Why I Don't Vote

With the Presidential election fast approaching, I thought I would put down my thoughts about why I won’t be voting. Simply put, my vote does not mean as much as MTV tries to make it out to mean, and I don’t feel that I should have to choose between the lesser of two evils. My friend Regan has hashed much of this out in a post on his blog, but I feel the need to speak on it as well. First, read the following essay from Christianity Today, which expresses the same sorts of things I am thinking, only more eloquently. It is a little long for a blog, but worth the read.

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Salt-and-Pepper Politics:
Choosing between candidates whose consciences are too clean
By Andy Crouch
October 2004, Vol. 48, No. 10, Page 108
Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today.

Some things were meant to be together. At least, that's what I learned somewhere along the way about table manners. Even if you just want the salt, etiquette requires that you ask for the salt and pepper. In the words of Miss Manners, "they get lonely if separated."

Ancient Israelites, as far as I know, didn't even have a word for pepper, but they did have the twin words mishpat and tsedaqah, which most English Bibles translate as justice and righteousness. "Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness" (Ps. 72:1)—justice and righteousness go together just like king and royal son. Prophets and psalmists thought in twos: throne and kingdom, establishing and upholding, justice and righteousness. Mishpat and tsedaqah. Just as salt and pepper belong together on a well-set table, justice and righteousness belong together in a nation. Mishpat and tsedaqah show up together more than 30 times in the Hebrew Bible, nearly always in a political context. Because justice and righteousness are the foundation of God's throne (Ps. 89:14), they are also the "measuring line" and the "plumb line" (Isa. 28:17) of earthly thrones.

Which brings us to Democrats and Republicans, and to why I will be voting this November with, well, fear and trembling.

Justice, in biblical terms, is more than equal treatment under the law—it involves putting power at the service of the powerless and wealth at the service of the poor. My friends who care about justice argue that Democrats have spent 50 years advocating for the vulnerable: the poor, the sick, the youngest, the oldest. And though the party of the powerless also has a curiously strong appeal among the elites of Hollywood and Manhattan, on the whole my friends are probably right.

Righteousness, meanwhile, is more than honesty and fair dealings—it requires the alignment of our lives with God's original good intentions for creation. Like justice, righteousness in a nation especially benefits the poor and powerless, who cannot insulate themselves from the effects of sin. My friends who care about righteousness argue that Republicans have held the line against values that come straight from the maw (or the mall) of individualistic consumerism, where pleasure and preference reign. And while the party of moral character raises lots of money from people whose only interest is making the world safe for consumerism, I can't argue with these friends either.

To make matters worse, each presidential candidate has blind spots even in his area of putative strength. John Kerry declines to see that abortion is not a matter of private morality but of public justice for utterly vulnerable human beings. (Bizarrely, he justifies his position by saying that government must keep out of people's bedrooms. Abortions do not generally happen in bedrooms.) Any public official who professes Catholic faith and is as enthusiastically pro-choice as Kerry does not have, in the words of the Catholic bishops, "a well-formed conscience."

Yet our President's conscience also seems too clear to be true. Asked a simple and predictable question at an April 2004 press conference—to name his greatest mistake since September 11, 2001—he couldn't answer, saying, "I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't—you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one." Is it too much to ask that the most devout President in recent history have a more concrete response to a question about his own limitations?

Such is the state of our presidential politics: an evangelical President flummoxed at any suggestion of his own fallibility, and a Catholic candidate who sidesteps his church's teaching authority. And in both our political parties, concern for justice often serves as cover for self-justification; righteousness curdles all too quickly into self-righteousness.

So I've decided that my own vote will be less about endorsing a platform or person than discerning the potential for change—in biblical terms, for repentance. Is it more likely that the party of justice can repent of its indifference to righteousness, or that the party of righteousness can repent of its deafness to justice? I have to choose one, but I will pray for both. Some things aren't meant to be separated.
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Neither side has it all together, and both leave out one aspect of life that is vital—justice and righteousness (which I equate with standards of holiness). Just because Bush is against the hot button topics like gay marriage and abortion doesn’t mean he has done much or plans to do much to help out the scenario in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Kerry may care about the oppressed, but does his laisse faire attitude about conduct agree with the lifestyle that I believe God is calling His creation to live? So I choose not to vote. And until a candidate shows that he cares just as much for the oppressed and the poor as he does about making sure that our freedoms line up with God’s standards I will not cast my vote.

For all of you who say that I can’t complain or have an opinion about the state of things because I choose not to vote, I refer you to our Bill of Rights. Just as I have the right to vote (or not to vote) I have to right to think and speak (or not to speak).

Let me know what you think.
Give some qualities of candidates you would endorse.
Tell me why you are voting and why you have chosen a particular candidate.

TV Pet Peeves

I was watching a thrilling college football game between Miami and Lousville. Then what happens? My cable goes out. No, not all of it. Just the sport, music, and Turner channels. So instead of watching this offensive explosion I had to sit through Baseball. What a joke. You would think that for $45 a month I could get better service. Nope.

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We also found out that our company (Charter) was sued for driving up prices through line fees and other hidden costs. A class action suit was brought against them and now I might be getting a year of high speed internet access. Pretty sweet.

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For a while now, I have noticed a disturbing trend on ESPN2. At the outset, they were supposed to be a station for “alternative” sports, which at the time was “extreme” sports. Now that “extreme” has become normal, they have gone to other sorts of programming. Billiards, Hunting and Fishing, even Poker have entered into the daily schedule. I don’t have a major problem with this sort of broadcast. But the last few years have seen a rise in things that are not sports, but merely competitions. The National Spelling Bee and dog shows have headed up the list. I suppose there is a place for these shows on TV, but not on my ESPN. How is the Spelling Bee going to get better ratings than something else, say the #1 sport in the world, soccer?

