This article was originally posted in October, 2020
If a pregnant woman promised to you she would donate money to poor children if you drove her to Planned Parenthood, would you do it? Would you enable her to kill her child to help other children?
If you’re pro-life—if you’re a Christian—you would reject her offer. You wouldn’t sacrifice one child to help other children. You wouldn’t be an accomplice to murder, right?
But what if a politician asked you the same question?
What if a politician asked you to vote for him so they could expand government funding to poor children? Except there’s one catch—one major problem. What if they also promised to expand abortion laws against vulnerable children? Would you enable him to kill more pre-born babies to help, supposedly, other children?
In other words, what if the politician is named Joe Biden? And what if you are a pro-life and Christian voter in next month’s American election? What would you do? What should you do?
According to one group of evangelicals, what you should do is become an accomplice to injustice—what you should do is enable politicians to kill more pre-born babies to help, supposedly, other children.
That group of evangelicals call themselves Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, and last week, they released a statement that has since been signed by almost 4,000 professing Christians in America.
The statement says:
“WE BELIEVE A BIBLICALLY SHAPED COMMITMENT TO THE SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE COMPELS US TO A CONSISTENT ETHIC OF LIFE THAT AFFIRMS THE SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE FROM BEGINNING TO END…Poverty kills millions every year. So does lack of healthcare and smoking. Racism kills. Unless we quickly make major changes, devastating climate change will kill tens of millions. Poverty, lack of accessible health care services, smoking, racism and climate change are all pro-life issues…For these reasons, we believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump.”
If you’re familiar with what God says—or doesn’t say—about poverty, climate change, and health care services in the Bible, then you probably know the draftees of the statement are not merely suggesting Joe Biden is more pro-life than Donald Trump. They’re also insinuating Joe Biden is more pro-life than God.
If a private healthcare system is a form of injustice—then God’s (healthcare) system for ancient Israel was unjust and anti-life. If the Green New Deal is the pro-life approach to supposed climate change, then the Bible’s words about how we should steward the earth makes God inconsistently pro-life.
If poverty is intrinsically an injustice, then Jesus Christ is guilty of injustice against poor people (Matthew 26: 6-13
). But like Judas, many professing Christians—like the Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden—use their supposed commitment to helping poor people as an excuse to dishonour Jesus.
Indeed, God commands Christians to help poor and vulnerable people in our communities. But we’re commanded to voluntarily help others. We’re not instructed to petition our government to use tax-payer money to end poverty. We’re not commanded to pass off the Church’s responsibility to the government. Serving poor and vulnerable people in our communities should be the Church’s responsibility, not the government’s. After all, who can help poor and vulnerable people better than King Jesus and his bride?
The government cannot help poor and vulnerable people better than the Church—especially when politicians like Joe Biden are more committed to killing vulnerable children than helping them. Politicians who kill children shouldn’t be trusted to help children.
Nevertheless, it’s not legal to kill poor people. It’s not legal to kill people who do not have private insurance. But it’s legal to kill babies. Poor people might suffer from obstacles, but they’re not suffering from injustice. A person who doesn’t have enough money to get great healthcare isn’t the same as a person—a baby—who doesn’t have the right to live.
That’s the most disturbing thing about Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden. They’ve created a false equivalency between obstacles and injustice—a false equivalency between obstacles and the greatest injustice in history. Abortion has killed more people than any other systemic injustice in history. Abortion is the biggest human rights violation in history, and yet, the Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden are comparing that injustice to the dangers of smoking cigarettes.
But that exposes what they—and many of us—really think about abortion. Their words say much more about what they think about the humanity of pre-born babies than what they think about climate change and poverty.
For instance, since they think it’s justifiable for Christians to vote for Joe Biden and the Democrats despite their commitment to strengthening and expanding abortion laws against pre-born babies—would they vote for Joe Biden if the Democratic Party wanted to make it legal to murder children 5 years old and younger?
The Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden probably wouldn’t want to vote for the Democrats under that scenario, right? They probably wouldn’t think poverty and climate change are equivalent to murdering 5 year olds, right? But why wouldn’t they think so? Why would they think that’s more horrific than the consequences of poverty and climate change?
In other words, why would they think murdering 5 year olds is more horrific than murdering pre-born babies? What’s the difference between murdering a 5 year old and murdering a pre-born baby? Isn’t it murder against precious, little humans in both scenarios?
They might call themselves Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, but they’re not thinking like Christians. They’re not thinking like pro-life people. In fact, they’re thinking like many of the pro-abortion agnostics I talk to regularly in pro-life advocacy.
That’s why I think it’s more apt to label them the pro-life evangelicals for abortion. That label is self-contradictory, I know. But that’s the point: their reasoning is completely self-contradictory.
We Christians have freedom not to vote for anyone, but we do not have freedom to vote for anyone. We Christians have the freedom not to vote for pro-life politicians like Donald Trump, but we do not have freedom to vote for pro-abortion politicians like Joe Biden.
This article originally appeared at Slow To Write and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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