What if I told you that I believe it’s OK to physically abuse your household pets?
Hold on. Don’t jump on my case about it. I’m saying it’s acceptable to torture and torment pets — but only pets. And only your own pets. You certainly can’t go around drop kicking, headbutting, or piledriving your neighbor’s dog, but your dog is a different story.
And you can only punch, pistol whip, and karate chop your gerbils, cats, puppies, parrots, etc, up until a certain age. And only in the most humane way possible.
That’s all. I’m not some kind of psycho animal hater — I’ve never even assaulted my own cat, and I don’t think I ever will — I just happen to think you should have that right, should the need or desire ever arise.
But, beyond this one admittedly unique viewpoint, my overall ideology is pretty mainstream. I mean, I think it’s important to recycle and eat healthy and be nice to people and all that stuff.
Now, what if I told you that I also consider myself an animal rights activist?
Do you think the other animal rights activists will embrace me as their own? Will they allow the title “animal rights activist” to be bent and broadened to the extent that it also includes maniacs who think we ought to vociferously defend a person’s right to smack their pets around?
Alright, maybe this is a bad example. PETA kills thousands of animals every year, yet they seem to be celebrated in the animal rights community.
Still, you get my point. And in case you don’t, I’ll spell it out:
Our beliefs are not packaged, sealed, and sold separately. We don’t formulate our personal philosophy in a vacuum. Your views on one subject will be colored, or clarified, by your views on everything else.
If you think you live in a world where it is morally acceptable to do X, then your opinion on Y must be understood in the context of a world where X is considered righteous.
So this is why you can’t, for instance, advocate for slavery while also being a proponent of civil rights. Either you’re lying about your civil rights stance, or else you have an understanding of ‘civil rights’ which does not include a right to be free from enslavement. If that’s the case, then you are not a believer in civil rights at all, no matter how loudly you insist otherwise.
For very similar reasons, you simply cannot be Christian and pro-abortion.
In order to be both, you’d have to change Christianity into a religion that does not and would not condemn the murder of human children. You’d have to turn Christ into a Savior who embraces infanticide, and God into a Father who creates children but does not necessarily expect us or command us to refrain from violently destroying them.
What you are left with is something that bears no resemblance to Christianity. In fact, you’re left with something that is, in every way, exactly the opposite.
You are the pro-animal abuse animal rights activist, the pro-slavery civil rights proponent, the circular square, the north south. You are attempting to be two diametrically opposed things simultaneously. You’re trying to do something that is not only theologically impossible, but scientifically impossible as well.
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If churches in America had any guts, this message would be proclaimed from the pulpit at least once a month. Especially this week, after that revolting story about a ‘Christian’ abortionist.
This man — a mercenary killer of infants — insists that his faith ‘calls’ him to decapitate babies. ‘Dr.’ Willie Parker says that abortion “became this conviction of compassion in a spiritual sense of the deepest level of love that you can have for another person, that you can have compassion for their suffering and you can act to relieve it.”
He’s right when he says that Christianity is a religion of love and compassion. But he understands (or claims to understand) love and compassion to include the extermination of 50 million children worldwide each year. His version of love leaves the ground scattered with the corpses of slaughtered babies. Christ’s love called us all to protect and love children, and warned us that we’d be better off with a stone around our neck, drowning in the sea, than defying that commandment.
Willie’s concept of love, then, isn’t just incompatible with Christian love — it’s the precise opposite of it.
But Willie The Child Killing Quack is not alone. Even Planned Parenthood has a “clergy advisory board” composed of fake clergy, peddling fake Christianity, in order to sell and promote infanticide. Meanwhile, the polls continue to show that a vast number of ‘Christians’ agree with abortion, to some extent or another.
Now, I almost hesitate to point out the numerous Bible verses that clearly and unequivocally condemn all abortion, at any stage, for any reason. I hesitate because I don’t want to reinforce the popular but horribly misconstrued notion that the Bible only teaches against or for a certain act if it somewhere explicitly mentions that act by name.
Scripture must be studied as a whole, in its entirety — not in disconnected pieces. From that view, we see a religion which preaches a message that is, in every facet, from every angle, from every vantage point, completely opposed to the killing of innocent children. It doesn’t need to say “hey, by the way, don’t kill innocent children in the womb,” in order for its anti-murdering-innocent-children-in-the-womb stance to be clear.
