Encore: A New Testament Scholar Explains What Should Be the Two Key Voting Concerns for Christians

How do Christians determine what are the most important matters when voting for or against a political candidate? We have to start “in the beginning.”

Beginning at the Beginning Determines What Political Issues Matter Most

The two most consequential acts in God’s creation of “the heaven and the earth” were (1) the creation of “the human” (Hebrew ha’adam) in God’s “image” and “likeness,” and (2) God’s differentiation of humanity into two sexual “counterparts” or “complements,” “male and female” or “a man” and “woman,” whose bodies are designed for “joining” in marriage, entailing both sexual companionship and procreation (Gen. 1:1, 26–28; 2:21–24; 5:1–2; 9:1, 6–7).

These are the twin bedrocks of human civilization. As such, assaults on them take on a huge significance for society and politics. Genesis 9:6 tells us that in the creation restart after the Flood, the taking innocent human life matters:

Whoever sheds the blood of the human,

by the human shall his blood be shed.

For in the image of God he [God] made the human.

Promoting the destruction of the foundation for sex also matters. Other things matter too (for example, managing the creation well on God’s behalf), but not to the same degree. Genesis 1:27 teaches us that among all the living creatures of the earth, only the human species integrates sexual differentiation with image-bearing.

God created the human in his image,

in the image of God he [God] created him.

Male and female he created them.

That means that only in the case of humans does what they do sexually have the capacity either to enhance the image of God stamped on the body or to efface it.

Jesus grounded his view of sex in Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24, concluding that the God-ordained duality of the sexes was the basis for limiting the number of persons in marriage to two. Do we have ears to hear? The moral logic of Jesus’s remarks is that twoness of number is predicated on twoness of the sexes. Monogamy (both concurrent, at any one time, and serial, over time) is a logical deduction from a male-female prerequisite for sex.

It should not occasion surprise, then, that alongside Paul’s strong condemnation of homosexual practice in Romans 1:24–27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 we find echoes to the same two creation texts lifted up by Jesus for defining acceptable sexual behavior—Genesis 1:26–27 and Genesis 2:24, respectively. Homosexual practice and transgenderism are thus viewed in Scripture as an assault on the very foundation of sexual ethics.

The Two Idols of the Democratic Party: LGBTQ immorality and Abortion

Today we have a political party whose two main idols are enforced “LGBTQ” immorality and “reproductive freedom,” or unrestricted abortion. I am talking, of course, about the Democratic Party. To be sure, the Democratic Party stands for other things as well. Yet these two issues are the defining identity markers of the Party.

They strike at the heart of God’s created order. Abortion sacrifices on the altar of self-fulfillment the unjust killing of a developing and innocent human being made in God’s image. The “LGB” agenda extinguishes the two-sexes foundation for sexual ethics, and the “TQ” agenda eradicates any biological basis for determining sex. Referring to “husband and wife” or even “boys and girls” is now treated by the Democratic Party as discriminatory, hateful, and bigoted.

Here it is not a question of the Democrats pursuing a policy of “live and let live.” Rather, for them, one is compelled to bow before these idols by praising the courage of those who come out as transgender and celebrating homosexual relationships. One is coerced into compete in sports against or share a changing room with a person of the opposite sex. In elevating to the status of cherished idols that which strikes at the very heart of God’s created order, the Democratic Party is in lockstep with demonic powers that seek to subvert God’s design (1 Tim. 4:3). What else can we call this headlong pursuit of LGBTQ immorality and abortion as the very raison d’être (reason for existence) of this Party, its debased heart and soul? Thus, a vote for that Party’s candidates is necessarily an ungodly vote.

The Democratic Party heads rejected the decision of voters in the primaries, Joe Biden, and picked instead Vice President Kamala Harris to be their head priestess of these two great idols. She has a long track record of being unsurpassed in the Democratic Party in her extremism on LGBTQ immorality and abortion. She in turn selected as her chief mouthpiece for these twin idols Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, whose commitment on these matters is as extreme as her own. They are both equally willing to sacrifice to these idols our most important freedoms given to us in a Republic, such as protection of our children and of our rights to free speech and free exercise of religion.

