Franklin Graham began his article, “Christians must focus on God, not politics,” with the obligatory acknowledgment that he has “always used whatever influence and platform [he] had to urge everyone to vote.” Then comes the inevitable “but”: “But as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I have a higher calling than getting out to vote or ‘getting out the vote,’” Graham wrote. Is a “minister of the gospel” the only higher calling? It seems to me that civil government is also a high calling. More about that in a moment. I wonder what Graham might say ten years from now, when new laws could be passed to keep Christians from preaching the gospel because they didn’t vote to keep out the tyrants, because everyone was involved in their ‘higher calling,’ including everything else God considers important?
The State Is Not Our Savior—Agreed
Christians are ministers of the gospel, Franklin reminds us, and therefore we are obligated to “offer the message of the Gospel . . . to people of every race, creed, age, walk of life and political persuasion.” He goes on to argue, “It is ultimately God who saves and prospers us. He is our hope—not Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives.” Who says otherwise? John MacArthur made a similar argument in his book Why Government Can’t Save You. Who said it could or should? Civil government has a necessary saving feature when it comes to “enemies foreign and domestic” regarding our Republic. People can be saved in many ways that have nothing to do with regeneration. Regeneration’s saving feature is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Graham goes on to exhort Christian leaders to keep their focus “on our true calling, which is spiritual, not political.” Let’s play fill-in-the-blank using the title of Graham’s article:
• “Christians must focus on God, not economics because economics is not spiritual.”
• “Christians must focus on God, not education because education is not spiritual.”
• “Christians must focus on God, not work because work is not spiritual.”
• “Christians must focus on God, not work to outlaw slavery because working to abolish slavery is not spiritual.”
The list could go on. But we know the Bible has much to say about economics (“You shall not steal,” even if by majority vote), education (Prov. 22:6), work (2 Thess. 3:10), and laws against slavery (Ex. 21:16).[1] When we focus on God, we get the right perspective on life. God wants us to do the right thing in economics, education, work, and politics because they are all spiritual endeavors, if by spiritual we mean guided by the Holy Spirit from God’s Word. Granville Sharp, an evangelist, Greek scholar, and humanitarian, was a leading advocate for abolishing the slave trade. He combined a passion for legal reform with the gospel message. One flowed out of the other. John Wesley, who was committed to preaching the gospel, had an “uncompromising attitude to slavery.”[2]
William Wilberforce was the primary parliamentary leader of the British movement to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, a cause he championed for nearly two decades. Inspired by his evangelical Christian faith and advised by former slave trader John Newton [“Amazing Grace”], Wilberforce began his campaign in 1789 by presenting detailed evidence of the trade’s horrors to the House of Commons.
Slavery was an issue of justice, and civil justice is the civil magistrate’s jurisdictional sphere to stop it since it controls and protects it. Our understanding of the gospel and God’s love compels us to engage in politics (the civil sphere) to stop such an injustice as “man stealing.” God’s government includes civil government, as I point out in my book God and Government.
God and Government
With a fresh new look, more images, an extensive subject and scripture index, and an updated bibliography, God and Government is ready to prepare a whole new generation to take on the political and religious battles confronting Christians today. May it be used in a new awakening of Christians in America—not just to inform minds, but to stimulate action and secure a better tomorrow for our posterity.
Buy NowWhat Does It Mean to Be “Spiritual”?
Contrary to Graham, spirituality is not an abstraction, an unseen and ethereal realm above us cut off from the world in which we live. To be spiritual is to be guided by the Holy Spirit in the here and now; therefore, we should study God’s Word to learn what it says about everything, including politics. Dividing life between the spiritual and the secular has created the mess we are living in today. God created this world for our good (Gen. 1:31). The civil magistrate is designed to be a “minister of God . . . for good” (Rom. 13:4) in the same way mothers and fathers were designed to be family ministers for good, and elders and deacons were designed to be ecclesiastical ministers for good. You can’t get any more spiritual than that!
I cover the “spiritual” argument in my book Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths.
Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths
Like the Bereans of Paul’s day (Acts 17:11), Christians should check the veracity of all opinions against the only reliable standard of authority that God has placed in our hands: the Bible. This may mean a change in belief systems for some. There is no novelty in this. God confronted Peter directly about the inclusion of Gentiles into the household of faith (10:9–16). Paul confronted Peter “to his face” on a similar matter (Gal. 2:11–14). There are times when we all need to be knocked off our horse of mistaken opinions (Acts 9:4). “Testing” is a biblical mandate (2 Cor. 13:5; 1 John 4:1).