In any case, conveniently enough, the Bible is pretty explicit about abortion.
Shall we count the ways?
Let’s begin with the Bible’s constant and consistent message condemning the taking of innocent life. Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Revelation, Matthew — all of these books engrave this truth into stone. Psalms, in particular, has a very relevant verse: “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons, and they shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters… desecrating the land with bloodshed.”
Question: is abortion the taking of a life? Yes. Call it a fetus, call it an embryo, call it a moose if you like. What you can’t call it is inanimate matter. Therefore, it is a life.
Another question: is that life innocent? Yes. And I shudder to think that anyone would suggest otherwise.
The Bible repeatedly condemns the killing of innocents, but abortion kills the innocent.
Who is still confused?
My favorite pro-life verse is that obscure passage that reads: “Thou shalt not kill.”
Yes, “kill” must be understood as “murder,” and murder can’t be understood to include justified and righteous killing like self-defense, or the defense of a loved one. It is not hard for me to understand “thou shalt not kill (except in matters of self-defense and just warfare). But it is a little difficult to comprehend this version: “thou shalt not kill (unless you’re killing your young child).”
The Bible also teaches that God specifically commanded the human race to “be fruitful and multiply.” Abortion would seem to fall short of that directive.
Scripture says that life is sacred (“I came that they may have life” – John 10 “There shall be no more death” – Revelation 21 “Thanks be to God who gives us victory” over death – 1 Corinthians 15 “He will destroy death forever” – Isaiah 25) and that children are a “gift from God” (Psalm 127).
Most compellingly, the Bible repeatedly says that God creates and forms every human being (“God created man in His image” – Genesis “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” – Jeremiah). Unless you believe in a flawed and clumsy Lord, you must not think that any life can be accidental, or that God wishes for any of the beings made in His image to be exterminated before they even emerge from the womb. God has a plan for all of us, and our job as parents is to guide our children in following and understanding that plan.
Further, Jesus makes it clear that whatever we do or fail to do for “the least of His brothers” we did or failed to do for Him (Matthew 25). When we abort a child, we are therefore aborting Christ.
I feel sick even typing that sentence, but there is no other way to interpret the matter.
But the most shocking Biblical attacks against abortion cannot be boiled down to one or two sentences. The central point — the Ultimate Moment — of Christianity is, among other things, a stunning rebuke against abortion. Indeed, if there is one issue today that most offends and desecrates the Christian Message, it is abortion.
Think about it: Jesus was miraculously conceived in the womb. He spent his first nine months on Earth as a “fetus.” If abortion wasn’t a grave sin up until that point (even though it was), it would have become the gravest of sins afterwards. Jesus elevated all of mankind when he became one of us. And He became one of us through every stage, so every stage was elevated and sanctified.
Let me repeat this: if you are a Christian then you believe that CHRIST HIMSELF was a “fetus.” How can the “fetus” be anything other than sacred life after such an event?
Just a glob of cells? Is that what a Christian would say of his Savior?
We don’t know what Christ looked like exactly, but we know he once looked something like this:
And how did Jesus’ life end? He sacrificed Himself for the our sake.
Sacrifice.
Christianity is a religion of sacrifice, while abortion is a sacrament for those who wish to avoid it.
Sacrifice. Love. Life.
Abortion stands opposed to all of these things, and so it stands opposed to God, and so it stands opposed to Christianity.
That doesn’t mean that pro-choice people can never be Christian, and it certainly doesn’t mean that post-abortive mothers aren’t welcome. Far from it. Christianity is also a religion of forgiveness, and thank God for that, because I am in constant need of God’s eternal mercy.
Christianity is a faith for all people, but it is not a faith for all notions and ideas. You cannot simultaneously profess the Faith while also defending the murder of the innocent. You are welcome into the church, but your belief in baby-murder is not. You cannot carry the cross and a Planned Parenthood banner at the same time.
You have to drop the one, and pick up the other.
I hope you do. I hope you start today. Now. This moment.
But until then, you cannot follow Christ while you still support the murder of His children.
You cannot be both.
You cannot be Christian and ‘pro-choice.’
LifeNews Note: Matt Walsh is a blogger and talk radio host. He’s also a father of twins and a writer of haikus. This article was first published on The Matt Walsh Blog and is reprinted with permission. Image of Jesus ©1998 Shannon Wirrenga
