An Election Day Reminder from God's Word

The psalm that many of us will be reading together this coming Sunday, Psalm 146, is perfect for this election week! (Funny how often God works out these "coincidences"!)

The psalm includes these lines:

Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that day their plans perish.

Happy are they whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, Who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them; Who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; Who gives food to the hungry. (Psalm 146:3-7)

Who our president will be is far less important issue than Who our God will be.

It's only God Who can give us what we most need: forgiveness, life, and hope for today and for eternity.

The Bible makes it clear, of course, that the Christian's duty is to honor those holding the reins of political power.

Government leaders serve an important function in God's plans, battening down the chaos that would otherwise engulf the world when our sins against one another had the freedom to do its worst.

God appoints governments to coerce those unchanged by and resistant to the grace He gives through Jesus Christ to leave neighbors unmolested and to protect those who voluntarily accede to Christ as King of their lives. (Otherwise, Martin Luther once wrote, Christians would live in the world as hapless sheep among ravenous wolves.)

So, whoever is elected today should, according to the Bible, have the prayers and the loyalty of all Christians.

After all, if Jesus told His followers to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and if Peter and Paul, in the face of persecution, could tell Christians to pray for the emperors of a despotic Roman Empire, then we Christians in America today can surely pray for and honor the democratically elected leaders of a politically free country, whether we voted for them or not!

But the really important thing for Christians to remember today and every day is that, no matter how much we may like or dislike those elected to be our political leaders, it's stupid to put our hope in governments, politics, or leaders.

The God we know in Jesus Christ has become one of us, has died on the cross, and risen from the dead. He offers life to all who throw in with Him. The God we know in Jesus Christ will still be standing when the last king or president on earth has drawn a breath.

And if we will surrender our lives to Him, accepting His offer of forgiveness for all our sins and of new and everlasting lives to all who trust in Him, we can live in the confidence that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God, given in Jesus Christ.

That's a lot more important than an election.

NYT: Giuliani Will Favor Abortion Rights

This is surprising?

I agree with Chris Matthews when he says--as he did on his Tuesday evening show--that the idea that pro-life voters are just discovering that Rudy Giuliani is pro-choice is absurd. (I also agree with Matthews that this idea reflects the media elite's disdain of the intelligence of conservatives generally and of pro-lifers specifically.)

These voters have known that Giuliani is pro-choice all along and many have supported him anyway. That's because most of them aren't single issue voters and because there are gradations of opinion within the pro-life camp, just as there are among other categories of voters.

This shouldn't shock anybody: Even Sam Brownback, arguably the most pro-life and the one most connected to the Religious Right in the current GOP presidential field, said last week that he would support a pro-choice Republican nominee for President.

I used to be among those who thought that Giuliani had no chance of securing his party's nomination in 2008. He still may not get it. He may be too liberal on a variety of issues to finally win people over. But Giuliani apparently scores high in the minds of GOP voters on other areas they deem important, such as toughness and leadership.

As opposed to Mitt Romney, who is perceived as a flip-flopper on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, Giuliani gets points from social conservatives who consider him an honest person of principle.

The strange thing to ponder though, is how many conservatives are willing to overlook Giuliani's liberal views on social issues, but can't stomach the Senator with one of the most conservative voting records in recent decades, John McCain. The focus of conservative ire seems to be that McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts and is the co-author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws. Are conservatives--even those from the Religious Right--saying that taxes and campaign finance are bigger deal-breakers than abortion and gay marriage? That's an interesting thought...and I don't think we yet know the answer.

(See Ann Althouse for a discussion.)

[THANK YOU TO: Brian at Columbuser.com for linking to this post.]

[This piece has been cross-posted at RedBlueChristian.com.]

The Mystery of Rudy Giuliani...Solved? And the Non-Mystery of Mitt Romney

Rudy Giuliani has been confounding people--including me--by continuing to score well among conservative evangelical Republicans, many of whom appear willing to support his candidacy for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Rudy is the frontrunner in spite of favoring gay marriage, gun control, and public funding of abortion.

There are many ways to explain these mysteries.

In the case of gay marriage, Giuliani's position is more in tune with the Barry Goldwater-Gerald Ford tradition of conservatism. The traditional conservative understanding of federalism was that the federal government had no business regulating the bedrooms of consenting adults. It further saw that traditional marriage, a rite of the Church, could not be threatened by any covenant established by the state, whose interest in marital relationships was (and is) threefold:

• the control of sexually transmitted disease;
• the joint ownership of property and its disposition in case of divorce; and
• the care and custodianship of children, whether the relationship continues or ends in divorce.
  

If some conservatives find Giuliani's position on gun control objectionable--and not all do, their apprehensions will be somewhat blunted by his apparently strong anticrime record while serving as New York mayor.

Abortion is a tougher one for conservatives, even some secular conservatives, to swallow.

But I think that Giuliani is even winning points and support from conservatives who intensely disagree with him on this trifecta of issues. Why? Because he isn't changing his position simply to make himself acceptable to some wings of his party. He seems to basically be saying, "I'm a fiscal conservative who'll fight terrorism. I also believe in strict constuctionist interpretations of the Constitution. Yeah, we disagree on other issues. I'm still the same guy today I was yesterday and I won't try to pull the wool over your eyes, pretending that I've had a road-to-Damascus experience when it comes to gay marriage, gun control, or abortion. But, there's a lot more that unites us than divides us."

My guess is that Giuliani is appealing to conservatives because of his refusal to flip flop on the issues.

Conversely, Mitt Romney appears to be facing all sorts of problems because he looks so much like a flip-flopper:










And notice the humor some clever Fox News Channel producer was showing here...



[Also see here. By the way, I'm not a Rudy Giuliani fan. I don't do endorsements, just observations.]