[ review ]
For Christians: Is it Election Day or A Day of Prayer?
by Iggie Krug (Church Planter, Missoula, MT)
Voting: The Noble Lie
Resisting the Powers Series #1
by Andy Baker and Tristin Hassell
With Election Day upon us and election turnout expected to be the lowest in years, why aren’t Americans going to the voting booths? I know why I’m not. Do you?
There’s no better time than now to read Voting: The Noble Lie by Andy Baker and Tristin Hassell. This pamphlet is the first in a series of pamphlets that Doulos Christou Press is publishing to challenge the Church to reconsider radical Christian discipleship. I set out expecting to be very critical of one of the authors, whom I had always viewed as a little bit of an extremist. However, after reading this pamphlet, I now consider myself to need the type of extremism that the authors have been trying to spread. I am now finding myself unsure of a lot of things.
However, there is one thing of which I am sure. This 17-page pamphlet got me thinking a lot more than the authors probably intended. The authors stated that their purpose in writing the pamphlet was to "put into question the Christian’s practice of voting". But what did the pamphlet really do? It called into question my place in the Kingdom of God and how that relates to my place, or the lack thereof, in the Kingdoms of Man.
The pamphlet opens with a bang, a grand opening of sorts. The authors begin with one of my favorite passages of Scripture (Hebrews 13:10-14), which involves a poetic contrast of the crucifixion of Jesus and the proper place for the people of God to vicariously live out, and be, the resurrected Body of Christ. I had expected that the authors would put a spreadsheet on page one and proceed to outline every passage of Scripture that talks about civility and the Kingdom of God, thus showing the reader that voting was wrong and unbiblical. Instead, they just poured out their convictions on why they don’t believe in voting. Then, they gave me the flipside: what voting means for the Church. It all made sense, and it made me sit down and pray about why I voted in the last election and how I used that as an excuse not to take civil action as a true follower of Christ and also about how I used voting as a way to shirk my responsibility and not attempt to change society.
Baker and Hassell, in showing the flipside, are not critical of the fact that there are voting Christians who try to make honest-to-goodness change from the purest of hearts. Instead, they merely show that there is a more effective way of change. The authors begin by showing that we too often use voting to be our only voice in the political world, and in all of society. They call into question the practice of voting as a means of preventing a tyrannical regime, or of preventing homelessness, poverty, and disease. Then, they show that there are better ways to effect change, namely living out the life of Jesus in pure and simple radical discipleship. To quote them: "Jesus life and death was about creating a kingdom to replace the violent options of the old order."
One of the things that the authors really made me consider was my own purpose in voting. They observed that we often use voting as an illusion of control, as if somehow our votes allow us to put our life in the Kingdom of God inside an illusionary box. Or in other words, we all too often put the Kingdom of God inside the Kingdom of Man. The authors reveal simple ways in which we can step outside of that limiting mindset and can remember that we are to live as aliens in the Kingdoms of Man. Aliens don’t get to vote in our country. Why would we want to?
On its own merits, this pamphlet speaks about the contrast between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man that we often don't want to think about. I recently read The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder and it completely altered my view on what the Kingdom of God is all about as far as effecting social change. This short pamphlet did the same thing in a much shorter context and in much clearer, more prophetic words.
Baker and Hassell each bring their own style to the table in this pamphlet, but they clearly wove it together like a fine tapestry that you would find on a wall in a palace. They didn’t play the classic role of good cop, bad cop. Instead, they complemented each other and we, the readers are all the better for it. It is a picture-perfect image of teamwork in writing. The two became one and you couldn’t tell the two apart. I will be eagerly anticipating more writings from this dynamic duo of prophetic voices. Voting: The Noble Lie is well worth the time to read, and it’s far more valuable than the two-dollar price tag. Prophetically relevant words are priceless.
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Voting: The Noble Lie is the second installment in the Resisting the powers series. It calls into question Christian involvement in the electoral process by voting.
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