Judgment? Or mercy?
Christians debate issue following election
In the late 1990s, Alice Juratovac, a widowed senior citizen in Willowick, Ohio, became someone with whom I regularly visited.
We talked about family, faith, church, and current events for about 5 years that I knew her. She went home to the Lord in the early 2000s, but my job as a reporter at The News-Herald in Willoughby, Ohio brought many conversations about current events.
Alice was a deep believer and an intense prayer warrior.
Late in the Clinton presidency, she confessed she didn’t know how to pray for him or the nation. After all, the former president was caught in a sex scandal with an intern. Clinton’s moral failure and embarrassment inflicted on the nation pained Alice.
I explained how I pray for elected leaders: “Dear God, give us the leaders we need, not the ones that we deserve.”
We deserve Kamala Harris and worse for post-Christian America. That isn’t a plea for a theocratic America. It’s the reality that we have turned our back on God, murdered millions of babies in the womb, attacked the nuclear family, sexualized children, and allowed the spirit of the age to wreak havoc nationwide.
We deserve the corruption and moral depravity from our elected officials.
However, that prayer remains relevant 25 years later as followers of Jesus Christ debate God’s intentions in this election. The premise has been about preventing God’s judgment by electing Donald Trump, with Trump’s election being a display of God’s mercy.
Perhaps it’s not an either/or proposition. Both are at play. It’s not black and white; it’s far more nuanced.
America is under Romans 1 judgment. Consider Romans 1:21 (ESV): “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
Let us count some of the ways:
Drag queen shows have been normalized and celebrated.
Some Gay Pride parades have people nude marching down streets in cities.
Schools push “gender identity” in their curriculum.
Some schools, with the aid of the state, demand no communication with parents if a child is in school and questioning their gender by birth.
Biological males are playing on teams for high school girls and college women.
Additionally, when women gather in the nation’s capital for an abortion dance, God has given them over to futile thinking.
When law enforcement officials refuse to punish lawbreakers, God has given them over to deluded thinking.
The spirit of the age is the dominant worldview. It prevails on social media, online, the media, television, movies, and elsewhere. When wrong is celebrated at the expense of what is right and people demand right is wrong, God gives them over to their futile thinking.
To underscore how far America has fallen, the late Rev. Billy Graham wrote on July 19, 2012, five years after his wife, Ruth, died in 2007.
Ruth authored the quote, “If God doesn’t punish America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Billy Graham continued:
Just a few weeks ago in a prominent city in the South, Christian chaplains who serve the police department were ordered to no longer mention the Name of Jesus
in prayer. It was reported that during a recent police-sponsored event, the only person allowed to pray was someone who addressed “the being in the room.” Similar scenarios are now commonplace in towns across America. Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone—except God.
Yet the farther we get from God, the more the world spirals out of control.
Graham died in 2018, alive to see the U.S. Supreme Court legalize gay marriage, but not long enough to see transgenderism the American cause celebre.
American followers of Christ see the moral rot and view elections, especially the president, as a way to push back against evil. This leads to Christians getting emotional about presidential elections, viewing them as “the most important election in our lifetimes.”
This is the official White House photo of President Donald Trump in his first term on Oct. 6, 2017. Executive Office of the President of the United States/Shealah Crainghead via Wikimedia Creative Commons
A case can be made that Trump’s election, and the agenda he seeks to implement, is God’s mercy on America.
However, God’s ways and thoughts are not like ours, and it would be wrong for us to think we grasp all of God’s ways. This is why the idea of seeing this issue of judgment or mercy as either/or is shortsighted.
Postmodern thinking runs amok in America. It is a worldview that says, “Your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth.” This is a worldview that also allows people to create their own reality. While everyone has their own version of reality, there is no common reality among Americans or objective truth that guides the culture.
This is yet another consequence of post-Christian America, the genesis of delusional thinking.
No follower of Jesus Christ can presume we know what all of God’s judgment would look like. Voddie Baucham has talked about this issue and authored the book: It's Not Like Being Black: How Sexual Activists Hijacked the Civil Rights Movement.
While this debate is relevant, and followers of Jesus Christ must have it, sovereigntists can have complete peace that God is wholly in control. God knows the hearts of kings, rulers, and princes of this world.
Sean McDowell offered strong biblical advice on understanding the times earlier this year.
Fear the Lord.
Grow in the fruit of the spirit.
Be led by the spirit.
Study and research.
Followers of Jesus Christ must stay sober-minded, understand the times, and realize God likely is doing many things at the same time, including in our elections.
