But the issue is not whether you vote Republican or not. The issue is whether you trust Republican. If we do that, then we are a bigger fool than we look.
It is not as though God is making us choose between evils, with us trying to figure out which one is the lesser. Voting Republican is not a venial sin, with a vote for the Democrats being a steaming hot mortal one. The issue on all these things is why and how. Trusting the Democrats is certainly a mortal sin. Trusting the Republicans is a venial one . . . but a sin nonetheless. Christians really ought to knock it off. But trusting perfectionistic third party candidates is obviously the Pathway of Light, upon which, if you walk, no political temptations whatever can behall you. Right? Well, suit yourself, friend. If you never enroll in the class, then nobody ever gets to grade your papers.
To make my own application: the proper response to idolatry is not to tell all the idolators that “you’re doing it wrong,” and insist on campaigning for better idols.
“But trusting perfectionistic third party candidates is obviously the Pathway of Light, upon which, if you walk, no political temptations whatever can befall you. Right? Well, suit yourself, friend. If you never enroll in the class, then nobody ever gets to grade your papers.”
I didn’t have time for the necessary smackdown of that post but this little jab here is based on a false dichotomy. “Perfectionism” is not the only alternative to being a slave to the last vestiges of right wing enlightenment humanism (i.e., pragmatically voting for whomever the Republican run because he/she is “the best of those who actually have a chance to win”).
Moreover, he can try all he wants to distinguish himself with this “trusting” stuff but politically speaking, he’s still a slave to the grind (he’s a “captive audience”). For all of pastor Wilson’s browbeating of Repubs, at the end of the day, he sees to do just what any other pragmatic evangelical does: he votes for them. He thus gets more of what he subsidizes, which, when you think about it, is ironic (i.e., voting pragmatically hasn’t “worked”).