The Lesser Of Evils (Or Choose Your Sinner)

Since we are getting close to Election Day and there's a lot of discussion about Christians voting and whether or not Christians should vote for certain candidates and how Christians should vote on the various issues and initiatives that appear on the ballot I thought I would share this.

I never “preach politics” from the pulpit in the sense that I don’t tell people how to vote, for whom to vote or what party to vote. That said, at election time I do talk about government and the roll of government from a Biblical perspective.

First, the back story as to how this sermon came about. I take part a podcast called the Gospel Light Radio Program heard Thursday nights on the Blog Talk Radio Platform and other outlets. One segment of the program is called Shout It Out (SIO), wherein one of the speakers answers a listener submitted question. Just before the 2020 US presidential election, the host of the show put forth the following question. I don’t remember exactly how, but somehow we got into a discussion about the question on social media and he asked if I wanted to answer the question on the SIO segment of the program which would air two weeks before the election. I agreed to do it and since so many see our elections as nothing more than choosing between the “lesser of two evils, I started my research on the topic with a search of the phrase “lesser of evils.” The references that were relevant to the topic, were interesting.

The original final version of this lesson was lost in a computer hard drive crash and I have reconstructed this version from a draft that I unexpectedly found on a cloud based storage. Thus, the bibliography is incomplete and I don't have sources for some of the points I make. The introduction to the lesson is pretty close to what I wrote in 2020, but I have cut out much of it. I will make appropriate updates before I present this to the congregation in the fall. For 2024, like most of us, I was gearing this up for a Trump-Biden Part 2 sequel and obviously that's not going to happen, but as of yet I have not rewritten the introduction to reflect the change in the Democrat candidate.

I’m including some houghts that I expressed in 2020 on the two men so that content throughout the lesson makes sense.

And now, on with the show.

The question that I dealt with was presented as follows, my answer begins in the paragraph following the question:

QUESTION: I have pondered this question for a long time. Made by those who profess to be Christians on social media you often hear people say how corrupt our political system is in the United States question: do Christians have a civic duty to be involved in our political system since we advocate that it is so corrupt?

THIS IS A SHORT ANSWER TO THE QUESTION. Some will not like my answer and I’ll admit that my answer is not perfect and might even raise objections and questions. To answer this question, I will try to be as politically neutral as possible. Just so there is no doubt, let me tell you “where I sit, before I tell you where I stand.”

As a voter, I have either registered as a Republican or an Independent, never a Democrat and I have voted for Democrats only twice that I can remember and in at least one election I voted a straight third party ticket.

Election day this year is on __________. I don’t know about you, but I dread election time. I used to look forward to it, but for the better part of my adult life, I have dreaded it.

For purposes of this lesson, let’s strip away the party AFFILIATIONS and PLATFORMS and look at the men. To be honest, except for differences in personal wealth and the “R” or “D” next to their names, I see little difference between these two men. In fact, I see none. Both men are old in the sense they are senior citizens (both ages are well north of 70), wealthy (since leaving the VPOTUS, Biden’s net-worth has surged by some $15 million, according to Fox Business and while in the white house, Biden went to silent running on his taxes and in July of 2020 finally released his and Jill’s returns from the years 2016, 17 and 18) https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/joe-biden-net-worth

While it is well known that Biden is widowed from his first marriage (he was sworn into the US Senate for his first term from the hospital where his two sons were being treated for injuries from a car accident that killed his wife and daughter). What is less well known is that the story of his meeting his current wife on a blind date, is questionable. Jill Biden was previously married (an established fact) the status of that first marriage at the time she started dating Joe is disputed by her first husband) Trump’s multiple marriages and philandering are also well documented.