In two days’ time, the Lord willing, the people of the United States will vote to elect a new President and Vice President. Additionally in our community, we will elect new Congressional, state, and local representatives. We also have the opportunity to voice our opinion on a number of legislative issues that affect our state and its government.

As American citizens, we enjoy a privilege too few other people enjoy — the right to select by popular vote the people who exercise authority over us, and to have some say in the decisions those people make. It’s a privilege for which we should be grateful, and one that we ought to exercise as conscience and understanding dictate. (For some Christians, conscience and understanding may dictate forgoing any participation in the elective process, in which case they should do exactly that.)

As effectively as our democratic system works in the civil realm, we run into problems when we attempt to apply the same principles to the household of God. The Lord is not the head of a democracy, a republic, or any other form of representative government. He is not interested in our choosing for ourselves how His business ought to be run, nor is He at all inclined to have decisions made by majority rule. He alone has the right to determine what is and is not appropriate for His people. His vote is the only one that counts.

The Bible warns us of what happens when people try to manage God’s business in their own way: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (1 Timothy 4:1-3). All of the dangers Paul mentions here are symptoms of the same underlying condition — disdain for God’s authority.

When individuals (or churches) decide that they know better than God does how they ought to conduct ourselves, they not only disobey His commandments, but they invent their own rules and bind them upon others. They fall into the trap of the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day, of whom He said, “For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers” (Matthew 23:4). Think of all the false doctrine men have concocted for themselves and for others, because some group somewhere decided that they could alter God’s plan to suit themselves.

Of course, many are easily persuaded to “go along with the crowd” when others decide to abandon the truth. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). But the Scriptures caution us not to be swayed by what “everyone” wants to do. “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent,” wrote the wise king (Proverbs 1:10); “You shall not follow a crowd to do evil,” the Lord God told the Israelites (Exodus 23:2).