A proposed guide to Christians voting

The Canadian landscape

Given the work I do with Liberty Coalition Canada (see here), it is quite common for people to ask me one or more of the following questions: “Who do you think I should vote for in this upcoming election? How do I make sense of the various parties and nominees? Should we be concerned about splitting the conservative vote? Does the Bible have anything to say about the way I should vote?” It shouldn’t surprise you that I have a few things to say in response to these and other questions.

In Canada, we have five main federal political parties that consistently poll at over 4%, which means they receive certain benefits with relation to elections. They are the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the Green Party, the New Democratic Party, and the BLOC Quebecois. We also have the People’s Party of Canada, a relatively new Libertarian-leaning party, and the Christian Heritage Party, which has been around for several decades.

My contention is that those five main parties represent our Canadian Uniparty. While there are many differences in policies, at the end of the day, all of those parties advance antichristian policies and hold to godless agendas. For example, they all voted in favour of Bill C-4, which could see Christians arrested for affirming Biblical sexuality. The leaders of all five of those parties affirm the murder of pre-born babies, sodomite unions, and doctor-assisted murder for the elderly.

The People’s Party of Canada, while holding to good policies regarding the suppression of rights and State-driven totalitarianism, has a leader that affirms all of those same anti-biblical beliefs. The Christian Heritage Party is the only party in which both the platform and the leader hold to a Biblical worldview. Given the cultural climate in Canada – an out-of-control death-spiral – it is doubtful they will experience any significant wins in the next few decades.

Therefore, the main question remains: “Andrew, who do we vote for?”

Some Biblical “voting-lenses”

Before I can answer that question accurately, we have to establish three Biblical principles, or positions in our thinking, in order to obey God faithfully and with integrity.

As a first guiding principle, when you stand before that cardboard wall to check off a name and cast your vote, ask yourself, “Will this vote be pleasing to the Lord? Will the Lord be pleased with this decision?” In Ephesians 5, as the Apostle Paul is exhorting Christians to live faithfully in the midst of dark days, he says the following: “Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them… Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:10-11, 17). As you consider both who you are voting for and the party they represent, and as you seek to live obediently and expose evil, can you say that your support pleases the Lord? If not, you can’t vote that way.

As a second guiding principle, when you are about to check off a name on the ballot, ask yourself, “Am I merely holding my nose, as it were, to vote for this lesser evil, while my conscience is pricked and I don’t feel totally at peace with my decision?” At the end of Romans 14, as the Apostle Paul is discussing issues of Christian liberty and conscience, he writes these words, “The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:22-23). If the person or party you are voting for cannot be supported with a clear conscience and a heart that is at peace with that decision, then you would be sinning, and you can’t vote that way.

As a third guiding principle, when election time comes around, ask yourself, “Am I voting in a purely pragmatic fashion? Am I only considering the worldly/material implications of this vote, or am I considering the spiritual realities and voting based on principles first and foremost?” We read this in Proverbs 14, “The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:11-12). If you are voting primarily to be pragmatic and politically strategic, and not primarily because it is principled and aware of deeper spiritual realities, you can’t vote that way.

“Fine, Andrew,” you might be saying, “that’s all well and good, but can you finally tell us who to vote for?” Not yet, not without allowing the Scriptures to penetrate our thinking even more deeply. I want to consider two different Biblical examples before I render my verdict, as it were. I want to look at a circumstance in the life of King David, and I want to examine the Prophet Isaiah and aspects of his ministry to Israel and Judah.

Can’t go under it, can’t go around it, gotta go through it

In 2 Samuel 24, David sins against God by taking a census of the people. Gad the seer came to David with the consequences of his sin. You see, for David, God’s judgment was unavoidable, looming over his head. David's choice was what the judgement would be. We read this, “Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days' pestilence in your land” (2 Samuel 24:13)? As he considered the options, David concluded, “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man” (2 Samuel 24:14).

