How should Christians Vote?

[ArmenianJohn]

But that's just it;neither of them are Christians. Christianity isn't about good behavior, it's about faith, and it's insulting to see liberals ignore that. So, basically, you're a Christian if you're a socialist and support socialism? (And yes, I've heard all of the arguments about why Jesus was a socialist and blah blah blah) Is God really so narrow-minded as to view people the way we do?

Where did I say that "you're a Christian if you're a socialist and support socialism"? I said nothing of the sort. I said: "Bernie is the most in line with God's Word. He doesn't pretend to be a Christian and he probably doesn't follow God's Word for religious reasons but for whatever reason his views and policies are the most in line with God's Word."

Nowhere in there did I say that his self-given label of "socialist" has anything to do with it. From what I know about his positions compared to all the other candidates is that he is the most in line with God's Word. This has to do with serving others. It has to do with putting service to people, particularly the various needy people that the Bible talks about - the elderly, sick, immigrants, poor, children, widows, orphans - ABOVE money (which the Bible refers to as "filthy lucre" and "mammon", a false god that we are to choose between it and the True God). That's why and how I see Bernie's platform supporting what Christians should want and what is most in line with God's Word.

If you like Bernie Sanders, fine. But stop calling him a Christian when he has said that he is an agnostic. It is so insulting to Christianity's rich history, traditions, and prominent figures--are Billy Graham, C.S. Lewis, Augustine of Hippo, Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther, and a great number of saints "not" Christians just for not having 100% leanings?

I don't mind anyone disagreeing with me and I would be happy to discuss whatever we disagree on. However, it does tick me off when someone accuses me of something I did not do. I did NOT call Bernie a Christian. In fact, I said: "He doesn't pretend to be a Christian and he probably doesn't follow God's Word for religious reasons." How is that saying he's a Christian in any way? He doesn't pretend to be one and he doesn't follow God's Word for religious reasons - how can someone be a Christian if they don't claim to be one and don't follow God's Word for religious reasons? How do you get from that that I have ever said he's a Christian? It's well established from his own mouth that he's an atheist and not a Christian in any way.

Where is any insult by me to the Christians you list? It's unbelievable to me that you fabricate such an accusation and then fashion it into an insult to these people.

Disagree with me all you want but when you bear false witness against me you are in error according to God's Word.

 

[ArmenianJohn]

While I actually mostly agree with your post, I found some points that I would have thought you would have a different outlook on and am surprised that you would say some of these things.

But today, the bad things happen less.

I don't think so - I think they happen as much or more but they may not all be the same "bad things". I don't think that "bad" can be agreed upon by everyone in the same way, either, so this is a subjective statement.

War today is far less common and far less deadly than war 100 years ago, despite the rising efficiency of the weapons.

Yet global slavery and economic oppression does a neater and more efficient job than outright war and hides deaths. When slaves are used in China to make cheap junk for Walmart and other American companies to sell we are killing people there and here. Look how people are enslaved in Dubai and UAE or other parts of the world, India, etc. Our world today has found a way to "legalize" slavery and then enslave people and kill them, slowly, while extracting use from them till they die.

Medicine today has increased human lifespans immensely,

Lifespan is not really a good measure of "good" - I faced the problem with my parents of having to make decisions because medical science was so good at keeping them alive that we had to consider QUALITY of life. There is no science to that. Science doesn't help with that. To a point it could help, but we tend to ignore mental health issues and other vital issues concerning the elderly. In the end, some people are better off not being kept alive artificially - but who can or should even decide that? Sometimes the "advancement" of science creates new problems, new "bad".

made the death of the mother and the child during childbirth a rarity rather than a commonplace occurrence, and made diseases that used to be a death sentence little more than temporary annoyances.

Doesn't disrupting survival of the fittest upset the evolution of man? Our society is OK with aborting a fetus if sickness is detected so why spend the resources to try to save sick babies in childbirth? Shouldn't nature take its course? Or can evolution be overruled by man and our science?

