Noted @JohnPiper yesterday published an article about the folly of Christians being single-sin-issue voters in this election, & as issuing a necessary warning to Pastors about aiming at the wrong target in their preaching. All good, but there is a missing stanza in this hymn...

There is a need to consider the common good, the love of my neighbor, rather than the sins of the candidates & voters in any election. A sin-centered view of policies & candidates can't adequately address the issue of the good that can be accomplished in a fallen world.

What some consider a choice between 'a lesser of two evils' - a notion I reject - I take as an opportunity to promote the greater good of my neighbor, and a Christian view of ethics that refuses to sacrifice faith to an idol of power offering false protections.

Christians on the right and left will disagree about the mechanisms most beneficial to the common good, but both can agree on this as a starting point - what they are for rather than simply what they are against. The EV Church has an earned reputation of inconsistency

and this hinders Gospel witness now - and will for years to come (see recent article by @johnpavlovitz as a succinct rebuke on that issue). Recovery can begin not by simply focusing on the effects of the fall within us and around us but on the common graces given to sustain us.

With such a focus we will at least be in a position to better offer an opportunity for all people, for all of our neighbors, to hear the message of the saving grace which alone can rescue and transform persons and the cosmos itself. There's more to voting than sin-scoring.

And let me close this by simply affirming again how grateful I am for Piper's on point summons to Pastors to make disciples of Jesus who will stand against all idols and powers rather than hollow chocolate followers that melt in the heat of cultural pressure. @BarnabasPiper ...

Tell him I said Thanks that for that hymn, even if I'd prefer him to add another stanza or two. The temporal good is as real as temporal judgments, and the eternal good must be our highest aim, but the eternal is never divorced from the temporal even though always distinguished.