Should a pastor be political in the pulpit? Does the Bible address political issues? What makes something political? What political topics are “off limits” from the pulpit? In this episode, Derek Brown and Cliff McManis will answer these questions and many more as they discuss how Christians should think about the government and engage political issues.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome back to the With All Wisdom podcast where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. I am Derek Brown, pastor and elder at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California and academic dean at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary. I’m here with Cliff McManis, pastor teacher at Creekside Bible Church and professor of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary, and today we are going to talk about politics. And along with that theme, I want to point you to a few resources at WithAllWisdom.org. The first is Cliff’s book, What the Bible Says About Government. This is a short but really helpful survey about all that the Bible has to say about secular government and its role in our lives and how Christians should respond to and engage with the government. And then there are a few articles at WithAllWisdom.org that I want to draw your attention to under this theme. First is “A Biblical View of Government.” The second is “Obey Caesar or Appeal to Caesar?”, with a question mark. And the third one is “Christian America?”, with a question mark. Each of these articles address the topic of government and politics from a biblical perspective, but each article has a slightly different emphasis, so I commend each of those to you. And with those recommendations, I want to hand things over to Cliff and hear why it is you want to talk about such a controversial topic.
Cliff: Thank you, Derek. This is exciting. Actually, you had asked me a few weeks ago what may be my next topic would be, and I had been given some thought to win with different ideas, but I thought, well, what are the two most controversial topics that people could talk about? Religion and politics. And I thought, hey, let’s talk about both of those at the same time.
Derek: Perfect.
Cliff: And then we’ll have quite the podcast and we’ll see who we might offend and ostracize and etc. stir up the pot. But that wasn’t the motive, but maybe sometimes that’s the reality, as these are definitely hot potato topics, religion and politics. But I actually gave a title to this podcast, Derek. My title’s pretty straightforward. It’s just, “Let’s Get Political!”, with an exclamation point.
Derek: I saw the exclamation point.
Cliff: So what I wanted to do today is walk through kind of a cornucopia collage, however you want to say it, of different topics related to politics, not just one topic in particular. And I have four main points that I would like to make and then close with a summary and practical encouragement for believers. So my audience here, primarily, or for us as Christians, those who are committed to the word of God, who love Jesus, who want to grow in their faith. So that’s where I’m coming from. So I’m making a lot of assumptions, biblical assumptions about our listening audience, that they’re committed to the Bible. So regarding “Let’s Get Political,” I want to start off with, we are in the middle of an election season and it’s a historic one in terms of, it’s still going on, actually. Election happened more than a week ago, the day of the election, and yet the results haven’t even been determined yet, and so the nation is embroiled in controversy at this point, going on almost 10 days now. So we don’t even know what the outcome is going to be. Nevertheless, the beauty of the Bible is, we can talk about principles that are timeless and it doesn’t matter what event, whether it’s a pandemic that’s maybe temporary or an election that’s passing through for the season. The principles that I want to address are timeless and will always be pertinent and they’ll be relevant the next time an election or pandemic comes up.
Derek: Which is comforting.
Cliff: Absolutely.
Derek: Brings stability.
Cliff: Yes. And that’s what the Word of God does. But regarding this topic of politics, so I’ve been pastoring at the current church here about 14 years, you’ve been with us here for seven, but then you and I had also pastored together some 15 years ago, actually more than that. And then I’ve been at other churches as well over the course of 30 years. It’s taboo, many would think and say in the Christian world that pastors aren’t supposed to be embroiled to talk about politics. And I’m reminded in light of this very controversial political season and recent election that we’re in, just a couple of weeks ago, we had some members of our church who contacted me around the time of the election. Actually what they commended me for being so focused, disciplined, single-minded about staying committed to just doing one thing on Sundays from the pulpit, and that is teaching the Bible. Teaching Scripture, preaching the Word, and specifically not being political. And they found that to be a comfort. They just wanted me to know that. Thank you for being a faithful pastor in terms of just staying focused and even in probably when there’s a temptation during election season or all this discussion that’s going on to want to say something or get political or put my agenda forth on my preferences. So that was very encouraging from them. And these members of our church, they’ve been hearing me preach for a good, almost going on 14 years regularly on Sundays, Sunday school classes. So you put all that together, they have a database of about 500 sermons or lessons that I’ve taught over the course of those 14 years. So that’s a big database and data points they have to make that assessment. And that was their objective assessment. So that was encouraging to me because I thought, well, that’s what I should be doing. As a Bible teacher in the pulpit in the church, I should be teaching the Bible and nothing else. Well, the irony is there have been people who’ve been a part of our church or attended or members, non-members over the years who have said just the opposite to me. And even you and I were in a meeting where not too long ago I was told that my preaching is too political. Remember that meeting?
Derek: I do.
Cliff: And so we were just like looking at each other, please explain, tell me more. And these people had historically thought I taught the Bible faithfully and on a regular basis. And then they came to an assessment that just recently, for whatever reason, I have changed my emphasis and I have pivoted towards preaching more politically than just the Bible. And then I can’t remember if it was either me or you asked them, break that down a little more and they actually gave us a percentage.
Derek: I remember the percentages.