The Democrats have been effective at getting a number of evangelicals and other religious conservatives to be distracted by the character flaws and off-color words of Donald Trump (ignoring those of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz). But these evangelicals disregard the far graver danger coming from hard-Left policies that entail Executive Orders, legislation, “disinformation” boards, and court nominations that will have long-term adverse effects on the two most consequential acts of creation. The effects would last well beyond a Harris-Walz presidency and encompass a far wider group of people.

The Urgency of the Present Moment

The urgency of the present moment is heightened by two additional factors.

First, Democrats are nearing autocratic control of the country. They already control most of the old legacy news media, social media platforms (except Elon Musk’s X), virtually all of the academy of colleges and universities, the search engines that determine flow of information on the internet, the entertainment industry, and most of the Fortune 500 companies. To hand over to them the Presidency for another four to eight years is suicidal both to a functioning democracy and the checks and balances of a two party system.

The situation is even more dire given the Biden-Harris massive illegal-immigration election scam. The current administration has let into the country an unprecedented four to five million illegal immigrants or more, even flying over 800,000 from Latin America into the US interior (mostly into red states and swing states). This has been done as a massive election-cheating scam to turn border states and swing states permanently blue, thereby insuring that Democrats will win all future presidential elections and control all three branches of federal government for the foreseeable future.

There are three steps to the plan. The first step for Democrats has been to vote against a bill in Congress to require proof of citizenship to vote, or even to deport illegal immigrants with criminal records (including rape). The second step has been to have the Justice Department sue any state that tries to remove non-citizens from voter rolls (as is the case with Virginia and Alabama). The third step will be to get a bill passed that grants immediate amnesty to the 13-20 million illegal immigrants in the country. They will be beholden to the Democrat Party both for social services and for their admission and citizenship.

Second, both “LGBTQ” immorality and abortion are “sea-change issues”; that is, they are issues that produce the greatest amount of changes or paradigm shifts in society. Christians need to give these issues greater weight in their reasons for voting for a political candidate because of their “most endangered species” status relative to other issues. Many other issues, while not unimportant, experience only relatively minor shifts. For example, sometimes Christians justify voting for Democrats because they feel that Democrats will spend more money on the poor. Yet the annual $1.1 trillion welfare system underwent little reduction during Trump’s administration. Or they justify voting for a Democrat because of racial concerns. Yet when you ask them to mention one racist policy promoted by Trump, they come up with nothing.

The sharpest differences today between Republicans and Democrats occur over LGBTQ and abortion issues, with the greatest potential for radical change.

Whose Policies Most Resemble That of a Fascist?

The adverse consequences of a Harris/Walz victory as regards the promotion of LGBTQ immorality and abortion, and as regards the destructive means by which these abhorrent goals are reached, are many and dire. Although Harris charges Trump with Hitler-loving authoritarian desires and calls him a “fascist” (which functionally exposes him to more assassination attempts), she is in a political party that wants to:

1. “Transition” minors and chemically castrate and surgically mutilate them without parental consent (here, here, and here).
2. Compel acceptance of female-identified males in female restrooms, locker rooms, sports, prisons, and shelters, endangering and harming females everywhere (here, here, and here).
3. Indoctrinate children coercively into “LGBTQ” immorality against parental wishes, starting at the earliest school ages with Drag Queen Story Hour (here, here, or here).
4. Remove your minor child from your home if you don’t embrace their “trans” or “gay” identity (here, here, and here).
5. Pass laws that mandate that schools keep secret from parents any information relating to their minor child’s “gender identity” or “sexual orientation.”
6. Mandate both LGBTQ indoctrination of adults in the workplace and “affirmative action” programs for LGBTQ hires (here, here, here, and here)
7. Compel use of “trans” pronouns and terminate the employment of those who do not comply (here, here, here, here, and here).
8. Close off the teaching profession to Christians and others who cannot affirm transgenderism and homosexual practice in classroom instruction.
9. Mandate taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for prisoners and illegal immigrants who request them (here and here).
10. Cancel free speech on social media and public places under the cloak of “hate speech” and “disinformation” (here, here, and here).
11. Suppress free exercise of religion when it conflicts with “LGBTQ” and abortion immorality, including killing Christian colleges with loss of access to federal student loans and accreditation (here and here).
12. Weaponize the Justice Department to jail peaceful pro-life protestors and doctors who blow the whistle on hospitals giving “trans” surgery to minors (here, here, here, and here).
13. Pass a federal abortion bill that will grant a virtually unlimited right to kill innocent human beings in the womb for all 9 months of a pregnancy and withhold lifesaving care for those who survive a botched abortion (here, here, here, here, and here).
14. Eliminate the Senate filibuster rule in order to enact federal pro-abortion legislation.
15. Require that state pro-life laws receive approval from a pro-abortionist Justice Department before they can take effect.
16. Force Christian doctors and nurses against conscience to participate in abortions, including at Catholic hospitals (here and here).
17. Put in jail her chief political opponent through Banana-Republic prosecutions (here, here, here, here, here, and here).
18. Bring about enforced LGBTQ immorality and unrestricted abortion by continuing to release into the US massive numbers of illegal immigrants (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), rejecting all voter ID requirements or proof of citizenship, weaponizing the Justice Department to sue any states that attempt to remove non-citizens from voter rolls, and pass an amnesty bill for 13-20 million illegal immigrants, all in an effort to turn this country into a one-Party state.
19. Bring about enforced LGBTQ immorality and unrestricted abortion by packing the Supreme Court and imposing term limits that would result in the immediate retirement of three conservative justices (Thomas, Alito, Roberts), and by nominating justices who treat the Constitution as so many tea leaves into which their own hard-left ideology can be imputed.
20. Bring about enforced LGBTQ immorality and unrestricted abortion by adding the dominant-Democratic territories of Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states and thereby gain permanent Democratic control of the Senate; and by blowing up the Electoral College.

There can be no question about the greatest threats to this nation coming from Harris/Walz. Yes, people who won’t vote for Trump always point to the January 6 riot and Trump’s attempts at circumventing the Senate verification of the election results. However, Trump explicitly spoke against violence at his rally in the hours during and following the Capitol occurrence. Only one percent of those at the rally have been charged with a crime in the action on the Capitol. Compare that to the “largely peaceful,” seven-month BLM/Antifa riots that produced an unprecedented two billion dollars of damage and twenty-three deaths. Were Trump’s responses to the Capitol riot without blame? No. I just don’t see him as a greater threat to democracy than the election cheating and anti-Republic policies of Harris.

Conclusion

There are many reasons to vote for or against a given candidate. What I have argued here is that God’s work at creation gives us a clear guide in what takes priority: The value of human life made in God’s image (flipside: the extreme offense of providing legal cover for the taking human life in the womb through abortion) and the importance of God integrating that image-bearing in humans with humans being made as two sexual counterparts (flipside: the extreme offense of promoting in the law homosexual practice and transgenderism).

While the Democratic Party stands for many other things (some perhaps good, some ambiguous, some very bad), LGBTQ immorality and abortion are their idols, their raison d’etre. As such, the Party has adopted a worldview that is demonic to its core, and faithful Christian cannot knowingly support it by voting for its candidates. That would be an ungodly vote, a sin of commission in God’s eyes. Indeed, to fail to cast an effective vote against Harris by not voting for the only viable alternative (Trump, with all his imperfections) would be a great act of omission (unless one lives in a state where there is no chance of Harris winning). It would be a failure in a faithful Christian’s moral obligation to prevent Harris from getting elected.