Evangelicals and the 2024 Election: The Iowa Caucus and the Evangelical Support of Trump

Christians need to stop listening to the world and start listening to God so the thinking Christian becomes as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. This is Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. We are recording this just a couple days after the Iowa caucus results, and, you know, there's been a lot of conversation about the evangelicals who rocked the boat there in Iowa and the seeming contradiction or dichotomy that exists between who the evangelicals voted for, which Trump won the Iowa caucus handily, and what Christians claim to believe. And so I'm joined here by Aleem Fransla, my friend and colleague, and we're excited to kind of talk through some of these issues and think through what does it look like for Christians to vote their biblical principles? Why is that so difficult? And how is it that we can explain it to people out there in the public so that even if people disagree with our decisions, they're not seeing this as something that is incommensurate with our faith? So that's the ground I hope to cover today. We'll see. Well, great, great excitement to be back on the hottest podcast known in 2024, minimum 2024. Minimum, yeah. Excited to be back with you, Dr. James Spencer, and to have a good conversation about what is almost new to me as a first-generation immigrant to this great country, and that is American politics, and maybe the new flavor of American politics. Well, let me throw out this idea, man, because there was a clip that I ran across. It's actually part of an interview I did earlier today. And they asked me to comment on this clip. We're not going to show the clip, but I'll kind of describe what it is. A woman named Tara Setmeyer was essentially offering a pretty harsh critique of evangelicals after the Iowa caucus. And essentially what she was saying was that evangelicals have failed both America and Christianity, that we are not voting along the lines of what we claim to believe and what we preach, and that if we would, if we were going to vote along those lines, Trump never would have gotten elected in 2016. We would have avoided the insurrection of January 6th altogether. We wouldn't have kids in cages at the borders. You know, all the problems of the world would be solved. And so the basic premise here is there is, at least in some circles, a high degree of confusion about why evangelicals would vote for Trump. So that's sort of the setup of this clip. Now, just to give sort of the disclaimer here, or maybe not the disclaimer, but just to give clarity, I don't fully understand why evangelicals vote for Trump either. I'm not necessarily a Trump guy, or I'm certainly not a make America great again guy, right? I don't really have a particular party affiliation, and so, nor do I generally share publicly who I vote for, right? In the era in which I grew up, voting was sort of a more private thing. You didn't tell people who you voted for. You weren't, you know what I mean? There were people who had campaign signs, I suppose, out in their yard, but for most people, you just didn't share it. You know, you went in the booth, you did it privately, and it was done. And so it's sort of an oddity for me having grown up in that context to have people know that so many evangelicals have voted or what have you. In any case, what I think we want to discuss here is, you know, is there any justification for Setmeyer's critique, which I've heard echoed in multiple other places, right? So voting for Trump has become sort of a lightning rod and a challenge, I think, where people are questioning evangelical ethics. Your thoughts on that, Aline? I have many, many thoughts about this. I have been observing the last years, the last almost eight years now of American politics, America under Trump. I have, I have friends that are people of color. I have friends that are people of culture, and I have friends that are Americans, and I have friends that are actually deeply Democrats and liberal friends in America. And I love the ability to have dialogue and thinking what, what is really triggering and really hurtful to them. I would say that I'm not as, well, I am concerned about some of the American politics, but I think the gravest concern I have is where the evangelical church has positioned itself in the whirlwind of a Trump presidency, which was controversial from a president's standpoint, right? I think Trump ran this country. This is my observation. I am, call me illiterate in politics, but this is an observation. I think he ran this country as a CEO. And, and the role, the office of the president has been now put into some question, right? Because what the question, the big question was, what is really the role of a president? It was interesting. I participated. I actually, I think the whole country was gripped, was gripped when, when Trump, president, former president Trump debated current president Joe Biden. And I will never forget the distinction between a career politician that looked in the camera and