Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast. This is a weekly program with Doctor Jeffrey J. Ventrella where he answers questions from subscribers around the globe, answering questions about worldview, cultural apologetics, and other miscellaneous items. I'm your host, Joshua Guillot, and this is another edition of the director's Bag.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Alright, well, welcome back to another episode of the director's Bag. This podcast is listener supported, and it's supported in a number of ways, one through your questions that our listeners send in. So please keep those coming. Jeff and I were just talking about how encouraging we are by that feedback, as well as the commentary and some of the probing questions that you bring from reading Jeff's dick does. Also, it is supported through financial resources. So if the Lord leads you and this podcast has blessed you, please prayerfully consider donating to truth exchange and you can find that link on the website.
So our first question is from Bernice in New Jersey. Bernice, says, Doctor Vendrella, thank you for opening up your time to impart your wisdom in various areas of life, as well as your theological knowledge on a wide range of things. As we enter into another election year, the clamor for who or how christians should vote is about to begin. I'm not convinced we have ever had a truly righteous candidate which one would think would make voting a whole lot easier.
This year. We have candidates, in my opinion, again, who are both wicked in their own right, which makes it easier, in my mind, to not vote. But my friends say that that in action is action for evil.
Please consider sharing your thoughts on how christians should vote. Scripture references would be preferable and why. It seems like everyone has their own worldview on voting. Thanks in advance and thank you, Bernice.
[00:02:13] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you, Bernice. That's a really important question to ask. Let's just, at the outset, inform everybody at truth exchange, we are a nonprofit christian ministry, and so we don't take a position supporting, endorsing, or opposing any candidate for elective political office. We do, of course, deal with cultural apologetic matters and be glad to discuss that from a general christian perspective. So I presume that the question is talking about the United States presidential elections. Again, truth exchange doesn't support one horse over the other horse. You know, we don't focus on the donkey nor the elephant, but on the lion, who is the lamb. That is our political bent. But with respect to those things, let me just say this, that one thing we have to understand is that in a constitutional republic, which is the system of the United States, it actually empowers the citizens to have a say, a say in who governs them. And that's a very christian idea. So that the consent of the governed, that very notion that appears in our founding documents, is crucial, because one person can't rule over another person except by the consent of that person. And so that is a christian idea that is rooted in the image of God, the imago dei. So it's really important to acknowledge that when we cast a vote, whether for dog catcher or for president, we are actually once again echoing the imago dei. In a christian sense of governance, one man cannot rule over another man absent consent. And when they do do that, it's tyrannical. And we ought to be opposed to any system on the left or the right that sounds in tyrannical coercion over another person without input. Now, having said that, the question is, how do we calculate our voting? I think one thing to understand is there's no moral equivalency. That is to say, all issues are not morally equivalent. So if I have one candidate that says, I think the tax rate should be 11%, and another one says it should be 12%, those are not morally equivalent to a candidate that says there ought to be abortion on demand versus there ought not to be abortion. We can't equalize those kinds of sentiments. And so, in a sense, the Christian, because of the moral vector of the law of God, requires us to be single issue voters. There are some issues that are more paramount, more important to those who have a christian worldview than other issues. And so if we put all our chips, so to speak, on lgbt issues, that's going to be a very different calculus. If we put all our chips on, say, the role of the federal government in dealing with health care, those are different kinds of issues. Now, having said that, there are certain issues, in my view, personally, that are non negotiable. The right to life, the definition of marriage, the nature of religious liberty, those are all primary, top tier kinds of issues, and there are, no doubt some others. So any candidate that is in error on those issues, from a christian perspective, it is always righteous to oppose unrighteousness, and so to cast your vote in a way that is opposing unrighteous positions. The other thing we must need to see is that in the United States, with respect to the election of a presidency, you're not simply electing one person. You're electing a person to lead an entire system. And what I mean by that is you're electing, first of all, a platform in a particular political party. And if that platform is ungodly it's anti creational, for example. Well, then you're also either need to oppose that or you need to support one that is more godly. Second of all, the president of the United States, through the administrative state, has something like 6000 appointments. That's in addition to things like federal judges with lifetime tenure. So consequently, you are not simply electing one person. And so you need to think about the leveraging factor that that one candidate, if elected, will have. And if they have unrighteous policies, unrighteous platforms, that's going to lead to unrighteous national governance. And so the proverbs tell us that righteousness exalts a nation, okay? And we need to exalt our nation to the extent we have that ability and freedom to do so. Similarly, those who forsake the law, the law of God, here praise the wicked, which tells us that it's an act of worship. If we vote for something that is ungodly, it's not only ethically mistaken, it is theologically mistaken. It's not a worshipful experience for that which is good and true and righteous. So I hope, Bernice, that gives you some ideas of kind of how we conceive of that.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Jeff, a number of years ago, you and I were doing a podcast together on this very issue, and you had listed off that top tier of items. And one of the things that you and I discussed on the podcast, because at the time, it was the 2020 election with Biden versus Trump, and there was a number of Christians, big name Christians, who had been president of seminaries and kind of leaders in their own right in various spheres of christian evangelicalism. And they had started an organization called, I think it was Christians for Biden.
