Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Politics and Religion
Elections as God’s Judgment

Elections as God’s Judgment

Last updated on: November 13, 2024 at 7:59 am by Gene Veith

0 Comments

Elections as God’s Judgment 2024-11-13T07:59:18-05:00 Gene Veith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“God punishes wicked subjects with wicked rulers.” So said Martin Luther in his Treatise on the Ban, as we blogged about earlier. He can also punish them with good rulers. And there might be differences of opinion among the judged on which is which. But God does judge the nations, including each one of us.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is not a fundamentalist preacher but a sober mainstream conservative pundit. He interpreted the 2016 election between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump as the judgment of God.

In a column for The Week published just before Election Day of that year, Dougherty published a piece entitled This election is God’s judgment on us. “I’m not joking,” he said. “This isn’t a metaphor or hyperbole. I’ll give you all the technical and historical knowledge I have. We can discuss history and analyze policy options all day. But if you want my answer for what is actually going on in this election, I suspect we are experiencing God’s wrath.”

It isn’t just that particular election. He sees unsettling parallels between our national and cultural problems and those condemned in the Old Testament:

I look at the headlines, our candidates, our political parties, our civic life, and mostly what occurs to me is that God has given us over to ourselves in this election, and he lets us make fools of ourselves with it. And not just this election. All the signs of God’s judgment of a nation, or a civilization, seem to be on us. In the Biblical accounts of Chronicles, you see the pattern. Faithful kings “seek” after God and ensure that a faithful liturgy is celebrated in Solomon’s Temple. Unfaithful kings make alliances with wicked nations, and cement these alliances with idolatrous worship in “the high places” or even the Temple itself. This lack of faithfulness is generalized, and the priests become wicked and oppressive. The life of God’s people becomes marked by violence, dislocation, and oppression. They lose the blessings of the Lord: good harvests, healthy children. They stop winning wars. They are conquered.

Dougherty sees his own church in the same light:

The Catholic Church, which I belong to, is rotten with wicked priests and mediocre leadership, ruined by pathetic attempts to make an alliance with the spirit of the age it lives in. It debauched its own liturgy to effect this alliance. Our sister churches of the Middle East are being put on the wrack of martyrdom by Sunni extremists, and the Western Church — fat with German money — is obsessed about how it might come to bless adultery. Last week, I read that the pope is seeking to come to some kind of understanding with a murderous regime in China. How pitiful. And then I look closer to home. Many civilizations have disgraced themselves with the murder of their enemies. But my own is one of few so debauched that we kill our own children and call it good.

Our leaders and our cultural and financial elite are also subject to God’s wrath:

Everywhere in the last decade, the leadership class of the Western World has been exposed for its avarice, its greed, its stupid clubbiness, its shallowness. The well-paid executives of our banks crash the economy while defrauding poor and working families. They get bailed out by the government, their bonus checks clear at the end of the year, and their banks’ name are put on our Coliseums. Our leaders fecklessly start wars in the Middle East, and then throw up their hands in surprise when the result is chaos, death, and fury unleashed upon the whole world.

And we ordinary folks fall under the same judgment:

In democracies, citizens are said to be the sovereign of their nations. What have we as citizens done to repair the damage or bring justice to our countries? We do nothing. Turn on cable TV, shout at someone at Twitter. For all the times I’ve satisfied myself with doing only that, I’m sorry.

Whereupon Dougherty becomes profound:

But for those who can accept it, God’s judgment is a good thing. The same fire that consumes the chaff is used to purify gold and silver.

Dougherty’s fellow National Review writer Jeffrey Blehar brought back that 2016 piece and applies it to the 2024 election. He concurs: “This election has taught me to fear God.”

Both Dougherty and Blehar were writing before they knew the outcome of the election. They didn’t approve of either candidate. They saw God’s judgment manifesting itself in whichever candidate won.

To be sure, the United States of America is not to be confused with ancient Israel, to whom the Biblical prophecies were chiefly addressed (though the prophets also did pronounce God’s judgment on other nations as well [e.g., Isaiah 13-23 and Jeremiah 46-51]). And God’s judgment is rather more severe than losing an election or misgovernment.

To his credit, Dougherty moves from his frustration over the election to a broader consideration of God’s judgment. I appreciate his comment that “God has given us over to ourselves.” He is alluding to Romans 1, in which St. Paul describes perhaps God’s most terrifying judgment: He lets us do what we want. Whereupon we have to suffer the consequences for it.

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, **God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.**29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Here is what the Bible teaches about homosexuality, not just that it is a bad behavior that should not be done, but that it is a punishment for idolatry. It is “contrary to nature” and, interestingly, an “error.”

Than again, “all manner of unrighteousness,” which St. Paul details, are also described as God giving us up “to a debased mind.” This account culminates with an offense that is made to sound even worse than actually doing all of these sins: Approving of them! Saying that these sins are not sins at all, indeed, that they are good.

This passage is not intended to set apart just a few transgressors for God’s judgement. Rather, as the very next verse makes clear, God’s judgment falls upon all of us, including those of us who self-righteously judge the transgressors: *“*Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Romans 2:1).

The reason that approval of sin–such as the approvals of sexual and homosexual sins meted out by progressive churches–is especially heinous is that it teaches those caught up in these sins have no need of repentance, that they are actually righteous and thus can be self-righteous, imagining that they do not need Christ’s forgiveness and so shutting themselves off from the good news that is St. Paul’s central message:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17).

Illustration: Day of Judgment by Lucas Cranach the Elder – The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26458626

2024 Presidential Election

elections

God's judgment

Previous Post

November 12, 2024

Why Democrats Lost the Election

Next Post

November 14, 2024 Christian Realism

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"VCRs, tape decks, and cassette players are all having a revival among a segment of ..."

Tom Hering

Luther on Tools

"As a (retired) lawyer I see potential liability from sharing things like power or sharp ..."

reg

Luther on Tools

"I am not sure the items you mentioned, though disused, discontinued, discarded, could be considered ..."

reg

Luther on Tools

"“Friend, use me in your relations with your neighbor just as you would want your ..."

DakotaLutheran

Luther on Tools

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category America Apologetics Art baseball Bible Blog Christ Church crime Culture Economics Education Ethics Family Food Football Government History Holidays Holy Week Humor International Islam Language Law Life Issues Literature Media Medicine Movies Music Nature News Personal Philosophy Politics psychology Reformation Religions Sacraments Science sex Social Science Sports technology television terrorism Theology Uncategorized Vocation war

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who saw a vision of a pot boiling toward the north?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Zechariah Jeremiah Isaiah Habakkuk

Books by This Author Books by Gene Veith

See All Titles »