My last word on Romney (before the election)

Several readers have texted me, e-mailed me or communicated on Facebook that they are disgusted with my view that Mitt Romney is an unacceptable candidate for president, and that Christians should not vote for him. “The alternative is so much worse,” they say. “We have to vote for Romney to stop Obama.”

For what it’s worth, I understand their pain because I share it. President Obama is so awful, so demonstrably evil, that I have awakened in the night more than once with a cold dread in my heart as I consider America’s future, should he be re-elected. I believe his conscious intent is to destroy the America that stood for more than a century as the world’s bulwark against tyranny and oppression. I believe he wants to destroy her constitution and replace her republic with a socialist government. I believe he deliberately intends to wreck the U.S. economy and make Americans dependent upon the government dole. Once those things are accomplished, I believe he fully intends to end America’s support for Israel and actively aid the spread of Islam at home and around the globe.

Nevertheless, I still cannot recommend that Christians vote for Mitt Romney, and I beg you to let me explain why.

In a time of national crisis the Christian’s first duty is to remind the world that “man does not live by bread alone,” or by electing the right president. In Jeremiah 18:7-10 God makes it clear that the only security for any nation lies in obedience to Him. An evil nation scheduled for destruction can avoid its fate through repentance, God says, but a nation He formerly established can bring disaster upon itself by persistent disobedience.

This is plain language, and those of us who make up the “royal priesthood” of Christ’s “holy nation,” (I Peter 2:9) have a duty to be crystal clear in proclaiming the conditions necessary for God to bless America. Unless she repents of her self-sufficiency and her mad pursuit of wealth and pleasure she will perish. America must repent or no political party can save her. Voting for Romney is not repentance. He seems to be a very good man by worldly standards, but in the end he is just a man, and not even a Christian man. America needs to turn to God, not to anyone-not-a-Democrat.

But now let’s talk about Romney, the man and the candidate. How is it that so many conservative Americans have apparently forgotten that he invented Obamacare, known to pollsters as the most widely hated law ever passed by congress? The healthcare system Romney instituted in Massachusetts served as the model for Obamacare. The president even hired some of the people who once worked for Romney to help him craft the Affordable Healthcare Act.

All this is bad enough, but remember, despite Romney’s promise to eliminate Obamacare he continues to praise and defend the Massachusetts law as his signature legislative achievement. Several of his campaign surrogates have even stated that he intends to uphold the “more popular” parts of the law. Interestingly, Romney refuses to make this unpopular law part of his campaign against Obama. He attacks the president’s economic record, his foreign policy failures and his feckless reaction to the Benghazi crisis, but hardly a word has come out of his mouth regarding Obamacare. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it any more than Obama.

An objective observer can only conclude that Romney likes Obamacare and really does not intend to eliminate it. If elected,he will likely argue that because several parts of the law are still working their way through the courts, he shouldn’t do anything until after the Supreme Court has ruled. Then he’ll bide his time, hoping people will eventually forget the promises he made to win the Republican nomination.

Romney’s Mormonism is also quite problematic, although in this politically correct age, no one wants to talk about it. Here’s the thing, if you elect a Mormon, you will get a Mormon government in much the same way that India got a Hindu government when it gave the Hindu party a parliamentary majority. Since then every non-Hindu Indian has felt the difference. A man is what he believes, and Romney does not believe in the God of the Bible. Instead he believes in himself. His belief system teaches him that he is in a process of “deification”, that he is becoming his own god. I may not be able to foretell exactly how this will affect his governing, but I am certain that it will be seen it in hindsight.

In electing Theodore Roosevelt, America got a president who believed in government more than God. Unfortunately, Americans found they preferred government over God (let’s face it, walking by faith is hard), so they turned around and elected Woodrow Wilson, a man who believed in the power of government even more passionately than his predecessor. Since then, America has elected a string of presidents who believed government should take the place of God: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, George W. Bush and, most lately, Barack Obama. Collectively, they have given America a government with god-like ambitions, anxious to appear as omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent as God, and ready to assume a god-like stance toward its subjects. Did God promise to be a husband to widows? For forty years America’s government has told the nation’s young women that they need never marry because government will supply all their needs and care for all their babies.

I’m certain that back in the day no one realized that by electing Theodore Roosevelt America would be saddled with the Great Society in 1964. But that’s what happens when you elect a string of men who worship human government. In much the same way I cannot now say what kind of president Romney will be, but I can say that he is as big a believer in big government as his aforementioned predecessors, and that that his Mormonism will impact the nation. The ethos of Mormonism is communal and authoritarian, consistent with a community in which all the men believe they will someday be gods.

Nothing about Mormonism relates to freedom and liberty, or democracy for that matter. If America is better off after a Mormon president I’ll be the first to thank God, but I say now there is no reason to hope for that outcome and many reasons to fear the opposite.

Speaking of four years from now, with Romney in the White House it is certain that Mormonism will be better off. It is already happening. Just a few weeks ago Romney met with Christian evangelist Billy Graham and received his endorsement. Just as Obama corrupted mega-church pastor Rick Warren’s formerly clear Christian testimony by linking their names together, Romney has now succeeded in corrupting Graham’s formerly clear Christian testimony.

For 150 years Mormons have tried, largely without success, to convince the world of their Christian bona fides. Now the world’s leading evangelical has allowed his fear of Obama to drive him to embrace a Mormon in such a way as to blur the distinction between true and false religion. You don’t believe me? Then explain why else Graham would suddenly remove from his website all references to Mormonism as a cult. Doubtless Romney is a nicer man, a much better man than Obama. But from a Christian perspective (and can there be any other perspective for the Christian?) that just makes him all the more dangerous. I say again, Romney is no saviour, and from my perspective as a Christian I could never vote for him.