Is God on the ballot or are we?

Americans typically refer to our November 2024 elections as “presidential,” but this is only partly true:

• All 435 members of the US House of Representatives and thirty-four members of the US Senate are also being elected.
• Eleven state and two territorial governorships are being contested.
• Ten states are holding attorney general elections.
• Seven are holding secretary of state elections.
• Ten are holding state treasurer votes.
• There are 147 ballot measures in 41 states.

Here’s who is not on the ballot: God. But we seem to think he is.

“Healing to those who knew they were sick”

In God in the Dock, C. S. Lewis observed:

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge; God is in the dock [on trial]. He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock.

As a result, according to Lewis, humanity today experiences “the almost total absence . . . of any sense of sin.” He added: “The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews, Metuentes [pious Gentiles], or Pagans, a sense of guilt. . . . Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick.”

By contrast, today, “we have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy.”

One of Satan’s most subtle strategies is to persuade sinners that there is no such thing as sin. But denying the sunrise does not affect the sun—it still “breathes out fiery vapors and when it shines forth its rays, it blinds the eyes” (Wisdom of Sirach 43:4 NRSV). Ignoring cancer only allows it to metastasize.

Accordingly, let’s consider the “election” that will matter longer and more urgently than any being decided by ballots across our nation.

“They did not know how to blush”

Mark Twain noted: “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”

The Lord agreed, asking about his sinful people, “Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush” (Jeremiah 8:12a). As a result, “They shall fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lᴏʀᴅ” (v. 12b).

For what should Americans “blush” today?

You can list our cultural sins as well as I can: legalizing abortion on demand, normalizing LGBTQ behavior and redefining marriage, ignoring the plight of the poor and needy, promoting prostitution and pornography, advocating for euthanasia, engaging in systemic racism and antisemitism—the list goes on.

The first phase of God’s punishment against sin is permissive, his decision to withhold his blessing: “When I would gather them, declares the Lᴏʀᴅ, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them” (v. 13). Everything we have depends on God’s provision and sustaining grace. Humans cannot create the rain upon which our food depends or even another day of life.

Are we experiencing such permissive judgment today? Are the decaying of our moral fabric and deepening of our partisan divisions symptoms? What about rising threats from geopolitical actors and terrorists? The specter of pandemics and extinction-level artificial intelligence?

“The summer is ended, and we are not saved”

If we still will not repent, we must then experience God’s proactive judgment: “‘The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan; at the sound of the neighing of their stallions the whole land quakes. They come and devour the land and all that fills it, the city and those who dwell in it. For behold, I am sending among you serpents, adders that cannot be charmed, and they shall bite you,’ declares the Lᴏʀᴅ” (vv. 16–17).

King David similarly warned: “God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered; and those who hate him shall flee before him! As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away; as wax melts before fire, so the wicked shall perish before God!” (Psalm 68:1–2). Jesus likewise told those who were speculating on the fate of some who had died recently, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5).

Repentance in the face of such judgment is therefore urgent: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” (Jeremiah 8:20). Our response should be to mourn with those we are called to serve: “For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded; I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me” (v. 21).

Christians should grieve for our nation in this way for three reasons:

1. The judgment that falls on the guilty often affects the innocent as well. Pharaoh’s “hardened heart” led to the demise of his entire army. The sins of the Jewish people led to the exile of Daniel and his godly friends.
2. As “the salt” and “the light” of the world (Matthew 5:13–16), our witness and ministry are vital to the spiritual health of the people we serve. If the room is dark and we have the only light, whose fault is the darkness?
3. Spiritual grief often motivates the contrition, repentance, and intercession that are vital to cultural and national transformation. This is how spiritual awakenings have always begun.

“As shockproof as the watches we wear”

This article was prompted by a devotional I read today from Paul Powell:

Can we still be shocked? The inability to be ashamed or to blush is a sign of national decadence. . . . Nothing is worse than when sin becomes bold, arrogant, and unashamed.

We Americans are as shockproof as the watches we wear. We are too easy on evil. We’ve taken this matter of tolerance too far. With people we need to be tolerant, but with sin, evil, and wrong we need to be intolerant. In short we need to hate things, but not people.

Every time we tolerate what God forbids, we cast a spiritual ballot for decadence, which God must judge in our lives and our nation. Every time we stand for what God commends, we cast a ballot for spiritual awakening, which God must judge in our lives and our nation.

Ten thousand millennia after the results of the current elections are forgotten, these decisions will still echo in eternity.

Dr. Powell closed his reflection with this optimistic word: “It doesn’t take many people to change the world. Just a few people with courage and convictions can do it.”

But then he reminded us: “The man who stands neutral stands for nothing.”

For what—and Whom—will you stand today?