If you are currently planning not to vote for either Trump or Biden, here are 10 reasons why I encourage you to change your mind and vote for President Trump.
1. Not voting for either Biden or Trump has a predictable result and therefore is not a neutral action.
At first it might seem as if voting for neither candidate is a way to do nothing wrong. After all, you aren’t endorsing the shortcomings of either candidate.
But consider the result of your decision. If you ordinarily vote for conservative candidates but decide not to vote for Trump, then Biden will need one less vote to win the election.
Think what would happen if all evangelical Christians followed your example: Biden would win in a gigantic landslide. That is because Trump’s biggest bloc of supporters are evangelical Christians.
Over 80% of white evangelicals apparently voted for Trump last time, while 16% voted for Hillary Clinton and 4% didn’t vote for either one. (I could not find statistics for black and Hispanic evangelicals.) Therefore, evangelicals who decide not to vote affect the outcome in a disproportionate way. They will, on average, withhold five times more votes from the Republican candidate than they withhold from the Democrat candidate.
Therefore, the result of evangelicals not voting for either candidate is not a neutral result. If enough evangelicals vote for neither one, Biden will easily win the election. Do you really prefer that result?
2. It can be wrong to have the ability to stop evil but fail to stop it
A Biden administration would carry with it several policies that I would put in the category of evil policies. Biden and his Democrat allies would push for laws that allow abortion up to the moment of birth and even remove penalties for infanticide (as has happened in Virginia and New York). They have also promised to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which for decades has prevented federal funding of abortion. Their abortion policies alone are reason enough to oppose them. God is not on their side, because, as the psalmist says, “Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute? They band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death” (Ps. 94:20-21).
In addition to advancing abortion rights, they would seek to enforce not just tolerance but active moral approval of homosexual and transgender conduct in school curriculums, in business training seminars and hiring practices, in government employment and contracts, and eventually in private Christian nonprofit organizations such as colleges and book publishers. Christians who refuse to comply would increasingly be forced out of their jobs (as has happened already in a number of cases affecting various occupations).
In addition, they would likely seek to banish as “hate speech” any opposition to the LGBT agenda. They would likely seek to force Christians in the creative professions (artists, photographers, florists), in education, and in government, to violate their consciences or face bankruptcy or jail if they refused to endorse same-sex marriage and transgenderism or (in the medical fields) to participate in abortions. And freedom of speech and freedom of the press would increasingly be nullified (in practice) by Internet censorship (as we have seen already with Twitter and Facebook regularly blocking conservative viewpoints).
The only way American citizens can stop such evil at the present time is through the election of Donald Trump for a second term. His administration will push for none of those morally evil policies.
But if Christians decide to withhold their votes from Trump, it appears to me that they are failing to do what they can to stop the evil of a Biden administration.
Someone might answer me at this point, “But isn’t Trump also evil?” I agree that Trump has flaws in his character, but in my judgment his first term in office has shown that the good he will do for the nation far outweighs any harm from his abrasive personality. And he will implement none of the evil policies that would come with a Biden administration.
Proverbs 25:26 is relevant here: “Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked.”
Just how is such a man who “gives way before the wicked” like a “muddied spring”? They’re both useless. If you’re out in the desert and thirsty, and then you see an oasis with a spring of water, you hope to drink from the spring. But when you reach the spring, you find that the water is muddy and undrinkable. It is useless. So it is if a Christian man or woman sees evil coming and does nothing to stop it. Such a person is as useless as “a muddied spring or a polluted fountain.”
From the standpoint of Christian ethics, there are both “sins of omission” and “sins of commission.” In the Book of Common Prayer used by the Church of England, a well-known confession of sin is “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and apart from your grace, there is no health in us. O Lord, have mercy upon us.”
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” — though it’s not from the Bible, this familiar aphorism contains wisdom for governments today (British statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was previously connected with the saying, and it echoes themes found in his writings.)
So I ask, are you confident that not voting for either candidate, and thereby having no influence it at all on the outcome of the election, is the right thing to do? I suggest that not voting for either candidate might not be a morally neutral decision. For a Christian, it might be the wrong decision.
3. If you think withholding your vote will “teach the Republican party a lesson,” you fail to understand the process by which Donald Trump became the Republican candidate.
Some conservatives have said, “If Donald Trump loses, that will teach the Republican Party that they shouldn’t nominate a man of such questionable character.”
But this viewpoint completely misunderstands the way candidates are nominated in the United States. If you intend to influence any organization that can be called “the Republican party,” then recall how the permanent, entrenched leadership in the Republican Party (the Republican National Committee and elected Republican officeholders) fought tooth and nail to keep Trump from getting the nomination in 2016. Sixteen candidates started out the primary process. But Trump just kept winning with the voters. They had an instinct that the country needed strong, courageous leaders like him, in spite of his shortcomings.
I know of nobody who needs to be “taught” (by losing an election) that Trump is not a perfect candidate. Republican voters are already aware of Trump’s abrasive personality. They already count it as a liability, not an asset.
And if Trump loses in a close election, most conservatives will place the blame not on Trump but on the “none of the above” conservative voters who decided not to vote for either Trump or Biden. The “lesson” most Republicans will learn is that conservatives who don’t vote for either candidate can cost Republicans the election. They won’t blame themselves for supporting Trump, but they may well blame conservatives who a decided not to support the conservative candidate chosen by the primary process.
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Wayne Grudem
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