This Follower of Jesus is Voting for Joe Biden

A Contentious and Polarized Electorate

In the months after the 2012 election in which Barack Obama won a second term over his challenger, Mitt Romney, I was part of a small delegation representing Emory University’s Board of Visitors who gathered at The Carter Center in Atlanta. We had the wonderful privilege of having lunch with former President Jimmy Carter.  We learned much about the global work of the center with eradicating rare diseases in the global south as well as their mission of monitoring elections around the globe. During the question and answer time, our conversation eventually turned to the previous election. It had been so divisive we wanted to get the former president’s take on it. He said a number of distressing things about the amount of money allowed in politics and the reality of negative attack ads being more effective than positive ones. But he said something that has stuck with me. He said the result of the billions poured into elections and the proliferation of campaign attack ads is that on the morning after an election, the winner wakes up aware that half the country hates him. He went on to say, “America is so politically polarized I fear we are on the verge of being ungovernable.” That was 2013.

The Most Toxic in My 71 Years

So here we are in the most toxic, polarizing political election season in my 71 years of life. How many times have we heard, “This is the most important election in our lifetime?” In the midst of this election season and with the clear choices for President of the United States, it sure seems so. No matter how distasteful we find this season and perhaps being disgusted with it all, we are nevertheless called to vote. For those who might suggest that somebody like I who is an ordained pastor in the church ought to stay out of politics, Martin Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms says otherwise. For Luther, there is the ultimate call and claim on our lives of the gospel and its hope and promises that must guide us, but there is also a penultimate call to participate in civil society. One of the ways we do that is by voting.

A Binary Choice

Given the binary choice before us, the choice for me could not be more clear. Being a follower of Jesus compels me to vote for Joe Biden. With this declaration, I am not in any way suggesting the Democratic Party as being aligned with the Reign of God. It and the Republican Party are temporal organizations. My allegiance is not to a party or even a candidate. My allegiance is to Jesus, the One whom they crucified and who would not stay dead because he loves us.

An Ethic of Love

The ethic that drives my vote for Joe Biden is love. Followers of Jesus are called to love God and all that God has created above everything else. When a religious lawyer stands up and asks Jesus to name the greatest commandment, he responds with the mandate of loving God with all we are and have. He then says that loving others is commensurate with loving God (Luke 10:27). To be a follower of Jesus, then, is to love what and whom God loves and to so be aligned with the heart of God that our hearts break with the things that break God’s heart. When I view the two persons running for President of the United States, their positions on issues, and the things their parties support, Joe Biden and his party, as flawed as they are, better align with the love to which God calls us.

Love the Earth 

At the top of the list of things we are called to love is the earth itself. In the great unfolding saga of human existence as beings created in the image of God, the very first job we are given is to take care of the earth and its creatures (cf. Genesis 1 & 2). But here we are facing a true existential climate crisis created by human activity, a crisis we have denied, deflected, and postponed for too long. My goodness, conversation about climate change was in the air on our university campus when I was an engineering student over 50 years ago.

Just a little over a year ago, my wife and I were in a zodiac with a naturalist 400 yards from the face of Dawe’s Glacier. Dawe’s glacier is reached by going up the Endicott Arm of Alaska’s Inside Passage. As we viewed this glacier, huge amounts of ice would calve off, often creating large waves in the fjord. We learned that the ice is melting at an exponentially increasing rate per year. In 2019 the icy monolith lost 300 yards. We returned from that excursion to 90+ degree temperatures near Juneau. With the massive wildfires in our west, the increase in intensity of tropical storms, and the hundreds of millions of refugees around the world trying to escape the ravages of climate change, is not the earth crying out to God? Paul writes, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning” (Romans 8:22). We cannot spend one more year denying the science and succumbing to the power of the fossil fuel industry. Greed cannot drive what we do. It must be a vision of a new birth of the earth because we love the earth as God does.   

Love Welcomes the Stranger

Then, there is the matter of refugees and immigrants. Jesus calls us to love the stranger and to welcome the downtrodden. Over and over in his sermons and teachings, he tells us that fundamental to being his follower is to love and welcome the poor, the powerless, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised. Under the current president the quota for admitting refugees is being set at 15,000 for the year. This is down from 110,000 under Obama. Wonder what the quota would be if Jesus were to set it? Would we even have a quota? We certainly would not build walls, separate families, and put kids in cages. We certainly would not prey on powerless women by forcing sterilizations. That we treat the “least of these” among us in these ways must cause God’s heart to anguish in biblical proportions.     

Just What Does the Lord Require of Us?

Then there is the matter of justice. What does the Lord require of us asked the prophet? “But to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). I believe the Jesus who marched into Jerusalem and protested the corruption of the temple and religious leaders would be right in the middle of the Black Lives Matter movement. It is unconscionable and a form of malignant Christianity that somehow whiteness and protecting whiteness is reckoned as the will of God. Remember. Our messiah has brown skin.

Love and America’s Gun Culture  

Then there is the matter of guns and gun control. My jaw dropped the first time I heard someone speak of “My God-given right to own a gun.” How absurd is that? Would anyone who has ever read the New Testament remotely imagine a Jesus endorsing the American idolatry of guns? For more on this refer to my 2018 blog series on The Church and America’s Gun Culture.  

Love and Roe v. Wade

I could say more, but before I end this blog, I do want to name the elephant in the room: Roe v. Wade. Frankly, the matter is more complicated than the binary options of pro-life versus pro-choice. I fundamentally value, as Jesus does, all of life – from the yet-to-be born child to desperately poor children in Haiti to children who are trafficked and to all those denied basic health care in our country of plenty. On the issue of abortion, I resonate with the theologically faithful Social Statement of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can google it and download it easily. It too is neither pro-choice nor pro-life. Quoting from the document itself, “Its fundamental judgment about abortion is that: ‘Abortion ought to be an option only of last resort.’” Stacking a Supreme Court with justices who may overturn Roe v. Wade will not put a stop to abortions in the U.S. Except for the privileged who will work the system, it would put a stop to safe abortions.

No to Hate and Division

As a follower of Jesus, I long for culture who chooses love over hate, tolerance over exclusion, justice over inequity, and unity over division. We are all God’s children. Therefore, in this political season, I am voting for Joe Biden, while knowing that real hope and faith come not from politics but from the One who assures us that life and love always and will finally win.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,