Cliff: I don’t, I can’t quite remember, but it was something like now I teach the Bible 40% of the time and 60% of the time I teach politics. And so that was surprising to hear from somebody who was a part of our church for a few years to come to that conclusion. And you and I talked about that later. It’s like, wow, really? Interesting. And I asked you, Derek, has my preaching changed or is it still the same because you’ve known me for all these years? And I think you said, no, it’s pretty much the same. So I use those two recent anecdotal situations to make an assessment that it’s interesting. You got these two different parties who have come to two totally different antithetical conclusions. One says you don’t preach politics at all. The other says you preach too much politics. And yet these same people are in the same church listening to me, the same preacher, listening to me literally preach the same sermons. And they come to these radically different conclusions. How can that be? Well, I’ve heard this kind of feedback over 20 plus years of preaching at this church and at various churches. Every once in a while, here and there, I’ll preach a sermon and then somebody will come up and say, hey, the sermon was too political. I shouldn’t be preaching on that topic. We’re in a political manner. Or they’ll send me an email. And it hasn’t happened a lot, but it’s happened here and there. It’s happened infrequently enough for me to remember those comments. So maybe less than 10 times over the last 25 years, people have said that. And 100% of the time, as far as I can remember, the reason that they brought it up apparently was, well, definitely they didn’t like the conclusion I came to on the topic. So I remember I was talking about the sanctity of life and abortion. This was like the previous church we were at. And somebody told me that you can’t preach on this. This is too political. And it turns out that they were pro-choice for abortion. And my sermon was for the sanctity of life against choice and for life.
Derek: I remember that sermon.
Cliff: Yes. And that was years ago. Another one was on homosexuality, what God thinks about homosexuality. And I was literally told, you can’t say that, particularly, I quoted a verse from Leviticus that said that basically homosexual is an abomination to the Lord. And the person that heard me say that at church said, you can’t say that. And I said, I didn’t say it, I’m just reading a Bible verse. So those are just a few examples, I can give you several others, but 100% of the time, they were opposed to my conclusions, and as a result, they were saying, you can’t say that, you can’t preach on that topic, it’s off limits, it’s too political. So they put it in a very specific category. This is political, not theological, not biblical, therefore, you can’t address this. So, first question I have for you, because you’ve been teaching in various contexts over the last couple of decades, have you ever had believers communicate the same thing to you, that certain topics are political and those are maybe off limits for church, or I wish Bible teachers wouldn’t talk about those?
Derek: Yeah, I have. In fact, I’m thinking the last two times that was brought up to me, my response was the same these last two times, was, well, whenever the Bible overlaps with the issues of the day, we are obligated to teach on them. And so, because, and the question might be, why is that the case? Well, because our role in discipleship is to teach people how to think biblically in all of life, personal relationships, work, romance, love, parenting, politics, government, the transformation of the mind, Romans 12, one through two, viewing Christ’s Lordship over all that He has made so that He can have preeminence in all things. And so, this issue of discipleship and transforming the mind, we are, as pastors, training our people how to think biblically in all areas of life. And whenever an issue of the day overlaps with what Scripture teaches, then we need to address that.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s a great point. And you’re making kind of a positive argument that in terms of discipleship, we need to preemptively train our people how to think, and there’s a, that’s true of every Christian in terms of discipleship, like you said, but it’s even a greater responsibility on the part of pastors, teachers, and shepherds, that we need to deliberately teach our people how to think properly and biblically. That’s kind of the positive. And the flip side to that is to warn them against unbiblical thinking ideologies and worldviews. And that’s the responsibility of every Christian to warn other Christians of wrong views, wrong theology, dangerous doctrine. I think of Colossians, but all the more a greater responsibility of Christian pastors to do that. You and I, we’re overseers, we’re shepherds, we’re responsible for spiritual growth of our sheep and protecting their soul, and priority number one of protecting their soul and their spiritual life is protecting how they think. And so, I think of Colossians 2.8, see to it that no one takes you, now, this is a command to every Christian, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception. No one.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: So, this is universal. Wrong teaching, wrong philosophy, deception that comes from any court or no matter what court, it’s not just religious areas or the cults or false religion. This is no one. This has to do with how people are, the information they’re taking in, worldviews, ideologies, how they think. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception. This is deceiving, deceiving thoughts, deceiving worldviews, deceiving teachers, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of, just worldly thinking. And same thing Paul says, something similar in Ephesians 4 about being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, every false ideology on planet earth. And so, I think you would agree that some of the most overt and widely propagated false, deceptive, destructive ideologies being taught in the world today come from the political world.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: Don’t you think so?
Derek: Yeah, I would agree.
Cliff: Not false religious teachers?
Derek: Well, and I think this is an important point is that I think one of the reasons perhaps people are not wanting to and Christians are not wanting to engage politics is precisely because political issues, policies, legislation, these things, these are issues of worldview. They come from a worldview. And when worldviews collide, it’s uncomfortable. And I think some would just like to kind of retreat back and not have to deal with it. But in fact, perhaps precisely the reason is because politics deal with worldview.
Cliff: Absolutely. This is a future podcast, by the way, developing a biblical and Christian worldview more in depth. So, going back to this scenario where you got two different members of your church listening the same sermon and making radically different conclusions, and then me just trying to figure out and diagnose how did this come to be. I’ve concluded over the years that it really does come down to the listener and their definition of what they think is political and what’s not political or what they think is biblical. Because that’s relative. You start digging a little bit and ask them, okay, so I’m preaching too politically. What do you mean? And we actually did that with that one person you and I were talking to and it turned out that because I’d been preaching through Genesis, chapters one through three, I kept talking about creation as opposed to evolution. And in their mind, that was political when actually I’m just being driven by the text, God as creator. So that’s an important distinction to make is when you’re, as a believer, as a Christian, what do you mean by political? What constitutes political to you and also what constitutes that which is biblical and are they so separated that you can’t, they don’t overlap?
So this prompts me to ask some important diagnostic questions. I think that may be helpful for all pastors, Bible teachers, the church in general, as an institution, as the body of Christ, and also every believer. So here’s just to prick our thoughts. By the way, the things that I want to say today, I’ll probably end up asking and creating more questions than giving answers today, so that’s okay. But question number one, should a pastor be, I’ll just run through the questions first. Should a pastor be political in the pulpit? Question number two, does the Bible address political issues? Number three, what makes something political? Number four, what topics are, quote, off limits from the pulpit because they are political? And then number five, why can’t a pastor talk about political issues from the pulpit, if that’s the case? So I just wanted to give very brief answers. Every one of those warrants a long discussion, but here’s just brief answers off the top from my point of view.