said, I'm for you. I got you. I'm here for you. And I was like, Oh, I can, I was like, wake up, wake up. It felt good. It felt like you see me, I'm, I'm here. And Trump saying, I'm gonna tell you the whole truth. I'll tell you who did this. I'll tell you who did this. And I'm like, no, don't tell me, don't tell me. I don't want to know. It's such a massive distinction between a career politician, somebody that knows how to handle the office of residence and somebody that is there moves from a CEO from, he was the, the, the, you know, the, the dream maker of America, the person that everybody would look to to say, if I want to, if I grow up, I want to be like Trump, successful money, all that kind of stuff. But the position of the evangelical church has concerned me. So I want to offer, James, I want to offer, I got invited to speak at a, the reunion of the largest reunion of, I would say, the influentials, official pastors in the Romanian American community on the West Coast. And they invited me to speak, and they assigned a topic to me, which was fascinating to me. It was a wake-up call to me. The topic was the outside perspective of the Romanian American church. And I'm like, why am I the outsider? Why am I speaking as the outside perspective of the Romanian American church? But I offer you this reflection. It's a short reflection because I'm curious if you think that this actually is the danger of the American evangelical church in the wake of the president's, Trump's hurricane presidency. I stood in front of that distinguished audience of senior pastors that have done a tremendous, wonderful job here. And I said, I believe that the Romanian American church in America is number one, invisible. And that is because it's, it is actually in a, in a melting pot and not a lot of people. And the people that are listening to us, please think about the last time you passed by a Romanian American church and you saw anything there. You just saw a sign in letters that you didn't understood. You moved past and you have no idea what those people are doing in there. It's completely invisible to your eyes in America. Number two, it's also irresponsible. And the reason it's irresponsible is because at large, most likely all Romanians that land in America are instantly conservative. They fly a 10-hour flight from Europe. And as soon as they land, I mean, the land, just as soon as they land, they're like, we vote for Trump and we're conservative and we're this and the people of color are this. And they're making statements that are just really controversial. And that's why I call that conflation between, you know, the being conservative and being Christian, that I think it's a degree of irresponsibility. And the fourth one is if you're invisible and if you're irresponsible, you quickly become irrelevant. And I shared this with the pastors and led into a great conversation, but I think this is what, this is where it's the concern of the evangelical church in the wake of a strong voice of President Trump that is somehow portraying itself as the defender of the Christian church, as the defender of the evangelical church.

To be invisible, so that we see less and less of the church, we see more and more of the evangelical politics. To be irresponsible of not loving all people, to not really loving the world and loving the people in the world, but rather be consumed with the world. And I think that is going to lead to some level of being just not efficient in this culture. It's interesting. I don't know whether I would have called evangelicals invisible, but I think I agree with you that, you know, what we're not seeing is the church, we see more and more of the evangelical politics. To be irresponsible of not loving all people, to not really loving the world and loving the people in the world, but rather be consumed with the world. And I think that is going to lead to some level of being just not efficient in this culture. It's interesting. I don't know whether I would have called evangelicals invisible, but I think I agree with you that what we're not seeing is the church. What we're seeing is the emergence of a political lobby. Yes, yes. And so we're not doing a good job of representing why it is that we would ever participate in American politics in the first place, how we make our decisions as we participate in American politics, and why it is that those things are aligned with the Christian faith. And thus, I think, you're right, I think we're becoming, to use your term, invisible as a church, but highly visible in an unfortunate way, again, as another lobbying group. I like the language of irresponsibility. I think that I would frame the evangelical church's irresponsibility a little differently. I tend to agree to a certain extent with Setmere, who made these comments in this segment, that the evangelical church has failed Christianity in America. Because as we flow from invisibility as a church, visibility as a lobbying group, what I think the irresponsibility is that the evangelicals have not demonstrated themselves to be a people apart. They have