Posted on 01/16/2004 12:51:55 AM PST by JohnHuang2
How good people can vote for good people
By Rabbi Daniel Lapin
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
In July 1788, after Dr. Benjamin Rush, the only physician to sign the Declaration of Independence, watched a federal parade in Philadelphia, he wrote the following words.
The rabbi of the Jews locked in the arms of two ministers of the Gospel was a most delightful sight. There could not have been a more happy emblem.
Dr. Rush would be disappointed, I am sure, to learn that many of the spiritual heirs of the three clergymen who so buoyed his spirits, often fail to vote in elections organized under the Constitution for which he risked so much.
I am blessed with friends, Christian leaders of wide influence and many rabbinic colleagues, who have confided in me that large numbers of their followers did not vote in the presidential elections of November 2000. No wonder that President George W. Bush won by such a close margin.
Thinking of all that has befallen America since 2000, I only partially joke when I say that these citizens made God's mission much harder during that election. At least 5 million fervent Jews and Christians – most of whom are conservative politically – sat out that election. What prompts me, in a spirit of solemnity and concern, to write these words are very disturbing indications that these same citizens of faith have no plans to vote for President George W. Bush this coming November.
My role is not to round up Republican votes. My role is to remind readers that politics is nothing more than the practical application of our most deeply held religious convictions. Any passionately held belief must surely translate into some specific practical policy that would further that belief.
With this in mind, I naturally inquired why so many otherwise patriotic and law-abiding citizens are avoiding the ballot box. It turns out that large numbers of fervent Christian and traditional Jewish conservatives plan not to vote because they can't bring themselves to vote for George W. Bush. I do not make light of their concerns when I explain they won't vote for the president's second term because they find him imperfect.
Oh, sure, they all believe his faith is sincere and they all praise what they see as his inspired and courageous leadership of our war against terror, but they all identify one presidential imperfection or another. Some feel he is inadequately firm on abortion and homosexuality. Others shake their heads at his approach to illegal immigration or his inviting Muslims to the White House. They are all disappointed in one or another of the many bills and policies that have come about during President George W. Bush's first term in office.
To me, it seems these Americans, who take their commitment to Jewish and Christian values seriously, are forgetting one vitally important biblical value: Only God is perfect. One of the great gifts of faith is the ability to live an imperfect life in an imperfect world. When facing a choice between two candidates, religious Americans put themselves into an impossible predicament by seeking perfection. Perfection simply doesn't exist among mere mortals, so the perfection-seeking voter has little choice but to vote for nobody.
There is a far better way for the voter who takes biblical values seriously to cast his vote. Perfection may not exist among men, but evil certainly does. Simply identify the candidate whose policies and affiliations are worse and then vote for his opponent.
Let me elaborate. Anticipating our problem, King David in his book of Psalms (34:15) advised us, "Turn away from evil and do good." Traditional Jewish wisdom, interpreting the ancient cantillation symbols in the Hebrew text, explains that only after identifying evil and turning away from it are we in a position to do good. Without first identifying the bad, it is often hard to do good.
When mankind tasted of the tree that combined the knowledge of good and evil, the two became blended and good became elusive. With its inevitable evil ingredients, every good action fell short when measured against the perfection of God. It is easy to fall into the trap of denouncing all as sinners and writing them off. Most of us may be sinners, but a few also do real good. These should not be written off – they should be elected.
So complete is the merging of evil and good, that merely labeling someone as "good" often attracts unwelcome thoughts of his failings. Judaism even suggests that publicly declaring someone to be a "good person" is dangerously close to prohibited gossip, because it presents an irresistible temptation to the bystander who happily informs us that so-and-so isn't nearly as good as we may think.
King David is right. Identifying the candidate who stands for evil policies, even though he may personally be a decent sort of fellow, is a far more practicable first step than seeking a saint. Choosing the better candidate is morally preferable to surrendering the vote. Part of God's gift of faith is the ability to live with imperfection, including our own.
Many readers will leap to the conclusion that I am trying to say no man is entirely free of sin and that our political choice is frequently reduced to choosing from between two scoundrels. Not so, the world actually does contain people who never sin. For greater clarity, let me call upon King David's son, the wise King Solomon, who wrote: "For there is no wholly righteous man on earth who achieves good yet never sins" (Ecclesiastes 7:20). You see, there are indeed many people on earth who never sin. They just don't do much good either. They are the ones who never take any risks and never achieve much good. People who live such detached and passive lives obviously have little scope for sin.
However, if you are going to accomplish anything worthwhile on this earth, Adam and Eve's legacy is that in doing good you will also invariably sin. Not much, but somewhat. Humans do not achieve total moral perfection. Sin, unavoidably included, does not diminish the good. God doesn't conduct double-entry moral bookkeeping on us, in which seven good points are washed away by eight bad ones. No, our heavenly tally remains +7 and -8, with the final arithmetic never revealed to our mortal form.
One candidate's +2 and -15 score is not morally equivalent to his opponent's score of, say, +7 and -8. Eliminate the candidate with the heavy negative score and vote for the other one. In other words, the only ones among us who are quite sin-free are those who achieve nothing and for whom you'd not want to vote anyway. That leaves two kinds of sinners: those who do little other than evil, and those for whom the evil is a small element of the total good they do.
So, yes, both candidates are probably sinners, just as I most assuredly am. However, nearly always, one stands for worse values than the other. Maybe the political party he represents is a party that reliably and predictably picks the most anti-biblical position. Maybe his previous votes and public statements reveal a dishonest cynicism. It is hard to spot the good guy, but it really is just not that challenging to pick the bad guy. Having done so, turn away from him and toward his opponent, regardless of the fact he is no saint. Of course, he isn't.
Finally, remember that God described the man He chose to save from the flood, Noah, as "a righteous man, perfect in his generations" (Genesis 6:9). Ancient Jewish wisdom comments on the apparent redundancy of these words, "... perfect in his generations." It turns out that only in comparison to the depraved delinquents of his own generations was Noah "a righteous man." However, that was enough for God to vote for Noah. And if comparing a good and decent man to other less worthy men alongside him is good enough for God, it is good enough for me. I suspect it might also have been good enough for Dr. Rush.
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