The first one, should a pastor be political in the pulpit? The answer is the pastor has one job in the pulpit, and that’s 2 Timothy 4:2. Preach the word. Preach the Bible. Preach scripture. All of your sermons should be driven by the text and not your opinion, the events of the day, or what the congregation wants to hear. It’s really simple. Preach the Bible. Or similar ideas from Jesus himself who talked to Peter, commissioning him as one of his shepherds. He said, “feed my sheep” in John 21:16. And the implication is there. Feed my sheep with the word of God, with truth, with scripture. That was question number one. Should a pastor be political in the pulpit? No. You’ve committed to the word. Number two, does the Bible address political issues? And I would say, of course it does. The Bible does address political issues, and there are many, and we’ll talk about some of those as we move ahead. Number three, what makes something political? Well, I determine this is up for debate, because you may get different answers from different people and you may not even agree in the end, because I was being told by a certain people, well homosexuality is a political topic, therefore you can’t preach on it. Or when the gay marriage proposition came up in California years back, about a decade ago, on same-sex marriage, and I preached a sermon on biblical marriage, according to Genesis chapter two in the New Testament, and I was confronted once again by Christians who heard the sermon saying, you can’t talk about this, this is political. And I said, no, my sermon was 100% from the Bible today, and actually God is the one who invented marriage, and He defined it. So they had a different definition and understanding of what was political and therefore what was off limits. So that’s why there’s debate on that issue. What makes something political? Question number four, question number four, what topics are off limits from the pulpit because they are political?
In other words, are there topics that pastors can’t preach on? And my answer is this is another area where Christians disagree, but despite disagreement there is a correct answer, I think, that’s very clear from Scripture. I think you said it well earlier, that wherever the Bible intersects with any given topic, it’s free game and God has something to say about it, and therefore it needs to be addressed from Scripture and from the church and from the preacher using His Bible. Question number five, why can’t a pastor talk about political issues from the pulpit? Well, here’s the answers that we hear in our culture over the last several decades, and these aren’t necessarily legitimate, but they’re just popular ones. Many times we’ll hear from those who don’t like pastors talking on issues they think are political. They say, well, the pastor’s just supposed to teach the Bible, therefore he can’t talk about political issues. Well, on one hand that’s true, but sometimes they define it a different way. They don’t want pastors talking about homosexuality as a sin, and they would even argue that the Bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality as a sin. So that’s a common argument. Others say you can’t preach politics because you might offend some of your congregation if you have both parties, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, and this is actually what some pastors actually do. They don’t want to offend their congregation, and that drives what they’re going to say or what they’re going to refrain from saying. And that’s not always, actually most of the time that’s not legitimate because you are being driven by the fear of man, the fear of the congregation, not the fear of the Lord being faithful to what you need to say.
Another common one is here in America, because we have what’s called the Johnson Amendment of 1954, Lyndon Johnson before he was president. As a senator, he pushed this legislation that became encoded in the IRS provisions, restricting the speech of 501c3 organizations, which are churches in even private organizations that aren’t religious. It could be a school, a college, various charities, whether they’re religious or not, and also churches, synagogues, et cetera. And ever since 1954, many people who are opposed to pastors speaking authoritatively on certain issues try to invoke that and say, you’re going to lose your tax-exempt status if you keep talking about homosexuality or condemning transgenderism, et cetera, et cetera. So that one actually has been abused time and time again. If you read it, actually in the IRS code, it’s very narrow, it’s very limited. One thing it doesn’t say is that it doesn’t say that pastors can’t ever talk about anything that’s politically oriented. We are actually free to preach from the Bible on social issues that we think are important to us based on biblical and religious convictions, and we can also actually talk about things that are perceived as political from the pulpit if we think it is something in the Bible. So this so-called amendment doesn’t preclude us from doing that, even though people threaten us with that all the time. Add to that, we have the Constitution, which not a lot of people want to talk about. We do have freedom of speech, and that doesn’t end when you get up in the pulpit to preach from your church on private property, actually. You should be able to talk to your church about anything as God’s shepherd of what they need to hear from God’s Word. So if it’s in the Bible, I’m pretty much going to talk about it. And of course, that will ostracize or offend people who don’t like that. So a question for you, Derek, in light of all that stuff and these five questions, do you have any brief comment on these five questions? And also, if you could elaborate a little bit more on your comment from earlier that how does the sufficiency of Scripture, that doctrine, play into this, of what we’re allowed to talk about, what we’re not allowed to talk about? Are there issues that are taboo and forbidden that we can’t talk about, or is it true that there are topics and issues that are relevant, pertinent, and important that the Bible actually doesn’t intersect with?
Derek: Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is something I’ve already alluded to on your fifth question is why can’t a pastor talk about political issues from the pulpit? And one of the answers that you sometimes hear is because he’s just supposed to teach the Bible. And I’m concerned that that response is viewing the preaching of the Bible in a way that doesn’t or doesn’t make things awkward for us in our day-to-day life. So it’s a very narrowly conceived way of preaching the Bible that has to do maybe with our personal devotional life, our personal walk with the Lord in kind of a narrowly defined way, but that doesn’t address larger issues that potentially could make things challenging for us in our workplace or among relatives or family members. So this idea of just preaching the Bible, although I am in hearty agreement that that’s what the pastor’s role is, we can’t preach it in a way that sidesteps important issues of the day, especially when those issues are directly addressed in Scripture. So just trying to help people see that when we talk about just preaching the Bible, we can’t conceive of it in an artificially narrow kind of way. Again, when the Bible intersects with issues of the day, we’re obligated to address it. Because the Bible does, and to be faithful to Scripture, we have to. Your question about the sufficiency of Scripture. When I think about the sufficiency of Scripture and the Lordship of Christ over all things, one thing that pastors don’t want to do is bind the conscience of their people on issues that Scripture doesn’t address, like what kind of pants to wear to church and things like that. And sadly, there are churches that do that very thing. So we want to be careful there.