David knew that because judgment was unavoidable, it was better to take his medicine right from the hand of the Lord and not at the hand of another man, thinking that it might somehow be worse if an earthly enemy was to come against him. David knew the only way out of judgement was straight through it, trusting God’s mercy and purposes more than either himself or anyone else.

Unholy alliances

In Isaiah 30, as Assyria is threatening the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Israelites are considering making an alliance with Egypt in order to protect themselves from Assyria. In essence, they were trusting in another evil nation in order to be safe from an even greater evil nation. They were prepared to yoke themselves with a lesser godless pagan in order to stave off the destruction from the perceived greater godless pagan. This is what the Lord has to say about that:

“Ah, stubborn children,” declares the Lord, “who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who set out to go down to Egypt, without asking for my direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to your shame, and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation.” – Isaiah 30:1-3

In 2 Kings 18, King Hezekiah tries to ingratiate himself to the king of Assyria in order to make peace and prevent Assyrian invasion. What Hezekiah did is particularly egregious:

“Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, ‘I have done wrong; withdraw from me. Whatever you impose on me I will bear.’ And the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house. At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria.” – 2 Kings 18:14-16

In 2 Kings 19, Hezekiah realizes he has sinned greatly, and he beseeches the Prophet Isaiah to hear from the Lord. Isaiah assures Hezekiah that because of the king’s confession and repentance, the Lord will be merciful to Judah. Then, in stunning double-mindedness, in 2 Kings 20 Hezekiah decides to court envoys from Babylon, partly to impress them, but partly to win their favour so as to not be the object of Babylonian wrath. This is what Isaiah says to Hezekiah in response to the king’s foolishness:

“Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” – 2 Kings 20:17-18

Hezekiah decided to align himself with evil pagan nations in order to save himself from the military wrath of his enemies. He decided it was better to link himself to what he perceived to be lesser, though still wicked, rulers in order to prevent the disaster that would inevitably come at the hands of greater wicked rulers.

Can you please just tell us who to vote for already

I want to draw all of this together – the three principles for voting as well as the two Biblical examples – and offer what I believe is a Christian framework for voting. Many Christians will disagree with both my assessment and my conclusions, which they are free to do. However, I would challenge them to do so from a Biblical foundation, not a merely pragmatic or “logical” one, whatever that means. If a person cannot ground their decisions firmly upon the Word of God, they might be wrong, and they definitely have to consider what the Scriptures would say about what they think, say, and do.

I believe that Canada is presently under the judgement of God. I’ll go one step further – I believe that Canada is standing in the dead-centre bullseye on a target while God is pouring His wrath upon our nation. What led us to this place? Some combination of the outright rejection of His Law and Lordship, the full-on embrace of Secular Humanism, and the total adoption of Cultural Marxist beliefs. What is the evidence we are under judgement? As per Biblical prescription, we have the slaughter of the vulnerable and innocent, economic turmoil, the leadership of evil rulers, plagues and diseases, cultural calamity, and the suppression of the knowledge of God en masse.

Like David, I believe Christians in this country have to ask themselves, “How will we take our consequences?” Will we place ourselves in the hand of the Lord, because His mercy is great, and because the only way past His judgement is right through it? Or will we place ourselves in the hand of our enemies, trusting that the mercy of the wicked won’t be that cruel?

We also have some political decisions to make. The current political situation has many professing Christians saying something like this: “Trudeau and the Liberals are bad, and if they get elected again it will plunge our country into tyranny and chaos. The NDP is worse. The Green party and the BLOC are a joke. The PPC and the CHP will never win. Therefore, we have to vote for the Conservative Party under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre if we have any hope of stopping Trudeau and saving Canada from ruin.”

To many of those comments I have replied, “But Poilievre supports the murder of pre-born babies, sodomy, mass immigration, the genital mutilation and chemical castration of anyone over eighteen, doctor-assisted murder for the elderly, and he also supported Bill C-4, which would put me in prison for telling a confused and sinful man that he is in fact a man and that he should marry a woman.”