not demonstrated themselves to be a people who are so willing to be different for the sake of others, that they can provide a true alternative to the politics of the world. And in that is a sense of responsibility, or irresponsibility. Again, I don't know that I would pin that only on voting for Trump. Arguably, you could have had the same thing if evangelicals in Iowa had voted for DeSantis or Nikki Haley or Vivek. It doesn't matter who they vote for. The point is that once evangelicalism becomes more of a political lobbying group than a church, they've abdicated a sense of responsibility that comes with actually presenting themselves as a church. And so that's where I see the failure really coming in. And then I think irrelevance is basically that. I think that because we have so focused on, and the way I would say this one, again, just a little bit of reframing on it, here's what I'd say. The church makes much of God. A lobbying group makes much of politics. And so what we're really doing is we're making God irrelevant. And in this sense, he is no longer infinitely greater than any other actor or factor with which we interact. Yes, yes. Right? He is now just another factor. Right. He's maybe a factor that informs our voting. But let's face it, if we don't get to the polls, nothing's gonna change. That is not, in my mind, a theologically true statement. It's just not. We do not need the government to reform and restore society. That is part of the government's role. But if we look at the way God has used governments throughout the ages, we don't necessarily see pious, moral rulers always moving society forward for the better. We don't see that. Sometimes what we see is a purging of nations there to sort of channel Genesis 15, 18, 15, 16, one of those two, 15, 16 or 15, 18. As the iniquity of the Amorites becomes complete, now God can move Israel into the land. But until that point, when the Amorites' iniquity becomes complete, they are going to continue to inhabit that land. And so what we find in part in the Old Testament, part of that picture is nations are used against nations to move one nation out when it has been sufficiently disobedient and to move another nation in until it has become also sufficiently disobedient and is going to be moved out as well. We see this particularly in Jeremiah 25 where Babylon takes Israel into exile and God says, I will also be punishing Babylon in the future for the acts that they have committed here today. And so nations don't get by with things, right? In other words, they are still under God's authority. And so I think in that sense, when we think about irrelevance, what we're doing is we are increasing the relevance of the political realm, the temporal, material, state of the nation sort of realm in which politics tend to exist. And we are diminishing the realm of the powers, the principalities that we are to be struggling against as a people called by Christ to be the church. And so I really like those three words that you're giving. I think within the, especially these comments that Tara Stonemire made were against white evangelicals. And so when we think about the white evangelical church, which may very well include Romanians these days, like who knows, right? You're right. But I do think that there are three words and three characteristics that are very appropriate to what we're talking about. Let's take just a quick break here, Arlene, and then when we come back, we can continue discussing maybe how we should go about or how we might think about making some of these decisions, almost offering an apologetic for evangelical choices within the political realm. So let's take a quick break and we'll come back for that. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Hey everyone, welcome back. We are talking about the Iowa caucus, the landslide victory of Trump in the Republican primaries, and really the role of evangelicals in that process. And so before the break, we were going to start talking a little bit about decision-making matrix almost. How is it that evangelicals can start making good political decisions? And sort of, I don't want to say balance because I think that's the wrong word, but how do we deal with this notion that we are almost always going to make decisions, choose candidates who are not aligned completely with the Bible, with biblical authority? You know, we're going to, in other words, it goes a little bit beyond we're going to elect an imperfect candidate. I think we can kind of concede that point. But I think what we're looking at is they are going to represent policies that would contradict, stand against a biblical perspective. So any thoughts on how we go about sort of thinking through that decision, Eileen? Yes, I think before we even put our finger on that, I want to draw us to another aspect of where we find Christianity in our generation. Because I think it ties directly to why we may be making these decisions and maybe the brokenness of what we have to fix before we're making these decisions. The generation I grew up with in America is our generation.

