How to Vote for the President: A Reformed Perspective

Every four years the people of the United States go to select whom they want the Electoral College to vote for President of the United States – the Chief Executive Officer of the United States – the person recognized in various ways as the leader of the United States and her people.

This year, perhaps more than in any election in the past 150 years, the American people are extremely divided, which is to say the cleavage between conciliation and division seems to be nearing the extreme of possibility.

I left the Republican Party because Virginians elected Trump as the Republicans’ representative; but I’m certainly no Hillary fan or Johnson fan either. I resigned myself to sit back and watch the drama unfold and strive not to lose any friends over a matter that, in my opinion, SHOULD be inconsequential. I’m committed to voting in the local and statewide races, but I doubt I will even write anyone in for the Presidential election.

Within others on the left and right, passions are reaching an all-time high: Passion for or against Trump; passion for or against Hillary; passion for what is perceived to be the most important decision of their lives and the duty to ensure/prevent Candidate X’s election.

The motivations for these passions are, in the end, selfish motivations. Selfish because if their favored candidate wins it will facilitate personal gain; selfish because if their disfavored candidate loses it will prevent personal loss; selfish because we are totally depraved human beings incapable of true altruism.

They argue that Hillary will limit our capacity to gain or prevent the loss of possessions, to expand our freedoms. They argue that Trump will destroy our capacity to uphold our reputation, to gain or prevent the loss of possessions in proportion to someone else.

Selfish.

The Reformed perspective on government always acquiesces to the supreme Sovereignty of God – the creator of universe. He is the sole proprietor of creation, and we are but tenants at-will. True, we may operate freely within the parameters He has ordained, but those parameters are still ordained by Him. There is no point in time or space in which God can lose control.

It also rests on the Goodness of God, and that because He is the ultimate Sovereign – the first cause, the fundamental legislator of the universe, and the final arbiter of the laws of physics, of logic, of morality, and even the law-ness of law itself – He is necessarily good.

As a Good and Sovereign God that owns the entirety of eternity, He is from the smallest to the largest creatures due absolute love, glory, and honor. And any time we do not accomplish this commandment, we place our own importance above that of the Creator.

Selfish.

So how does this apply to the election of a President?

Our right to vote may be considered a mundane right, but it is, in the final analysis, nothing more than a celestial privilege from the ultimate sovereign. Given that we have been granted this privilege, what are we to do with it? Are we to use this privilege to advance our own interests?

Selfish.

Do we use it to protect what’s “ours?”

Selfish.

Do we use it to prevent the loss of what is dear to us?

Selfish.

Do we use it to “get what we [think we] deserve?”

Selfish.

Do we use it to alleviate our earthly fears?

Selfish.

No, a Reformed Perspective believes that this vote – JUST AS IN ALL THINGS – should be used to glorify God. I don’t mean that the candidate selected should be the one most capable of glorifying God. I mean that the motivation upon selecting a candidate should be made from a being which loves God with all its heart, mind, and strength, and from that absolute and primal love thenceforth loves its neighbor as itself.

If your vote is for selfish reasons – for reasons that elevate the creature over the creator – then it does not, by definition, bring glory to God, but rather glory first to yourself.

I do not believe a vote for any of the presidential candidates can satisfy the requirement to love God and neighbor absolutely. To vote for any I can discern would be a matter of personal convenience. Selfish.

The chief executive should recognize, above all else, that he or she is (by our Constitution), intermediately under the sovereignty of the people, and ultimately (by logical necessity) under the sovereignty of God. I don’t believe any candidate in this race believes both of these imperatives.

This does not mean I would rebel against any governing authority – it simply means that I shall also exercise the right and privilege to abstain from my personal endorsement of depravity, nihilism, or avarice.

The doctrine Soli Deo Gloria (to God alone be the glory) is a doctrine popularized in the Reformation, but it is – I believe – a doctrine shared not only by the Reformers, but by the Catholic Church, as well (though we may differ on the language of latria, dulia, and hyperdulia, and how those terms relate to glorification). It is, in other words, an orthodox position.

What worries me more than anything is the continued rejection of that doctrine in favor of one that satisfies our need to affirm that we, and what we hold dear, are more important than He who caused and controls every thing.

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do [vote], do all to the glory of God.” I Corinthians 10:31.