This is a Time of Winnowing

It astonishes me to hear people characterize this Access Hollywood 2005 Trump recording as "guy talk," "locker room banter," and even "lewd comments," as though it were all about his choice of words.

Open your eyes! He bragged about his lifestyle of sexual assault and we have no reason to believe that (a) he's ashamed of it, or (b) it's over. This is not about words. It's about the abuse of power by a sexual predator. And if he will abuse his power for that end, he will reach out and grab many other objects of his desires (money, revenge, etc.).
"You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the xxxx. You can do anything."

So am I for Hillary Clinton? Certainly not! She is criminal in her own ways.

A Christian must not vote in fear. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6

The three young Hebrew men who refused to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue had no idea how or whether the Lord would save them from what looked like an impossible situation of pagan oppression. But they refused to calculate within the horizon of human alternatives. They trusted God and set their course to reflect that trust.
“Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” Daniel 3:17-18
Neither Hillary Clinton (D) nor Donald Trump (R) is even minimally qualified to be president. Some people think they have to vote for one or the other, perhaps the less of two evils. To do otherwise, they think would be to waste their votes. But this misunderstands what voting is. If an effective vote, as opposed to a wasted vote, is a vote that makes a difference, then every vote is wasted unless a particular election comes down to a one vote margin. For example, voting for either Trump or Clinton in New York State. Or voting for either one in Vermont, Texas, California, or Wyoming, states that are reliably either Democrat or Republican. But your vote is a moral affirmation of a candidate. It is a citizen statement to the government. What kind of person do you want governing you and what sort of laws (or restraint from making law) do you want to see established?

If Evan McMullen (I) is on the ballot in New York, I may vote for him. I may write in Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. The Constitution Party tends to put up candidates who are, to put it gently, “not ready for prime time.” But given the circumstances, simply the name of the party could send the right message to the political class in Washington. I will not, however, give my sacred affirmation to either Trump or Clinton, neither of whom should be allowed anywhere near public authority of any sort, and certainly not the awesome executive power of the United States federal government.
This is a time of winnowing. Do we obediently trust God with our future or do we not? God in his sovereign goodness has given us these two morally appalling major party candidates. The question for us is how we will respond in faith.

Tyranny, Freedom, and Divine Government

Pastor Benjamin Miller at Relocating to Elfland posted this helpful reflection from Karl Barth.

[God’s] authority is divinely majestic just because it has nothing in common with tyranny, because its true likeness is not the power of a natural catastrophe which annihilates all human response, but rather the power of an appeal, command and blessing which not only recognises human response but creates it. To obey it does not mean to be overrun by it, to be overwhelmed and eliminated in one’s standing as a human being.

Obedience to God is genuine precisely in that it is both spontaneous and receptive, that it not only is unconditional obedience but even as such is obedience from the heart. God’s authority is truly recognised only within the sphere of freedom: only where conscience exists, where there exists a sympathetic understanding of its lofty righteousness and a wholehearted assent to its demands – only where a man allows himself to be humbled and raised up, comforted and warmed by its voice. (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 2.661–62)

There are those who hate the notion of God's sovereign rule over the universe. They find it dehumanizing, a denial of their human liberty, an assignment of slave status to the whole universe. Note that though some of these people are militant atheists, others are Arminian Evangelicals who treasure their modern notions of personal autonomy above the majesty of God.

It is true that the New Testament uses the word despotes, from which we get the English word despot, ten times to refer to God as sovereign ruler of heaven and earth and to the Lord Jesus Christ as master and owner of his church.

But to equate God's government of the universe and of his human creations in particular with the government of either a tyrant or puppeteer would be willfully and carelessly ignorant. For those interested in how the absolute sovereignty of God's divine government actually elevates and completes human liberty, Barth (heretic though he was in his Neo-Orthodoxy) here is a good place to begin.

It is also a worthwhile study to compare the holy sovereignty of God as he has revealed himself in the Bible with Allah of the Muslim Koran. The Muslim Allah is the divine tyrant. He is never described as being "love," and never displays any. "Islam" means "submission," but it is an entire moral universe away from the joyful obedience of the Christian to his Redeemer. Islam is completely indifferent to what Barth here calls "obedience from the heart," "freedom," "conscience," "sympathetic understanding," and "wholehearted assent."

Objections, whether by atheists or Arminians,  to God's rule over his creation according to his sovereign will in both its decretive and prescriptive aspects, i.e., his providential and moral ordering of all things, misses this fundamental point and so battles a straw man.

There is so much more to say on this subject.