Many years ago I was involved in a controversy in the church over the issue of women voting. It seemed like such a huge deal to me at the time that I almost felt willing to stake my ministry on the concept that women should not be allowed to vote in the church. An interesting thing happened to me when visiting an old Finnish pastor up around Rock Lake North Dakota. In the discussion of this controversy this old gentleman actually started to laugh at me which I found rather disconcerting. His first question was, “where in the Scriptures can you show that voting was ever done in the church?”. They drew lots and they had discussions; they prayed and laid hands but there really is no definitive place for you to say that they actually cast ballots. His second question was “there is no governance order for the church in the Scriptures, why doyou want to order one?”. If Christ is the Christ is the head and we are the body, built on the foundation the apostles and prophets and we are to submit one another out of reverence for Christ why do want to “order”?
When I told him that I believed the exercise of the vote was exercise of power he really laughed. His statement still echoes in my memory today – only a German would see the vote as a exercise of power. He then had a whole list of different called cultures and countries and how they view the vote. They were mostly Scandinavian countries and I can’t remember how the order was arranged but he said some people see the vote as a means of reaching some kind of consensus. Others saw a vote as a snapshot of peoples opinions at any given moment in history. Other saw a vote as a duty. Some saw the vote as an exercise of a communal responsibility. But his phrase, only Germans would see the vote as some kind of exercise of power. I found it a bit disconcerting to say the least.
Finally, tomorrow we get a chance to cast our ballots. If you’re like me you probably just want the whole thing to be over. I am so tired of the twisting and the turning of the truth. Of parsing words and all the shenanigans that go into this nonsense of a national election. If it wasn’t so important I would probably just stay home and read a good book, however I plan to vote. And now I’m finding there is a new definition of what the vote means. To vote is the best way to have revenge. One more thing for you to think about before you go to your balloting box tomorrow. Revenge – really? This isn’t Harry High School – this is important.
There is something in the Bible about revenge, or vengeance and I believe it is something to the effect that vengeance belongs to God. One more thing to think about.