They wanted to save the world. Uh, even Michael Jackson said, save the world, make it a better place, right? Um, so, so you had American missionaries that carried with them a flavor of colonialism, but it was actually that, that was with some level of pure intent because they wanted to go out there in the world, the 80-20 window. It was really all about saving the world. Right. And that has somewhat died down. I don't think we put a label on what kind of flavor we are experiencing right now in many conversations I've had with you, one thing that I loved was the aspect of being witnesses to God, but I think what you were putting your finger on is our tendency right now to fix the world. Whether it's with social justice, whether it's with some of the things, but we want to fix the world. And we realize that in fixing the world, we're already trying to resolve a problem that is really not ours to resolve. What we need for that, the tool that we need for that is power. We need to fix this world, but what do we need? If we need something, we need the government. Because the world has lost its mind. It's going into LGBTQ. It's going into, you know, the liberals are destroying America. All these words that we are now in the reason I actually even shared a glimpse of a private conversation in a sacred conversation with the Romanian pastors, which they were really gracious, and we had a great conversation and me being poor in my heart with being irresponsible, it had to do with the fact that and being irresponsible, it had to do with the fact that when we land in America and we become conservatives, we repeat words that we don't know the meaning of because we don't have shared experiences with Americans. So when we say things about, have you seen the people of God doing this? Have you seen the LGBTQ? We really don't know exactly what those mean behind them, but we repeat them because we somehow tend to agree with them without understanding the meaning. And so when we start repeating and where we start using, when younger evangelicals are now taking positions, I have a fear that this political year finds us in a crisis as an evangelical church. And that crisis is, we don't want to save the world anymore. That's gone. We want to fix the world. We need politics for it. And now we're paying more attention because we want the government to fix a little bit more than we care for. And I'm concerned about that because if that's not, if I'm missing this, if I'm missing seeing this, I'd be happy to be wrong. But I really believe we're called to completely something else. That's what I'm trying to call into. So that before we even talk about decisions, because I see, I see a series of decisions that are really becoming problematic now. Maybe they're coming from that space. No, I think it's a great way to start. I mean, I've been, I've read a book by James Gibson, An Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. And, you know, total geek book, right? Like a lot of footnotes, old school stuff. It has nothing to do with theology, so don't read it. But I read it, so let me give you a little quick synopsis. Basically, what Gibson says is bigger units or smaller units are nested in bigger units, right? That's one of his main points. Like smaller units are nested in bigger units. And so as we sort of scan out, right, what we're trying to get to to understand where we are in the world and how to interact with the world that we're in, we want to understand that we're in the biggest unit possible. So the way I picture this, if we think about living life at the bottom of the well, and we suspend for a moment how it is that we got in the bottom of the well, right? We don't know how we got there. We don't care how we got there. We just know we've been living there. And we're looking up from the bottom of this well, and all we see is that small circle of light at the top. Now, there are a lot of truthful observations we can make about the world based on what we see through that hole at the top of the well. But they're going to be extremely limited because we're unable, having been trapped at the bottom of this well, to see the bigger picture. In other words, we're trapped within a smaller unit. We can't see the bigger unit in which we're nested. And I tend to think that's politics. Politics is the well, right? And it creates within us a tunnel vision that we don't need to have, particularly as Christians, because we've had this broader world shown to us. Right? And so, to your point, I think as we think about how do you make decisions for voting, we have to first recognize that politics is the well and that most people participating in politics only see life through the well. Yes. And for Christians, what we're seeing is we're seeing the well as part of God's broader ecosystem. And so we're not trapped in the well. We've got resources beyond, you know, the old bucket that fell down or, you know, the brick walls or whatever happens to fall down into this thing. Like, we've got all these different things we can do. There's no need for us to climb down to the bottom of the well and go, well, I guess we're out of options. And so I think you're absolutely right in bringing this up because to start our decision-making process, we have to frame our decisions within the biggest unit, and God is that biggest unit. We are nested within a world in which God is the creator and redeemer. And I would argue that all of our actions really need