Food is so overabundant that in many parts of the world, we have more to fear from overeating than from famine.

While food is overabundant in some parts of the world there is NO food in other parts of the world.
https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-hunger-and-famine

1. Each year, 3 million children under five die of preventable, hunger-related causes.
2. Around the world, 805 million people are hungry--nearly 1 in 9 globally.
3. It costs just $0.25 daily to provide a child with all the nutrients they need to grow up healthy.
4. Asia has the largest number of hungry people (over 500 million) but Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest prevalence (23.8% of population).
5. 66 million primary-school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone.
6. The World Food Programme calculates that $3.2 billion is needed every year to reach all 66 million hungry children.
7. If women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry people in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million.
8. Hunger is number one on the list of the world’s top 10 health risks. It kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.
9. By 2050, climate change and erratic weather patterns could push another 24 million children into hunger, most of them contained to sub-Saharan Africa.
10. Hunger is the single biggest solvable problem facing the world today. 2.2 billion people live on less than $2.00 a day.

So for all our advancement, science has yet to figure out people and how to get people to help other people... That is not the realm of science.

I think that you can't just proclaim there is "less bad" in the world and cite some instances that seem to be better. It can't be ignored that longer lifespans are not necessarily "better" - people live in suffering, depression, loneliness, and anguish and it's not always "better" for them. While some people thrive and do better others in the world are paying the price for it. For you and me to be able to eat a lot of food, drive our cars (or take our buses/trains), have our kids or relatives live longer and/or better, etc. we are taxing people in other parts of the world and those people have to starve, suffer, and die for us to get what we have.

It's a very first-world thing to say "look how much better the world is today!!!" - it's really not. In fact, with all our advancments it should be all the more embarrassing that we have the severe problems we still have.

 

[SepiaAndDust]

It's a very first-world thing to say "look how much better the world is today!!!"

No, it really isn't.

If the entire world barely ekes out survival, then 100 years later half of the people have enough food, that is a better world. Imagine choosing which of your children you'll let starve this week. Every time that choice is unnecessary, the world is better.

If the entire world has no antibiotics or pain killers, then 100 years later half of the people do have them, that is a better world. Imagine your brains baking from an untreatable fever or the screaming pain of a broken back. Every time those are avoided, the world is better.

That everybody suffers at some point in their lives doesn't negate the fact that things are better. That some people don't have access to the food, the antibiotics, or the pain killers doesn't negate the fact that things are better.


A very first-world thing to say is I and all of my siblings survived being born, none of us died from fever or were crippled by polio, none of us went without food for any significant length of time, and all of us have lived well beyond threescore years and ten, but the world hasn't gotten any better.

 

[Calminian]

I don't care that he said "two Corinthians" so much as I care that he says he's a Christian but also says he never asks or asked God for forgiveness (although he's unsure whether drinking "his little wine" and eating "his cracker" is technically asking God for forgiveness).
http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/18/trump-ive-never-asked-god-for-forgiveness-for-anything-video/

It's more the other things he says and stands for that make it clear to me he is probably the least in line with God's Word.

Bernie is the most in line with God's Word. He doesn't pretend to be a Christian and he probably doesn't follow God's Word for religious reasons but for whatever reason his views and policies are the most in line with God's Word.

I'm unsure what you hear that you're so "amazed" by...

Just with what I'm hearing from supposed Christians, preferring a socialist and abortionist like Bernie Sanders. What policies are you hearing from him that are not in line with God's word? Surely you can name something?

 

[Calminian]

My difficulty with Trump is not about his faith. I do not think that he is a brother, but that is beside the point. The real issue is his integrity. Yes, he is a successful businessman, who achieved success through exploitation. He is a proud adulterer. And, as a candidate, he appeals almost exclusively to racism and violence. And, he claims he has nothing to repent of. He seems to be a man of no integrity at all. And, many Americans who call themselves Christians (some of whom probably actually are) want to put him in charge? I am still figuring out what to make of that.

