Voting: Is a Refusal to Vote Republican Essentially a Vote for Democrats?

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Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

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Listen and enjoy this latest episode as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions. Here's Pastor Tim.

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On this episode of Bible Bash, we'll be answering the question, Is a refusal to vote Republican essentially a vote for Democrats?

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Now, for as long as I can remember, the basic Republican impulse at this point was to suggest that essentially the country is divided into half, and half the country is going to always vote

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Democrat, and so essentially in order for a Republican to actually win, we need basically every single registered

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Republican to vote, and a failure to vote or a vote for a third -party candidate is essentially going to constitute a vote for Democrats.

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Now, this kind of calculus was brought to the forefront in terms of President George H .W.

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Bush's second run for president, where he lost to Ross Perot because many people voted third -party candidate, and essentially many people were persuaded that that vote for the third -party candidate is what lost the presidency for him.

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But then, for as long as I can remember, this has been basically the argument. The Democratic Party on the left are basically just literal

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Nazis. They're demon -possessed individuals who are attempting to destroy our country as fast as they possibly can, and so if you're an individual who cares about that, and if you know what they're planning to do, and if you don't stand in their way of that and hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, then essentially what you're doing is you're handing the

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Democrats the office, and one of the things that's happened over the past few years is that the level of insanity on the left has just magnified and amplified to the point where now we are obviously just tumbling down the side of the mountain as fast as we possibly can, awaiting the crash at the end.

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The Democrats on the left are pushing as hard as they possibly can to basically destroy

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Western civilization at every single level, and Bill Clinton, he used to be considered someone who was liberal, and now if you look back at President Clinton, he seems conservative.

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You can even think about how far advanced we are in our rebellion at this point when President Obama started off his first run for president essentially saying that he believed that marriage was between a man and a woman, and we are so far from that at this point that basically the left is pushing and pushing and pushing to get as far, to push us to as many insane positions as we possibly can, so what do we make of these things now?

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As I said, for as long as I can remember, the moral voting calculus has always been presented to people that essentially we know that the

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Republicans don't really have a spine, they aren't really going to do what they promise, but then there's always been this pressure to think about what you're doing, because each new election that comes along is basically the entire country hangs in the balance and everything else, and so if you fail to do your part, vote

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Republican, then evil will prevail and good will lose, and that's always been the basic moral intuition.

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Now one of the things that was remarkable about that basic moral intuition is that over the past 20 years or so as I've been trying to pay attention to these things, and even longer, even when

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I was younger, I remember thinking through these things and thinking that this didn't really make a whole lot of sense.

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The example that has always come to my mind is the example of what do you do if you're forced to choose between Mussolini and Hitler, who do you pick?

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You might do some cost -benefit analysis and try to figure out, well, maybe Mussolini isn't quite as bad as Hitler, but then if in a high -handed way, the

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Mussolini party basically put pressure on you and say if you don't vote for Mussolini, that's a vote for Hitler.

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In a certain sense, it seems like that's bad logic. That seems to be bad reasoning. That just seems to be not the way things work.

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If all you have is just two terrible options, then what do you do with that?

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At a certain point, you basically look at that and you say, hey, maybe it's acceptable morally to say you need to give me some better options if you want me to participate in this kind of mess.

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Now, I'm not trying to say that the Democratic Party platform and the

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Republican platform are equally evil and they're across the board. Essentially what you have is you have a situation where one platform is essentially the platform of the devil and the other platform is remarkably different than that.

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There's still some problems within the Republican Party platform, but largely it's the inverse of the other one.

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But then what's happened is that we've been for a while in a situation essentially where you can imagine a basketball analogy related to the kind of situation that we've been in.

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You can imagine the kind of scenario where you're playing basketball and you have the opposing team and that would be the

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Democrats who are doing everything they can to win and play dirty and foul and everything else.

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They don't care. They have no moral compass. They'll do whatever it takes to win. Then you have individuals on your team who basically want you to keep on coming back to the game and playing.

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But then they tell you this game is going to be different. This game is going to be different. We're going to try. But then when you pass them the ball, they essentially hand the ball straight over to the opposing team and let the other team score.

