The vast majority of faithful Christians recognize that they can’t possibly vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, or any Democratic candidates for any race, given the Democratic Party’s idolatrous worship of LGBTQ immorality and abortion. In my prior article, I showed that these two stances by the Democratic Party are an affront to the two most consequential acts of God at creation: the intersection of the creation of the human (Hebrew adam) “in the image of God” and as a complementary sexual binary, “male and female” (Gen. 1:27).
However, many of these faithful Christians also refuse to vote for the only viable option to Harris/Walz in this election: Trump/Vance. They take this position because they find to be disqualifying any or all of the following: (1) Trump’s sexual immorality in the past, (2) his ongoing crude and insulting remarks and behavior, (3) his role on January 6 in the riot and contesting the election, and/or (4) his backtracking on abortion and “gay” immorality. They take this position even as they acknowledge that Harris/Walz is a worse (or even far worse) alternative. They believe that they would be sinning to cast a vote for Trump as “the lesser of two evils” because, well, that would be voting for evil.
Moral Responsibility in Voting When Your Binary Options Are Not Optimal
In what follows, I hope to make the case from Scripture that voting for “the lesser of two evils,” if that is the way someone wants to frame it, is not an evil but in fact a good—the greater good. More specifically, I believe that voting for the candidate who is going to do the most good and least harm is a moral act. Voting for the candidate who will do the most harm and least good is an immoral act. Failing to cast an effective vote against the candidate who will do the most harm and least good is, by omission, complicity in an immoral act. By “casting an effective vote” I mean voting for the only candidate that has a realistic chance of defeating the worse candidate.
A faithful Christian who refuses to vote for the only viable alternative to Harris/Walz is essentially offering a half-vote to Harris/Walz. If you are conservative and are voting for a third party or not voting at all, the Harris campaign may as well send you a thank you card. Harris can’t win without your non-vote for Trump. It would only take a relatively small percentage of conservatives to refuse to vote for Trump/Vance to throw the election to Harris/Walz.
Christians who think that God will protect them from Harris’s evils if they keep themselves pure from casting a vote for an imperfect candidate are ignoring a crucial fact: God is giving them one, and only one, way out from the much-worse outcome of a Harris victory that does not require any immoral action on their own part: Vote for Trump/Vance.
Voting for one candidate who will bring far less harm than another, and will do some good, is not a sinful act. It is a responsible exercise of choice given the limited options available to people in a world of sin. It is a righteous act, because it brings about the greater good, even though that good, shy of the coming Kingdom of God, is still mixed with sin. There is literally no benefit to letting unbelievers select the worse candidate.
Let us turn to Scripture and examine two cases: (1) the example set by God in choosing the lesser of two evils; and (2) God allowing his people to choose the lesser of different options for punishment.
God’s Own Example of Choosing the Lesser of Two Evils
If you think that God will not permit you to choose the far lesser of two evils because that itself would be an evil, please be aware that God himself selected imperfect vessels to accomplish his purposes throughout history. We could start with the patriarch Jacob, the stereotypical trickster and deceiver. All the major judges in Judges, except Deborah, were imperfect vessels, the most notorious of which was Samson. These were persons that were charismatically chosen by God, through the pouring out of the Spirit. They were lesser evils.
God selected Jehu to destroy the house of Ahab, which he did. Jehu did not get rid of the golden calves in Bethel and Dan. But Jehu was far and away the lesser of two evils, getting rid of the most evil dynasty in the history of the northern kingdom. God himself chose the lesser of two evils.
God chose a pagan idolatrous ruler, the Persian king Cyrus, as his instrument, even calling him his “anointed” (messiah), to liberate Israel in exile from the yoke of cruel Babylon. God used Cyrus to allow his people to return to the promised land. Not an ideal situation, because they were still under Persian rule. Yet it was a far better option than the one they had under Babylon.
It would be nice if all our rulers were a David, a Hezekiah, or a Josiah—though even these had their own deficiencies and sins—but it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes our range of options is more limited, and we must select from the best of those options. Even God did that.
If God could make these choices, so can we. In a world where all people are sinners, elections are always all about choosing the lesser of two evils. God was not endorsing Jacob’s deceptions, the problems of various charismatic judges, Jehu’s failure to destroy the alternative cult sites in Bethel and Dan, or Nebuchadnezzar’s and Cyrus’s wicked paganism, even though each of these were instruments chosen by God to accomplish his purpose. He chose them despite those problems.
