Evangelical Leaders on Voting - Demonstrable Hatred

So last week, I started off the week very focused on something in particular, and I admit that I got distracted. That's my bad. I shouldn't get distracted by nonsense, especially when we've got an election coming up and we've got to be laser focused over the next week or so on whatever it is that we're attempting to do.

I've got a bunch of stuff that I need to be focused on. Not just the election, of course, but I run another business and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, let's jump into it today, because at the beginning of last week, I was focused on this idea of voting Democrat and how that should be a church-disciplinable offense.

That should be something that if you don't repent of that, you ought to be excommunicated. And so I issued a challenge, and I borrowed this challenge from actually a Jonathan Lehman Nine Marks article, where in that article, he makes the case that there are some political parties that exist pretty much exclusively to do evil.

And so it would be a sin and an excommunicatable offense for someone to support a party like that. And in the article, he mentions the KKK and the Nazi party. I would agree with both of those things. I think that both of those parties exist primarily to do evil.

There might be some small redeeming qualities here or there of something that they want to do that is actually good, but by and large, they exist pretty much to do evil. And so I would say, if you're claiming the name of Christ and you're intending on voting for the KKK party in an election or the Nazi party or something like that, that that should be something that you should be called to repentance for.

And if you don't repent, you should be removed from the assembly of Christ. You no longer have the right to call yourself a Christian. That's what I would say. Now, I would apply that also, though, to the Democratic Party, because if you look at the Democratic Party platform, which we've been doing over the last few weeks, you will see that almost to the point, every part of that platform is evil.

They are saying, look, we are a party that is gathered together to do these list of things. And when you look at that list, it's pretty much exclusively evil. Even if you go just by like body count and stuff like that, like there's so much more death caused by the Democratic Party's policies than by the KKK parties.

So it's actually worse than the KKK. The Holocaust of abortion is way worse than the evil murders and stuff like that, that the KKK did. They're both bad. But let's just be honest, if you just go by a strict body count, it's clearly worse.

And so I issued a challenge. I said, hey, guys, anyone who thinks it's crazy to excommunicate Democrats, Christians who claim the name of Christ that are voting Democrat, explain to me what the difference is.

What's the principle that you're using to make it OK for like the KKK and the Nazi Party, but not OK for the Democratic Party? Because I have a sneaking suspicion that basically the only difference is that a lot of your friends are Democrats right now, and it would look very bad to excommunicate Democrats from the church.

In fact, Phil Vischer said this exact thing. He claimed that, well, pretty much black people just pretty much vote for Democrats. And so if you excommunicated them, what you're saying is that there's no room for black people in Christ.

And no, that's not what we're saying. And see, the thing is, guys like Phil Vischer, they're obsessed with optics, right? Let's just say that all Latinos were voting for Democrats except for me. I would have the same opinion because for me, it's not about optics.

It's about what's right. And so if it's wrong to vote for Democrats, which I argue that it is because the entire platform is evil from top to bottom, all they want to do is evil. If it's wrong for for someone to do that, then it doesn't matter what their skin color is.

It doesn't matter if it's if it's black or Latinos or Asians or whatever. It's always wrong because I'm not a partial person. So to me, it's not about the optics of the situation. It's about what's right.

And so, you know, I issued that challenge. And honestly, I did not expect very many people to take it up because I don't think there really is a good argument to make the difference between voting KKK and voting Democrat.

You know, you can you can look at the platform from top to bottom and there's a lot of evil in both. And so if it's good for the goose, then it's definitely good for the gander. So I didn't expect many people to provide any kind of response, but I did get a few people that did respond and they responded in a similar way that really, to me, seemed like a non argument.

Like I didn't understand why they were responding that way, but I really want to understand. Right. And so I thought about it a lot and I think I might have figured it out. So the response goes something like this.

They say, look, A .D., what you don't understand is that people vote for certain candidates or parties for very different reasons. They don't always just vote for a certain party because of abortion. I know that you're obsessed with abortion, A .D., but not everybody's obsessed with abortion.

