Why Abortion May Not Be the Single Most Important Cultural Issue for the Christian

In the past, it has been a general rule that Christians are pro-life and oppose abortion.  There has always been opposition to a pro-life position from outside of Christian circles, but growing numbers of people inside of Christian institutions and churches have become more vocal in their opposition to a strictly pro-life position.  From what I’ve read, a common theme in pro-choice or pro-abortion arguments made from a Christian perspective is that legal abortion is an evil which is currently necessary in order to avoid a different moral or ethical problem which would be even worse.  

For the record (and this is no surprise), I severely disagree with any argument that I’ve seen which attempts to justify continued legalized abortion. With that being said, what I have not seen is an argument for the sanctified beauty of having an abortion or for the sanctified beauty and Christian virtue of the abortion doctor’s activity and vocation.  In other words, while various arguments are given to view the issue of abortion from a different perspective, I’ve not seen a Christian argue that it is a morally good and non-sinful thing to kill a baby in the womb.  

 

I believe that the single greatest issue of our time is the current sexual/gender revolution.  I believe this because this issue has the largest implications for the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ because proponents inside of Christendom argue that being involved in same sex relationships or embracing of gender confusion leading to transgenderism is morally good while the condemnation of the same is morally evil.  I say this not because transgenderism or homosexuality are greater sins than abortion.  I say this because the arguments made in favor of homosexual marriage and transgenderism are so positioning these issues as not being sinful at all.  Whether it’s Matthew Vines’ “God and the Gay Christian” or any number of similarly aimed arguments, the primary objective is to sanctify an activity that, they say, has been incorrectly defined as sinful.

 

And therein lies the reason why this is the foremost Christian issue of our time and not merely another cultural, social, or theological issue that must be debated and hashed out.  This gets at the heart of Biblical revelation and our ability to make any sort of proclamation about what is or is not sinful according to God’s Word (or anything else for that matter).  Contrary to our opponents, establishing the sinfulness of homosexual activity is not done merely on the basis of a handful of “clobber passages” where homosexuality is explicitly mentioned, but it is done by taking what the whole canon of Scripture says about sex, marriage and divorce (along with a whole range of other things) in order to create a biblical view of sexuality. 

 

If some Christians are unable or unwilling to proclaim that homosexuality is sinful, then they have cut off their noses to spite their faces because they have given over any ability to actually define sin according to what the Bible says instead of defining it according to pop culture or your own personal feelings.  And if we lose the ability to define and understand sin, we lose our ability to define and understanding the necessity for a savior who bore our sin in His body on the tree.  We will have lost the ability to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to all dying men. 

Buying Bullets and Having A Gun Range Behind a Daycare Are NotEquivalent

Viagra and Contraceptives are not Equivalent

In the wake of the Hobby Lobby verdict by SCOTUS, I’ve seen many different people posting graphics lamenting the fact that there is obviously a bias against women because Hobby Lobby doesn’t want to provide certain forms of birth control through their health insurance but Viagra is covered.  If you think the owners of Hobby Lobby are off their knick-knacky rocker, fine, but try to be honest in your comparisons. 

Right now, I’m not primarily interested in getting pro-choicers to agree with my conclusions about when human life beings or why and how it should be protected; I just want us to be as fair and honest in our conversation as possible.   This form of humoring can go both ways too.  Let me show you:

Pro-choicers don’t believe that a fertilized egg is a human child.  So, if I truly believed that, then I’d have no problem with drugs or other means used to kill that thing and stop me (or my daughter, etc) from having a baby.  Why would I?  If something is no more morally significant than naval lint, why would I care if it were destroyed? 

The reason that Hobby Lobby, and other pro-lifers, are opposed to various forms of FDA approved contraception is that they believe that these specific forms have the likelihood of destroying a fertilized egg (read: kill a baby).  Now, again, feel free to disagree with the presupposition (i.e. fertilized egg = fully human baby) and the resulting conclusion (destroying that fertilized egg = killing a human baby), but understand that if someone believes that human life begins at the time of fertilization and they also generally don’t like the idea of killing people, then that is why they don’t want to have to pay for something that very possibly will end up killing a baby. 

So bear with me as I try to use a really bad analogy (RBA) to examine at the Viagra/birth control comparison that is clogging up the Internet:

Viagra and Contraceptives are both related to sexual intercourse.  Viagra has to do with a man’s physical ability to participate in sexual intercourse while contraceptives try to stop what naturally follows intercourse: the creation of a child. 

Bullets and Gun ranges are both related to shooting guns.  Bullets are what get shot out of guns, and gun ranges are where you can safely (relatively) shoot the guns. 

Just because I am not opposed to the idea shooting guns or of having a safe place to shoot them does not mean that I will participate in putting up a gun range behind a daycare facility. 

Sure the gun range is supposed to be safe and it is supposed to stop all of the bullets from getting outside of its property, but there’s still the off chance…the very slight chance that someone with a loaded gun could accidentally fire the gun and hit a child at the daycare. 

If me and my neighbors, or even the owner of the daycare center, got together and protested the building of a gun range, it doesn’t mean that I hate gun owners or that I have a prejudice against hunters or little old ladies who carry a 38 in their purses.  It just means that the possibility of tragedy and death is unacceptable.

So, please, if you’re actually interested in changing the minds of thinking people and not just in whipping up support from the masses that’ll get hysterical about anything, stop with the Viagra/birth control pill comparison in the hysteria following the Hobby Lobby Decision. 

PS – Medical coverage for vasectomies is a closer comparison than Viagra, but I don’t believe that anything resulting from the vasectomy can actually cause the death of a baby/killing of the fertilized egg.  So, good try with that one too, but still…not the same thing.