to be nested within worship. So John Piper talks about this in terms of mission. And he basically says, you know, mission is not ultimate. Worship is ultimate. Worship will continue. Mission will end. Right? Mission is something we do now because we can't worship all the time. Right? And I would say the same for politics. Politics is not ultimate. It will end. But worship never will. And so we need to be focused on the ultimate as we do the less than ultimate. So that's part of, I think, the decision-making process that Christians really need to wrestle with is our starting point. Our starting point is always, we love God. Now because we love God, because we love God, because we worship God, now through that love, we learn how to love neighbor. Yes. And as we look at how do we love neighbor, now we can start thinking through, okay, how do we order the way that we love our neighbor? That ordering of love, Augustine talks about this an awful lot, the orders of love or the ordering of loves. Right? Augustine essentially argues that our problem in relationships is not that we have a lack of concern for other people. It's that there is a proliferation of loves for us to choose from, and we often get distracted. And so what we need is the love of God to reorient and order those loves for us to give us this sort of sense of what it is that we're supposed to do next. Now I don't think that results in sort of a hard orthodox order, right, where it has to be number one, do this, number two, do this, number three, do this. It's not going to end up being a recipe list. But I think as a general guide, what we're looking at is we love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. That love informs the way then that we love neighbors. And we begin to participate in politics such that we demonstrate the love of God through love of neighbor. That is, in broad strokes, the decision process that I think most Christians need to go through as opposed to using something like a, let's say, an ethical framework, right, and asking ourselves which is the higher good or something like that, right? Our ethics don't derive from higher goods. They really derive from God. And so through that worship, we learn and we see what it means to love other people. Yeah, I really love the framework of love. We love because he first loved us. And just knowing what that, like how powerful that is that it actually reframes even what I love. I love that God always tries to cleanse us from the love of the material things. We somehow always tend to just grab and hold on some of those things that we can hold on them. And I'm like, it's such a small thing about eternity. Let it go. And we start loving those things, right? That's why we can't love the material. I'm not trying to make, I want to make a distinction. I'm not trying to make a parallel between this year, this election year and Dante's Inferno. I'm not trying to make, I'm not trying to say it's going to be a hell of a year. I'm not trying to say that. But it was interesting to think about the levels of, when Dante wrote about the Inferno, he said that there are layers and layers and layers. And, you know, the first cycle, you know, it's limbo, then there's lust and gluttony and then greed and anger. And there's heresy and violence.

And fraud is the eighth circle and all the way down to the deepest level of hell, right, it's treachery. So it's basically betrayal of country and betrayal, right? There's such a small nugget of truth in that because I'm curious if you were to do a levels of heaven for evangelical Christians in America, right? What would be at the top of the priority as the inferno gets down to the worst level of person in America as somebody that doesn't love America, right? Somebody that betrayed. But what is the highest form of priority for evangelical Christians? And I pick on evangelical Christians because I'm an evangelical Christian and I do think we have a different responsibility than any group, than any political group of really sharing the truth of the gospel and that responsibility put on us is huge, it's massive. We cannot taint that with anything. And I see it, I see it in the way where we act, I see it in the battles. But what would be the highest form of heaven on earth every time we pray, your will be done, God, right, as in heaven on earth when we are now celebrating and we're so excited about a win that is what is telling me that this is going to be definitely a hell of a year, right? This is going to be an interesting year in America. Yeah, I'll answer real quick and then maybe we continue after the break. But what I would say is, you know, I think for many evangelicals, what tops the list are sort of hot-button issues, right? So things like abortion, top of the list, and have traditionally topped the list. Now, there's part of me that says that, and then, you know, I look at statistics, right, why evangelicals voted for Trump the first time around, and what you see is that many evangelicals voted for Trump because of economic reasons. And so, you know, there is a sense in which prosperity, which there is a movement toward prosperity gospel even these days, prosperity may very well top that list, and moral issues may come in second, third, or fourth. So even saying, you know, abortion tops the list, I think may be the most frequent talking point, but when people are filling out their surveys and they're answering their questions, it tends not to come out