We're looking at the entire platform and we don't always necessarily vote for that platform for the same reasons that you do. So everyone has different reasons for voting and you can't just excommunicate people because they choose someone differently than you.

The other thing that that they'll typically say is that like, you know, church disciplinable offenses are few and far between. It's not just any sin. And so the thing is, like, you can't just say this kind of sin is is different.

It's not a church disciplinable offense. Furthermore, I'm not even sure if it is sin to desire the Democratic Party platforms to be to be accomplished in Toto. There might be there might be, you know, sort of some things that you would do differently, but I'm not even sure that's a church disciplinable offense.

Prove to me that that all sins are church disciplinable offenses and then maybe we can talk. But until you do, until you show me the verse that says that voting for a platform is is is a church disciplinable offense, then you can't say that it is.

And so therefore, be quiet, A .D. And I couldn't understand why they were responding in that way. For for one, I mean, obviously, I know that people vote for different reasons. But my point is that if you support if you desire a party to accomplish evil, which I would say that the Democratic Party tells you they're going to accomplish evil and then goes and does it, if you desire that party to be empowered so that they can accomplish their evil goals, I would say that that's that's that's clearly a sin, right?

Like like whatever the reasoning that you give you in your own mind, like desiring evil ends is itself evil. So I don't care what the reasons are. Nobody's offered or even one reason that's legitimate to to to vote for Democrats.

And so that's weird. Furthermore, I'm not saying that everyone has to agree with me on who I'm going to vote for. I think there are totally legitimate options out there for people to vote. You don't have to vote Republican.

You don't have to vote for Donald Trump. But one thing you cannot do is vote for a party that exists primarily to do evil. That doesn't that's a nonstarter for a Christian. So there's definitely at least one party, the Democratic Party, that you cannot vote for.

But I'm not saying who you need to vote for. So that's that's the other thing. But then I started thinking about sort of what's what's sort of the reasoning behind this, right? Like, why are they saying that they're not even sure that this is a church?

Even if it was a sin, it's not a church disciplinable offense. Why is that? Why is desiring to put into power? Because a vote is nothing more than expressing your desires, you know, in action. Right. So when you when you vote for Joe Biden, Biden, you are expressing your desire that he become the president.

Right. You're wanting him to become president. And presumably you want some of his activities that he's told you he's going to go and do. You want those to be enacted. My argument is all of those activities are evil.

So when you're desiring that Joe Biden be empowered in order to do evil, then you are desiring to do evil. That's that's my argument. And so why is that not why would that not be a church disciplinable offense?

Because I've had a lot of people say, I think you're right. I think it is sinful to vote Democrat. In fact, Jonathan Lehman says this. He thinks it's sinful to vote Democrat, yet he doesn't think it's a church disciplinable offense.

Why is there a disconnect there? And I started thinking about this and I thought about it for a while. And obviously I don't know the exact answer because I'm not inside everybody's head. But I think that there has been a pervasive idea that has been spreading amongst evangelicals for a very long time, and it's coming out more and more regularly.

And I think it's all connected to the Revoice conference. Do you remember the Revoice conference where they're trying to kind of recast how we think about homosexuality and homosexual behavior? One of there's a lot of problems with the Revoice conference, but one of the problems is sort of like a disconnect.

They're trying to build a wall between the desire for another man, if you're a man or another woman, if you're a woman. And the actions of actually, you know, trying to join them in union, marry them, have sex with them or something like that.

And so they're trying to build this this wall where you can say, OK, I'm a gay Christian because I desire other men, but I've never acted on it, so I'm OK. So the desire itself isn't a sin because, by the way, God gave me that desire.

And it has to be right, good and holy because God gave me that desire. Not everybody says this, by the way, but a number of them do. And so there's a wall between the desire itself and the action. So somebody can get up on stage and say, I'm a gay pastor and not be church disciplined because there's a difference between the desire, which is good, right and holy, or maybe it's disordered, but it's not your fault.

So it's like they'll say maybe it's like maybe it's not right, but it's not wrong either. It's just it just is. It's just a thing that is. And so there's like a disconnect there between the desire to do evil and the evil itself.

