Politics and the Bible

First off, a big fan of Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics: How the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. But recently I had a conversation with a friend who claimed another friend was a staunch Republican and needed to find a follower of Christ who is a Democrat. I said, “I am.” His eyebrows shot up in amazement. Where I tend to congregate (not always in church, by the way) with other believers, those circles tend to be Republican. (And lately, the Republican party’s lack of an honor code or consistent values—law and order, sancrosanct family units, integrity, truth—have driven me further away.) But there’s hypocrisy on both sides so why do I tend to vote for Democratic candidates?

If there’s an issue on which Republicans and Democrats are most divided, it’s the immigration issue. I realize that’s broad, but a lot of political analysts can pretty much predict how you’re going to vote based on your stance on immigration. From a business perspective, I’m in favor. Increased population means a growing economy, a larger labor pool so that our businesses aren’t hindered by a shortage in the workforce. [Note: the economic growth of the US was aided by the Boomer generation entering the workforce and the decimation of the rest of the industrial world from WWII. By 1990, the Boomers had entered the workforce, followed by much smaller generations, and the rest of the first/second world nations had reindustrialized. Hence, we started to experience lower GDP growth; still a growing economy but at a slower rate.] Immigration is needed to fill all the job vacancy postings. In many, if not most of the US, we have more job openings than we have unemployed.

Second, the two commandments that Christ emphasized are based on love. Love is the directive He enjoins us with through most of the scriptures. I find the Democratic policy on immigration to be more consistent with ‘love your neighbor’ than the Republican policy. Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan—a disliked foreigner who ‘immigrated’ to Jerusalem—was told when He was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” The answer is, “All in your midst” and we are called to be the good neighbor to all we meet whether they are in our group or not, we like them or not, we are in our own ‘neighborhood’ or not. Leviticus 19 follow up the ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ command with a command to ‘love the foreigners among you as yourself’. Why? Because ‘we’ were immigrants once and He is our LORD God—our ever-present Commander of Commanders, King of Kings...

On other issues, the worldview that divides the two parties are whether the societal problems are caused by individuals only (Republicans) or systems/governmental-corporate structures (Democrats). Therefore, Republicans think we need to ‘fix’ individuals and government is not the solution to any problem—generally the market is.  Democrats recognize the sinfulness of individuals and suggest that we ‘fix’ the systems, often through government regulation. Was the financial crisis caused by rogue people (Republicans) or loopholes that allowed investment banks and mortgage companies that allowed people to over-invest in real estate and overheat the housing market (Democrats)?

I believe all economic systems and polities would work if people were angels. Instead, we succumb to our devilish sides for economic and influential (aka power) gains and thus, no system or polity is perfect. Even though we “can’t legislate morality,” we need systems—government—to provide order as God seems to imply through scripture, even if the government is a corrupt Babylon or Assyria or Rome. When His people strayed, He ‘created’ a leader/prophet/judge to guide them.