Voting

I heard a story from a friend who attended a meeting of the World Alliance of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches in the 1980s. The chair, Rev. Dr. Allen Boesack, a black African living under Apartheid regime in South Africa at the time, asked people for no votes even if a motion was overwhelmingly or sometimes unanimously agreed. When someone asked why he was doing that, he explained that it was all about allowing everyone to exercise one’s freedom to speak one’s view. To him calling for a nay vote even if there was only one person was the exercise of free speech that needed a special sensitivity. More than that, for him calling out for the smallest of voices was the act of love that made this freedom possible.

In North America we do not worry too much about participating in elections or in voting during meetings. We take our freedom to express our views for granted. We are given enough opportunities to vote in or out a government we do not like. We can vote yes or nay or abstain. We do not have to worry about having someone burning our houses, beating us up on a street, and being thrown into a prison without charges. We would never come to appreciate the very freedom we enjoy until it is taken away from us.

Living with this endless and unbound freedom, we neglect this task of voting and expressing our views. For us, because of the lack of immediate consequences we do not know the price of neglect when we do not bother to vote or become apathetic. As Christians, on the surface, we seem to be justified in not participating in secular political activities. After all, we believe in the separation of church and state. What is there for Christians to say on political matters? We do not want to be like those fundamentalists or evangelical Christians who want to bring God’s dominion over the world, no?

Actually, there is another view that we need to consider as Christians and take seriously the affairs of the world. As Christians who deeply care about God and our neighbours, voting of any kind including elections ought to be seen as our way of contributing to the world, a way of discerning God’s will to establish a fair, just and loving world. That is, casting a vote is to help the world discern a way to love God and neighbour. Our standard in discerning is that it ought to meet the test loving even the enemies as Christ beckoned us to do. The act of voting, therefore, becomes an act of faith that brings hope and love to this troubled world.

What about atheists, agnostics and others, you say? As Christians, we do our part in loving them. The difference between Christians' and secularists' views is that we through vote are helping to discern God's will while the rest of the world express their views. Our hope is that by participating in this democratic process called elections, we come along side secularists and help them discern ways to build a compassionate and caring world where the vulnerable are protected, poor are lifted up, hungry are fed, sick and those who mourn are comforted.

Indeed, our task as Christians is to discern for ourselves and help our neighbours discern the way of loving that casts out fears, brings forgiveness in order that enemies are reconciled, and point to hope-filled world that is to come in Christ. In this, we differ from all other Christians who express in order to impose their views on the world.