Some issues in our society are foundational. What you think about one key issue can have massive implications for other issues. What a person believes about life is a foundational issue.
When does life begin? Is life worth protecting? Do all lives matter? What is the basis of lives mattering? These are essential questions with massive implications for our society. It is worth casting your vote for leaders who get these questions right.
Scientists have proven that life begins at conception. Even though the baby is very small, dependent on his or her mother, not fully formed, and living inside of his or her mother’s womb, it is a separate human baby. We don’t allow people to kill innocent human lives because they are small. We don’t allow people to kill innocent humans that depend on others to live. We don’t kill people who are not fully formed. We don’t kill people based on where they live.
Some rationalize that even though unborn babies may be humans, they are not persons yet. Politicians then pass laws that say it is acceptable to choose to kill innocent humans, because they are less than real people. Consider the terrible implications of this logic.
Adolph Hitler’s National Socialist Party used that same thinking to say that Jewish men and women were lesser humans, and therefore, ought to die for the good of the race. During World War 2, the Germans killed 6 million Jews in concentration camps. While the Holocaust seems so obviously horrible to think about, it is logically acceptable if you start with the premise that some humans are lesser beings than others.
Slave owners in the South before the Civil War also used the same logic to justify enslaving Africans to work in their cotton fields. Because they believed that humans with black skin only counted as, at most, three-fifths of a person, they assumed it was morally acceptable for white families to own African men and women as property.
In other parts of the world, countries have already begun to use that logic to say that older, sicker citizens have become less productive humans. Therefore, they aren’t worth as much as people. According to this logic, why should the resources of government health care be wasted keeping them alive or helping them feel better. Since they don’t matter as much, they should save the rest of society money by going ahead and dying.
If you are a Christian, you know that human lives are all precious. The Bible reveals God’s intimate knowledge of and involvement in every life from the moment of conception. King David described God’s work poetically in Psalm 139.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:13-14).
The prophet Jeremiah learned that God had had a plan for his life before the day of his birth. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5).
The reason why every life matters is that God made it so. Every man, woman, boy, and girl from every ethnicity, every socio-economic background, from the smallest to the tallest, from the most beautiful to the most unattractive, and from the healthiest to the sickest, all people are made in the image of God.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27).
Life and death are matters for God. It is wrong to kill an innocent human being made in God’s image. God does not like that at all, and he will judge those who commit such sins.
We should vote for leaders that appreciate the dignity of all human life. Some say, that is legislating your morality on everyone else. Certainly, that is true. But every law is based on someone’s morality. The question is whose morality should support our laws. When you are putting something together, it is helpful to follow the instruction manual. God’s Word is the instruction manual for his creation.
There is debate about the Christianity of the Founding Fathers of America; were they true Christians or were they Deists? The answer is that they were a mixed group. But, there is no debate about whether they believed in the morality of the Bible. Some of the founders didn’t even think a free nation could work if there were no biblical morals guiding our interactions with other free citizens.
When a politician rejects what science and the Bible teach about life in the womb, deadly logic is introduced to their leadership of our society. I am thankful that there are politicians who haven’t worked out this logic into all of their other decisions—it is God’s mercy that this anti-person logic hasn’t spilled out upon the lives of unwanted born babies. After all, newborns are also pretty small, very dependent, and not fully formed either. What would keep someone who believes that unborn babies aren’t real people worth protecting from using the exact same logic to say that a woman should be free to choose to kill their unwanted born babies?
The Life issue is vitally important. Certainly, there are many complicating considerations when young mothers are weighing what to do about their unwanted child. As a society we need to care well for these women and help them with these new children. I am thankful for excellent resources already in place and the long lines of parents eager to adopt these children. But these challenges ought not distract us from the fundamental matter of life and death. Unborn babies are not lesser humans that the real people ought to be free to kill, if they so choose.
The logic of life and death ought to weigh heavily upon you as you vote in the coming election. Vote for those who get this one right.
By: John Crotts
