Can a Christian vote for Kamala Harris for president? We’re going to take that issue up on this edition of the Case for Life podcast. Thanks for joining us today. I’m Scott Klusendorf, president of Life Training Institute. who, by the way, is our primary sponsor for this podcast. Be sure to visit their website at ProLifeTraining.com for more on how you can book one of our speakers. to your event or to otherwise tap into Pro-Life Resources. Got a lot there for you. So can a Christian vote for a candidate like Kamala Harris that supports abortion, supports transgender surgeries on children, supports redefining marriage so that it can include anything, any 2 people that like each other. After all, love is love, so the saying goes. Can a Christian vote for somebody whose policies do not align well with Scripture? Now, there is a view out there that says, no, absolutely not. If you vote for Kamala Harris, you’re not a true Christian. I want to mitigate that just a little bit, and here’s why. Let’s start by defining what we mean by Christian. A Christian is someone that God the Father has regenerated. that has been declared righteous in virtue of Jesus taking their place on the cross and suffering the wrath of God that they deserve, and God has rescued them as we’re told in Colossians, from the domain of darkness and transferred them to the kingdom of his beloved son. That’s a Christian. A Christian is not somebody who we look at and say, oh, they check this box, They check that box, they check this box by doing certain things. That’s not an indicator necessarily. There are plenty of people out there who outwardly do the right things, but will wake up one day in hell because they were never regenerated. They never came to a saving faith in Christ, and they will awaken to that horrific realization. That’s going to happen to some people, but Here’s the question I’d rather pose. Not, can a Christian vote for Kamala Harris or Does someone who vote for her and her party mean they’re not a Christian? Here’s the question I think we need to grapple with. Is it consistent with a biblical worldview to vote for a candidate and her party that promotes evil wholesale. And if you don’t think abortion is evil, the intentional killing of an innocent human being, if you don’t think that is brutally evil, I invite you to go back and review some of our previous podcasts where we’ve gone over quotes from abortionists who dismembered children in the womb. and who talk about what abortion is very candidly. Go have a look at some of that if you doubt that what we’re saying is true here. You may also want to take a look at the video we’re going to post in the show notes here, the short, 55 second video depicting abortion. And then ask yourself, how can that be anything but unbridled evil? So with that background Is it consistent with a Christian worldview to support a candidate that does not align with biblical truth. Now, as soon as I frame it this way, here’s the pushback I’ll get. Hey, Scott, you’re missing the point here. There is no perfect party. And Jesus isn’t a Republican or a Democrat. So why are you trying to dice this out as if there’s a right answer here? Well, let’s take that first objection that there’s no political party that’s perfect. That is absolutely true. And that’s not easy to figure out. There’s no political party that’s perfect because there’s no humans that are perfect. Parties are made up of humans, and you’re going to get imperfection in parties because the sum total of the parts are not perfect either. So that’s an obvious one. But it doesn’t follow that because there are no perfect parties that align perfectly with a biblical worldview, that there aren’t some that align better than the alternatives. And that’s what the Christian needs to look at. In the real world we live in, in the fallen world we are part of, which parties align best with a biblical worldview in terms of limiting evil and promoting good? That’s the question we need to be looking at, not perfection. but which parties align better than others. So I would look at that. Now, the next thing I hear is, well, We should just look at all issues and figure out which party on balance does the best. And this objection tends to lump all issues into one moral equivalency stew and say, well, You know, there’s one party over here that, yeah, it supports abortion. Yeah, it supports gay marriage, but it’s better on war. It’s better on care for the poor. It does better with government programs aimed at alleviating poverty. And they have a better education program. They have a better health care programs. So therefore, on balance, I can still vote for and promote a party that that does in fact promote abortion, but is good on all these other issues. So on balance, rather than being a single issue voter, I’m gonna take all these issues into consideration and pick the one, pick the party that I think best handles all of these issues equally. The fatal flaw in that view is this. Not all issues are morally equivalent. Some sins are indeed worse than others. And if you think that’s not true, just take a look at Proverbs 6. God very clearly spells out that there are things that he hates, one of which is the shedding of innocent blood. Hands that shed innocent blood represent a particularly egregious moral crisis in Scripture. So we can’t just say, well, all these issues are all the same. I think one, another way to look at this is to apply what my colleague Jeanique Stewart calls the 1860 test and i think she’s right on about this imagine it’s eighteen sixty and your choice for president is a candidate in a party that has a fantastic healthcare plan, a fantastic economic plan, a fantastic social program to help poor people out, but it’s a party that not only allows for slavery, but promotes it wholesale. And in fact, not only promotes it here, but abroad. and is complicit in the slave trade. Would that be a party where you’d say, well, you know what? They’re good on all these other issues, so I can give them a wink on the slavery issue. No, I think you’d say, no, that party’s disqualified. Or let’s do what another colleague of mine calls the You live in Germany. Maybe you grew up in the Weimar Republic. I don’t know. But you live in Germany and The question is, do you vote for a guy who is clearly bringing back German pride, German