How We Honor Our President

Monday afternoon, I challenged Christians with the following words:

I hope you vote wisely and thoughtfully tomorrow, but please, don’t buy into the idolatrous lie that your future hangs in the balance. If you are a Christian, I would encourage you, regardless of the results of tomorrow’s election, to be gracious, kind, and humble. Show the world that your hope is not in this life or in the things of this world, but in the One who offered Himself on the cross as a ransom for sinners.

Naive right? Of course those whose candidate didn’t win would not be gracious, kind, and humble. Seeing some Christians unravel the minute the announcement was made that President Obama had won a second term illustrated the importance of the article I wrote Monday and how easily the human heart misappropriates important but not ultimate things like politics.

The voices that are most imbalanced and most bitter tend to be the voices people in our culture gravitate toward. Consequently, those voices which are humble, kind, and thoughtful often get ignored. One such voice is that of Russell Moore, who had this to say today in response to a vote which did not turn out the way he had hoped:

However we voted in the election, let’s pray for God to bless our President. We can pray for him to be granted wisdom and health. We can pray that God would prosper his good ideas, and change his mind on his bad ideas. Moreover, we can teach our children to respect our President, starting with referring to him as “President Obama” or “Our President,” not as “Obama” or “the guy our parents voted against” or what have you.

There’s a time to vote. There’s a time to campaign. And there’s a time to petition. But, through it all, let’s be the people who, even as we speak with conviction, are marked by kindness and respect. When we have to differ with President Obama, let’s do that, with backbone. But let’s make sure we do all this with honor, with respect, with prayer, and, most of all, with love.

Let’s render unto Caesar, as free people with natural rights. Because we know as believers that we will eternally say “Jesus is Lord,” we can as citizens temporally say, “Hail to the chief.”