As I considered this year’s presidential candidates trying to determine who God would want me to vote for, I realized that I had set my standards higher than God’s own standards. If we look through the Bible at the leaders God Himself chose, we realize that not one of them was perfect!

• Noah got drunk and laid naked in front of his children.
• Abraham lied and put his wife in the position of being sexually exploited
• Moses had an anger problem and was apparently not a very charismatic leader
• Joshua opposed men who were prophesying by God’s Spirit
• David committed adultery and murder
• Solomon had hundreds of wives
• … and so on …

So if God Himself didn’t require perfection in the lives of His anointed leaders, what did He look for?

We see a clue in 1 Samuel 16:7:

“The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

Even though King David sinned so seriously, he was still called a “man after God’s own heart.” How can this be? Even after his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, God said that David walked in “integrity of heart and uprightness” (1 Kings 9:4). How can this be?

When Nathan the prophet came to rebuke David for his sins, he told a story about a poor man whose only lamb was taken by a rich man (2 Samuel 12:1-4). In spite of David’s sins, his heart still burned with passion for those who are poor and exploited (2 Samuel 12:5-6). Even in the midst of his sin, David was a man after God’s own heart.

“If a king judges the poor with fairness, his throne will always be secure.” (Proverbs 29:14)

God wants his leaders to have a heart of service, and to seek justice for those who are exploited. So does God want leaders to advocate hand outs to the poor? No: the kind of poverty which comes from laziness is condemned in the scriptures:

“Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” (Proverbs 10:4)

But God’s concern is for the hard-working poor man:

“A poor man’s field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it away.” (Proverbs 13:23)

God doesn’t want His leaders to show favoritism toward the rich or toward the poor. (James 2:1)

Another way in which David demonstrated that he was a man after God’s own heart even in the midst of his most heinous sins was the way he confessed his sins (2 Samuel 12:13, Psalm 51). When we have fellowship with God, we walk in the light (1 John 1:5-10). This doesn’t mean that we are perfect (in fact, if we claim to be perfect, all that proves, according to 1 John 1:8, is that we are deceptive liars). But it means that we are willing to confess what we have done wrong.

As we try to apply these principles to the current presidential candidates, we need to consider the fact that children in the womb are victims of serious injustice. While some poor people have earned their poverty by their laziness, no unborn child has done anything to deserve death.

However, injustice also affects some pregnant women. Many abortion-minded women are pregnant because of their own sins, but some abortion-minded women became pregnant because of another person’s sins. A heart of justice will seek to defend such women. Because of this, those of us who unashamedly seek to protect every unborn child need to be careful about harshly criticizing candidates who accept the concept of abortion in cases of rape and incest. I believe that such candidates are wrong, but nevertheless, their position shows that they do have a heart which seeks justice for the oppressed (although their heart has led them to the wrong conclusion in this case).

But some candidates (notably Barack Obama in the present campaign) show a calloused disregard for the lives of innocent children, not only in the womb but out of the womb. (For more details on this, go to www.BornAliveTruth.org.)

John McCain’s positions, on the other hand (even those positions where he is wrong), show that he has a heart which seeks justice. McCain has also shown a willingness to candidly confess his mistakes of the past, which shows that he has a heart which seeks to “walk in the light.”

McCain is not the perfect candidate. For a long time, I thought that he could never earn my vote because of his past mistakes. But now I see that even his mistakes show that he has a heart for justice, and my job now is to support him in prayer, asking God to reveal His truth more fully to him.

(I was in a hurry when I wrote this, but if you want to study more of the scriptures relating to these concepts, I encourage you to go to www.BibleGateway.com and search for “poor rich.” For in-depth study of these passages, I recommend www.BlueLetterBible.com.)