IN HIS
UNFAILING
LOVE
MINISTRIES

How Christian voters have denied their faith
Posted: November 04, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
via Alan Keyes

Regardless of the outcome of the presidential election,
the 2008 election cycle has been a winnowing season for all
Americans who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. Both
of the major parties nominated individuals whose views discard
the nation's founding principle of respect for the authority
of the Creator God.

Faced with this circumstance, those in full possession of the facts
had to make a choice for or against telling the truth. Many
so-called Christian leaders chose to act deceitfully. They
produced voters' guides and made statements pretending that
John McCain is pro-life. His record includes some actions that
appear to be pro-life and others that could not be. They
emphasized the first and ignored the second. If the pro-life
position is just a matter of counting votes, they could claim
to be justified. But Christian conscience can never be satisfied
with a result that accepts as righteous those who appear to do
good, but turn their backs on the principle of all goodness,
which is the will and spirit of God. Such were the Scribes
and Pharisees whom Christ harshly ridiculed and condemned,
even though his uncompromising rejection of them led directly to
his unjust arrest, torture and crucifixion.

For Christian conscience, the core of the pro-life position
is not a matter of numbers, but of wholesome respect for God's
authority. McCain's consistent and repeated
support for research that destroys embryonic human lives and
his position that state governments have the right to disregard
the God-given unalienable right to life prove that such respect is
not the basis of his actions. As a matter of Christian conscience
and American principle, he is not pro-life. Moreover, since
McCain professes to accept the fact that humanity exists from the
moment of physical conception, his willingness to support
embryo-destroying research implies a conscious choice to go against
God's will when expediency requires. He knows what is right, but as
a matter of conscious calculation chooses to do otherwise. As a matter
of conscience, this is exactly what Obama has done by supporting the
murder of viable babies born into the world despite every effort to
abort their lives. Obama's position is an outrage, not just as a
matter of feeling, but because it self-evidently violates God's
stand against the taking of innocent life. When he advocates the
view that such murder is part of so-called "abortion rights," he,
too, consciously rejects God's authority.

As a matter of political expediency, some leaders in the pro-life
cause have been willing harshly to condemn Obama's conscious choice
against God, while consciously hiding McCain's similar choice. They
have produced deceptive voters' guides that label McCain as pro-life.
These same leaders quietly contradict themselves, however, by arguments
that take the view that "Christians have no choice but to support the
lesser of two evils", thus tacitly acknowledging that McCain, too,
stands for evil. Though some ignored the thorough arguments I and
others have made against the choice-of-evils position, others
recognized their truth. They adjusted their rhetoric, taking the
position that Christians had to vote effectively to limit evil - or
else they would be guilty of promoting it.

Slyly, this argument implies that those who conscientiously
seek to hear the word of God and keep it are in fact the evil ones.

Yet the apostle says, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil
with good." (Romans 12:21) We cannot limit something
by extending it. The limit is established where it ends and something
else begins. Christ suggested this when he responded to the unforgivable
accusation of the Pharisees who said, "It is only by Beelzebub the
prince of the demons that this man casts out demons." Christ replied
to them, saying:

Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city
or house divided against itself will stand; and if Satan casts out
Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand?
And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast
them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. But if it is by the
Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has
come upon you. (Matthew 12:25-28)

Clearly, Christ ridicules the notion that evil can be divided against
itself, that a line can be drawn that incidentally separates evil
from evil when both arise from the same principle. Yet this is
precisely what they seek to do who claim that we can limit one evil
by supporting another. Christ understood that we must define good
in terms of its source, not its circumstances. "Either make the tree
good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad;
for the tree is known by its fruit." (Matthew 12:33) For Christian
conscience, the difference between good and evil is a matter of
principle. This is why Christians reject moral relativism and
"situational ethics." For Christian conscience, the moral nature
of action lies in the relationship between the action and its
source, which is to say, the principle that governs it. The will of God
is the principle of good action.