Well, have I put up with it for a few years, but enough is enough. I turned on the TV yesterday, and ESPN2 was showing the National Scrabble Tournament Finals. You read correctly. Scrabble was being televised. Two nerds were dukeing it out for a $25,000 purse. They even had insights into training such as the 4-6 hours a day that the contestants spent learning the 120,000 acceptable words in Scrabble. What a joke. Sure, they may be way smarter than me. And, perhaps intelligence should be praised over strength and agility. But seriously, does it have to be on ESPN? I recommend we start a new station dedicated to televising this crap. Spelling Bees, Dog Shows, Scrabble, Firefighter competitions, Lumberjack wierdness, even Poker (which I love to watch and play) should not be on a “sports” network. Get the hell off of my ESPN and stick the Game Show network, or Animal Planet, or wherever else you can show this crap. But leave the sports on ESPN. Please.

Pop-up Debates

I watched the final presidential debate last night. It was what I expected. A lot of mudslinging, a lot of impugning one another’s past actions, and a lot of inflated statistics. The whole time I watched, I wondered, “Is that true?” When they are talking about trillions of dollars it boggles my mind and I wonder if such a figure could be accurate.

This led me to an idea. I always enjoyed watching pop-up video on VH1. You know, interesting, but mostly useless facts about a particular video, the artists, the sets, etc. What if we had pop-up debates. That way, when John Kerry says that Bush’s tax cuts are putting us 600 trillion dollars in debt, a little balloon pops up and says, “Actually, it is only 1 trillion.” Or when Bush says that Kerry voted for extra taxes 98 times, a balloon pops up and says, “Though true, 80 of them were for alcohol, cigarettes, and other vice taxes.”

ABC did have a fact checker at the end of the debate who set some things straight. But it was too little too late for me. I like instant gratification, and would like to know who is lying, who is skewing facts, and who is just a moron. But in order to know such things, I would have to spend way more time on the internet than I already do. And I just have no desire to do that.

The Butterfly Effect

Carrie and I watched the movie “The Butterfly Effect” the other week, and I am just now getting my thoughts out about it. The idea comes from “The Chaos Theory” and basically attempts to describe how small and apparently insignificant incidents can set in motion a chain of events with far reaching consequences. As this concept relates to the movie, every time the main character went back and changed his past, the future looked much different. Though some things were improved, others were affected for the worse. Anyway, decent movie. Kind of interesting.

But it got me thinking. If taken seriously, the proponents of this theory postulate that even the flap of a butterfly's wings in Central Park could ultimately cause an earthquake in China. That blew me away. Though most dismiss this concept as farfetched and without basis, I thought I would spend some time spiritualizing it. I considered how many people I ran into each day. Some I acknowledge perhaps with a nod, a smile, maybe even a word. Others I blow by uninterested in their lives. And still others I spend a large portion of my time, investing my life into theirs. And what are the consequences? It seems that my dismissal of people has more impact than my investment, at least I feel that way sometimes. I spend hours with the kids in my youth group and then find out that they are involved in things that will only lead to pain and heartache. Meanwhile, I ignore other kids and who knows if it has any impact on them.

At the football game Friday night I saw two teenage girls holding hands and kissing. My teenagers just looked with disgust. I did nothing but continued to engage them in pointless conversation. But what if, instead of focusing on these kids that I know so well and am trying to impact, I had spent that time reaching out to their classmates that are ostracized? By ignoring them, and so many other people do I perpetuate their destiny in life to be cast out? What if a simple “Hello,” or some other act of love and kindness triggered a spiritual awakening in them?

I guess in the end, I want to be the butterfly – flapping my wings, not to cause an earthquake and devastation, but bringing renewal, restoration, and reconciliation. When my wings flap, may it cause the same ripples that Jesus’ actions did: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim the release of the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

The Big Debate

So, I watched the presidential debate last night.

All I heard from Bush was, “I don’t see how you can lead when you say, ‘Wrong war, wrong time, wrong place.’ What message does that send?”

All I heard from Kerry was, “We should not have brought war to Iraq.”

Now, I have not kept up completely with it all, and I suppose that these issues are important to Americans, but not as much for me. I tuned in hoping they would discuss gay marriage, stem cell research, the environment, our social problems, etc. But I found out at the end that these “domestic” issues will be discussed in two weeks at the 3^rd debate. I was more than a little displeased. But, it was interesting nonetheless.

A couple of observations. Both men came out swinging at the opponent, but refused to answer for themselves. One candidate would make an accusation at the other, and instead of doing a good, clear job of answering the accusation, he would side step it and return fire. Not what I was hoping to see.

Second, Kerry made it clear that Bush needed to humble himself and seek some forgiveness from various places. That, I agree with. Leadership books will tell you to always have a strong front, and not show weaknesses. I believe it is quite the opposite. If leaders want respect, they must seek forgiveness when they fail. If they make bad decisions, then the must come clean and say, “I screwed up.”

I believe that the inability to be humble is the very thing wrong with politics. Too much side stepping and spin doctoring. Maybe they teach that sort of thing at Ivy League schools. And maybe the American public wants a strong front of a person that they see no flaws in. And maybe we don’t want to show weaknesses to other nations. But if we want to lead in such a way that brings people together, I believe honesty and humility must be at the forefront.