We've all seen the "biblical scorecard" literature that floats about during election seasons, grading candidates based on their voting record. The criteria are usually the same: pro-life, pro-family, pro-morality. Most of us would hopefully agree that one is safe in concluding that these are indeed biblical objectives. The problem comes when a whole series of specific policies are deduced, as if they were logically required by commitment to those values. In a lot of these scorecards, for example, God has apparently declared himself in favor of a specific tax cut, a particular war, school prayer, and a Constitutional ban on flag burning. A lot of them get more specific even than that. Usually, by the way, they are not very specific about racial discrimination, environmental disaster, or piling up debt for future generations.
On one end are those who think that God doesn't have anything to say about politics. Can we imagine that the God who created the world, upholds it every moment by his providence, has redeemed it at the cost of his own Son's death, and will one day make it new, does not really care what we do to it or in it? On the other end are those who think that they can deduce God's will on every congressional vote: "If x, then y; if y, then z. Can't you see that if you don't adopt z, you don't really accept x?" But whenever the church thinks God has told it more than he actually has, it has always reflected poorly on God and his cause in the world. Many who take "biblical scorecard" folks' word for it that Scripture clearly supports conservative Republican policies simply reject Scripture. To be sure, they probably already had, but now they feel more justified in doing so. They have missed the point that Scripture was not given as a blueprint for a holy government with civil power, but to reveal Christ as the hope of history and the world beyond the stop-gap measures of politics, hospitals, jails, and other means of restraining the damage that sin does.
The biblical scorecard approach has been effective on the left as much as the political right. It is often not differences over whether God is on their side in every jot and tittle of their ideology, but a matter of which ideology is so privileged.
Here are a few suggestions for thinking biblically at election time:
1.Clearly distinguish the role of the church as an institution from the role of Christians as citizens in the world. Especially in a democracy, Christians have every reason to be involved, informed and engaged in the pressing questions of our day. However, the church itself is not an American institution, but a colony of Christ's heavenly kingdom in this present age. Patriotism, for example, is terrific for the public square and a Christian ought not to have trouble expressing it along with non-Christian neighbors. But it is completely out of place in Christian worship. Further, the church simply does not have the authorization or usually the competence to address complex policy questions about which many of its own members might with good reason disagree. This relates to the next point.
2.Clearly distinguish divine command from questions of wisdom and prudence. When you think about it, God has not commanded very many things. He makes few laws, but enforces them. Further, the churches of the Reformation insist that Scripture alone can command the conscience. We cannot be required to believe or do anything that does not have scriptural warrant. Of course, many brothers and sisters think that they have scriptural warrant for every policy position they take, but they often confuse their own thinking with the Bible. There is nothing wrong with using one's own mind! God has equipped us with reason and endowed us with a sense of justice, so that even non-Christians can create a reasonably equitable government. Christians who agree on the big questions clearly addressed in Scripture may and do disagree over policy questions-in other words, how to implement or apply the civil use of the law. We have to allow each other room to disagree without judging them to be somehow unfaithful to Scripture.
3.Try not to read the Bible selectively. God is not a Republican. He's not a Democrat either. We have to remember that any political ideology is a reflection of questions raised by the secular culture in a given time and place. The "biblical scorecard" is not actually biblical. There is no official Word from God on whether we should have a tax cut or what kind of cut it should be. Even when we think we're on solid biblical ground, we often realize that somewhere else in Scripture another biblical value is affirmed as just as important, and we cannot sacrifice it for this other value over here. We have to allow Scripture to give us better questions and a fuller interpretation of reality than we already have by simply listening to the cultural left or right.