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If you watch that happen for years and years and years, them just sabotaging the game, at a certain point it may dawn on you that this is futile and this is pointless and this is stupid and you may not want to participate in this kind of sham anymore, in this kind of pretend scenario where you're being sold a bill of goods only to be deceived year after year after year after year.

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Essentially, that's somewhat comparable to what's been happening for a long time.

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Now, when the 2016 election came, one of the things that was interesting to me is that this basic moral position that the right has had for a long time, or for you to vote

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Republican is essentially a vote for Democrat. All of a sudden, you still have plenty of people who thought that way and they would be what

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I would describe as the Trump loyalists or whatever else.

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There are many people who couldn't see anything wrong with Trump at all and essentially were playing the party line at that point.

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Basically, if you're not with us, you're against us. The Republican Party is flawed, but we're not trying to elect a pastor -in -chief or something like that.

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But then basically, they were looking at that scenario and they were running the same play that has always been run.

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The Republicans are our only hope and we got to get the right Supreme Court justices in office and everything else.

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It all depends on this. There are plenty of people in that kind of category, but then you had the phenomenon of the never -Trumper.

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Now, part of the problem with the never -Trumpers, and I would say that originally when that election started happening, the 2016 election,

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I'll be honest with you. I didn't believe much of what Trump said. I looked at him and I saw him as an individual who says a lot of the right things.

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But I didn't believe him. I didn't believe he was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. Wonder of wonders that ended up not actually happening.

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But then I thought some of the things were very clear.

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He was obviously against globalism. He was obviously running America first.

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He obviously believed in that. He obviously wanted America to prosper financially. So I think there's some elements of that that were very good.

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But then they were distorted like a great many things. But then as far as that's concerned,

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I didn't believe him about abortion. I may have been wrong about that. He may have been more serious about abortion than what

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I thought. But I didn't really believe him about traditional marriage or anything like that. I just saw him as a

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New York liberal who was basically just a pragmatist to his core, and I found a lot of his pride and his arrogance somewhat off -putting.

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But then I was somewhat entertained by his boldness and his ability to speak his mind and not care so much about what other people thought about him.

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Honestly, I didn't know how it would turn out. But what I'm trying to say is that there were people in what you might describe as the

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Never Trump kind of movement. I wasn't in the Never Trump movement, but I was nervous about voting for him at that point.

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In the 2016 election, I just saw – I didn't see it as a wonderful choice.

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I just – predominantly I saw him as a reality TV show who – art of the deal, basically con artist who – and a lot of my perspective of him has been vindicated and some of it needs to change as far as that's concerned.

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But I wasn't just closed off to him fundamentally. Now, the problem though is you had a lot of respectable pastors who seemed like for the first time and as long as I can remember, seemed to all of a sudden be pushing on this basic calculus.

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They refused to vote Republican. It's essentially a vote for Democrats. And we're essentially saying, hey, there are lines here.

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So there has to be some kind of standard and maybe we're at that point. They may not have put it quite like this, but maybe we're in a scenario where – what do you do when you have to choose between the beast and the great harlot?

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What do you do when you're choosing between Mussolini and Hitler? And basically maybe they were questioning – what

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I saw was a lot of individuals were questioning that basic moral calculus. Now, the problem is in hindsight when you're looking back on that kind of election, one of the things to realize is that they're – like most of the people who were never

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Trumpers to the core and they were always going to be never Trumpers and there's nothing Trump could do that would ever be good enough.

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What it seemed like was actually happening for those kind of individuals is that they were looking at him and he was so offensive to everything that they stood for.

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And the kind of things that they stood for were being nice and being polite and basically just kowtowing to the left.

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In your standard David French, Russell Moore kind of conservative never

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Trumper at that point, you really do have a group of people who by all appearances just seem to be in love with the approval of the left and this was just like this opportunity for them.

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They were like kids in candy stores. It's like finally we can show the left that we're not these horrible monsters like Trump.

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Trump became kind of like the personification of evil for them and essentially they for the first time could be invited into the cool kids club and could get a pat on the back like they so desperately wanted.