On the other hand, we want to also be aware that Scripture as sufficient addresses all that the Christian needs to know on how to glorify God in their life and how to conduct themselves as a Christian. It impacts their whole way of thinking about life. And so we need to be careful that when we are thinking about the sufficiency of Scripture, we’re not, like I said, artificially narrowing it to not include issues of the day that might be challenging to talk about, might ostracize some people, might ostracize us. And so right now, especially in our current situation, it’s hard for me to nail down, I don’t know, maybe you have some, it’s hard for me to nail down any issue that Scripture doesn’t some way speak to because we found with even like COVID-19 where you could say, Scripture says nothing about COVID-19. You’d had some people even saying that Scripture says nothing about COVID-19. We came to find out as we searched the Scriptures that it says a lot about our current situation with regard to COVID-19, the government and so on. So because of the Lordship of Christ, because Scripture is God’s Word, I see it as having something to say about all of life at some point, at some level. And so that’s where I would, I think, answer your question with regard to sufficiency of Scripture.
Cliff: Yeah, no, I agree. The sufficiency of Scripture, from my point of view, I think I can talk about anything, basically, from the Bible. And the reason I can, because one of the ways to define the sufficiency of Scripture is that the Bible tells us everything we need to know, not everything that we can know. And it even tells us what to do on things we can’t know, in terms of gray areas, where we can’t bind the conscience of a believer. And what the Bible says about that is, there are areas of freedom of conscience and liberty and deferring to one another, loving one another, not judging one another. And that was one of the issues that came up for us during the COVID thing, that there were still very specific biblical principles that even played in these gray areas, some masks and whatever else. So a very important issue that the Bible is totally sufficient for, no matter what we’re dealing with. And I think faithful pastors need to start with that grid, that what does the Bible have to say about this issue, even if it’s a gray area issue. The Bible’s clear on that in laying out principles of how to deal with it. All right, let me transition on to the second main topic or point I want to deal with. And that is, in this past election cycle, here we are in 2020, November 2020, there has been an uptick, at least this is my perspective, you can tell me if you think the same thing, but there’s been an uptick in pastors and high-profile Christian leaders speaking out more specifically about issues and candidates than usual, or that we’re accustomed to in terms of their political preferences. And some actually surprised me of actually who was speaking up politically. Has that been true of you as well?
Derek: Yeah. Yeah, you’re going to mention some today that I was particularly surprised about. And it was an interesting phenomenon to see that this election cycle brought out voices that were a little louder than they had been previously, which I thought was interesting.
Cliff: So it’s like there was some gerrymandering going on over the years, or recently in light of this new election and who the candidates were. And it’s like new alliances were forming in the Christian evangelical world on a grand scale of people who historically weren’t aligned in their thinking on either theology, methodology, or even political issues. And those who once used to be very close in kindred spirits are now on different sides of the discussion. So that was something that rose to the surface that I had totally unexpected.
Probably the two most surprising ones to me were how John MacArthur, who, he was my pastor for years, and I’ve known him for years. And when I was at Grace Community Church, I went to Master’s College, and I studied Bible there. I went to the Master’s Seminary. I worked at Grace Community Church for a little bit. And so we were taught as shepherds and pastors, emphatically and very clearly, you are not to be political. Even Pastor John shared for 50 years that he is not going to be political from the pulpit. And people always ask him, why don’t you go on this TV show? And that TV show said, no, I’m not going to do that. And just within the last year, actually, since COVID, we saw him do the circuit of political show after political show after political show after political show. Because he was on Laura Ingraham, he was on Tucker Carlson, he was on Glenn Beck, who’s a Mormon. And those people are all about politics. That’s it. I mean, I can just go on CNN, Shannon Bream from Fox News, blog, podcasts, and other shows that he’s going on for the last eight or nine months, like he was very deliberate in wanting to get the word out, whatever that word is. And many perceive this as being political, which goes against the grain in the last 50 years of John MacArthur’s convictions. So that was interesting. The other very surprising one was how outspoken John Piper was in a recent article that he wrote, and I want to talk about that with you in just a second, that he wrote in October just before the election. So as far as high profile Christian leaders, they fall into different camps. There’s always those who are perennially political. They always seem to be from Franklin Graham, who prays at presidential inaugurations, and his dad, who prayed for a new and developed friendships with presidents over the course of six decades. And Franklin Graham and Billy Graham were always political, very political for Christian spiritual leaders. Jerry Falwell, Jr., Liberty University, very political. Robert Jeffress, the Baptist pastor in Dallas, with his large mega church, who not only is a pastor there, but he’s a Fox News contributor on Politics of the Day. Very outspoken on politics. I put Al Mohler political in terms of his blog and Daily Post, and they definitely, the issues he talks about intersect with politics. And I believe in a legitimate way, from Al Mohler’s point of view, because he believes in the doctrine of the biblical sufficiency. Therefore, God has something to say on just about everything. And I believe that’s true. But not all these pastors or spiritual leaders who are political have the right balance. I think Al Mohler has a good model. John Hagee, he’s in San Antonio, well-known pastor, mega church. He’s always been political for the last 30, 40 years. I think he lacks some balance in terms of, as a pastor, being too political. James Dobson, not a pastor, but a Christian leader for decades, has always been very political. And then even Doug Wilson, who’s pastor in Idaho there, he’s been around for 40 years, faithful pastor up there. But he’s always been, people would perceive him to be political. He’s been writing and speaking and talking for, like I said, 30, 40 years. But he’s dealing with cultural issues all the time through the grid of scripture, and therefore he’s perceived as being political. So very similar, I think, Doug Wilson to Al Mohler in terms of, actually, they’re talking from a Christian worldview as they look at the issues of the day. So I don’t think they’re out of balance in terms of being too political. But anyway, those are the political people. But then we had a new wave of Christian leaders and how they were categorizing themselves or camps that they were siding with. And three articles in particular, I wanted to run by you real quick, that made a splash in the Christian world last month. But Tim Keller, well-known pastor, retired from New York, and Mark Dever hit the headlines just a couple of weeks ago because of their political affiliations. And that hit the internet and the Christian world with a big splash and much controversy. I think you even sent me some stuff about Mark Dever and the fact that they’re registered Democrats and comments that were being made about that. So that was kind of new stuff. Then you had Richard Mao and the gentleman that he wrote an article with I want to read a quote from. So Richard Mao was the president of Fuller Seminary, which would be considered one of the most well-known, prestigious, largest evangelical seminaries in the world. So he’s in a prominent spotlight there. And he got very political in a recent article that he wrote, especially on this upcoming election. And then John Piper as well.
