On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Rand Paul said of President Biden, “I think most importantly, what we have to hear is that he’s not going to radically transform the country into some sort of socialist dystopia.” I submit that years ago he, along with the rest of us, should have thought more deeply about the direction we have been heading for a while.

The presidential election is over. The results, however, are not final as a matter of law. I don’t know whether the voter fraud that accompanies all elections will prove sufficient to change the media-predicted results in this election, but something more than ballot integrity is on the line -- the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court. And it may do itself in for generations to come.

This past Sunday, The Tennessean, ran a story entitled “Can religious leaders help US repair post-election divisions after Joe Biden victory?” The article states that “Biden wants to unite a divided nation. . . . It is a tall task. The wounds of division post-election are deep and unity work is hard, but clergy in Tennessee still think it is worth doing.” Worth doing? Sure. But how?

As I thought about the presidential election results, I could not help but think of these words in the so-called “southern national anthem,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, “Now Watergate does not bother me. Does your conscience bother you?” In a certain sort of way the election results do not bother me nor does my conscience regarding how I voted. 

Last week, I tried to encourage readers to consider the true nature of godliness and compare it to how they approached voting for either President Donald Trump or Joe Biden. This week, I want to explore two recent commentaries by well-known Christian ministers within the evangelical community, each coming to a different conclusion about how to vote in the presidential election. I hope I can contribute something I think both missed.

With early voting starting, it is again time for evangelicals to start explaining why they will or will not vote for Donald Trump. Some will say that voting for Trump is a bad Christian witness while others will say his personal conduct can be excused because his policies are more consistent with biblical positions on abortion and religious liberty. What I’ve read brought to mind what Martin Luther wrote to Pope Leo X in 1520 as part of his tract, The Freedom of the Christian, and made me wonder if both camps are missing something vitally important.