Proud adulterer? Where did you get this from?

Also, what's indecent about him? He desires to protect Christians around the world. Indecent? He is dedicated to vets. Indecent? He has a good relationship with his kids and even with this ex wives. Indecent?

And I've never heard an ounce of racism from him. He has many hispanic and black americans voting for him. You're repeating political lies, which is gossip and slander. To me, that's much more indecent. I'll take salty language over lying any day.

 

[The Cadet]

Yet global slavery and economic oppression does a neater and more efficient job than outright war and hides deaths. When slaves are used in China to make cheap junk for Walmart and other American companies to sell we are killing people there and here. Look how people are enslaved in Dubai and UAE or other parts of the world, India, etc. Our world today has found a way to "legalize" slavery and then enslave people and kill them, slowly, while extracting use from them till they die.

You know, a few hundred years ago, they had a different way to "legalize" slavery. They just... had legal slavery. Say what you will about the exploitation of cheap labor forces (it's doubtlessly a problem), it's still worlds better than the systematic extermination or subjugation of entire peoples and cultures through legalized, institutionally-recognized, Biblically supported slavery. Even the parts of today's world that are bad are better than they used to be!

Lifespan is not really a good measure of "good" - I faced the problem with my parents of having to make decisions because medical science was so good at keeping them alive that we had to consider QUALITY of life. There is no science to that. Science doesn't help with that.

Um... What?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term="quality+of+life"

Quality of life is a major issue in modern medicine. It's a significant scientific question asked before virtually any dangerous or debilitating medical procedure. Very often, the answer is, "It's time to stop keeping them alive", in which case people are moved to hospice care, to make their passing as painless as possible. This is not something science cannot help with, it is a question science crucially needs to ask, and which no other system offers better tools for dealing with.

To a point it could help, but we tend to ignore mental health issues and other vital issues concerning the elderly. In the end, some people are better off not being kept alive artificially - but who can or should even decide that? Sometimes the "advancement" of science creates new problems, new "bad".

Um... What? I fail to see how the choice of "stay alive longer or die" is worse than the non-choice of "die".

Doesn't disrupting survival of the fittest upset the evolution of man? Our society is OK with aborting a fetus if sickness is detected so why spend the resources to try to save sick babies in childbirth? Shouldn't nature take its course? Or can evolution be overruled by man and our science?

I don't think you understand natural selection very well.

While food is overabundant in some parts of the world there is NO food in other parts of the world.

Right. And how does that distribution play out over a global timescale? Simple question: did more of the human population, by ratio, die of starvation in 1500 or 2000? The answer should be obvious to anyone with even a passing grasp of history. Let me give you a hint. In the past, everyone was at risk of starvation. Nowadays, only the very poor corners of the world are. We've gone from a world where unless you were extremely rich within your own country you were at risk of starvation when famines hit to a world where starvation is completely unheard of for even the poorest in many parts of the world. Sure, some people still starve. But has it, on the whole, gotten better? It's absurd to claim otherwise!

I think that you can't just proclaim there is "less bad" in the world and cite some instances that seem to be better. It can't be ignored that longer lifespans are not necessarily "better" - people live in suffering, depression, loneliness, and anguish and it's not always "better" for them. While some people thrive and do better others in the world are paying the price for it. For you and me to be able to eat a lot of food, drive our cars (or take our buses/trains), have our kids or relatives live longer and/or better, etc. we are taxing people in other parts of the world and those people have to starve, suffer, and die for us to get what we have.