So let me read a couple of excerpts from these articles and get your thoughts here, Derek. This one was written by John Piper, October 22, 2020. So not even a month ago. It was just prior to the election on DesiringGod.org. And the title of Pastor John Piper’s article is “Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin: Pondering the Implications of the 2020 Election.” And I read this and it stirred up the pot, created a lot of controversy in the Christian world, the evangelical world. To be honest, when I read it, when I was done reading it, I wasn’t quite sure what he was saying or where he had landed politically, because he actually doesn’t mention the name of the candidates in the article. So I thought, oh, that’s weird. But it definitely, to me, what I took away was this is an article written, he’s bashing Trump and he’s cutting slack with Biden and the Democrats. That’s what I walked away with. So I was going to ask you, when you read it, what did you walk away with? Because you’re familiar with Piper and have been for a long time.
Derek: Yeah, it was a challenging read for me because Piper’s been so influential. I have so much respect for him and really have appreciated his ministry. But I was in pretty full scale, well, I shouldn’t say full scale disagreement, but I was, this article was challenging for me to read because, like you said, he didn’t name the candidates. However, you would walk away from the way he describes a leader. When a leader models self-absorbed, self-exalting boastfulness, he models the most deadly behavior in the world, talking about pride. And I just assume that he’s referring to Trump because that’s how a lot of people have characterized him. And so in his point in the article, one of the main points was that we have to consider the character of the man, the person, and recognize the kind of effect that that’s going to have. And that seemed to be the main focus was the character of the person in the White House. And so what I was left with is, at least initially, was I shouldn’t vote for Trump because he is proud and arrogant and has these various character flaws. What I thought, though, was after more reflection is that this is kind of lopsided because what about issues where President Trump has exhibited character, namely in the area of pro-life policies and speaking out pro-life and things like this and other issues of religious liberty. And not to mention the fact that when it comes to character, I don’t have much respect for the other candidate, Joe Biden. I think there’s plenty of character flaws there as well. And so what you’re left with is either don’t vote for either one, or actually initially when I read it, I thought, or you vote for the Democratic candidate. And so it was a disappointing article, I’ll be honest, and I wasn’t encouraged by it. I thought that he wasn’t considering the whole picture. I agreed about character does matter in leadership, but there are other issues to consider. And again, I think even the issue of character was lopsided. He didn’t consider the balance of how character is exhibited. And character is exhibited through policies, too. And when I consider the Democratic candidates, Joe Biden’s policies, and what he values, that exhibits character. And so in that case, I can’t respect that person’s character either. So I didn’t think it was well balanced, and I was disappointed by it.
Cliff: Yeah, I walked away with the same thing. And I think that’s a fair assessment. So those who want to maybe study that a little further, because John Piper is incredibly influential in the Christian world and has been for a long time and has a huge megaphone with a lot of influence.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: And so if he says something very deliberately and puts it in writing like this on such a sensitive topic, I think there’s high accountability on his part and it’s going to affect a lot of people in the way they think. So it was an important article that he wrote that I think there needs to be a response to. I would recommend two responses that I thought were very well done and objective. Speaking of objectivity, I agree with you that one of the biggest problems with the Piper article was the lack of objectivity. And just even this statement right here where he says, I find it bewildering that Christians dot dot dot, seriously, exclamation point. So he’s basically, if you’re, I can’t, he says that two or three times, I find it bewildering, I can’t believe. In other words, I find it bewildering, I can’t believe that Bible-believing Christians would vote for Trump is the implication. That’s going to be ironic when I quote from John MacArthur in just a second who says the exact opposite. But two articles that I would recommend for good sober-minded biblical concise readable evaluations of the John Piper article and viewpoint, one is by a gentleman named Robert A. J. Gagnon. He wrote a great little article. He’s actually a professor of theology at Houston Baptist Seminary. His title of his article that he wrote, I love the title, it says, “Dear John Piper, no, arrogance is not as deadly as murder.” Great article. Here’s just a sentence from his summary of Piper’s article. “Well, what of Trump’s sexual sins? Maybe Piper has some information to which the rest of us aren’t privy. So far as I know, Trump has not engaged in sexually immoral intercourse for more than 12 years. He issued a general apology in 2016 saying, ‘I’ve said and done things I regret. I’ve said some foolish things,’ said Trump. Most important for those considering a vote for a politician, Trump hasn’t actively promoted sexual immorality as a policy in the way that the Democrats have.” So that’s just a simple… Another, probably the best response in the writing was by Wayne Grudem and the title of his is “A Respectful Response to My Friend, John Piper, About Voting for Trump.” So that’s worth reading. It’s longer, it’s exhaustive, it is excellent, it’s objective, well done, very fair. As a matter of fact, him and Piper have been friends for 40 plus years, brothers in the Lord. They’ve even done much ministry together and then even before Wayne Grudem submitted this article for publication, he had John Piper review it and give feedback. And Piper gave feedback and said, you represent me fairly, that is my position. As a matter of fact, you could beef up one of your arguments against me if you say this. And he did. So Wayne Grudem, research professor of theology since 2001 at Phoenix Seminary, among many other things and great books that he’s written. Let me just quote, it’s a long article, but I think a couple of key points that Wayne Grudem made was Grudem says, “Piper speaks of Trump’s character in entirely negative terms.”
