Zeal For Truth

In a somewhat surprising move, Ron Paul has chosen to buck his libertarian roots and endorse the Constitution Party’s Chuck Baldwin for President. In a long, very personal and very revealing piece, Paul makes a couple of observations about this decision and his run at the White House. This one stuck out:

Ironically the most difficult group to recruit has been the evangelicals who supported McCain and his pro-war positions.  They have been convinced that they are obligated to initiate preventive war in the Middle East for theological reasons.  Fortunately, this is a minority of the Christian community, but our doors remain open to all despite this type of challenge.  The point is, new devotees to the freedom philosophy are more likely to come from the left than from those conservatives who have been convinced that God has instructed us to militarize the Middle East.

Paul, like many of us Christians who deeply lament the unbiblical support from our brothers and sisters of offensive war, murder, lying and blasphemy - and those who have sold themselves out to John McCain’s “evil” because it is “less evil” than Barack Obama’s “evil” has decided to embrace a genuinely Christian candidate in Chuck Baldwin. From the pastor himself:

For one thing, a sizeable number of believers allowed President George W. Bush to redefine their Christian principles almost out of existence. They willingly looked the other way while Bush betrayed his word (not to mention the Constitution) and catapulted conservative principles into outer darkness. To the point, that they can now even support someone as liberal as John McCain and still call him a “conservative.”

I will say it straight out: any Christian or conservative who supports John McCain has no principles left worth defending!

…How could Christians sacrifice their principles and convictions so easily? How could they be so willing to surrender their loyalties–both to Christ as the organic Sovereign of this land, and to constitutional government, which is, itself, built on Biblical principles?

…

There it is: countless millions of professing Christians will eagerly abandon their commitment to constitutional government and Biblical principles in order to accommodate a Republican Presidential candidate. In the minds of many Christians, the Republican Party is more important than the U.S. Constitution. It is more important than conservative principles or even Biblical injunctions. In essence, the Republican Party has become an IDOL in the hearts and minds of many professing believers.

So, how can we ask God to bless America when God’s children have set up the groves of idolatry in their hearts? How can we expect God to heal our land when Christian pastors, Sunday School teachers, deacons, ushers, and faithful church members place more loyalty and allegiance in a political party than they do in the very Word and principles of God?

As surely as the pagans of the Old Testament worshipped before the gods of Baal and Ashteroth, many Christians worship before the GOP. They are willing to sacrifice their children to the policies and practices of unscrupulous, evil politicians–as long as they have an “R” behind their names.

We have a major problem in the church, let alone the conservative political movement when so many claim they agree with the authority of Christ and the bible and yet, out of ignorance or stubborn human-centered pride, support policies that are so blatantly and radically unbiblical and unchristian. There is probably more hope with the left’s base, who though dead wrong on principle, at least seem to understand the concept of principle. It may be easier to convince them that their motives, while correct, are not carried out through socialism, wealth-redistribution, pluralism and so called religious and cultural “tolerance.”

The Christian “right” has gone full-circle this decade. What started as an effort to align one of the major parties with a God-fearing agenda has turned into a power struggle to align God-fearing people with a major party agenda. Paul sees that the mainstream of political Christianity has been so caught up in what these false prophets, teachers and experts are proclaiming that it is time to “evangelize” the left.

Realistically, Paul’s positions have generally been closer to the Constitution Party that the hard-line of the Libertarian Party. Paul’s emphasis on Rothbardian/Austrian economics and his opposition to the drug war makes him friends with the Libertarians, but his views on immigration, Christianity and abortion align him more with the Old Right and Constitution Party.

With this endorsement Paul has shown his true colours, even though it will not make a lot of sense to those who supported him from the left.  Once again, he has chosen to follow his principles over politics, and pick a hard-core Christian “libertarian-esque” candidate who emphasises those principles which Paul finds most important.

Here is Paul and Baldwin talking in 2007 about Christian/conservative issues.