I can respect where you’re coming from. A person could feel good about voting for Corrie Ten Boom instead of a less-perfect candidate who had a chance to beat Hitler. But their feelings of self-righteousness came at the cost of the millions of people who died under Hitler who would not have died if the less-perfect-than-Corrie-Ten-Boom candidate had won.
In the end everybody has to follow their conscience, and I don’t begrudge you your conscience. I understand where you’re coming from.
I do believe, though, that what is to compel us even more than desire for our own righteousness (which Christ has already won for us) is love. If I give up everything I have and keep myself pure from all compromise but have not love, I am nothing. If I knew that a vote for Corrie Ten Boom would mean that millions of innocent people would be starved and buried either dead or alive in mass graves, love would compel me to vote for someone who could instead prevent those senseless deaths. To vote for Corrie Ten Boom when she had no chance of winning rather than voting for the one who realistically COULD prevent the Holocaust from happening would almost be like the priest or the Levite walking on the other side of the road - staying nice and pure themselves rather than dirtying their own feelings of righteousness to help the Samaritan left for dead on the other side of the road.
It’s a matter of conscience, and everybody has their own conscience. I wish you well and don’t need to speak with you any more on this. You know what my conscience is telling me and why, and what you come up with between you and God is for you to work out.
This thread is the first time I’ve spoken out in detail about the philosophy of voting for somebody besides Romney as a protest against Romney and the establishment, because I understand the angst that provokes the philosophy. But when I hear people implying that it is un-Christian, unpatriotic, or unwise to vote for Romney in this situation, I have to speak out.
If Christians as a bloc voted for Corrie Ten Boom they could have prevented the Holocaust without having to vote for a severely flawed candidate to beat Hitler. But the time in America’s election when that had to happen was during the primaries, and it didn’t happen. If it didn’t happen then, it’s not going to happen in the general either. That option already failed. So at this point we have the choice between the Holocaust, or not the Holocaust. And I have strong reservations about Christians voting to allow the Holocaust because they could at least feel personally innocent while they watch their neighbors starved, experimented on, tortured, and thrown in a mass grave. My need to feel righteous is already met by Christ’s sacrifice for my sin; I don’t need millions of people to die in order for me to feel holy.
And I realize that’s not the motivation behind what you’re doing. You want to do the right thing, and can’t believe that voting for a corrupt, pro-abortion, greedy politician who takes the name of “conservative” in vain could ever be either justified, wise, or loving. Like I said, that’s a matter for your conscience. But please do weigh the evil (that you think voting for him would be) against the evil of what will happen if Obama is given a totally unaccountable signed blank check for 4 more years. If he does this when the tree is green, what will he do when the tree is dry?