Filibustering

As I write this, the new President of America, Barack Obama, is delivering his address to a raucous crowd in Chicago.

I've spent the last several minutes reading Facebook statuses. I'm ashamed, for the most part, by what I've read. I've read some things posted on several other blogs, and I've had one email conversation with a good friend with an open mind. I feel the need to clarify some things.

I am not saying that Christians should not vote.
I am saying that when or if they do, I wish it were from a different perspective than what I typically hear and read from Christians.

My goal here is to challenge these typical perspectives. As I told a friend via email today, I am taking this stance based upon a firmly held idealist conviction. To vote now, when so many seem to scoff and think my position to be ludicrous, ignorant, or even un-Christian, is something I will not do. I don't want people to assume that I think what they think about Christianity and the American government. So, I don't vote because I choose not to - BUT I do not think it wrong for Christians to vote.

So, now, we need to look at some particular issues. We'll start with the one that gets me going the most: Abortion.

Abortion is the Christian issue. It seems to me that this is the one issue that decides Christian votes more than any other. My experience is that more Christians vote based on the abortion issue alone than any other. For one, on a purely intellectual level, to vote based on one issue is probably a little short-sighted. But so much more than that, Christians have a serious deficiency on the way that they have typically addressed this issue.

If Christians are going to vote pro-life, it doesn't end there. With the most profane definition, abortion is killing babies. I'm not in support of abortion. It's a sad and horrifying idea. But if you are opposed to killing babies, why would you support war? Do we have bombs that only taget adults that I don't know about? If killing babies means so much to us, we need to think very seriously and critically about what it means to go to war because that too involves the deaths of innocent people, including children, through warfare and refugee situations. If you are against abortion, I think you should at least seriously consider your stance on war and you will need to be able to give your reasons for why killing babies should be illegal in our country, but why it is okay to support the murder of children in other countries. And if I need to point out that there's not really a difference between murdering babies and murdering...

Translation: abortion is murder, war involves murder. We need to be aware of the connection between the two.

Even more so than the murder issue, if Christians are going to vote against abortion, it doesn't end there. You better be ready to adopt, or at least support adoption in whatever way you can. Keeping mothers of unwanted children from being able to have an abortion means we are going to have more and more unwanted children being born. Christians read their Bibles. James 1:27. I'm not an adoption expert. My sense is that adoption isn't for everyone and no one should feel guilty for not adopting if they know they shouldn't. But Christians are going to at least support it in whatever way they can.

Translation: To vote pro-life and not support adoption in some way is irresponsible.

If Christians are going to vote against abortion, it doesn't end there. Illegal abortion is not going to stop unwed women from getting pregnant. Let's be honest, voting to make abortion illegal doesn't mean people will stop trying and getting abortions. So what have you solved by voting? Preserving the sanctity of our Christian nation? Abortion isn't even the issue! It's the symptom of a disease(s) of great social magnitude. It has ties back to urban neglect and poverty. It has ties to the generational poor and weak public education. It has ties to middle and upper class teenagers having premarital sex at alarming rates. It has ties to pornography addictions and date rape. How is voting against abortion going to solve any of these complex social issues? What is really accomplished by voting for or against political candidates who are on one side or the other on the abortion issue? Not only that, what have we gained from voting Republican candidates into office?

Put simply, voting pro-life solves very little of what it seems Christians hope to accomplish by doing so. This is why, when it comes to this issue, it is incredibly dangerous to consider the act of voting as fully constitutional of one's act of faith. If you are a Christian, your "spiritual task" is not done in regards to the abortion issue if you vote pro-life. Hopefully no one will disagree with that.

For me, the question becomes, how can we, as Christians, begin to address this issue. Shall we do it through politics? Perhaps. But what if Christians disagree on whether or not abortion should be illegal? What happens then? What if, as no doubt many Christians are worrying even now (I'm not one of them), a democrat government is elected? How then will you deal with this issue?

It seems to me that it becomes very difficult pretty quickly to see the agenda of the Kingdom of God accomplished through the American government. If only God had instituted a body on Earth that could carry out His agenda! If only He had given that body His Spirit so that true change we can believe in might take place! If only...