on top. And I think that's a little bit concerning. And so if we are making our decision based on how we can be maximally prosperous, that's a scary thought. But I think at the very least, you know, some of the statistics I've seen, they suggest that, and that means that evangelicals need to really rethink why it is that we're voting for the person we're voting for. Obviously, I think that's a mix of reasons, right? Moral, economic, you know, all those different sort of mixes. But one aspect, and I'd like to return to this after the break, one aspect that I think we don't think about often enough when we're voting is how it is that supporting a particular political candidate limits our ability to be all things to all people that we might save some. And so that's where I'd kind of like to return after this break. So we'll talk a little bit more about that when we come back. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Hey everybody, welcome back to this episode of Thinking Christian. Before the break, we were just kind of discussing, you know, what do we think tops the list for evangelicals when they go to the polls and think about issues when they're voting? And I suggested just one of the things that we might want to consider more deeply is how it is that voting for a particular political candidate, you know, endorsing vocally, publicly coming out for a particular political candidate, may hinder us from being all things to all people that we might save some. Eileen, any thoughts on that? Yeah, that speaks to where our identity and to who we are as Christians. I do look up to the writings of Apostle Paul. I think he is a unique voice of not just in Scripture but in the world that has left a strong echo. And he could have been, he was a Roman citizen, he could have been a really good leader, really in mind. And when you hear somebody like that to say that I count everything as garbage compared to, like, I count everything, everything, his education, his everything, compared to the calling of sharing the gospel, you are humbled. I mean, that has to really just make somebody really sober on all achievements, on all political structures, on all things that are happening compared to the great calling of sharing the gospel. So when somebody like that is saying, I'm willing to put aside all other things, and I'm willing to actually have a conversation with somebody that is a liberal and say, you know, there's some things that I appreciate about how you view the world. How hard are those words coming out of our mouth, talking to somebody that is so different politically than we are in this generation? I remember I was in England, sitting across the table from somebody, and I always position myself a little bit more conservative. I think at best I'm a centrist. But back in the day, I was a little bit more conservative. Sitting across with somebody that is liberal, and she said, I can't believe that somebody can be a Christian and be a conservative. And my response is, like, I can't believe somebody can be a Christian and be a liberal. And we are sitting across the table, and I am still grieved on that conversation because we were both missing the point. We were both missing the point by miles and hundreds of miles, right? Because thinking through that is saying that somebody that is in more democratic views and more liberal in their views, they're more consumed with the person. And somebody that's more conservative is more consumed with the structures. Both are needed. Both conversations are very much needed. But on top of that, the different game that we talked about in a different podcast is being part of a different platform. You are consumed with the things of the kingdom. That's what I love about what Apostle Paul is saying. Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it, consumed with the things of the kingdom. And so as we go to the polls, there is a way for us to be consumed with the... And here's the mistake that I think... I don't even know that it's a mistake. I'll call it an overemphasis. I think here is the overemphasis. As we look at moral issues like abortion, even things like immigration, if we look at the economy, any of these issues that we look at that we would consider to be fairly strong political issues, we generally frame them as political. These issues are also theological. And they are, as such, they are ecclesial. In other words, they're church issues. And so what I would argue is that part of the overemphasis we're making, we are saying, look, these problems can only be solved through political action. And I think that's a mistake. It's something I've talked about on the podcast previously. I call it cheap participation, right? So when you go through the grocery line, you know, like around Thanksgiving or Christmas, they do this a lot. And they're like, hey, would you like to round up to help feed a family for Thanksgiving? Would you like to round up to feed a family for Christmas? And, you know, I mean, it might be 15 cents, right? And you know intuitively that that 15 cents is going to add up and this is going to have an impact. And so I don't have a problem with rounding up. In fact, I usually do it, right? So let's round up. Great. The danger in rounding up is in thinking that in rounding up, you've done all you need to do. That's what I mean by cheap participation. Rounding up is about the easiest thing in the world to do, right? Occasionally, it comes out to like...

