platform closest to upholding the essence of the Law of God.
See Mattera’s website for more great stuff.