Derek: Yeah, exactly.
Cliff: It’s completely one-sided. Well, that is not true or accurate. And plus, you know, he puts a character over policy in terms of importance for a leader. And if we did that with, what about King David? Let’s look at his character. King David, the murderer, the sexually immoral person. How many wives did he have? At least nine, the polygamist against God’s law. So David had some serious character flaws and yet he loved God and God loved him. And God was able to use him as a leader despite his character. As a matter of fact, you’d probably pick about every character in the Old Testament who was a leader, spiritual leader from Abraham to his sons and Gideon. They were sexually immoral adulterers, et cetera, et cetera. Or if you want to look into their past for their dirty sins, the Apostle Paul, the former, oh, Christian killer. So yeah, Trump, adultery and all that stuff 10 plus years ago and the Apostle Paul, the Christian killer. But anyway, not to make an equivalence there, but so those are just some good points that Wayne Grudem makes. Another one, he said, the Trump administration has brought to prominence many leaders with exemplary lives into his administration that affect policy.
Derek: That’s right.
Cliff: From Mike Pence, who’s a Christian, Mike Pompeo, who is a solid Christian, Secretary of State, Ben Carson, who is a Seventh-day Adventist, but just a good man with a great reputation, and Betsy DeVos of the Secretary of Education. Those are just some of the examples he gives. And then Wayne Grudem just says the obvious, that when it comes to an election and a leader, policies and laws have primary importance over character flaws or the fact that he has bad breath or whatever it is.
Derek: You just don’t like him. He just rubs you the wrong way.
Cliff: Exactly, or his tweets are obnoxious. Yeah, that’s irrelevant or secondary. Now, with that, the other article I wanted to mention, get your thoughts on was Richard Mao, who was the president of Fuller Seminary, along with a group of other prominent Christian leaders with big names. Not only did they write an article, they formed a group or a coalition, and the title of this article, October 3, 2020, “Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden.” A group of evangelical leaders have formed, quote, pro-life evangelicals for Biden, a formal group. And their official statement is, as pro-life evangelicals, we disagree with Vice President Biden and the Democrat platform on the issue of abortion, but we believe a biblically shaped commitment to the sanctity of human life compels us to a consistent ethic of life that affirms the sanctity of human life from beginning to end. That’s their official statement. Any thoughts on that, Derek?
Derek: Is that the rest? Is that the whole statement?
Cliff: Well, here’s the next paragraph. Knowing that the most common reason women give for abortion is the financial difficulty of another child, we appreciate a number of Democratic proposals and policies that would significantly alleviate that financial burden. Accessible health services. They think that’s a good thing. Actually, I think that means accessible murder of babies is what it means. Accessible health services for all citizens, affordable child care, a minimum wage that lifts workers out of poverty. So these are the things that they are commending that overrule anything voting for Trump and pro-life would be. For these reasons, we believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Let me read that sentence again. For these reasons, we believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Therefore, even as we continue to urge different policies on abortion, we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.
Derek: I don’t know how much I have to say about that. It’s just stunning. It’s hard to know where to begin. I don’t think you have a coherent theology of life until you have a clear affirmation and protection of life in the womb. So, you can’t begin to talk about caring for life, the sanctity of life through all its stages. Logically, you can’t even talk about that until you’ve begun by affirming and protecting the life in the womb. So, those statements you just read, I just try to be very balanced here. Almost incoherent, quite honestly.
Cliff: Yeah, I agree. There is a major disconnect there. Well, in light of that, so you got these evangelical leaders not trying to be neutral, but literally saying what candidate we should vote for.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: And then here’s John MacArthur. He was in the circuit on these political shows. Here’s one that he did. This was a podcast, I think, where he was a guest, a video podcast. And it was in August 2020, so this was before the election, at the Falkirk Center of Liberty University. In an interview there, and here’s some quotes from John MacArthur, he said, there’s no way that a Christian can affirm the slaughter of babies, homosexual activity, homosexual marriage, or any kind of gross immorality. No way we can stand behind a candidate, Joe Biden, who is affirming transgender behavior, which is really the reprobate mind of Romans 1. Certainly from a biblical standpoint, Christians could not vote democratic. So, here you got Piper saying, true Christians, there’s no way they could vote for Trump, and then MacArthur saying, no real Christian can vote for Biden. And then John MacArthur was sharing how the President had called him, President Trump, during COVID on the phone, and John MacArthur was talking to President Trump, and here’s one of the things that MacArthur said to Trump, quote, I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing, in terms of policies.
Derek: Right, right.
Cliff: These things aren’t even political for us, these issues that Trump is defending or standing for or advocating. These issues or these things are biblical. Upholding righteousness, like law and order, the police are good, not bad. Upholding righteousness in a society is what a church is supposed to do. Any true, and here’s MacArthur in his controversial sentence, any true real believer is going to be on your side, President Trump, in the election, because it’s not just an individual, it’s an entire set of policies that Christians cannot in any way affirm, end of quote. And then he kept repeating this election cycle that the Democrat National Convention has literally adopted as their platform, the sins of Roman 1, and he’s been saying that since at least 2012, the last eight years. So you can’t get any more antithetical in terms of what Piper was saying and MacArthur, and they are also had been good friends and done ministry together for decades. I heard John Piper speak at the Shepherds Conference back yonder. So these are the new kind of fishers that have arisen during this election cycle. It probably confused a lot of Christians. So maybe to bring some clarity, here’s my closing thoughts, some practical things of, well, how do we think through these things?