It is my deepest conviction that a vote for Poilievre, or for that matter any politician that opposes the truth and Law of God in favour of pagan practices, in an effort to save Canada from the evil Liberals is our way of both making alliances with Egypt or Assyria AND placing ourselves in the hands of our enemies and not the Lord. We are choosing a lesser evil, and a vile godless one at that, in order to save us from the greater evil, as we perceive it. But there is no hope to be found in Egypt, and there is no good in making an alliance with Assyria. The only consequence to be found there is incurring greater judgement. It is imprudent to trust in our enemies - and Poilievre is an enemy of Christ and His Bride - and foolish to prefer their wrath to the righteous wrath of God.

Having eyes to see

If our nation’s rejection of God coupled with the Church’s compromise and political pragmatism are part of what have brought the judgement of God upon our nation, do we really believe that doing more of the same will get us out of it? Are we so naïve as to think that we can continue to be faithless and double-minded in our operation, but believe that this time it will be better, so long as the Liberals don’t win? If we are primarily pragmatic in our approach, even if the Conservative Party wins a majority, though it appears to be a victory and reprieve, I believe it will in reality be Canada drinking the cup of God’s judgement even deeper. Yes, it could actually be worse for us. It might not seem like it, and it might not make any sense, but the spiritual reality in which we live is at times the opposite of what appears to be true in the material world; we just need eyes to see what’s really going on.

This is not fifty years ago, where we might have had a chance to repent and avoid the disaster that has come upon us. This is not the first half of the books of the Minor Prophets. This is the second half, where God’s mercy and patience have been exhausted, and where we must experience His judgement in full. The question is will we make alliances with evil leaders and place ourselves in the hands of our enemies, or will we live out our Christian conviction, place ourselves in the hand of the Lord, and experience the consequences directly from His hand. Maybe that means a Liberal majority, and maybe it will be really bad, but better to have God’s judgement upon us as people who have walked in principled integrity than to experience greater and prolonged judgement because we were too shortsighted and afraid to trust God.

And who knows, maybe by being faithful and courageous we will experience the mercy of God even as His wrath falls upon Canada. Afterall, when Egypt was being devastated by plagues, the Israelites were shielded from it all in the land of Goshen. God’s people were spared His judgement even as the rest of the nation was under it. Afterall, when Israel was destroyed by Rome in 70 AD, the Christians were spared because they obeyed Christ and did not fall back into the seemingly secure walls of Jerusalem. If Christians form solid communities and obey Christ faithfully, even in our political engagement, we might find ourselves blessed and flourishing even as Canada deteriorates around us.

Whatever the case, Christians have to stop looking at politics and engaging in politics through worldly and earthly eyes. We have to see beyond pragmatism and what makes sense from a human perspective. We have to understand the deeper spiritual realities that surround us. We have to believe that principled obedience will always yield better fruit than not, even when it seems counter-intuitive. We have to recognize that we cannot get out of this mess by doing the same kinds of things that got us into this mess in the first place.

So, who do you vote for? I think it should be a person who loves the Lord and is committed to bringing the truth of His Word to bear in Canadian political life, and for the party that affirms Biblical truth in its policies. You might say that is a wasted vote, you might say that will lead to a Liberal majority, and you might say that is politically foolish. You know what I say? Canada murders 100,000 babies each year, we legislate and protect sodomy, we castrate boys and sterilize girls at taxpayer expense, and Wokeness has infected every level of every institution. Whatever else you might be suggesting has led to one of the most wicked nations in the history of humanity, and it doesn’t seem to be letting up. Do you really think that by playing the same political games we’re going to get off of the bullseye and out from under the judgement of God? The only way past the judgement is through it, in the hands of the Lord, trusting that He will bless our principled obedience in ways we can’t even imagine.