“Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” ~Psalm 115:8

One of the more disturbing things among the dozens of disheartening developments around the uncritical embrace of Donald Trump by Christians in America is that preachers are telling their congregations that character does not matter. I am not kidding. Ordained proclaimers of the Gospel are preaching in their pulpits that, when selecting leaders of your nation, character and integrity really shouldn’t play a role.

And we wonder why the Church in America is losing its Christian witness.

Several Christians I know and love dearly have sent me some of these sermons as representative of their own thoughts on the state of our culture and the Church’s role in changing it. They do so unapologetically. Sincerely. “Watch this sermon,” they say, “I agree with this 100%.” And the megachurch preacher they send me is telling thousands of Christians on a Sunday morning that character doesn’t matter.

Gary Hamrick, the preacher at Cornerstone Chapel in Virginia, says a Christian’s vote is not a valentine. You’re not saying you love a guy just because you vote for him. You’re not approving of his vibes or his look, the language he uses or the ways he acts. Your vote is purely about policy, not character.

Josh Howerton, the preacher at Lakepointe Church in Dallas, says a Christian should vote policy over personality. To quote him directly, “Stop looking at the person and only look at the policy!”

Both of these preachers, and countless others like them, are moving their congregations away from considering a candidate’s character. They’re telling us that character doesn’t matter.

I’m telling you it does. Character matters. It matters a great deal.

One reason it matters is that Christians who are giddily supporting and defending Donald Trump today were denouncing Bill Clinton thirty years ago for lesser crimes. The American Christians I knew then condemned Clinton’s supporters for prioritizing policy agreement over personal character.

In the middle of the Clinton sex scandal, a group of 74 Christian scholars issued a “Declaration Concerning Religion, Ethics, and the Crisis in the Clinton Presidency.” It stated, in part:

“We are aware that certain moral qualities are central to the survival of our political system, among which are truthfulness, integrity, respect for the law, respect for the dignity of others, adherence to the constitutional process, and a willingness to avoid the abuse of power. We reject the premise that violations of these ethical standards should be excused as long as a leader remains loyal to a particular political agenda and the nation is blessed by a strong economy.”

For as long as the United States has been a nation, its political and religious leaders have demanded that personal character and integrity are critical for those we follow. For as long as God has been talking to his people, from burning bushes and shaking mountains, through the written word and the incarnate Word, he and his people have demanded ethical behavior from its leaders. So, today, when preachers are telling their churches that character doesn’t matter, that we should be placing policy over personal integrity and ethics, it destroys our credibility. It makes us out as hypocrites who really are only interested in political power and control.

Secondly, character matters because a nation becomes like its leaders. A corporation, a church, a civic club, a bowling team–all groups become like their leaders. Russell Moore, in an essay from the March issue of Christianity Today ironically entitled, “Why Character Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” argues that what is normalized in a culture becomes an expected part of that culture:

“Defending a president using his power to have sex with his intern by saying, ‘Everybody lies about sex’ isn’t just a political argument; it changes the way people think about what, in the fullness of time, they should expect for themselves. Louisianans defending their support for a Nazi propagandist and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan because he’s allegedly “pro-life” is not a “lesser of two evils” political transaction. The words pro-life Nazi–like the words pro-life sexual abuser–change the meaning of pro-life in the minds of an entire generation.

No matter what short-term policy outcomes you then “win,” you’ve ended up with a situation in which some people believe authoritarianism and sexual assault can be offset by the right “policy platform,” while others believe that opposing abuse of power or sexual anarchy must necessitate being opposed to “pro-life.” Either way you look at that, you lose.”

What happens to policy in a post-character culture is important. What happens to your country is even more important. But what is it doing to us Christians when we say character doesn’t matter? That’s the third thing I want to mention here, that character matters because of the way it forms us individually. You don’t think it impacts you and your own development, your own Christian transformation, to say that character doesn’t matter? You don’t think it shapes the way you think and speak and act when you continuously convince yourself that what’s inside a person doesn’t matter? The Bible makes it clear that external conduct cannot be separated from internal character. What’s inside a person’s heart always comes out of his mouth. Scripture also tells us immorality, boastfulness, and ruthlessness will lead a person to ruin along with all who “approve of those who practice them.”

If I had told you 30 years ago that in your lifetime a vast majority of American Christians would be prioritizing policy over character in a presidential election and that preachers would be preaching that character doesn’t matter when choosing a U.S. president, you would have gasped and asked what in the world has gone so wrong that followers of Jesus would believe and behave in such awful ways. That’s a very good question. You might ask what happened to our culture. What happened with the world? What happened to our young people? The question I can’t shake, or answer, is what in the wide wide world of sports has happened to the Church?

Lots and lots of preachers and Christians are saying today that character doesn’t matter. I’m telling you it does. Because if character doesn’t matter, nothing does.

Peace,

Allan