The same when we vote. When I vote for Trump, I am not endorsing his less than stellar positions on abortion and homosexual practice. I am casting an effective vote against the evils of a far-worse candidate, taking the way out that is available to me. God chose imperfect vessels, as do I. We profit from God’s example and grace.
Again, God is giving us a choice: not the ideal choice, but nonetheless a choice of one candidate who will do far less evil and much more good than the other candidate.
God Allowing His People to Choose the Lesser or Least of Punishment Options
In the Old Testament, God sometimes allowed an Israelite ruler or the people of God generally to choose their punishment from two or more options. We see this, for example, in 2 Samuel 24 and Jeremiah 38.
2 Samuel 24
In 2 Samuel 24 we read of God’s anger being “kindled against Israel,” which led him to “incite” David to take a census of Israel. Normally a census was a prelude to oppressive state policies (e.g., eliminating old sacred tribal boundaries for bureaucratic redistricting by the central power, heavy taxation, forced labor, and military conscription).[1] After David sinned, Yahweh conveyed to David through the prophet Gad a choice between three years of famine, three days of pestilence, or “fleeing three months before your foes while they pursue you” (2 Sam. 24:13).
1. David was still responsible for complying because inciting is not the same as compelling; Yahweh put the idea in David’s head but didn’t force him to do it, which is why David can still subsequently repent of his action.
David preferred one of the first two options. So, Yahweh sent pestilence (disease) on the land and 70,000 died. The main point is that God had David select from three choices of punishment. It was gracious for God to offer any choice. He could have just imposed a punishment on David for his grave sin. Yet, instead, he allowed him to choose. God has given us two choices in this election. Bowing out from the choice is not an option. Bowing out would mean opting tacitly for Harris. Everyone must choose. We might as well choose the more gracious, less evil, option.
Jeremiah 38
Another example comes from the Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah told King Zedekiah to surrender to his Babylonian overlord and that things would go better for him. But if he didn’t take the way out that God has offered him, then the disaster would be so much greater. In 588/87 BC, while Babylon was besieging Israel,
Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of hosts, the God of Israel, If you will only surrender to the officials of the king of Babylon, then your life shall be spared, and this city shall not be burned with fire, and you and your house (dynasty) shall live. But if you do not surrender to the officials of the king of Babylon, then this city shall be handed over to the Chaldeans, and they shall burn it with fire, and you yourself shall not escape from their hand.’ (Jer. 38:17–18, emphasis added)
God provided a way out of his predicament, a way that seemed contrary to what the expectation of being faithful to God meant, trusting God to get him out of this difficult situation if he and others just had faith (which is what many are doing in not voting for Trump). But because the way out wasn’t the way that he hoped for, indeed surrender to a pagan power, he would get something worse. There were two options available to Zedekiah, one that was not great (yielding to Nebuchadnezzar; in our case voting for Trump) and the one that was far worse (destruction of the city and exile; in our case voting for Harris). Zedekiah chose a third option that wasn’t available to him: Have faith that God will rescue him if he doesn’t choose the less bad option. The result was he received the worse of the two options God posed to him. And to what advantage? None at all, but only greater misery.
God has offered us a choice between two candidates in this election: Trump or Harris. Perhaps we didn’t get the candidate we wanted because of the sins of the nation, or our own sins. But God is graciously offering us the less-than-optimal Trump as an alternative to the far worse Harris who will promote to the hilt unlimited abortion, coercive LGBTQ immorality (including state-sponsored child abuse), the abridgement of free speech and free exercise of religion, and a one-Party rule of the country through a massive illegal immigration scam.
You can view Trump as a punishment, if you will. Even so, he is far less of a punishment than Harris/Walz. He will do significant good in attacking the imposition of Trans-insanity on minors, opposing a federal bill to promote unlimited abortion, rejecting the weaponization of the Justice Department against pro-life and pro-family Christians, protecting free speech and free exercise of religion, restoring the border, and bringing down inflation. There is no good reason for turning down the far better option. Take it. God is offering you the choice in his grace and mercy.
“Speaking in a human way”: Analogies from Human Life
Sometimes the apostle Paul departs from scriptural proofs to analogies based on human examples or reasoning. He calls this “speaking in a human way” (Rom. 3:5; 6:19; 1 Cor. 9:8; Gal. 3:15). I will now offer such illustrations.
