I’ve been a little perplexed by a sentiment I’ve seen rolling around the intarwebs recently… “Vote your conscience, not your religion.”

I wholeheartedly agree with the statement “Vote your conscience.”  That is how we are to vote.  Not by party lines, not according to media hype, not according to a resigned sense of “if ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, not according to what anyone else tells you to do, but according to your conscience.

If your religion does not affect your conscience, then you have an impotent religion and may I suggest that you are wasting your time on your religion.

Of course I know that what is meant by “vote your conscience, not your religion” is that you shouldn’t simply vote according to how your church tells you to.  I agree here (partially), see above.  However, there are worse ways of determining how to vote, and I might submit that if you don’t let your church affect how you vote at least slightly, then you are in fact going to vote the way someone else tells you.  (I really need to get around to writing that post on my feelings on free will… someday…).  You might also be wasting your time in that church.

I also believe that a church should not mandate a particular voting direction.  HOWEVER, a church SHOULD educate itself (i.e., the people in the church should eductate themselves) on what scripture has to say about various issues, let that sink into your “conscience”, and then vote accordingly.

Sad fact is, most churches don’t take the time to teach this thoroughly and so simply state one candidate is God’s man, and the other is obviously the anti-christ.

Interestingly, I’m not hearing that (yet) in this election.  Probably because most church leaders are rather baffled by the (lack of) good options.

I also find it interesting that the most likely candidate for the anti-christ I’ve seen in awhile is running and no one is saying anything (oh, snap.)

I was pretty much shocked to read this article from the Sovereign Grace blog about how Joshua Harris’ “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” has been used in classwork at a liberal school like Boston University to discuss modesty as a virtue. Then again, I have to think that there is a chance that a least a few are starting to notice the devastating results of the “hook-up” culture that seems to be prevalent today. In her article in the Wall Street Journal, Donna Freitas says of her students after reading Harris’ book,

“They seemed shocked that somewhere in America there are entire communities of people their age who really do “save themselves” until marriage, who engage in old-fashioned dating with flowers and dinner and maybe a kiss goodnight.”

I could probably just rehash everything that CJ Mahaney wrote in the article, but he probably says it better himself :)

Abstinence is the virtue of the weak, temperance is the virtue of the strong. - A.B. Bruce – The Training of the Twelve