Why I Won’t Tell You Who To Vote For From The Pulpit

I’d be happy to tell you who I am voting for actually.  But it will cost you some time and a cup of coffee.  If you want to hear about the issues and convictions that bring me to those votes, it will cost you even more: the price of a lunch!  But you won’t hear about my voting plans from the pulpit.  In that position, I deal with things that matter for eternity, not just this election cycle.

There is a good deal more to say about this than I will take room for here.  Instead, I will simply focus on four reasons that I won’t be telling people at Christ Covenant how to vote.

No Wonder The World Is Confused!

Perhaps you heard me scream Sunday night.  A recent article in USA Today entitled "Evangelicals May Face Choice: Electable Candidate Or 'Moral' One" completely misrepresented the nature of grace.  Unfortunately, the misrepresentation was by an "evangelical" spokesman for a political advocacy group.  USA Today simply quoted him correctly.  Here's the offending statement:

Warning: Bible Reading Can Be Dangerous To Political Stereotypes

Nearly everyone I know has a Bible, in fact, usually several Bibles.  I also know a lot of people who believe that the Bible tells us what we need to know about God and life.  I know some people who even have pretty firm convictions about God and life with Bible verses to back them up.  But the number of people I know who actually read the Bible in a systematic way - reading regularly, reading full passages rather than just favorite verses, and reading to let God "speak" to their life in what they read - is actually fairly small.

No need to point the finger here.  Just look at how much of the Bible you have read without commentary in the past three days.

A recent article in Christianity Today, based on research by Baylor University and  LifeWay Research identified some unexpected outcomes on beliefs and behaviors for people who read the Bible regularly.  It's worth reading and pondering the entire article - Click Here To Do That - but here are some highlight statements I have gleaned from the larger article.