Would you care to cite any measure for how the world is objectively worse? You've cited unfortunate situations and atrocities today, but compared to the past, it's a drop in the bucket. Oh, some people starve today? In the past, everyone starved. Yeah, poor working conditions exist today, to the point where some people could still be considered slaves. How does this stack up against the trans-atlantic slave trade, and the fact that almost every culture on earth had legalized slavery in some fashion up until not all that long ago? Medicine forces us to confront difficult questions about our quality of life vs. quantity of life? In the past, the reason we didn't have those questions was because when we got cancer, our options were "die", "shuffle off our mortal coil", or, for some, "run down the curtain and join the choir invisible"!

There is not a reasonable argument to be made nor a single metric to support the claim that the world is not a better place to live now than it was at any time in human history. None.

 

[SepiaAndDust]

Human trafficking is more widespread today than then.

No, it isn't.

There is more drug addiction

No, there isn't.

and more dangerous drugs on the street.

You may have a point there. Then again, even normal medicines were often much more dangerous in the 40s.

Islamic Jihad is more prevalent today..

Nowhere near as big a problem as the other things on the list.

There is more hunger..

No, there isn't.

There is more suicide.

Maybe, but I doubt it.

The world is falling apart.

Not even close.

The family unit is falling apart.

Again, not even close.

The communist utopia has not yet arrived. Come on man!

Useless comment.

 

[Deviant Writer]

farout, here's the thing. History has always been awful. The world has always always always had wars, famines, floods, earthquakes, genocides, crusades, plagues, and indiscriminate mass murder. There has never been a decade in recorded history where these things didn't happen.

I'm assuming you've tried telling religious conservatives that before, and you would be wasting less time and energy by dunking your head underwater and blowing bubbles.

It's like all human crime didn't exist until the turn of the century, and it ONLY happened because people "turned away from God." And when presented with all the bad things that happened in America alone, from discrimination, to lynchings, to slavery...the immediate response is "yeah you can blame Democrats for that."

Well you can't blame Democrats for the idiocy of Trump, or that of people who want this country to be like the '50s or '40s again. Today, that's your Republican. They have this picture of a mom in the kitchen, and a dad telling her what to do, and the family holding hands while saying grace, and that has eclipsed literally everything else that was going on at the time.

 

[The Cadet]

Human trafficking is more widespread today than then. There is more drug addiction, and more dangerous drugs on the street. Islamic Jihad is more prevalent today. There is more hunger. There is more suicide.

Human trafficking is more widespread now than it was when the midatlantic slave trade was in full swing? Citation needed. Drug addiction I have no figures on; does the misery and death brought upon by drug abuse even scratch the surface of, say, the misery and deaths caused by smallpox and cholera? Islamic Jihad is more prevalent today than it was back when the Ottomans attempted to conquer Europe by the sword? There is more hunger? I'm not even going to ask for a citation on that one because it's so absurd on it's face. And citation on your suicide statistics?

I mean honestly, what bubble do you live in? The world is falling apart.

The world is more long-living, well-fed, and interconnected than it has ever been. I can pick up the phone right now and see and hear my father, who lives thousands of miles away, and shoot the breeze about the latest news from places even further afield. Even if I lose my job, I have absolutely no worries that I will be able to feed myself. If I get sick, even if it's something that would have been a death sentence for my forefathers, chances are good I can get a quick and relatively easy remedy.

The family unit is falling apart.

You know, you never did answer my question. Which decade in history would you like to be transplanted into?

 

[Kersh]

Proud adulterer? Where did you get this from?

Also, what's indecent about him? He desires to protect Christians around the world. Indecent? He is dedicated to vets. Indecent? He has a good relationship with his kids and even with this ex wives. Indecent?

And I've never heard an ounce of racism from him. He has many hispanic and black americans voting for him. You're repeating political lies, which is gossip and slander. To me, that's much more indecent. I'll take salty language over lying any day.

I addressed all of these topics in detail, and with links, in Post #51.

 

[Kersh]

and failed miserably. that's why you're backing off now.

Interesting that you say that, but you never responded to it.

