The Devil's Lie

The first campaign promise in human history was made in a garden, and it was a lie. “You will not certainly die,” the serpent told Eve (Genesis 3:4). Take what isn’t yours, skip the cost, and you will be like God.

"Take your Bible into the voting booth." (Lonnie Poindexter, Episode 77)

With the midterms almost here, that same pitch is on ballots across this country. It goes by the name democratic socialism, and in more churches than you would guess, it is being blessed from the pulpit.

My good friend Lonnie Poindexter joined me for this one. Lonnie was one of the first guests ever to sit in this chair. Years ago, before either of us knew the other, he interviewed me about my first book, The Prodigal Republican, and that conversation set me on a road I am still traveling. He has spent the last stretch of his life caring for his parents, who are in their nineties, and he is back in the fight.

A Movement, Not a Punch Line

A few weeks ago I called the DSA movement undeniable. Nothing since has changed my mind. By mid-August, the Brookings Institution counted 282 candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America this cycle, from city council to Congress. As of early October, by DSA’s own count, its House candidates had won seven of their twenty-five primaries. Seven does not sound like much until you look at who they beat. At least three sitting Democratic members of Congress lost to DSA-linked challengers. New York elected Zohran Mamdani mayor. In Denver, a 29-year-old democratic socialist took out Congresswoman Diana DeGette, who had held her seat since 1997.

Define the thing before arguing about it. Socialism says the government should own or control the means of producing wealth and then decide how that wealth gets passed around. The democratic part means they want to vote their way there. The destination does not change because you rode a bus instead of a tank.

The pitch is affordability, and the pain behind it is real. But listen to the offer underneath the offer: you can have the good thing, and somebody else will pay for it. That is Genesis 3 all over again. Something good, no cost, no God. Jesus told us who wrote that script. “He is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Socialism never sells itself as theft. It sells itself as a free lunch, and somebody always pays for the lunch.

The church gets pulled in through Acts 4:32, where the believers “shared everything they had.” It is a beautiful verse. Keep reading. When Ananias and Sapphira held back part of the money from their land, Peter did not accuse them of breaking the rules of a commune. He said the opposite: “Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?” (Acts 5:4). Their sin was lying, not keeping. The early church gave because hearts had changed, not because Caesar sent a bill (2 Corinthians 9:7).

Lonnie pointed to the kibbutz movement in Israel, which sounded good at the start and could not hold together. Then he told the story of his father, raised by a single mother, who summed up his success in three parts: faith in God, focus on your goals, and refuse to believe anyone who tells you that you can’t make it.

I asked Lonnie where the pastors are. His answer was blunt. Too many do not want the heat that comes from speaking the whole truth. He described a prominent pastor planning the legacy he will hand to his sons. “We might leave them some buildings,” Lonnie said, “but there’s not going to be any people in them, or the people that are there are going to be socialist.”

Paul gave the church a plain rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). That is not cruelty. It is dignity. God gave Adam work in the garden before the fall, not after it. A church that will not teach on work, property, and giving is leaving its children to learn economics from people who do not believe in God. They will learn it from somebody. It had better be us.

The Meat Pots of Egypt

About a month after they walked through the Red Sea, the Israelites were ready to go back. “There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted” (Exodus 16:3). Nobody mentioned the whips, the brick quotas, or the baby boys thrown into the Nile. They remembered the meat. Egypt fed them. Egypt also owned them. Comfort in bondage will beat freedom with risk almost every time, unless God changes the heart.

Bring that forward. The economy tops every serious poll this cycle, and the final New York Times and Siena poll before the election has Democrats up eleven points on the generic House ballot. That is the economy moving votes. Black voters care about the economy as much as anyone. Yet as of late September, the same poll had Black voters backing Democratic House candidates 83 to 11. It’s the economy, stupid, works on almost everybody. Why not here?

I point to the meat pots: a guaranteed program, even a thin one, a sense of belonging, and a social price for breaking ranks. I have paid that price. And I find that most people in our community have never heard the history. The Republican Party of Lincoln ended slavery. Freed slaves voted overwhelmingly Republican. It was Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and Lincoln’s vice president, who reversed the promise of forty acres. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were Republican achievements, and a larger share of Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. History has leapfrogged right over our community.

My own party owns part of this. A major Republican donor once told me plainly that they made the investment in Black outreach, it did not pay off, and they were done with it. You cannot preach a big tent and then decide some neighborhoods are not worth the visit.

No community is a monolith. Vote your values. And when you walk into the ballot box to support the very thing God instituted, which is government, you do not get to leave behind what you know about Him.

God did not answer Israel’s complaint with a lecture. He answered it with bread (Exodus 16:4). Freedom has a Provider too, but manna came one day at a time and it had to be gathered. Trust and work, every morning. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

Read the Label

Sometimes the news writes itself. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s husband, political consultant Tim Mynett, co-founded a California winery called eStCru. Among its wines was a red called The Devil’s Lie. The New York Post reported it.

In 2024, an investor accused Mynett and his business partner of swindling him with the promise of a 200 percent return. The winemaker they hired said her pay stopped in early 2023. House Oversight Chairman James Comer has pointed to the congresswoman’s own financial disclosures, which showed the winery and a venture firm Mynett co-founded going from as much as $51,000 in 2023 to as much as $30 million in 2024. The winery shut its doors in April. And Chairman Comer has said it sold investors empty barrels as “wine to be aged.”

As a lawyer, I will be clear. Every bit of that is an allegation. Nothing has been proven in court, Mynett denies it, and he is entitled to his day. But those numbers sit on forms the congresswoman signed, and a jump from fifty thousand to thirty million deserves an answer. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). Somebody put the devil’s lie on a label and sold it as something sweet. Read the label.

Lion Chasers

I asked Lonnie why he named his network Lion Chasers. The name comes from Benaiah, one of David’s mighty men, who went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion (1 Chronicles 11:22). Christians have to be bold enough to take on the lions of our day. Lonnie pointed to a church in the San Jose area that stood its ground when local government tried to shut it down during COVID, and won.

His message to Christian voters was simple: “Take your Bible into the voting booth.” And then this: “Why did the Lord call us an army? Armies fight. Simple as that.”

Jesus called us salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16). Salt cannot preserve anything if it stays in the shaker. Light cannot push back darkness if it does not shine. And you cannot beat a lion unless you fight. We are ambassadors of the kingdom of God, and this is not about Republican or Democrat. If you plan to sit on the couch with your arms crossed, watching the returns and bemoaning how dark the culture has gotten, you are part of the problem.

Three Stories, One Author

The socialist promise says you can have the good thing and somebody else will pay. Egypt’s meat pots say stay where it is predictable, even if somebody owns you. A bottle of wine says the quiet part right on the label. Different packaging, the same offer first made in a garden: something good, without God, without cost.

Jesus told us who is behind it. He also told us the way out. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). The truth costs something. It always has. Manna had to be gathered. Freedom had to be walked out through a desert. The generosity God honors comes from a changed heart, not a government invoice.

Vote. Vote your values, not your rations. And do not let anybody, from a podium or a pulpit, sell you something God never offered. Read the label. The fine print matters.

Find Lonnie Poindexter at contentofcharacterseries.com and at his new site, Lionchasers.network.