nationalism. He’s got great healthcare set up. He’s got A great economic recovery for your nation that has been in shambles since the end of World War I. But there’s this little problem that he wants to exterminate Jews. Do you look the other way on that? and say, well, that’s just one issue among many. I’m not going to be a single issue voter. If you lived in Nazi Germany in the early 19 thirties when you might have had a chance at detouring a guy like Hitler, Do you wink at the stuff that he does that’s evil because he’s got these other things that are really good? And of course, you would say, no, we should not support that guy. And the reason is very simple. Some evils disqualify a candidate. It’s true there’s no perfect candidate. We all know that. But some evils are intrinsic in nature, not merely contingent. They’re intrinsic. and a candidate who promotes them is disqualified. I’ve said before, a candidate who has great policies domestically but thinks it should be legal for you to beat your wife is disqualified from my vote because of the evil he promotes. It’s not that there’s no perfect candidate, so we might as well settle on one that has the best number of issues going his way. No, that single issue disqualifies. Now, I can hear another pushback that goes like this. Well, just because I Support a candidate who supports some things that are evil does not mean I am contributing to that evil by voting for him or that I intend the evil that he intends. Now, there’s a bit of truth to this. For example, let’s say that you’re in a bank and it gets robbed. The thugs come in and they rob. start shooting the place up and you’re a teller at this bank and the thug comes up to you, puts the gun in your face and says, all right, empty the register. or a whole bunch of people here are going to die. And so you empty the register. And somebody could say, see, you cooperated with that evil. You intended what the robber did. You helped him do it. Actually, your cooperation there is not intrinsically wrong because by cooperating, what you were trying to do was prevent an even greater evil from happening. So I get the idea that there can be times where we say, okay, I will support this policy or this candidate for the purpose of avoiding something far worse. But that’s not what’s in play here with Kamala Harris. What evil is worse than the intentional killing of an innocent human being? What evil is worse than saying we should allow children to be subjected to surgeries that castrate them and harm their bodies in the name of gender equality and transgender equality? And the answer is, There are no evils that correspond to this where we can say, okay, we’re avoiding something greater by casting our vote for her. So what then becomes the point of voting for Harris? And the answer is I can see no possible way we’re voting for her contributes toward a Christian worldview or establishing moral truths that help us avoid greater evils that may yet come. I can make that case for Donald Trump. I can say he is a flawed man with bad character. And you know what? I don’t say he’s a good man. I don’t know if he’s a Christian or not, but that’s kind of irrelevant to the point I’m making here. At least with a Donald Trump, I can say, OK, by voting for him and his party, I help avoid an even greater evil, and that is a party being in power that promotes evil wholesale. I see no way to make that argument with Kamala Harris. Could she have policies that help the poor? I don’t know. That’s debatable. By the way, I don’t think conservatives should just roll over on this. Conservatives are often labeled as the party that doesn’t care about the poor. What I think we can make a very powerful empirical argument that the best way to lift people out of poverty is through market economies, not through government spending and regulation. I think Christians can argue that forcefully. So I don’t think we need to roll over and just concede that she’s got better policies for the poor. But my larger point is here, the things she promotes disqualify her from somebody voting for her with a biblical worldview. If you are advocating voting for someone like Kamala Harris and the party she represents, I’m not going to say you’re not a Christian because I can’t say that. for 2 reasons. Number one, you might be a new believer who doesn’t have a properly formed biblical worldview yet. I mean, Greg Koukl, my colleague, puts it real well. Jesus first catches his fish, then he cleans them. So I have a lot of room for people coming around to a biblical worldview conversion and being declared righteous is not the same as your worldview lining up instantaneously with a biblical one. That takes time, that takes discipleship, that takes older believers helping to nurture you and disciple you in the faith. But I can say this, a Christian who says they’re going to endorse a party that promotes evil wholesale has something very wrong. in their understanding of what a biblical worldview is. Something is not lining up there. Their moral compass is off, off. and it needs to be readjusted to align with a biblical one. So I don’t want to overstate the case by saying there’s no way you can be a Christian and vote for Kamala Harris. That’s not true. But I think I can say with a great deal of certainty that if you are promoting her candidacy, and you intend to vote for her, you are, in fact, aiding the evil she will promote wholesale and You’re not lined up with a biblical worldview. There are no perfect parties. There are no perfect candidates. But some candidates and some parties line up better than others with a biblical worldview. And as a Christian, as a pro-life Christian, you’ve got to vote in a way that you promote the advancement of human flourishing in the best way possible, given the fallen world we are forced to operate in. Thanks for joining us today. Be sure to visit us on social media at scottklusendorf.com and at caseforlife.com. Also, I want to remind you that we have a course available at scottklusendorf.com. And I would encourage you to look into taking that course that will help you defend your biblical worldview and make sense of it and apply it. in the crazy world we are living in right now, where Christians must be discerning and function with a great deal of wisdom. All right, look forward to seeing you next time.