Like a lot of people I hate election season. I hate the ads. I hate the rhetoric. The hate internet fighting over candidates. I hate the binary choice of two broken parties. I hate that people only see it as a binary choice. I hate that neither candidate will do anything to really fix or address the fundamental problems of the United States – even the ones they could effectively address as the country’s top executive.

This was the worst election yet for me. I had more debates with friends than I ever have before. Nasty ones at times. I hate how elections make people act. I hate the thinking it drives us to.

“If you aren’t for my candidate, you are a traitor.” “If you vote third party, you are voting for the ‘other’ guy.” “If you don’t vote, you’re voting for evil.”

I don’t even want to address that stuff at this point. I just don’t care about the debate over debate anymore.

At the end of it all I stand in front of the voting machine and stare blankly into the screen. It doesn’t ask me who I don’t want to elect. It asks me who I do. After all that build up it’s all over so quickly. I make my selections. I choose to the best of my ability and I walk out.

The rest is up to God. The results are his will. I have done what I can to affect temporal, earthly politics. Now, finally, I can go back to real life.

While I hate, hate, hate the conversation of modern American politics, I can’t really expect differently of most people. They are – most of them – unregenerate sinners who need Christ. I shouldn’t expect values like honesty and principle to govern their actions when they have so many incentives to forsake honesty and principle.

I’m really disappointed in my fellow Christians. Not all of them. But certainly some.

Romans 13:1-7 gives a succinct explanation of how Christians should relate to the government. We are commanded to submit to authority in scripture. We are commanded to show respect and honor where due. It is God who puts leaders in power.

Most scholars maintain that Romans was written sometime around 51 to 58 A.D. which would be during the reign of either Claudius or Nero. Neither of them were particularly nice guys and certainly didn’t have Christian values in their governance (especially Nero) and yet the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write Romans with that passage about submitting to authority.

There’s a lot that could be said about this topic. It has a lot application in our lives. But here are the two points I wanted to make to my fellow Christians given that context.

1. When you disrespect people who hold offices in our country; when you make fun of them; when you misrepresent them as something they are not; when you see them as an enemy to be thrown out of office even if it means abandoning some of your principles to do it, are you in accordance with what the Word of God has to say?

2. Your reaction to whomever wins the election should be consistent with a deeply-held belief that God is in control of everything and that we are citizens of an eternal kingdom foremost and not an earthly country. It should make no real different to your Christian walk who wins this election (though practical life changes might occur). Does the Bible change depending on the result? Does God change? No. I know you know this. Act like it.

And I am not innocent in these things either. I had to stop watching the Presidential debates this year because I couldn’t stop myself from getting angry and disrespectful toward the candidates (and indeed the whole system and culture). There is a point at which disagreement turns to disrespect and I’ve crossed that line more than a few times. We have to learn to see our leaders for what they are: God’s instruments.

Politics is far less important than my patriotic American upbringing has led me to believe. That’s not an excuse for not participating (I did participate) but it is a reason for not having my heart invested in this thing. It gets ugly when I do that. It gets ugly when you do it.