I try really hard not to follow politics, so I don’t have much to say on this, but, in what I have heard, I was reminded of one of the major turning points in Augustine’s life.  When he was 16, Augustine first read Cicero’s Hortensius.  Although Cicero was a pagan philosopher, Augustine believed Hortensius had played a tremendous role in pushing him into the arms of God.  In fact, that time in his life is often referred to as his “first conversion”.  His real conversion didn’t happen for another 16 years when he was 32, but he recalled that Cicero was the one who first taught him to love truth, which eventually led to his embrace of the true God.  Augustine wrote of the incident many years later in his Confessions,

[Hortensius] altered my outlook on life. It changed my prayers to you, O Lord, and provided me with new hopes and aspirations. All my empty dreams suddenly lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth. I began to climb out of the depths to which I had sunk, in order to return to you. . . . My God, how I burned with longing to have wings to carry me back to you, away from all earthly things, although I had no idea what you would do with me! For yours is the wisdom. In Greek the word “philosophy” means “love of wisdom”, and it was with this love that the Hortensius inflamed me. . . .

I was astonished that although I now loved you . . . I did not persist in enjoyment of my God. Your beauty drew me to you, but soon I was dragged away from you by my own weight and in dismay I plunged again into the things of this world . . . as though I had sensed the fragrance of the fare but was not yet able to eat it. . . .

I began to search for a means of gaining the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I could not find this means until I embraced the mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ.

As he saw it, had Augustine not read Hortensius, he never would have become a Christian.  Let’s be thankful for any attempts to teach our children to be lovers of truth.

Jesus put it simply when he said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And I think what happens in the Republican party or the Democratic party or the United States Congress is really irrelevant to the advancement of the kingdom of God. The message of Jesus is to go into all the world and make disciples, not make Republicans. Our message is a message that Jesus died and rose again to save us from our sins and death and hell. And when evangelicals have convoluted that message, sublimated that message to a political agenda, they have missed the point.  And in many ways we have turned the mission field into the enemy.  Homosexuals are not our enemy; they are our mission field, like all other sinners are. . . .

Just exactly which sinners are we going to exclude [from a political party]?  Are we going to throw out all the people who have been unfaithful to their wife?  All the people who have cheated on their income tax?  All the people who have falsified their expense reports?  All the people who have watched pornography?  Just exactly where do we go with this morality thing?  We’re not going to have anybody in any party because we’re all sinners (John MacArthur, edited transcript).

. . . and we pledge that we will pray for you. We have hope in our sovereign God.

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Why are you reluctant to involve yourself in moral political movements?

Politics isn’t the issue.  The pattern that I want to follow is the pattern of Christ who never got involved in a political issue.  Because the price was too high.  If you take sides with that stuff, which is very volatile, within which there are many opinions, you will run the risk of making people think Christianity is a certain political viewpoint or lobby position.  Once you mix the thing with politics, people begin to see evangelical Christianity as a right-wing viewpoint.  People really do see that.  And I think that price is too high to pay (edited transcript).

On Sunday I posted my reasons for not voting this year.  I still have the same convictions.  But since making that post, I’ve come under a different conviction, mainly from reflecting on Proverbs 24:11-12:

Rescue those who are being taken away to death;
hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
and will he not requite man according to his work?

(more…)

Up until the time I was able to vote I was heavily involved in political discussions.  For anyone who knew me then, it may seem strange that I didn’t vote in the 2004 election and will not be voting in the 2008 election, but you probably understand.  For anyone who didn’t know me then, it might seem typical since my age group is the least likely age group to vote, and it may conjure up ideas of apathy and ignorance.

That’s not the case.  These are the main reasons I will not be voting in 2008:

• I want to say to my family and friends that as important as political issues are, there are things ten thousand times more important. I really mean that.  Even issues like abortion and poverty.
• I want to say to my family and friends that Democrats are not evil. Correction: I want to say that Republicans are just as evil as Democrats.  There are some great Christian values that the Democratic party fights for, most of all is probably putting attention on relieving poverty.  As one of my friends has said,
  

  If people who claim Christ would follow Christ’s commands there wouldn’t be any need for legislation. . . . No one deserves to be rich. It’s a gift, period. You can work for it all day long, but in the end, we don’t deserve much apart from a hole in the ground to bury ourselves in. But we’ve been blessed for the sole purpose of helping other people.

• Who am I to choose the president? I will be praying for the election, but in not voting I am choosing to defer to the wisdom of those who have studied these issues and put more thought and prayer into them than I have.  There are many things I don’t know, and one of those is who should be the next president.  If you do, I encourage you to vote!  But I don’t.

For those of you who are planning on voting, check out Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Vote clip below.

Update: Also see Why I Second Guessed My Decision Not to Vote in 2008.