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They were just the dog that was just waiting all day long for the master to return and then barking and wagging his tail when the master gets home and just wanting that pat on the head.

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That's essentially how I view many of the evangelical leaders who were persistently never

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Trumpers. I mean basically the vast majority of your blue check Twitter evangelicals, anti -Trump people, that's essentially what it seems like was happening as far as that's concerned.

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And so I thought maybe it was something different at first but then the more I started to look at it, the more

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I started to see that this is about something different. This isn't about principle. This is about a desperation for the approval of the left and that seems to be the kind of thing that still carried on.

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And so when you had an individual like Trump who came along and essentially didn't care what the media said, who wasn't just going to apologize after every single time they call him racist and sexist and everything else.

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To the evangelical leaders who were inculcated in this philosophy of in order to win the world, you have to essentially just accept all their basic demands and give them whatever they want and validate their feelings.

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This was just a step -by -step repudiation of all the pragmatism that they embodied at every conceivable level.

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But then I think that there are still other people who were looking at Trump in the beginning in 2016 and just nervous about him.

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They weren't in that same kind of category. They're looking at him and saying, hey, I just don't believe him.

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And I don't know what to do when you're in a scenario where you have two choices that just seem horrendous in a variety of ways.

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Now looking at the game film, I'll say that I think Trump presidency was a mixed bag.

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And part of having the ability to comment on these things now and not commenting on them step -by -step gives a person a bit more objectivity as far as that's concerned.

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But there's many things in the presidency that I thought were good. I thought that some of the primarily good things was that God used a brash, arrogant, self -centered, egotistical man to essentially start,

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I think, a populist movement. And that I think is a reaction to the left. I think a lot of the things that you're seeing right now is largely signs of health.

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Just a little bit of courage seemed to go a long way. He emboldened a lot of people to have more courage and to be more courageous and to stop caring so much about what these sycophantic leaders think about them and care so much about what the left thinks about them.

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And so I think that there's a lot of good that came. God, obviously, can use a crooked stick to draw a straight line to use the old preacher metaphor, even though anyone could take a crooked stick and draw a straight line with it because the only thing that's actually touching the ground is the tip.

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But leaving that aside, just not being overly literalistic,

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God can use a fallen, corrupt individual to accomplish some good. I think one of the main things that I look back and I think the main— like the best thing that Trump did was he essentially declared war on critical race theory.

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If I think there's anything good about that, it was that. It was amazing to watch the snake oil salesmen like the

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BD and all them who basically— for years and years, it's like critical race theory.

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It doesn't exist. It's a figment of your imagination. It's a boogeyman, whatever.

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It's not real. You guys just see it under every rock. But then right when Trump took a stand there, all these race -baiting evangelical leaders immediately— all of a sudden, they changed their tune, and it was like, yes, critical race theory is okay.

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And so I think that decision really unmasked many of these compromised evangelical leaders at that point.

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But then this is all—I mean, I think there are other positives there, too.

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I think there's some negatives in that obviously Trump was an egotistical maniac, and it got tiresome listening to him brag about himself on almost every single interview that he ever did.

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I do blame him for locking us down for a year, no doubt. He did so with all the dire predictions, and he was manipulated, and he was used as a tool or whatever else.

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But I do blame him for locking us down for a year. That was wrong. That was the wrong decision to make, and it really was a bad decision.

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Whatever good economy he built, he destroyed by making that kind of decision also. Although I understand—I'm not unsympathetic to the nature of the delusion that swept through all of us.

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I still blame him for that. I still blame him for vaccine -pushing as far as that's concerned.

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And so there's—I mean his presidency was a mixed bag. I think there were some good things about it.

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I think he gave a lot of people courage in his own flawed way, took a stand on critical race theory.

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He—I don't—time will tell about whether or not the Supreme Court justices he picked are actually good choices.

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I mean looking at them now, they look to be a bit of squishes, just typical Republican spineless morons who basically don't know how to take a stand on basically anything.

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But I mean truth—time will be told on that. I think he obviously wasn't a fiscal conservative by any reasonable measure as far as that's concerned.

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And so I don't know. I think that was a mixed bag. But I would say that I saw enough positive signs to go ahead and vote for him in 2020, even though I was reluctant to do so in 2016.