There are a couple issues that in all these articles I read and blogs and things that I’ve listened to, a couple points that either were neglected or not even brought up that I think would be helpful to us to give us a fully orbed Christian worldview about how to think through these difficult situations. I think, in my opinion, that some of these high profile Christians, many of them are erroneously saying, because I think this was, if I could summarize Piper’s article down to just one sentence, I think John Piper was saying, I am not voting for Donald Trump because he’s not qualified to be president. And I think Richard Mao is basically saying the same thing. And the former president of Westminster Seminary, by the way, is part of that evangelicals for Biden. So their premise is, I’m not voting for this candidate because he’s not qualified to be president. So Piper is arguing that, Richard Mao was arguing that. When we were at the Shepherds Conference in 2016, before the election, Phil Johnson was saying that publicly and even putting it in writing, bashing Trump pretty hard, literally saying, quote, he is not qualified to be president. When I heard that, and I know Phil Johnson, I’m thinking, that’s not true. On what basis are you saying that? So I just want to address that. I think saying that is patently false and misleading for several reasons. Here’s a couple of reasons, which raises the question. What are the qualifications for president? I did not hear that in any of these articles. What is the qualification for president? It’s real simple. Here in the United States, here they are, Article 3, Section 1 of the United States Constitution has three simple qualifications to be the president. Number one, you need to be a natural born citizen. Number two, you have to be at least 35 years old. You don’t have to act at least 35 years old. You have to be 35 years old. Number three, and have spent 14 years as a resident in the United States. Those are the three qualifications. That’s it.
The qualifications to be United States president are not the following. They are not the qualifications of First Timothy 3 in the Bible, which many Christian leaders refer to, saying that’s why Donald Trump or others aren’t as qualified. It’s like, nope, those are not the qualifications. Or Titus 1. Those are qualifications for an elder in a local church. I know two churches that list qualifications for membership of their local church. They list the qualifications of First Timothy 3 and Titus 1 to be a member of the church. You would be surprised at which churches. But anyway, that is wrong. Also regarding what the qualifications are not, or the qualifications in the Constitution, there are no or there are zero character qualifications in the Constitution. None. It says nothing about character. There are zero spiritual qualifications to be a legitimate president of the United States of America. There are zero qualifications on your academic training or anything about gender, whether you’re male or female, because there are plenty of Christians who say because of First Timothy 2, women should be leading men, that a female could never be a civil leader or ruler or president. And that’s, well, it’s not in the Constitution. And First Timothy 2 isn’t talking about leading a country, it’s talking about the local church. I think that’s a misapplication. But anyway, so there are no spiritual qualifications to be a legitimate president of the United States. And if you looked at the last 40 plus or all of the presidents of the United States in history, I think just about all of them are lacking in spiritual character, if you examine their lives in great detail. So the bar or the standard for qualifications for being president of the United States is actually disappointingly very low. And literally any person born in the United States can someday be president. Just like Abraham Lincoln was born in Log Cabin, and there are others who were not of noble birth from President Clinton to Obama. That is foreign to all of history. That is completely foreign to the Bible. So that is the divine or the unique experiment of the United States of America and its leadership. So literally, according to the United States Constitution, you can be a Mormon, a Methodist, a Mooney, a Mason, and we’ve had plenty of those, and even a moron, and be perfectly qualified to be president of the United States. You can be an agnostic, a skeptic, an atheist, an anti-Semite, and we’ve actually had some of those as president. You could be a socialist, we’ve had some of those. You could be a communist, you could even be a Marxist and be president of the United States. You could be a bi, transgender, transsexual, a practitioner of the occult, a Spiritist, a New Ager, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Flat Earther, a Wiccan, a Satan worshiper, and be qualified to be president of the United States of America as outlined in the Constitution. Now, it’s kind of scary, but that’s just the fact. It’s a sobering reality, Christians.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: So, the reason I brought that up is we need to reset the plumb line in terms of Christians’ expectations of that role of governance here in America, and the role of president, as though if we just elect the right person of moral character or spiritual practice, or a Christian, they’re going to fix all of our problems. They’re going to fix the cursed earth. No, they’re not. As a matter of fact, God has used pagan leaders in history to do his work. Pagan kings, just a couple by way of Cyrus the Great of Persia was used by God. He was a pagan, and God calls him in the book of Isaiah, my shepherd. He calls Cyrus the Great, the pagan, my anointed one. Artes Xerxes of Persia in the day of Nehemiah, he was a pagan. God used him to accomplish his purposes. Xerxes in the book of Esther in the days of Medo-Persia, God used him. He was probably a Zoroastrian, which is a pagan religion, and God used him to accomplish his purposes. So, yeah, God can use leaders that are not biblically driven and born again to accomplish his purposes.
Derek: And the interesting, and I think the excellent point that Grudem brings up in one of his articles is that when you are voting for the president, you’re not just… The unique situation we have in America, you’re not just voting for that one man. You’re voting for an entire, what he calls package, an administration with cabinet members, with potential judiciary picks, and policies.
Cliff: Absolutely.
Derek: So, even narrowing it in on just the person and then even artificially applying certain character qualities that aren’t in the Constitution is to kind of misunderstand what you’re doing when you’re electing the president. So, I think Grudem is helpful there in pointing that out.