And behold, one came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good
deed must I do to have eternal life?" And he said to him, "Why do
you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would
enter life, keep the commandments. " The young man said to him, "All
these I have observed: what do I still lack?" Jesus said to him, "If
you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." When the
young man heard this he went away sorrowful: for he had great
possessions. (Matthew 19:16, 20-22)

The line between good and evil (the limit of evil) can
only be established by action that focuses on God's will. In his words
to the young man, Christ points to God's commandments as the indicators
of his will. But he goes on to suggest that until we see as good
only those things that correspond to God's will, and wholeheartedly
follow the one who embodies them, our observance of his will is not
complete.

A good action is one that arises from this single-minded and wholehearted
focus on God. The aim and objective of the action is God, so that no
preoccupation with evil plays any part in it whatsoever. This is
entirely incompatible with action that aims at "limiting evil," which,
by focusing upon evil, loses sight of the root and source of all good.
Good action may in effect limit evil, but it does so by making way for
good, as John the Baptist made way for Jesus Christ.

(HALLELUJAH - GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST!!!!)

Now those who say that we are morally obliged to support evil in order
to limit it suggest that people who fail to do so are somehow
responsible for the evil that results. They contend that people who
single-mindedly seek out and support a candidate for president whose
views and actions consistently align with the commandments are
morally culpable. Anyone, therefore, who does not vote for the evil
they prefer (in this case John McCain) is casting a vote for the evil
they oppose (in this case Barack Obama.)

--->This comes close to the unforgivable stance of the Pharisees,
who ascribed evil to one whose only crime was to follow the will of his
father God.<---

Though Jesus could know with certainty and from within the exact
substance of his father's will, we rely upon faculties of perception
and reasoning that leave us with no source of certainty except by faith.
We want to do what's right, but we cannot know that what we do will in
fact produce results more good than evil. Therefore, our choices are
almost always approximations, best guesses about a future whose contents
"must be acted 'ere they may be scanned." As beings finite and limited,
we can only have a finite and limited impact upon the future. If we take
stands that seem to correspond to God's will, but produce results that
move the situation further away from his will, do we not promote evil
in fact for the sake of an unreal and unattainable perfection?

If we walked only by sight, this argument might
be decisive. But on numerous occasions Christ demanded that his
disciples trust in him, rather than in the results of their own
rational calculations. They did so when he twice fed the multitudes with
a few loaves and fishes, though their rational calculations told them
so little food could not possibly feed so many. Peter did so when he
stepped out of the boat with nothing but his trust in Christ to keep
him from being swallowed by the sea. This reliance upon the Lord was in
and of itself enough to secure salvation for people as disparate as the
woman healed by a touch of his garment, and a crucified thief saved by
his simple recognition that what seemed the culmination of Christ's
failure and defeat was in truth the seal and emblem of his triumphant
victory. Such as these trusted before what Christ called "the sign of
Jonah" had been revealed. As Christians for whom that sign is like
the rock of ages, what faith are we called to by our certainty of its truth?

The key flaw in all the arguments that call us in this election to embrace
evil in order to fight or limit evil is that to do so we must surrender
our single-minded reliance upon God. But what once we let go of that
reliance, what good is left to us? Once we take up the sword of evil
to fend off or defend ourselves against it, what becomes of the faith
whereby Christ fed the multitudes and which alone opens the way to life and
hope and a future? These questions reveal the true import of this flawed
moral reasoning. It seems to offer us a better hope for victory as the
world understands the term, but only if we surrender the faith that
alone leads to the victory that lies beyond the world's understanding.
That faith is proved especially in those circumstances when we trust in
God as the standard of truth though the whole light and reason of the
world decries our trust as folly. Who is responsible for evil: those
who persevere in faith despite the world's reproof, or those who say we
must surrender perfect trust in God in order to limit evil? Don't the
latter lure us into a place that is beyond redemption precisely because
to reach it we must surrender our hold upon the key that opens the
floodgates of God's saving grace? Rather on the day when evil seems to
triumph over us, should we not hold fast and say, though it be with
our last breath, as Jesus did, "Father into thy hands I commit my
spirit" - and there leave will and choice, conscience and vote and all?

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