That said, I know that I am not going to convince you. But, I will say this. I urge every believer, regardless of who they are voting for, to spend the next several months praying for wisdom and reading through the historical books (esp. 1 &2 Kings) of the Old Testament to see what kind of leader God is looking for. If you remain convinced that Trump is that guy, then by all means, vote your convictions. But, I'm not seeing it.

 

[Calminian]

Interesting that you say that, but you never responded to it.

That said, I know that I am not going to convince you. But, I will say this. I urge every believer, regardless of who they are voting for, to spend the next several months praying for wisdom and reading through the historical books (esp. 1 &2 Kings) of the Old Testament to see what kind of leader God is looking for. If you remain convinced that Trump is that guy, then by all means, vote your convictions. But, I'm not seeing it.

Well on this we can agree. Also, read Romans 13 to understand God's purpose for governing authorities. The linked article in the OP deals with that passage quite a bit.

BTW, Trumps is pro life, pro marriage and pro law and order, and pro capitalism. He has endorsements from very good Christian leaders, including Jeffress and Falwell, who have gotten to know him very well. Art Laffer Reagan's economic adviser has endorsed Trump's tax plan. He's a good man, a lot better than many of the gossips on this board. He loves and cares about this country deeply. He wants to fix immigration so that it's lawful and safe. Jeff Sessions endorsed him as the best candidate on immigration. He wants to bring jobs back so we can put the almost 100,000,000 that are out of the work force. Compare that to Sanders and Clinton, who want to do just the opposite. It's no wonder Trump is winning evangelical support.

Grace & Peace

 

[EinsteinsGirl]

Christians should vote for the person GOD advises them to vote for.
God can use anyone to perform His will.
The problem is that the majority of Christians cannot hear God's voice because they are not in a relationship with Him and so they use their carnal mind to make important decisions.
What does the bible say about the carnal mind and intellect?
Take a look below
For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. - Rom 8:5-7
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. - 1 Cor 2;13

 

[Deviant Writer]

The problem is that the majority of Christians cannot hear God's voice because they are not in a relationship with Him and so they use their carnal mind to make important decisions.

I don't consider it a problem that most people don't hear voices in their heads.

 

[David4223]

MOD HAT ON

This thread has undergone a cleanup. Please ensure you are treating each other with respect, courtesy, and civility.

Thank you.

MOD HAT OFF​

 

[Deviant Writer]

HAHA! good joke
..Hillary the necromancer who "communes" with dead people..

You do understand that reality isn't World of Warcraft, right?

 

[Tiny Bible]

My brother forwarded me an old Carlin comedy concert video link. Way too racy to post here but anyone interested can find it at YouTube. Just look for, George Carlin - Voting is meaningless.

"The Owners Of The Country" was on the related video's menu on the right hand side of the video.
Brother is a huge Carlin fan. I can see why. Especially his bit about Global Warming.

 

[EinsteinsGirl]

Where did I say that "you're a Christian if you're a socialist and support socialism"? I said nothing of the sort. I said: "Bernie is the most in line with God's Word. He doesn't pretend to be a Christian and he probably doesn't follow God's Word for religious reasons but for whatever reason his views and policies are the most in line with God's Word."

You obviously don't know God's word then!
Bernie Sanders is definitiely not in line with God's word

 

[Tiny Bible]

You obviously don't know God's word then!
Bernie Sanders is definitiely not in line with God's word

Agreed!
Their remarks here doesn't even make sense in any context of Christianity.

ArmenianJohn said: ↑
I said: "Bernie is the most in line with God's Word. He doesn't pretend to be a Christian and he probably doesn't follow God's Word for religious reasons but for whatever reason his views and policies are the most in line with God's Word."

 

[EinsteinsGirl]

Agreed!
Their remarks here doesn't even make sense in any context of Christianity.

This isn't the only thread in which his ridiculous views are being spewed.
Oh well, at least he can say he's consistent with the drivel he purports.