5 cents. Yeah, no problem, right? Yes. And so it's cheap participation. It really requires no effort on my part other than to push a button on the screen. I'm actually just depressing an extra button. That's all I'm doing. I'm saying an extra yes in answer to a cashier. That is cheap participation. And so my concern sometimes with Christians and the political process is that we are participating cheaply by voting. The voting becomes all we need to do to solve these issues. Yes. And so I think that's an overemphasis, again, that we may be falling prey to. We're overemphasizing the significance of politics, and we're underemphasizing the myriad of ways that the church can plug in and do something about these issues outside the political realm. And so we spend a lot of time and a lot of energy. I mean, we've spent multiple podcasts on this, right? And so, and I don't mind talking about this stuff, but the reality is, right, what we keep coming back to is just this. The world needs the church. Yes. The world needs the church. And if the world does not have the church, guess what? It's always going to be the world. Always. Because in thinking that we need political power to fix these issues, we've already lost. Yes. We've missed something, right? Yes. And so, that is, to me, sort of where Paul's statement about being all things to all people that we might save some starts to come in. That statement and approaching politics from that perspective gives us a true alternative that most of us don't think about, which is non-participation. Now, I'm not arguing for non-participation, right? I am saying that it needs to be a viable option within Christian thinking because we care so much about reaching the lost that we are willing to become all things to all people that we might save some. Yes. Part of what we're seeing in these critiques coming out, as I mentioned before, the Terra Centermire is able to critique evangelicals the way she is because we've surfaced. Right. We've made it known. Hey, we're evangelicals and we're voting for Trump. Yes. And so, there's only a couple ways to solve that, right? Either don't claim evangelical on the voting sheet, not telling you not to be evangelical in daily life, right? Not at all. But maybe the government doesn't need to know that you're evangelical, right? Maybe they don't need it for their stat sheet. Maybe that's just their problem, not ours. But then the other way of it is just don't vote. At the end of the day, you know, we have to trust that whether we vote or not, God is going to put the man who he wants, man or woman, who he wants in charge, in charge. Like nobody voted for Caesar, right? Nobody raised their hand for Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus in the Old Testament, right? Like these guys are in charge. And so, I think that while yes, it's appropriate for us to participate in the mechanism, we also need to be really thinking this through from a thick theological perspective and saying, at what point does participation in politics do more damage than it does good? And are there ways that we could reorient our efforts or add to our efforts, right? Not abandon politics 100%, but to say, we're not going to spend as much time on this as we used to because we're going to be doing church things. We're going to be doing the politics of the church. We're going to be serving and caring for people. We're going to mobilize in that direction. I don't think there's an easy solution here, right? Like I don't, I'm not arguing that there is some utopia that we can find if we'd only do it a different way. I think that's ridiculous, right? But I do think that there are avenues of faithfulness that we very seldom explore because we've bought into this idea that there's a political system that we have to participate in. Yes. And I think that when we buy into that given, right? Not that it's bad to participate, but when we buy into that given, when it becomes a have to, a must, we have made a category mistake. Yes. And that skews our thinking. We have to choose between the two evils. Yes. That's right. That's right. And you know what the reality is? We don't. We don't. Right? We don't. We have other options available to us. Right. We're not caught in the well. And so, you know, we're not at the bottom of the well. We can see the whole bigger picture. We have plenty of other options we can exercise. And if it's going to create such tumultuous craziness to support one party or another or one candidate or another or whatever, maybe there are better ways for us to do this that would allow us to be all things to all people that we might save some. Yes. There's some good news in this. There's some serendipity and there's a silver lining. Here's the silver lining. You might not agree with me and I'm fine with that. But here's the silver lining for me. The world knows what it means for us to be Christian. So the world knows what a Christian should look like. I grew up in a place where it was not cheap to be a Christian. So not a lot of people were Christians because you got beat up by the government and it was like, you know, it was not cheap to be a Christian. It meant something. But that came with some advantages because, for example, you got pulled over by the cops, right? And the cop was like, have you been drinking, sir? And you're like, no, I'm a Christian. And the cop would never waste one of his tools over there to check if you're drunk because you just said, I'm a Christian. So he was like, yeah, I know this guy doesn't drink because he's a Christian. Now, again, this is communism hardcore, like saying that that's the value of Christianity, that you don't drink. But it meant something in the marketplace so strong. When you said you're a Christian, the world immediately said, hey, what are you doing here? Aren't you a Christian? Why are you laughing at this joke? Aren't you a Christian? Why are you doing this? And it would always correct. It's interesting to me how well the world knows what it means to be a Christian, even when they, you know, they're saying they're acting like they don't know. They know very well. In this generation, in America right