Buy NowChristians spend more time on the job and in the classroom than they ever do in a lifetime of politics unless they choose it as their vocation, a calling, for that’s what a vocation is. We vote every two years. It takes 30 minutes to learn what candidates believe. It may take another hour to go to the polls and vote. Why not tell Christians to give up their jobs and quit going to school so they can focus on preaching the gospel? Talk about time killers in the grand scheme of things. The thing of it is, God told us to work (Ex. 20:8-10; 2 Thess. 3:10) and learn (Deut. 6:4-9) just like he told us to view civil government as a ministry under God (Rom. 13:1).
When a warning is raised that a thief is about to come and steal from you, or that a murderer is on the loose, you better drop everything and get busy protecting yourself and your family. Civil government is stealing from us through the way it taxes us. Civil government has made killing unborn babies a legal right. Civil government has created a near-monopoly on education that makes children subjects and wards of the State. Civil government has created a perpetual underclass, a form of institutional slavery, through confiscatory taxation and wealth redistribution.
If You Want Long-Term Relief
Graham is the CEO and president of the international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse. It does good work to relieve poverty in third-world countries. The main reason there is poverty in these countries is due to the sinful misuse of politics. Missionary enterprises typically meet the “spiritual and physical needs of hurting people around the world,” as Graham’s organization does. But they fail to deal with what’s causing the poverty. If you want to help the poor, get government out of the business of poverty. But you can’t do that if Christian leaders are minimizing the effects politics is having on our lives and inappropriately separating the spiritual and secular realms.
Graham and Samaritan’s Purse can put all the money they can into their relief work, but it will never alleviate poverty in the long run. Being a new creature in Christ must lead to the “renewing of the mind” (Rom. 12:2) and the hands (1 Cor. 4:12). That is, it’s not enough to get people saved; they must understand how God’s Word is applicable to every facet of life, including politics and economics! That’s why the Bible is such a big book. What’s a Christian teenager to do with the next 70 years of his life? Preach the gospel and view every other endeavor as a distraction? Who will make the food distributed to the poor? Who will make the bags and boxes to hold the food? Who will build the trucks to haul the food? Who will drill for the oil to be refined into gasoline to drive the trucks? You get the picture.
Eternal Vigilance
If Christians don’t stay involved in the political process, I can guarantee that the State—the god of so many—won’t need our vote either. We’ll end up under a dictatorship where Christians will be denied the right to vote and the freedom to preach the gospel. It’s happened before, so don’t say it can’t happen here.
Focusing on God means preaching the gospel and applying God’s Word to every area of life. Anything less, and we are less than Bible-believing Christians. We might as well surrender to the secularists who claim that religion and life should be separated.
The following was posted on Facebook:
If Christians abandon the voting booths, the voting booths would not be empty! Islam’s advocates are using their mosque networks to maximize voter turnout in favor of Democratic candidates in Michigan, Texas, and other states.
It is our ethnic duty, it is our civic duty, it is our religious duty to go and support those candidates and choose those that represent the best of our interests … We are undergoing perhaps the most important election season, perhaps of our entire lifetimes, and it is imperative that we, as Muslims of this country, as American Muslims, we avail ourselves to the same rights, the same privileges, the same sense of civic engagement and civic duty as everybody else. (Source)
If the Islamists take over, you’ll get your desire—the voting booths will be empty for Christians. Loving our enemies does not mean we should not stop people from raping our daughters and wives. Stop locking your doors because you do not want to “resist the evil person.” By not restricting the role of the civil magistrate, you are permitting an earthly master to rule over you and your family. “Seeking the kingdom” means following God’s commandments, including how to deal justly within family, church, and civil governments, as their jurisdictional priorities and limits are specified.
[1] “He who kidnaps [steals] a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.” Revelation 18:13 condemns the economic practices of Babylon, listing slaves and human souls alongside luxury goods like spices and wine. First Timothy 1:10 condemns slave traders (or kidnappers).
[2] Susanne Everett, History of Slavery (Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books, 1996), 135.