And I recall engaging with some of these men, and they said, look, on the issue of pro life, there has never been a republican candidate or a president who has actually been effective on that tier, on that issue of life, therefore.
And plus, it's not, the president can't do anything. Or to that sense, they'd argue the president can't do anything he needs. This has to take place with Supreme Court, this has happens with Congress, this has to have a senate and so on down the line. So the president can't really do anything but this. But the president can help on areas of the widow and the orphan, the James one, pure and undefiled religion. How would you respond to Christians who say, well, okay, they may not be pro life, but they are going to care for the widow, they are going to care for the orphan, and they're going to do other aspects that are quite christian.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I think a lot of people tend to emotionally gravitate there, and a lot of it's based upon inaccurate information and sentiment. So a couple things are going on here. One, we see an equivocation on the issue of what it means to be pro life. Pro life is a taxonomy that deals with the unborn human person as well as the end of life for people who have debilitating diseases or terminal diseases. That is what that nomenclature, that label is really about, what we see from largely the left. And it started with Ron Seder clear back in the 1980s. The author of Rich Christians in an Age of hunger, which was trying to shame Christians in the same way, had a debate with him in October of 1986, actually. But the idea was that, well, to be consistently or thoroughly pro life is to take up some of these other ideas. There's a couple of problems with that. One of the problems is it confuses jurisdictional categories. The admonition in James is not a call for the state to do things. It's a call for christians to do these things through the mediation of associations and through the church. James in no way invokes Caesar with respect to these things, and there's good reason for it. The good reason is contained in what Paul articulates in Romans chapter 13 concerning the role of the state. The state has a monopoly on coercive power. Paul calls it the sword, and it is for the purpose of being a minister, a servant of God, in the areas of express wrongdoing, unethical conduct, not status, not immigration status, not economic status and those kinds of things. Should we be engaged in protecting the widows, the orphans, the outsiders, the poor? Yes, we should, as Christians, but that's not the role of the state. And what happens is it expands the role of the coercive state, and it leads to all manner of mischief. The third thing I'd say, the mistake of someone who has that sentiment is because the president, in fact, can do something about these things. I can talk about history. So President Trump appointed a friend of mine, Roger Severino, to the office of Civil Rights. The Office of Civil Rights is part of the administrative state. And what Roger and his team did was get rid of regulations that were anti life, get rid of regulations that were problematic, and instead, Roger's team was able to set forth regulations that were firmly more christianly oriented, and so forth. So since we do have an administrative state, we have to acknowledge that reality. And it does matter who's making those appointments and the policies they are going to then implement. So for all those reasons, the people who called for what they did in 1920, first of all probably violated the tax code in doing so. Now, I think that tax code is wrong. Make no mistake. I think it's an unconstitutional prohibition. It's called the Johnson Amendment. It occurred in the 1950s. I think it's unconstitutional, but you can't really challenge it because there's to get legal here. You can't get standing to do it. They have to have an enforcement action and the IR's knows they're going to lose. So they don't really enforce it, they just saber rattle. But even with that, we want to follow the law at truth exchange. So we're not going to take a position for or against candidates for elective office that we think the law is wrong.
There'll be a time when I think someone will challenge that and win. That being said, those people not only probably violated the law, but they also are just based upon sentiment as opposed to sentience and thinking through the issues and the reality on the ground.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Excellent quick announcement. In August we have our public symposium every square inch, and that will be at Providence Christian College in California.
Please be sure to register on the website truthexchange.com and we have more information on that.
[00:14:04] Speaker D: This concludes a recording of the director's bag.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: For more resources from Truth Exchange, please.
[00:14:09] Speaker D: Visit us online at www.truthexchange.com. you can follow us on X as well as Facebook for more updates and content related to Truth exchange. Be sure to join us next week for more questions from the directors bag. Im your host Joshua Guillotine and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.
