“As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” Ecclesiastes 11:5
In the wake of the historic Supreme Court decision yesterday overturning the disastrous and horribly reasoned Roe v. Wade, allow us a few points for Christian thinkers to consider.
First, God is merciful. We should pray for those who are confused on this issue – no doubt overtaken by the state-propaganda machine of public education, their faculty of reason severely damaged. We should compassionately yet fervently reason with any and all on the issue, showing them from Scripture and natural revelation that God calls us to protect life, not abort it. The truth is written on everyone’s heart (Romans 1:32, 2:14-15) so we must remind ourselves that our reasoning, despite their protestations, are in fact rooted in their heart because God has shown it to them (Romans 1:19).
Second, God is not a Republican. The Republican Party is not the party of Christ. Nevertheless, to say this isn’t to say that there isn’t a massive gap between the fundamental ideology of the Left/Democrat party and Republicans. On the rulings of self-defense and abortion the Democrats have made abundantly clear that they aren’t merely confused but openly hostile to the gospel of Christ and the political liberty that’s a corollary of it. No right thinking Christian can be in this modern Democrat party. This isn’t to say that Christians are Republicans. It’s to say that Christians must resist the rising evil that’s in the Democrat party and call for it to reform and repent. Christians aren’t concerned with political kingdoms but with the justice and truth political movements very often pervert. For this reason we must speak against them and call them to obedience to Christ.
That said, this Democrat party is on every major issue a party of evil and lies. Scores of Democrats came out yesterday and called for a vote to protect abortion legislatively without qualification or limitation. The contrast between this and their stance on the 2nd Amendment should be apparent. Abortion is nowhere mentioned in the constitution and yet they’ve convinced themselves that there’s a fundamental right to it and that any restrictions are paramount to the worst human rights violations. At the same time they see restrictions on the well enumerated right of self-defense as not only permissible in the narrow sense but the summum bonum (highest good) of their politics.
Third, the ruling didn’t outlaw abortion as Democrats are saying. It overturned the horrible law that was Roe. As we said, the constitution is utterly silent on abortion. It isn’t mentioned in it anywhere and this court ruled logically, therefore, that the issue should go back to the states. This is a victory for common sense Federalism and freedom. It was Roe that was anti-freedom, a heavy-handed, top down decree in violation of the text. This ruling corrects the scales. Freedom can be messy. It’s a sinful world and we won’t all agree. The Founding Fathers were careful – and we’re blessed that they were – in bequeathing to us a system that gives us a chance to work issues out without tyranny. California and New York will judge the issue one way, South Carolina and Oklahoma will go another.
Federalism allows for “laboratories” of freedom just like Baptists and Presbyterians, united in the central tenets of faith in Christ, prefer different orders of worship. Baptists don’t have to go or tithe to Methodist churches. And you don’t have to live in New York (I, for one, left there years ago for precisely this type of reason). Political liberty isn’t perfection. Christ is. Liberty is political/social necessity in a sinful world that limits the Cain-Abel impulse in man’s heart (Jeremiah 17:9).
Fourth, abortion will now go back to the states where it belongs. That’s the point of Federalism. On this issue, the court got it right: it’s supposed to read the law, not write it. Christians are still responsible to go to the public square and reason with the people, making God’s appeal in Jesus Christ to them. This includes arguments against abortion. This includes telling the civil magistrate that its job is to protect life. Until that time when He comes again our job is to reason, preach, extol, exhort, rebuke, and call everyone to repent of their sin in His name.
Fifth, we should carefully explain to people how God’s marvelous and life-giving Word provides the principles we desperately need to make sense out of life’s complications. Sin complicates things. The world needs to hear God’s definition of rights. To that end, no woman has lost her liberty through this ruling. And no Christian, being biblically faithful, would ever support any abridgment of another’s rights as that would be a violation of the commandment to love our neighbor. Indeed, the highest love a Christian has insofar as social policy is concerned, is the jealousy for the rights of others. We yearn for political freedom of all because sin leads to tyranny. We yearn for this liberty, yes, and we have, in Christ, the path to it. We should and must tell people this. We must tell the world about the gospel of Jesus Christ and, so important, its social implications.
No woman is being denied the right to have sex with whomever she pleases (provided, of course, we’re speaking of consenting adults), however she wants. That is her right. We may think it’s sinful in some cases and should preach biblical sexual ethics to all but we do not support the legal use of force or regulation against anyone’s sexual liberty. A woman’s right is to have sex. That’s freedom. This isn’t an arbitrary thing; God has given a woman this freedom. God’s word-law gives no man the right to interfere with the rights of others. What the Bible prescribes is the preaching of the gospel – freely and without coercion – to all.
Violence may only be used by individuals in self-defense or by the civil magistrate in vengeance against those who directly committed a crime against someone who could have used violence to defend themselves but was overpowered or defrauded. Left to natural causation a baby will grow full term. The only way to stop a baby in the womb from being born is to initiate force against it. This is why abortion isn’t a moral choice. It’s an initiation of violence against the most vulnerable person in the world – a child in the womb. A person who has no moral reservations about the killing of a baby in the womb and, more than that, champions it, has arrived at a place of profound moral sickness. The desire for sex without consequence, in contradiction to the Lord’s clear moral law written on the hearts of all, leads us to cheapen life. As always, sin leads to death.
We repeat: no one has a right just because. A right must originate from God or else it’s the figment of our imagination. An impersonal force can’t issue personal moral rights. Thus, we’re all constrained by Gods’s moral law. Yes, Christians and everyone else. If a woman engages in sexual sin, the church should and must preach the gospel to her. It has no authority, however, to use or support the use of any regulation (indirect force) or force against her.
A pregnancy, though, isn’t a choice but a consequence of a choice. A woman has no moral or legal right to kill the consequence of a choice she made. A baby in the womb is in her body but it’s a separate life. It isn’t a toaster oven. To say fetus is to say, in Latin, ‘little baby.” Just as you can’t murder your elderly grandma because she’s old and relies on you, you can’t simply off a baby either.
The choice is intercourse. A pregnancy is a consequence. The argument to the contrary is a vicious misidentification with the goal of protecting irresponsibility.
Finally, two rulings in two days expose the nerve of the Democrat party. If Donald Trump hadn’t won in 2016 and appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, Hillary Clinton would have done that. This means it would be very likely that not only would Roe still be in place but the court would have ruled that states had no right to allow concealed carry of self-defense tools (handguns). Instead, the more conservative court ruled for freedom. Yes, elections have consequences and a vote for Democrats means a vote for top-down tyranny and the obliteration of dissent.
Freedom requires responsibility, which is why the Left reacts to guns and abortion the way they do. The root of their hatred of self-defense and love for sexual licentiousness is the want of freedom from responsibility. God calls us to be increasingly stronger and more responsible. Self-indulgence eradicates the compounding power of responsible growth. The modern Democrat party champions not actual rights but their inverse, which is freedom from frustration. They are, therefore, in principle, a party of brats, caterwauling in the back seat of the nation’s car because mom won’t stop for ice cream. They intend to make life so miserable for others, with their crying and fits, that productive people give in and let them have their way. This isn’t name calling, by the way, but a definition of the animating principle they’ve embraced, knowingly or not.
Real freedom is TO responsibility, not the eradication of frustration. To be frustrated, to not get what you desire, is not a violation of your rights. This entire debate finds its root there, which is why Christians should be careful and logical in detailing this to others.
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