Electoral Maps and Evangelicals

Many sit tonight and look at possible electoral maps that predict the future president of the United States of America.  I believe that it is very important that we select a candidate for president that best reflects values we find in Scripture, but this election has exposed a problem that has been emerging in our country for a long time now.  LifeWay recently did a survey among Evangelical Christians and the results of that survey was staggering.  Of those surveyed, the two most important topics that informed an Evangelical's choice for president was the economy and national defense.  The personal character of a candidate came a very distant third as a concern for a potential evangelical voter.  This to me betrays what I really already knew.  The Church in America has become compromised with the world.  We are really good at 'being in the world' but we are having a very hard time of 'not being of the world.'

Here is a sobering thought:  judgment begins with the household of God (1 Peter 4:17).  While we moan and wail about the condition of our country we have witnessed a secularization of God's people that is unprecedented.

Here are some things to thing about:

-For the first time in world history we, as Western society, have brought into doubt the foundational concept  of marriage being defined as being between a man and a woman (I acknowledge polygamy was around in the ancient world but it was a relationship between a man and women).

-We are not sure about the question of how to handle gender in our institutes of state funded education, but we are very sure that the name of Jesus Christ cannot be invoked in our classrooms.  We champion the idea in our schools of blurring lines and kicking down boundaries while eschewing any concept of objective truth.

-We can have the most blessed and affluent societies in the history of man and still turn our nose up at the poor.

-We endorse free sexual promiscuity and then try to cover for the consequences of that promiscuity by a policy called 'a woman's choice'.

-We apply names to evil actions like 'abortion' so we can sanitize it and not call it what it is, murder (you abort a rocket launch, you murder a human).

-While Churches assemble to bring honor and praise to the living God on Sunday's parking lots of the church are empty while the ball fields are full.  

- We have bought into the lie of the idol of statism that tells us that that the state can solve all of our problems.

-We have forgotten the boundaries that God set up in the sphere sovereignty of the family, church, and state.

-We have grown cold to the Gospel of Jesus Christ that tells us that we are sinners and we are called to love the world enough to tell them the truth of their sinfulness and their need of a Savior.

I say all this to point out that no election is going to save our country.  It begins with the Church repenting of the evil in our hearts.  It begins with God's people re-dedicating our life to Jesus!

As far as this election goes - I have to quote the venerable Leslie Newbigin- "I am neither a pessimist or an optimist, Jesus Christ has risen from the dead!