And this is very hard to understand for most conservative Christians, because we know that our Lord has said that that disconnect, that that's actually not real. You know what I mean? Like that's actually not real.

Like if you lust in your heart after a woman, if you desire a woman that that's not your wife, that's the sin of adultery. Now, it's not the crime of adultery. We couldn't execute justice upon you. We couldn't convict you of adultery on the evidence of two or more witnesses.

It's it's a different kind of sin, but it is a sin. Right. If you hate your brother in your heart, we heard from the words of our Lord like that hatred is the sin of murder. It's it's a different kind.

We couldn't execute justice on you on the evidence of two or more witnesses. It's not a crime, but it's a sin. You've committed murder if you hate your brother in your heart. There's no disconnect between the desire and the action.

Right. That's the thing. And so when we think about the desire to empower Joe Biden to accomplish his wickedness, whether it's the abortion issue or whether it's stealing from some people to give charity to others, welfare programs, progressive tax rates, carbon credits, destroying industries, whatever it is, whatever the evil that they want to accomplish is.

When you express your vote to desire to empower him to do that evil, that desire itself is a sin. It is church disciplinable. It's not that it's not as bad as it could be. You could be the literal ones doing the stealing.

Right. You could be the one who steals from some and gives to poor people. That would be a worse sin. That would be something we could execute justice on, of course. But the desire for the sin is a sin.

So when Greg Johnson gets up and says, I'm a gay pastor because I have a desire for other men, he should be church disciplined for that. He should be defrocked for that because the desire itself must be mortified.

I'm not saying it's easy to do this because everyone has sinful desires. You know yourself, you know yourself better than I know you. I don't have to tell you that you have to sinful desires that you think about and that are in your heart.

And there they feel like they're just there because sin is so pervasive in us and we must defeat it. We must rule over it. Right. We know that I hate my sin. I hate that. I hate my sinful desires. And I hope that you do as well.

The thing is, though, that like we can't have this disconnect, this wall, because I'm thinking to myself, why are people saying that this is somehow not a sin that is church disciplinable, especially because it goes beyond the desire?

Because here's the thing, guys. Like, let's just be honest, like desiring sinful policies is one thing, but going and voting for someone to be empowered to do those sinful policies, that actually crosses the line into action, right?

So it doesn't even make sense in the first place. But I think that that the idea that there's kind of a wall between the desire and the sin itself, that is something that expresses itself in revoice for sure.

And I think it's expressing itself in this whole situation with voting. Like, how can Jonathan Lehman say that it's a sin to vote Democrat, but I won't confront you about it and I won't church discipline you about it?

Like, how much does somebody have to hate you to allow you to continue in sin? If somebody is doing a sin and saying, expressing themselves, their desires in an action, in an action, they're expressing their desires and you think you're a pastor, my goodness, you're a pastor and you think it's a sinful desire that's being expressed in a sinful action.

How much do you have to hate them to not confront them, to start church discipline? And the way you start church discipline is to confront them and say, hey, brother, you're doing this thing. You ought not to do this thing.

Let me explain why. Like, like if you won't even do that, like how much do you have to hate someone? It's, it's, it's just really, it's really hard to understand. But I think that whatever, I haven't really thought through this all the way, but I think whatever's driving the revoice error that I just described, where you can be a gay pastor, but not get defrocked because the desire for gayness isn't as bad as the gayness itself.

It's not really a church disciplinable thing. Besides, it could be holy. Whatever's driving that disconnect is also driving this disconnect here, where we have tons of pastors that'll say, I wouldn't vote for a Democrat.

I think it's sinful, but I'll come to the table with you and I won't confront you. In fact, I'll write article after article after article, soothing your conscience the same way that they write articles about the revoice conference saying, well, track A and track B and side A and side B.

By the way, we're still figuring this out. Wasn't that Tim Challies who was like, yeah, we're still figuring this out. You know, it could be legitimate. It's like, man, if you know better and you're not confronting your brother, you really ought to think about what the definition of hate and love is.

You really ought to think about that. Anyway, let me know what you think about this in the comment section below. I hope you found this video helpful. I'm going to be laser focused this week. Laser focus.

God bless.