HI everyone,
As you know in couple of months (ish) we are having the presidential election. I have been praying on it lately because I am so confused who to vote for, and I want to vote, because I know someone will get in the office regardless if I don’t vote. Now before I was A Trump supporter because, well he was a better choice than Hillary. (Whom I would never in a million years vote for). But after praying in reflecting and asking God to send me signs if my choice in trump would be correct, I feel like He is subtly telling me it isnt. I have seen him in action being very unkind and lying. He says some very uncharitable things and although I do agree with him on some things like more border control, his "round up the foreigners " approach is pretty scary. Now I was looking into third party candidates and mostly all of them are pro abortion pro homosexual marriage so that brings me back to trump who is techemically the most prolife of the group. Ugh. I am turning to you for advice because I feel at this point God has kind of left the ball in my court. I know who NOT to vote for but who can I vote for and have a clean conscience afterwards?
I believe most conscientious Christian believers, who place ideals, personal responsibility, and principles ahead of cult of personality and political party rhetoric, are going through a little mini-crisis. The plain fact of the matter, is that after about 50 years of voting for the “lesser of two evils”, we ended up with, finally with an unacceptable binary choice.
I also have prayed a great deal, and have finally come to peace with my conscience which is where the Holy Spirit speaks to us. I have decided to to vote, as I believe is a civic duty. However, I am just voting the down ticket. We have a Senatorial race, a Congress person race, our judges, and some important state and local ballot measures to consider. I will vote for the future in all of these down ballot races. I have decided that based on all of the information available to me on all four of the Presidential candidates, I am going to withold my vote for the Office of President. This is my decision and it has given me some relief, and some different insight and perspective.
I respect whatever decision anyone makes in this strange time, and I hold no one any ill will with the agonizing decision. I think what is helpful though is to make the decision based on prayer and study. Make the decision, and then don’t second guess yourself. If you are able to make your decision and then put the whole thing to bed, then the sooner you get back into the swing of your own life. If your have Christian causes that you work for as ministry, just pour yourself into them. Whoever becomes President is not going to have a mandate from the American people, so hopefully neither will get much done and will be hamstrung, but even if not, it’s our of our control.
Hopefully we will learn over this next four years that we must stop the idea of voting for the “least of two evils”, and because of that, demand better candidates from our Partys. Another great things is to ALWAYS vote at the grass roots level. If we elect aldermen, State and local officials, congress people, and Senators who are good and decent people, then in a couple of election cycles, the choices will be quite good on the National level, and even at President if we stop settling, and get more interested in our local stuff than the National Stage. Under the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity the smallest level of Government, (beginning with the family, and then working outwards), that can handle aa problem, the better. So it seems to me that we have all this backwards anyway. We’re way too concerned about the Federal President, and way too underconcerned about our Mayor and City Councilman. So…two takeaways I’ve gotten from this election cycle that I’m going to take to heart are summed up in these statements:
Without good seeds, you won’t have a yield of good fruit.
As for me, and my household, we will serve the Lord.
With the looks of things in this country, it may be a while…