Category Archives: Abortion

Grieve? Yes. But open your eyes to the truth.

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Ecclesiastes 3:1  There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven–

Ecclesiastes 3:4   A time to weep and a time to laugh; A time to mourn and a time to dance.

The right thing to do in response to this mornings tragedy in Newtown, CT is to grieve.  Law enforcement agencies are doing the hard work of attributing motives, so that a reason can be determined for this horrific crime.  But unless you are working on the case the best thing you can do is to grieve and pray.  Grieve over the loss of life; especially of so many children.  Pray for the parents, grandparents, extended family, and friends who will be dealing with this grief for the rest of their lives.

Eventually the news media will move on to other stories, and the horror in Newtown will blur into the background.  The deep, penetrating pain of loss will not blur in the lives of those who knew these children and the brave adults who tried to protect them.  It seems as though that’s the human way of dealing with unthinkable tragedy.  Life must continue, so we compartmentalize and move on.  None of us are immune to that.

What lessons can we learn from this horrific event?  Some will say it is justification for gun control.  Others will argue just the opposite.  School security will be discussed by boards of education across the nation.  The list of topics will be endless.  But lost in all the dialog that will surely ensue is an even deeper tragedy.  Americans are rightly horrified and outraged over what happened this morning in Newtown.  My question is why they are not equally horrified and outraged at the state-sanctioned murder of over 1.8 million unborn babies each year in the United States.  Since Roe v. Wade became the law of the land in 1973 over 55,000,000 unborn babies have been murdered with the blessing of the United States government.  Chew on that number and see whether you can make sense of  it.  If your conscience does not seem to be moved over 55,000,000 murdered babies, perhaps I can tell you why that is.  Evil has a way of desensitizing those around it.  The murder of 20 children today is shocking; not only because it happened, but also because of the way it happened.  But abortion is like a fine tuned manufacturing process.  The grisly nature of its operations are sanitized under the term “reproductive services.”  But no matter what you call it, abortion has violently murdered over 55,000,000 unborn babies in the United States of America.

Grieve over the murders in Newtown, CT?  Yes.  Grieve, weep, and pray.  But don’t let your grief end there.  Open your eyes to the even greater horror that takes place in abortion mills throughout our country.

What are you most known for, your politics or your faith? Part IV

The real question in this series has yet to be answered. Should Christians be involved in politics? Well, I don’t know if they should be involved in politics, but there is no prohibition against political involvement. But even if a Christian decides not to engage in political activity, they are not excused from taking a stand on just causes. It’s not necessary to make such a stand in a public forum, but rest assured, what happens in society often invades the family and the church. I’ll deal with that in a few moments.

 

I used to believe that there was a separation, or dichotomy, between moral issues and amoral issues. For instance, abortion is a moral issue. No matter what position you hold on the topic you must make a moral judgment. Most Christians, indeed, most Americans, would agree with that assessment. But then there are topics such as taxes. Are taxes a moral issue or amoral? I’ve heard Christians make the point that taxes fall within the realm and discretion of government. The argument goes that taxes are neither good nor bad. No one likes to pay them, but they are an inevitable ill of human government. Even Christ paid taxes. I suppose that is a good argument, and it is true that our Lord did, indeed, pay taxes (Matthew 17:24-27). But can the argument be made that some forms of taxation are an oppression upon the poor? Look at the current argument about whether Congress and the President should extend the Bush-era tax cuts for all income classes. One party argues that the rich should not receive a tax break. They want to sunset the tax cut for all those making more than $250,000 a year. However, most small businesses in America are netting their proprietors incomes between $150-$400,000 a year. The increase in taxes for these small business owners would result in a cutting back of expenses, including direct labor. In other words – layoffs. In the midst of a recession is it a good idea to potentially harm those who can least afford it? This is when a supposed amoral topic intersects with a moral one.

Would it be permissible for a Christian to protest against a proposal to raise taxes on moral grounds? Yes. Why not? But we must remember that we are Christians. We need to to watch our speech (Ephesians 4:29). We are prohibited from speaking falsehood or slander (Exodus 20:16; Ephesians 4:25). We cannot use our political convictions as a pretext for disobedience unless we, or the church, are asked to violate God’s law (Titus 3:1; Acts 5:29). In fact, we are to come to the aide of those who cannot defend themselves (Matthew 25:25-36; James 1:2). This is most important with a moral issue like abortion. Prenatal babies cannot defend themselves. They are dependent on help from those who honor the sanctity of life. Abortion is both a political and moral issue in our country. The church must speak out against it. Our pulpits must rail against it! The Nazis murdered over 6,000,000 Jews and others that they deemed as “undesirable”. Since abortion became legal in the United States over 50,000,000 babies have been murdered. I am not attempting to minimize the horrors inflicted by Hitler’s regime. But simple math reveals the compounded horror of state sanctioned infanticide. Should the church turn a deaf ear to such evil?

We’ll continue this discussion in the next installment.

What are you most known for, your politics or your faith? Part III

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following was originally published at the Ligonier Ministries Facebook page.  While I enjoy writing original content there is nothing more I can add to this Ligonier post.  Christian, before you cast your vote for an “economic” conservative, or buy into the “big tent” fallacy, consider your Christian obligation.

God calls us to think His thoughts after Him. That means all of His thoughts. That is, we ought to have a sound and biblical view on everything the Bible touches on. Where it touches on political issues, we are called, again to have sound biblical views. We need to think biblically about what is just war and what is not. We need to think faithfully about taxation, and the size and scope of government. We need to think through what obligation, if any the state has to protect property, to protect our lives.

That said, there are precious few things that frustrate me more about the evangelical right than its utter foolishness with respect to proportion politically. We bundle together this issue and that, everything from tax rates to school vouchers to flag burning to abortion, and call it “family values.” There is a right and a wrong answer on all these issues. But abortion is not like any of the others. It stands out all on its own. In a hundred years, the Christian church will not hang its head in shame that it did so little to pass a Constitutional Amendment against the burning of the flag. In a hundred years, no elderly Christian will be looked at with suspicion by the younger generation because they didn’t do more to lower the tax rate. In a hundred years, if God should be so gracious, we will be looked upon as that godless generation of the church that watched tens of millions of babies go to their deaths. Indeed, we’ll be remembered as those “Christians” who elected men to office who believed that the state ought to protect the rights of some mothers to murder their babies.

It is unfair to draw too tight a comparison between abortion in America and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. There are significant differences. First, the Holocaust was carried out, by and large, in secret. The rank and file Germans had no idea what was going on. We, on the other hand, every last one of us, woke up today knowing that four thousand babies would die today. We, on the other hand, have four thousand mothers, every day, who knowingly do this. We, on the other hand, have four thousand fathers, boyfriends and husbands who every day encourage this. The Holocaust lasted roughly ten years, and the Nazi’s killed roughly six million people. We, on the other hand, have been at this for 35 years, and have killed more than fifty million babies. It is an unfair comparison, unfair to the Nazis. We are far worse monsters.

How much weight should our opposition carry? I have purposed in my heart that I would never vote for a man for any office that is not committed to using every power at his disposal to protect and defend every unborn child. Never. Ever. If every Christian would simply make that simple pledge, then we would win this battle. As it stands, at best we vote for candidates who might nominate or support judicial candidates who might vote for this small impediment or that to abortion on demand. At worst, we vote for the guy with the R by his name. We need to get rid of our strategies, and get on our knees in repentance. We need to stop negotiating with candidates over the bodies of dead babies.