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But then just revisiting this basic question, is there a refusal to vote Republican, essentially a vote for Democrats?

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I've never been persuaded by that kind of moral argument. And I think the way

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I view the Republican Party is that they're just like an abusive boyfriend or something like that who makes all these promises and then, you know,

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I'll never hit you again, baby. And then you take him back each year and then he hits you again.

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And it's like, well, I mean at least you have a boyfriend to protect you from the

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Gestapo or whatever else, which is the left. And I think essentially that's the kind of calculation that most people are making in voting for the

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Republican Party. They're essentially choosing between the abusive boyfriend and then the psychotic maniac who wants to sterilize you and kill you and put you in a gas chamber.

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It's like, well, at least he'll protect you from that, maybe somewhat. But then, you know, I don't know that he's even doing that all that much.

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He takes his turn on you and maybe what he does, like takes his turn beating you a few times. And then he'll, you know, he'll keep the

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Gestapo from absolutely killing you, maybe. But he'll let them, you know, beat you a little bit, too. But in moderation.

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I think when you look at that kind of scenario, I don't know.

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You know, I'm not trying to suggest that my insider observations at that point are perfectly accurate.

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But there's many people who think about it that way. And then you might wonder like at a certain point, it's just like what is the right thing to do in that kind of scenario?

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Should I take back the abusive boyfriend each time he asks? Or do

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I just basically say, hey, enough is enough. You know, I don't need you anymore. I'll just look to God to protect me from these psychopaths on the left.

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And you can, you know, take your protection and, you know, go somewhere else.

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Like if people aren't going to give me a better option, then I'm not going to keep on taking the abusive boyfriend kind of option.

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And it seems to me that that is a valid moral calculus.

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And that is a strategic kind of thing to do. If, you know, if the evangelical church would be able to stand together and basically say, hey, you give us men with courage and conviction and integrity or we're not going to vote.

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It may be that, yeah, you have a few, you know, years of disaster. But you might get something better on the other end of it.

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If they realize that they can't just lie to you nonstop and, you know, keep on taking it over and over and over again.

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Now the problem is that we have so many feckless people on both sides that, you know, strategically it will work.

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I don't know. And like the reality is that there's not enough people with the kind of moral clarity necessary just to stand on their convictions and say that.

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And so then you're in a situation where essentially, you know, like you're just, you're doing the best you can to choose between the abusive boyfriend and the

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Gestapo. What are you going to do? You know, and I don't blame people for basically feeling that way.

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I mean, I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. But then, you know, as the night dawned on me,

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I thought Trump would win. I was pretty confident that he would win. But I was actually pretty surprised about how relieved

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I actually felt when Hillary lost. But, you know,

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I don't know. I don't know what the end result of all that would have been if the other side would have happened. And, you know, the left is so insane at this point that, you know,

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I don't know what to make of it all. But then I'm not persuaded that a refusal to vote

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Republican is essentially a vote for a Democrat. And I'm not suggesting I have the right answers about what to do. I just would tell you that there's plenty of times in life, in the

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Bible, where, like from a biblical perspective, you know, if you're at a church and they're going to basically, you know, they're voting on who's the next pastor or whatever, and they put before you two women candidates, then

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I think as a church member, you say, hey, we're not voting on either one of these. You better give us a qualified candidate.

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And there is a kind of scenario like that in public, in terms of elections, like if someone is going to give you two horrible choices, then you just cast yourself on the mercy of the

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Lord. And whatever we do, if we learn anything from the past eight years, the past 12 years, the past, you know, a couple decades, we learn anything, it's just God's going to have to do a mighty work and send revival, and our hope can't believe in a political process.

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These political leaders have failed us. There is no political solution to this. We need repentance.

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We need Jesus to do a mighty work and save a great many people. And if we would spend much more of our time trying to evangelize people and make disciples and be bold and courageous and stand firm, it might be that there's help for us in other ways than we might actually think.

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But we need something massively different than what we're getting in either one of these parties. In order to really stay the hand of God's judgment, we need to be praying for our nation.

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God has to do a work. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.