John Piper suggested in a new piece for his site, Desiring God, that he may not be voting for Donald Trump or Joe Biden in the presidential election.
“I think it is a drastic mistake to think that the deadly influences of a leader come only through his policies and not also through his person,” Piper writes. “Flagrant boastfulness, vulgarity, immorality and factiousness are not only self-incriminating; they are nation-corrupting.”
Piper says he is not making an endorsement and he doesn’t intend to “dictate how anyone else should vote.”
He said he is “baffled that so many Christians consider the sins of unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai), and the like, to be only toxic for our nation, while policies that endorse baby-killing, sex-switching, freedom-limiting, and socialistic overreach are viewed as deadly.”
He said voters should consider the person and how he impacts the nation, not just in policy, but in his character and convictions.
“This is true not only because flagrant boastfulness, vulgarity, immorality, and factiousness are self-incriminating, but also because they are nation-corrupting. They move out from centers of influence to infect whole cultures.”
In supporting a person who is unrepentant, Piper says Christians sometimes value laws and policies over the person.
“I find it bewildering that Christians can be so sure that greater damage will be done by bad judges, bad laws, and bad policies than is being done by the culture-infecting spread of the gangrene of sinful self-exaltation, and boasting, and strife-stirring (eristikos),” he said.
Piper also said in the post that abortion is “wickedness,” but there is another deadly sin.
When a leader models self-absorbed, self-exalting boastfulness, he models the most deadly behavior in the world,” Piper writes. “He points his nation to destruction. Destruction of more kinds than we can imagine. It is naive to think that a man can be effectively pro-life and manifest consistently the character traits that lead to death — temporal and eternal.”
Following the article’s publication, speculation over who Piper plans to vote arose. This caused the longtime pastor to take to Twitter to confirm that he is neither voting for Trump nor Joe Biden.
“The article we posted today explains why I won’t be voting for Biden or Trump. That choice to “write in” is relatively unimportant. But the reasoning really matters.”
The article we posted today explains why I won’t be voting for Biden or Trump. That choice to “write in” is relatively unimportant. But the reasoning really matters.https://t.co/FNPRClUh2h
— John Piper (@JohnPiper) October 23, 2020
I drove a stake in 1995. God helping me, it will never move.https://t.co/RoJTy78r4D
Photo courtesy: John Piper Facebook
Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and IBelieve.com. She blogs at The Migraine Runner.