I was in seminary during a presidential election cycle, and one of my professors went off on a nearly half-hour long diatribe against one of the candidates. He was playing to the room, as he realized that the vast majority of the students supported “the other guy,” who happened not to be the incumbent. He was an Old Testament professor so I had to give him credit for not spending his time focused on the words of Romans 13, but it was a case where I simply felt wrong hearing the disparaging remarks made about the President.
All of our elected officials are servants of God (even if they don’t believe that about themselves). They have answered a call that He has placed upon their lives to serve as leaders within the government, and regardless of our personal views of those officials, we should offer them respect and honor. That does not mean that we have to vote for someone with whom we disagree (much less like all of their policies), but we should treat them with the respect of someone who is following their calling.
Another way to think about this idea is with the word agape, which is one of the Greek words for love that Paul uses throughout his writings. At the heart of agape is the desire for the best for someone else, not because of anything that we like or dislike about them but purely because they too have been made in God’s Image, as we each are.