If I have a choice between prison guard A who will have me and my family beaten daily (and is no paragon of moral virtue in her private life either), and will cut our rations severely; and prison guard B who will not have me and my family beaten daily, but has a sordid sexual past over twelve years ago and a potty mouth in public, and who will take some of our rations but won’t make us starve, I will go with prison guard B every time. When I do so, I am not sinning, but rather exercising wisdom given the limited options available to me.
I do not know of any conservative NeverTrumper who thinks that we should tear down the Jefferson Memorial. Jefferson, writer of our Declaration of Independence and third president of the U.S. (among many other achievements) had an unmarried (and, by definition, coercive) sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. This relationship likely began when she was 16 (he 46). It spanned a 20-year period, leading to eight pregnancies. Plus, there is the fact that he kept slaves, though he wrote some semi-antislavery things.
Speaking of Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton hated Jefferson. The two were political enemies based on very different political policies and philosophy. But faced with a choice between Jefferson and Aaron Burr, he threw his support to Jefferson, because Burr was a danger to the Republic in a way and to a degree that Jefferson was not. He understood that there was no gain to be had by isolating himself from a choice; indeed, there was everything to lose.
Consider Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. Even Lincoln was not a declared abolitionist in 1860 (also by our standards today a little bit of a racist). He couldn’t have been an abolitionist and still have had a prayer to get elected. In his first Inaugural Address in 1861, as a last-ditch effort to save the Union, he even stated that he would not oppose an amendment to the Constitution (already passed by Congress) that embedded slavery in the U.S. for as long as the Southern states wanted it. In this sense, he was a lesser of two evils. I don’t think that is a perfect analogy (even apart from the character differences of the two men) because Lincoln deep in his heart thought that slavery was a high moral evil, whereas Trump probably isn’t convinced in his heart that abortion is an evil at all stages. But the point is that even Lincoln had to compromise his principles in running for office. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison wouldn’t vote for him as a result, but Garrison was wrong (as ex-slave Frederick Douglass pointed out). Garrison eventually did come around and support Lincoln in the 1864 election.
Based on the “logic” of those anti-Harris conservatives who won’t vote for Trump either, I have to assume that if they had a choice between Lincoln or Douglas, or even Hindenburg or Hitler in 1932 Germany, they would have sat out the election or voted for a non-viable candidate in the hopes that they could get a better candidate in the future by allowing Douglas and Hitler to get elected.
God in his infinite sovereignty and foreknowledge may have allowed Trump’s selection because a consistently pro-life candidate could not win this year (in its last nationwide poll CNN found that, in answer to the question “Who do your trust more to handle abortion/repro rights,” Harris had 21% more support than Trump, her biggest vote getter by far). Or it may be a partial payment for our sins. It is impossible for us to know.
But what we do know is that God is giving us a choice between two candidates, one of whom will be horrifically bad for the unborn, for children, for our freedoms of speech and religion, and for our safety; and the other of whom will do some positive good in these areas except he will not do as much good as we would like. I say, thank you God for allowing us to suffer much less for our sins than we deserve, and then I vote for the candidate from whom we will suffer far less harm and experience some good.
The Alternative Strategy Approach: Dump Trump Now and Hope for Better in the Future
The response that some give to these arguments is that it is nonetheless good strategy to vote third party, or not at all, to send a message to Republicans that you won’t support a nominee who is not 100% pro-life and 100% against the acceptance of homosexual behavior. That’s not a good strategy in my view.
if you let the far worse candidate, Harris, get elected in the hopes of getting a better candidate than Trump (I supported DeSantis this year) in four-years’ time, there likely will be nothing left to build upon. As I pointed out in my previous article, given all that the Democratic Party currently controls (media, the academy, entertainment, search engines, Silicon Valley technocrats, and Fortune 500 companies), handing them the Presidency for another four to eight years is suicidal.
Four more years, and possibly eight, of Harris will be devastating for the country.
With their illegal-immigration election-cheating policy that has resulted in at least four to five million illegal immigrants in the country, all for the purpose of turning border states and swing states blue, there is a real danger that Democrats will succeed in bringing about a one-party rule nationally. All they have to do is keep thwarting voter ID laws and efforts at removing illegal immigrants from registration rolls; then pass an amnesty bill for the thirteen to twenty million illegal aliens currently in the country. Then no Republican will win the Presidency in our lifetime, and Democrats will have control of Congress and thus the Supreme Court as well.