Cliff: Very helpful. So, maybe turn into some practical ways to further think about this to help us as Christians. I think we need to think more about two basic truths that we don’t often when it comes to government and elections and our political leaders. Number one of the points is the nature of secular government. And then the other one is what is the role of secular government? Just a couple of Bible verses on those two points. First, the nature of the secular government according to the Bible. One of the key verses I think that we need to keep in mind is Luke chapter 21 verses 20 to 24. This is the end of Jesus’s ministry. He’s talking about the end of the age. He’s talking to his Jewish leaders, the apostles, who are going to be the leaders of the church answering a very specific question about the end of the age, the time of his coming. And Jesus gives some prophecies. And I think in Luke 21, he gives a prophecy, a short-term immediate prophecy about what happened in 70 AD when Rome came in through Titus and they destroyed Jerusalem. And then also some long-term prophecy regarding the end of the age. And here’s what Jesus told them in Luke 21. But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. Jerusalem will be abandoned by God’s people, the Jews, when it’s attacked by Rome. Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are inside the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city because these are the days of punishment so that all things which have been written will be fulfilled. Woe to those women who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babes in those days, for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive, here’s the key, into all the nations and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. Jesus said that, it’s a prophecy, and there’s the key phrase in verse 24, that Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, pagan leaders, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. So, Jesus’ reference to this time period called the times of the Gentiles is a specific time period in history. It has a beginning, and it has a definitive ending point. And I believe most commentators all agree that the times of the Gentiles is a very specific period of time in which the Jews will be dispersed throughout the nations and will be dominated by foreign pagan Gentile powers. Whether that began in 586 or whether it began in 70 AD, they pretty much all agree, which means ever since at least 70 AD, we have been historically in the times of the Gentiles where the world’s leaders will dominate and they will be pagan and they will be Gentile. They will not be Jews in the theocracy who believe in God’s word. And I think also it reminds us as Christians that the church is also going to be subject to these rulers during the church age. And I think that’s where we’ve been for the last 2000 years.
So, we live during the times of the Gentiles, a time when pagan rulers dominate leadership positions around the world, which actually puts a damper on Christians who think that America is a Christian nation and has been a Christian nation and had a point where it was. I just don’t think that’s true. So, we need to change our thinking on that paradigm of how we perceive and understand world governance. And then also, my second point is on the role of secular government. What are we expecting? There’s a lot of Christians who are really depressed who voted for Trump right now. Actually true of any election. If you put so much stock in the president or who is going to be the senator and you are depressed and can’t get out of bed and you’re sulking for weeks and months on end, then as a Christian, you have the wrong perspective. You’re not understanding what the role of secular government is. And I think from scripture, this is a good reminder that the role of secular government is very specific and clear in scripture, but it’s very narrow. And well, what is the role of government? I would say it’s very simple and that is to uphold justice or the law. That’s it. Specifically, the government exists to protect the innocent and punish the wicked. Romans 13 affirms that. 1 Timothy 1 is very specific about that. And then in 1 Timothy 2, Christians are commanded to pray for government. And the main point of our prayer on behalf of the government is that we would have civility and peace in society, that we can go unfettered and unhindered as Christians being a good witness to the world, which is in keeping with this idea that government’s role is very narrow and that is to protect the innocent and to punish the wicked. That’s it. That’s all God expects. And that’s the truest sense of justice. Unfortunately, in America, we’ve grown to have greater expectations of what the government should do and what they can actually accomplish. Like in the recent interview of many, dozens and dozens and dozens of your typical college students who were asked about, should the government be responsible for paying for your college education and the majority of them, super majority of them said yes. They’re obligated to. The government is responsible for paying for my college tuition and my college loans. And then they just got more. Well, then is the government responsible for paying for your house? Well, I guess so. Bring it on. All this free stuff. And I would say, no, not according to the Bible. The government is not responsible for providing welfare, free education, free food at public schools, free healthcare. The government’s not responsible, according to the Bible, to pay for your college loans or to redistribute wealth or to guarantee equal outcomes like we were recently told by Kamala Harris. As a matter of fact, the Bible says, 2 Timothy 3:10, quote from Paul, if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat either. Boy, that’ll shake up some people.
Derek: Yeah, that’s quite the statement.
Cliff: It is. If anyone’s not willing to work, then he is not. Of course, Paul’s talking about able bodied people. And Paul calls this an order and a command from the Lord. And anybody who’s willing to sponge off of others and take their money and their wealth, because he calls them unruly, undisciplined, and lazy, and they need to be admonished. That is the biblical worldview on the basics of the role of government. Well, I know that’s a lot of stuff. Let me just give some practical takeaways for our listeners out there and believers in light of this election and government in general and moving forward as a Christian directing us to Scripture. Number one is that, always be reminded, we can’t hear this too much or enough, and that’s that God is on the throne. He’s in charge. He’s the king. He’s ruling all things actively, specifically, and all the time. Psalms 92 to 99, just reiterate that truth, chapter after chapter after chapter. God is the one who’s truly in charge. Number two, God is the one who, quote from Daniel, God is the one who changes the times and the epics. He removes kings and he establishes kings. Daniel chapter 2 verse 21, because he’s got a plan, history’s moving somewhere, and it’s going to come to his exact culmination the way he wants it to. So he’s in charge of rulers around the world. Yeah, we vote. We’re secondary, actually. God is the one who ultimately removes and raises up new leaders and presidents. Number three, keep proper expectations, Christian, of the role of secular government, and it’s just simply they’re supposed to maintain civic order. That’s all. They are not supposed to be your provider. Our only provider is to be God himself and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Number four, don’t be discouraged because God’s plan is still on schedule. Jesus told his disciples that before he left, Acts chapter 1 verse 7, he told his followers, it is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. God is in charge of history. He’s in charge of the seasons. Yes, we just went through an election cycle. There’s a new season. There’s a new four years ahead. We don’t need to know what that’s like. We need to trust God through it. God knows exactly what he’s doing. Number five, and finally, stay focused on your calling as a Christian. It’s really that simple. That’s not a platitude. That’s not something that we can’t keep reminding ourselves of. Stay focused on your calling as a Christian. That’s why we’re here, which would include the Great Commission, living for Christ as a believer, serving in the local church, edifying the local body. Are you doing that? How are you edifying the local church right now, even in times of a pandemic? This is not our home. We are just passing through. Well, that’s all I had to share with you, Derek.
Derek: Well, thank you, Cliff. That was a great conversation, and I enjoyed it, and illuminating for me, and helpful. We hope it was helpful for you. Thank you for joining us on the With All Wisdom podcast. We will be back here again soon, but in the meantime, we encourage you to check out WithAllWisdom.org and our growing collection of resources to help you apply biblical truth to your everyday life. We’ll see you next time.
