Lesser of Two Evils—The Christian Vote

This question about the lesser of two evils is all the buzz among evangelicals as we converge toward the polls. Every fourth year we re-consider this same idea, never discovering any final solution. We are damned for our bad selection, or, we are cursed for our wrong choice. It tosses faithful church-goers into a quandary. We feel so guilty, but we cannot let the shreikingly evil guy win, so we vote for the less evil choice, who will only stab us instead of decapitating us, or so we suppose.

It was about 1440 BC when Moses, beleaguered to exhaustion by the Israelite nation, was brought to wisdom through his father-in-law Jethro. Having received God’s law on Mount Sinai, Moses was acting as the sole judge over the chosen people. As we can read, with hundreds of thousands of Jewish nationals under his care, the task of judging all civil cases soon became impossible for this one man.

Moses listened to the sagacious Jethro, who formulated a righteous solution to the aggregating trials docket.

…you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them, as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. And let them judge the people at all times…(Exodus 18).

Given that there were no other government officials serving the nation, it was imperative that these men be qualified, as God, through Jethro, specified. They were to be the cornerstones for a new civil order.

That right civil order held together for four-hundred years, much longer than our own republic, until it was terminated under an ill-notioned election. Understanding that election can help us gain wisdom for our own situation. “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages has come” was how the Apostle Paul worded it. Old Testament, New Testament, they are both written for our instruction.

It is in 1 Samuel 8 that we read of the fall of the Mosaic civil order under the judges. Four centuries had passed. The memory of slavery in Egypt, of Moses and Joshua, the mighty dividing of the Red Sea, manna in the wilderness, and much else had all faded from the national consciousness. God’s repeated commands against idolatry had long been ignored. His moral and civil laws were being set aside. The final chapters of the book of Judges tell a story of decreasing morality and an obstinate people who will not obey God. They increasingly imitate the lost world in their behavior.

The last judge over Israel was Samuel, a faithful man. Though he was a hero, a great man among righteous men, he reared his two sons, Joel and Abijah, poorly. Having placed them, in his late years, as judges overIsrael, he began to exit public life. His work, he likely reasoned, was approaching its God ordained conclusion. The torch had been passed and he could retire in peace. But, this was not to be the case, for his sons, “did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after dishonest gain and took bribes and perverted justice.” This record, in case we might miss it, uses the exact language that Jethro did in Exodus. They were the fulfillment of the definition of evil forewarned in Moses’ time. The Hebrew republic had grown morally sick, and the old circumscriptions had become a prophecy of its doom.

The Lord Himself had instructed that He would be King over Israel. For the previous four centuries the Israelites had used God’s law to direct their course. The Judges did not legislate, they merely decided court cases based on that law, and they led the army in war. Their unseen King was Jehovah. Now the system of judges, and the recognition of Jehovah as King, was collapsing due to iniquity in high places, and the moral turpitude of the people.

It was in this context that they made the fateful decision. Voting for what they perceived as the lesser of two evils, the people demanded, “Now appoint a king over us to judge us like all the nations.” When they were further warned of the foolishness of their vote they restated, “No, but there shall be a king over us, so that we also may be like all the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us, and fight our battles.”

At that decision Israel made a choice that forever changed their direction and thwarted their own liberty. God told Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them.” The right choice for the nation, the God-pleasing vote, would have been to demand new, morally upright, judges. They should have upheld the form of government God had given them. At that moment, it was the third choice. It was the choice they were not going to make due to their compromised state. They no longer recognized Jehovah as king, and had determined that they would choose the lesser of two evils, a king, as opposed to Samuel’s corrupt sons as judges. They were morally incapable of making a right choice because they had been captured by the idea that God’s way was impractical for them. A vote for the right thing, seemingly, was not viewed as a worthwhile choice. So, they chose the lesser of two evils, thus destroying the republican government God gave them and entering hundreds of years of tyranny and warfare, under the kings.

Remember, that these things are written for our instruction. We are the people of God. In the New Testament the church is called the chosen people. This is our story, and again, this is our moment. We have to decide if we are going to choose between the lesser of two evils or if we are going to refuse evil and choose a morally right course. In this election, that is our choice. The real, the important choice, is not between the lesser of two evils. Under God’s law and will, that can never be the case. There is always a possible choice for righteousness. The Apostle Paul wrote that with temptation God will, “provide the way of escape.” We have an opportunity, now, to choose the right thing. It was predicted of Jesus that He would, “refuse evil and choose good.” He never chose the lesser of two evils. Rather, He always chose good. That again, is our example. It is our time to imitate the Hero in Scripture. May we refuse to ever choose the lesser of two evils.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach

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