now, the world, however you define that system, is screaming at the church and saying, what are you doing? Why are you embracing the political system? Why are you embracing a political candidate like it's yours? It's actually screaming at the church and saying, what are you doing? This is not what it means to be a Christian. And I really think we need to listen to that voice. I think that voice should teach us something. Why is the world screaming at us? Exactly like the article that you mentioned. You have failed America and you have failed Christianity. But where they're screaming that, that means they need you to be the church. They need you to be there even though they disagree fundamentally with you, but they need you to be there because without that faith, without the person of faith, the entire system would collapse. Yeah. And I think ultimately, it's a really great place for us to sort of close this out because what I would say is, I heartily agree with that. I do find it fascinating and perhaps politically expedient that people conveniently know what the church should be like when the church does something that they disagree with. And so I think what people would really like is for the church to swing around and serve their politics as opposed to the other people's politics. But I think the point you're making is absolutely correct, is that there is a way that people understand who Christians are supposed to be, that we are supposed to be different, that we're supposed to be more, maybe above it all in some ways. I'm not saying holier than thou, but actually sort of thinking on a different plane. And in voting for Trump, at least, you know, certain commentators are sitting back going, this doesn't seem like you're above it all. It seems like you're down in the mud with the rest of us. What are you doing? And so I think it is a good wake-up call for us to start rethinking how we evaluate, how we explain why it is that we're making the political decisions we are, you know? And I do think a lot of, there are a lot of great resources out there. Augustine's ordering of loves, I think is a great one, you know, thinking through it from that perspective. But then I'd also just, you know, mind the scriptures because I, you know, it's a much more recent thought for me to begin wrestling with if Paul is telling me to be all things to all people that I might save some, how do you do that in a democracy where you have two candidates and it is very transparent who you've voted for? You know, I mean, Paul didn't have that problem, right? Caesar wasn't elected. And so Paul's talking about in a very different context. He's talking about in terms of, you know, Jew-Gentile relationships and various different things. But, you know, Paul would have still been fairly public. It's not like he's not going to have anybody, you know, taking pot shots at his decisions. We're always going to have to deal with this. And so I think we need to wrestle to the ground what Paul is really saying.

Saying there. And because at the end of the day, even if Trump got elected, if Biden gets elected again, whoever gets elected, right? It's four years. It's four years versus the eternal salvation of someone we could potentially reach if we were just willing to sit back and say, our task is not electing the right guy. Our task is serving the right God. And so that's where I think we need to focus as Christians. I agree wholeheartedly. So, folks, as you're making your voting decisions, obviously I don't have, and I don't think Aline has, any clear-cut advice for you, right? We're not going to tell you what hole to punch on the voter booth. We're not going to tell you who to cast a vote for. We're not even going to tell you what issues you should have at the top of your priority list. But what I think we would say is just this. What it means to think Christian about these issues is to make God the most relevant factor in the room. To make much of God. And to the extent that we can point to and magnify him through the decisions we make in politics, we're doing the right things. That's true. James, would you please, I got a chance to preview your Serpents and Doves book. I got a chance to just read a little draft of that. And I'm excited about when that's coming out. Could you please give just one quick shout out on, because I think that's tremendously important. Yeah, yeah. So I'd encourage people, take a look, you know, sign up at usefulthegod.com. Download one of our pieces from there. I have a new book coming out called Serpents and Doves, Christian Politics and the Art of Bearing Witness. And I go into greater depth on a lot of these issues in the book, as well as just dealing with some basic biblical concepts and trying to wrestle to the ground what it means to have the church distinguished from the state. It should be coming out sometime in February. And so I'm excited to offer it. And I would encourage you to just go over to usefulthegod.com, sign up for something, and then you're on our email list and you'll get a notice when the book comes out. It'll be available on Amazon.com. So, yeah, look forward to that. And hopefully, hopefully it will be a help to folks as they move into the voting season. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's gonna be a great year. All right, everybody. Aline, thanks for being here. Folks, thanks for listening. And we will look forward to having you back on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care, everybody. I wanna take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. Life Audio. Praying Christian Women, the podcast that brings Christian women together to talk about the deep questions about prayer that we're all thinking, but sometimes afraid to ask. Hi, I'm Jamie Hampton, and my podcast partner, Alana Terry, and I would absolutely love for you to join us as we discuss what it means to be a woman of prayer in the 21st century. This podcast will be your go-to for biblical encouragement, inspiration, and practical tips to equip you with the tools you need to live out a more passionate, powerful prayer life. Tune in now at lifeaudio.com or your favorite podcasting app.