What we have right now is not that people
are too busy or too uncaring to vote.
They are voters; they care deeply – but cannot in good faith pull the
lever for someone they loathe. The
philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argued for this kind of ethic: when we are given
two bad options, we must choose neither.
This I understand and feel. But something about it feels odd, even
troubling to me – and for three reasons. (1) None of us has ever, ever voted
for an un-flawed human being. Christians
should know well that all of us are broken, fallen, sinful, confused people,
with hidden turmoil and a string of botched decisions in our past. Is there some threshold of “good enough”? and
if so, where would you draw it? and if you did, is that line where you happen
to be, or are you above or below it? If
I pass judgment on candidates (and in a way, we all must), is there
simultaneously a huge log in my own eye?
(2) Maybe of more interest is this: if I
just can’t cast my vote for either person, am I treating my vote as something
sacred, or utterly holy? It is lovely and
fitting to think of your vote as a huge deal, not to be squandered
lightly. But is it so sacred, does it
have a pristine history of purity, that it can’t be soiled? Or is my vote my best stab at doing my small
part in helping the world to be less woeful than it would be if I withdrew?
(3) Almost every day, I find myself faced
with some choice between bad options, and you do too – so we should be used to
it. Some are little trifles, some are
heart-wrenching, but the decisions we make in our working and personal lives,
if we step back and ponder them from the perspective Jesus might have, in a
fallen and constantly compromised world and culture, are really in that “lesser
of two evils” zone. And you find each
day that not to choose really is to
choose, because something ugly steps into the vacuum where you were supposed to
be. Not choosing is itself a choice that
does impact the outcome.
But I am not at all sure about these
things. They are just questions that
surface in my gut when I think about just not voting at all. Even if you can’t go for Hillary or Donald,
there are other important elections at the state and local levels…
