I should probably start by saying that, even though I’ve never missed a Sunday in over a decade, I will not be providing this weekly eNews message for the next two Sundays while on vacation. I promise. My kids know what I mean when I say, “I promise.”

For me, a promise is binding. I will keep it, no matter what. They also know I won’t make a promise I can’t keep. Rest assured, I can keep this one, if only because I’m more tired, mentally and physically, than I’ve ever been before. I just need to rest.

That said, before I step away for a little while, there’s one thing I’ve been thinking about, especially as I’ve watched the LCMS presidential election unfold. Because I took a few hits for things I wrote, I think it’s at least worth the effort to extrapolate.

And to be clear, I do mean extrapolate, if only because some of the responses to what I posted last week became an exhibit of the very thing I’m about to describe. Some who read what I posted received my observations as accusations. Others went even further, somehow reducing my relatively simple premise to the claim that I was calling a particular candidate a liberal. I said no such thing. I never even assigned to the candidate the liberal ideology of those who happen to be cheering for his victory. What I actually did say had two parts. First, if the primary sales pitch for a candidate is that he’s not the other candidate, you have no real sales pitch. Second, various groups in the LCMS that openly oppose our doctrine and practice are indeed cheering for one candidate over another. I think that’s telling. Audiences are rarely accidental, and I think it deserves sober reflection rather than caricature.

For starters, whenever a person speaks, writes, teaches, preaches, posts, advocates, or whatever, he does far more than just send information into the ethereal spaces. He becomes an antenna of sorts. As an antenna, he creates a kind of signal that attracts listeners. People receive that signal. In the process, some are corrected by it. Some are comforted by it. Considering the responses to some of my posts, I know firsthand that some are provoked by it. This happens because a single signal has multiple frequencies. It also happens because people are working with certain types of receivers, all attuned by their own ideologies. Therefore, even as different kinds of people receive the same signal and tune in, categories based on frequency ultimately form. People might receive the signal and hear a friendly frequency, leading them to appreciate it. Others might receive it and recognize threat. Naturally, those who appreciate it typically stay for more. Those who despise it don’t. Unless, of course, their goal is merely to troll.

That said, among the listeners who stay because they like it, another category has likely developed—and this gets closer to the concern I shared last week about judging a candidate based on those hoping for his victory. When a candidate runs for public office, some people may be drawn to his signal because they hear a frequency that sounds like permission.

Again, every message gathers a congregation. That’s true in the pulpit, in politics, and pretty much in every public something or other that asks people to listen. What’s more, those who write or speak or act for public consumption know that their message never travels alone. It carries these frequencies in its tone and style and emphasis.

Now, I am not at all willing to say that every listener actually understands any given message perfectly. In fact, with the steady decline in reading and listening comprehension, I think that understanding is only getting worse. Still, crowds are always mixed. Even our Lord had both sincere and confused hearers. He had opportunists and enemies, too—all standing in the same crowds. It’s no surprise then that God’s Word urges us to pay attention to who is being drawn to our message as a “friendly.” We should know and understand what they think they heard and why they keep coming back for more. I mean, Saint Paul warned Timothy that people do not merely choose teachers because of information. They choose teachers because of appetite—because something in the teacher’s message grants them permission. They gravitate toward messages that allow them to keep their passions unaltered, or even give them a foothold (2 Timothy 4:3).

I don’t know about you, but that matters a great deal to me. It should matter to everyone participating in an election process. If the prideful consistently hear unintended permission in a candidate’s message, then he should examine the message. Maybe it’s there. If the sexually confused, or those pressing for Church practices that reach beyond biblical boundaries, if these folks keep claiming a candidate’s words as home territory, wisdom requires more than simply saying, “They misunderstood me.” Wisdom asks what they heard. Wisdom stirs a person to ask, “What frequencies am I emitting?”

I learned a long time ago that the folks who inevitably hate or cheer for me will always be the footnotes in my life that explain me. People will look back and know what I stood for by those two categories.

And the thing is, God’s Word already urges listeners (and speakers) to keep this in mind, and it does so without apology. Saint John says, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). Our Lord said relatively plainly, “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). Saint Paul wrote, “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Saint Jude warned that certain men “crept in unnoticed” and turned the holy message of grace into sensuality (Jude 4).

A point inherent to these texts is that the Lord and His apostles never treated a resulting audience as irrelevant. The kind of people drawn to a message mattered to them. That’s because they knew that false teaching, just like faithful teaching, creates a climate, and climates grow certain kinds of crops.

This is especially important, in a distinctly human sense, because messages contain more than propositions. They also contain posture. Or maybe “nuance” is the better word. I don’t know. Either way, I’ve learned over the years that two people can quote the same Bible verse, and then, by lathering it with nuance, aim it in completely opposite directions. Nuance is never neutral. It’s a frequency in the signal. Again, I made this point in last week’s posts, and the basic response from the opponents was, “Whoever criticizes a person for the audience they attract misunderstands that person.” Well, I suppose sometimes critics are unfair in this regard. But could it be that it’s actually possible to see smoke and know a fire is nearby? Is it possible to see a whole bunch of people cheering for a particular candidate and know by their praises something about the candidate’s potential trajectory?

As it meets with the Church, when the wolves applaud a potential shepherd, the sheep are obligated to at least ask why.

Of course, someone is likely thinking right now that a person in the public sphere cannot control every supporter who gravitates toward them. This is true. But he can control what he rewards and rebukes relative to his message. He can control what he refuses to excuse. He can say, “If you heard support for Marxist social justice, you didn’t hear it from me.” He can say, “If you heard license for practices beyond God’s Word, you didn’t hear it from me. Repent.” He can say, “If you came here to baptize your anthropocentric worship ideologies with my message, you came to the wrong font.”

In that sense, I dare say that a candidate’s silence in those moments is another frequency in the signal.

The Church—especially the Church—should be more than capable of admitting this premise. It’s really not that complicated, if only because we already go about our daily lives picking and choosing things in this way—knowing what to embrace and what to avoid by who we see embracing or avoiding it. In this case, I think it gets complicated when this relatively normal filter is obscured by ideological capture—when we’ve already invested so much of ourselves into a message, a person, a movement, or whatever that we can no longer bear to examine any of it honestly.

If anything, this filter matters most where the Gospel is being preached, if only because, naturally, sinners will always be found nearby. Indeed, Christ came to save sinners, and so the presence of sinners, by itself, proves nothing against the Gospel message. I’ll preach that very message this morning in worship here at Our Savior. Still, the question even those in my own church should be asking is whether the message is one that’s gathering sinners to repentance and faith, or whether sinners are hearing in the message a sanctuary for the beliefs, desires, and loyalties that Christ calls them to surrender.

This is to say, words have gravity, and our audiences ultimately tell on us.

Maybe one of the best ways through these things is to ask listeners what they actually like about what they’re hearing—what attracted them. Or even better, we could ask listeners what they think the message allows them to keep. And then, most importantly, we should ask whether Christ is being proclaimed clearly enough for every sinner to know what must die and where real life is found.

That question matters more than any election, any candidate, or any passing controversy. Because when the Church speaks, the goal is never merely to gather a crowd, but to make sure the voice being heard is Christ’s.