In the present time we have no way of knowing whether consistent Republicans will maintain majorities in the House and Senate. Look at the passage of a gay marriage bill last year. It is entirely possible that the Senate could pass the LGBTQ “Equality Act” (already passed in the House when the Democrats controlled that body), given a few defections by Republicans in name only, and then Harris will eagerly sign it into law. Then it will be game-set-match for LGBTQ oppression of Christians and their children over these issues.
As regards the Supreme Court, two to four judges could be replaced in the next administration. Clarence Thomas is 76 and will be 80 before the 2028 election; Samuel Alito is 74 and will be 78 in four years. Sonia Sotomayor is 70 and will be 74 in four years. And Chief Justice Roberts, who has already served 17 long years will be 70 in January. Should Harris win, she would likely nominate at least two hard-left judges. Just the replacement of Thomas and Alito would result in five hard-left justices, already a majority. And that is not even factoring that Roberts and Gorsuch are not reliable at all on LGBTQ issues, nor Roberts on abortion.
Harris supports state-sponsored child abuse, whereas Trump does not. That, and half a dozen other reasons, are more than a sufficient moral basis for voting for the latter candidate as an option that will do much less harm and far greater good.
Conclusion
We have seen that Scripture provides support for choosing “the lesser of two evils” or choosing the option that will do the most good and the least harm. God himself acts this way. Moreover, he sometimes gives believers a choice of punishments for their sins.
While it is true that Trump is not all that we want in combatting the Democrats’ two idols of LGBTQ immorality and abortion, there is a considerable difference between one candidate who wants to push chemical castration and surgical mutilation on minors (state-sponsored child abuse) and mandate female-identified biological males in female restrooms and sports; and the other candidate who has promised to end on Day 1 Biden’s Executive Order to interpret Title IX’s “sex discrimination” ban as including “gender identity,” and who wants to eliminate the promotion of state-sponsored child abuse and the endangerment of female privacy and participation in sports.
There is a big difference between one candidate who wants a federal abortion law that will have no restrictions on abortion for all nine months, who will end all doctor/nurse/hospital conscience exemptions to performing abortions, and who will direct her “Justice” Department to prosecute and jail peaceful pro-life protestors and go after states that put any restrictions on abortion; and the other candidate, who appointed the three Supreme Court justices that led to the overturning of Roe and Doe and who will do none of those above things.
There is a huge difference between one candidate who supports censoring and prosecuting so-called “hate speech” that calls into question the LGBTQ and abortion idols and who will do harm to the free exercise of religion by those she regards as hateful and ignorant bigots, asserting that the First Amendment doesn’t cover those things and threatening the accreditation of faithful Christian schools that don’t toe the LGBTQ line; and the other candidate who has consistently affirmed the First Amendment rights of free speech and free exercise of religion against Left-wing tyranny.
There is a big chasm between one candidate who has promoted a massive illegal-immigration, election-cheating scam involving four to five million unvetted people (and counting) and fought any attempt to prevent non-citizens from voting, unconcerned with the billions of dollars of social-welfare costs on taxpayers and increased threat to the personal safety of its citizens, all in the hope of creating a one-Party state across the nation that resembles the one in California by turning swing states and border states blue; and the other candidate who wants to restore safety and security at the border and end the illegal-immigration, election-cheating scam.
There is a major gulf between one candidate who wants to nominate court justices that treat the Constitution as so many tea leaves into which they an impute any hard-Left meaning into the text, promoters of abortion and LGBTQ immorality and undermining free speech and free exercise of religion; and the other candidate who wants to nominate judges who will not legislate from the bench or attempt to amend the Constitution without going through the constitutional process for doing so (which is the role of Congress, not the courts), but who will be strict constructionists and will safeguard our First Amendment rights.
One can maintain the fantasy that if one remains “pure” and doesn’t vote for the imperfect Trump/Vance ticket, God will rescue Christians, and perhaps the nation, from this far greater calamity in the next or later presidential election cycles. But apart from a work of God, this isn’t likely going to happen. God is giving a way out now for the greater good: cast an effective vote against Harris/Walz by voting for Trump/Vance. Should we oppose God’s help in a misguided view that God accomplishes his purposes only through pure candidates?
