In the current national debate on abortion—specifically among Christians who oppose abortion but disagree on the best way to fight this evil—terminology is everything. Both sides use each other’s language to argue opposing views, and the debate is diverting energy and resources from the battle to save unborn babies.
A key word—actually a prefix—in this debate is pro, a Latin word meaning “in favor of” a particular idea, system of belief, or political party. Attached to the word life, it has become the label of choice for those opposed to abortion.
The problem is, nearly everyone can claim to be in favor of life. Those who block the entrances to abortion clinics believe they are doing it to save the lives of unborn babies, just as those who demonstrate against nuclear weapons feel they are preventing the potential destruction of millions of innocent people. Even many who favor policies that allow women to have an abortion say it is ultimately better to prevent an unwanted child from being born than to force that potential life to endure the cruelty of neglect and abuse.
A Common Ground
What does it really mean to be prolife?
Christians opposed to abortion are divided on this question. On the one side are those who claim the only clear-cut prolife issue is abortion. On the other are those who say that to be truly prolife one must consistently oppose anything that destroys life: nuclear weapons, economic injustice, environmental pollution, substance abuse. Is it more prolife to shut down an abortion clinic than it is to lobby for increased aid to countries where thousands of children starve to death each day? Is it more prolife to demonstrate against the development of nuclear arms than it is to campaign for a human-life amendment to the Constitution?
Ironically, a similar debate helped create the feminist movement, which in recent years has led the fight for legalized abortions. In the nineteenth-century battle to abolish slavery, many abolitionists connected the rights of slaves with the rights of women. Conversely, some opponents of abolition argued against freeing slaves, warning that granting rights to slaves could lead to granting rights to women. In that debate, both sides acknowledged that the ethical principles underlying the emancipation of slaves had broader implications. Today, however, those who would liberate fetuses from the threat of abortion do not all agree that their principles extend beyond a single issue.
Yet because Christian participants on both sides of this debate agree on so much—the authority of Scripture, the belief that man is created by God, the clear biblical teaching against the destruction of innocent life, the call to action on behalf of the poor and weak—the church has more to gain when dialogue replaces division. Such honest interaction, we believe, will further convince us that we serve a God who is not only for life, but the very author and creator of life. And it will lead us to translate our differences into a life-affirming language that encourages all believers and nonbelievers to listen.
The battle for life is real: 1,000,000 unborn babies are killed each year; one billion people in the world are starving; one nuclear assault could eliminate civilization as we know it. But to our Savior, even one life was worthy of his supreme sacrifice.
Led by his Spirit and carried out for Christ’s sake, our efforts to protect any human life will honor God and give hope to humanity.
By Lyn Cryderman.
Contributors: Ronald J. Sider is executive director of JustLife and Evangelicals for Social Action, and professor of theology and culture at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Charles E. White is cofounder of the Jackson (Mich.) Center for Women, and associate professor of philosophy and religion at Spring Arbor College, Spring Arbor, Michigan. Kenneth S. Kantzer is a senior editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and dean of the Christianity Today Institute. He is also the Distinguished Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Lyn Cryderman is senior associate editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Ronald J. Sider
Everyone supports life, but inconsistencies pop up on the way to its practical protection.
For example, why do so many liberal and radical activists champion nuclear disarmament to protect the sanctity of human life and then defend the destruction of one-and-one-half-million unborn American babies each year? Are “sexual freedom” and affluent lifestyles finally more important than helpless, inconvenient babies?
Why does Sen. Jesse Helms, one of the most visible opponents of abortion, support government subsidies for tobacco? Is the political clout of North Carolina’s influential tobacco growers more important to this prolife advocate than the fact that smoking kills 350,000 Americans a year?
Why do Marxists destroy millions of lives and impose totalitarian governments on millions more in order to create an “ideal life for all”? Is economic justice (such as it is—the effective income differentials between Communist party members and ordinary citizens is often greater than differentials in capitalist societies) more important than religious and political freedom?
Why do prominent American televangelists lend support to South Africa’s racist government? Is not racism that tortures and murders a prolife issue?
Why do many Westerners join the crusade for nuclear disarmament and neglect poverty and starvation among the poor? Is the growing danger that a nuclear holocaust may destroy us more important to affluent Westerners than the present annual murder by malnutrition of millions of persons?
What does it really mean to be prolife? Is there a consistent prolife stance?
The answer, of course, depends on one’s basic values. If one endorses Marx’s philosophical materialism, then sacrificing millions of people on the way to a secular utopia is not inconsistent. If one knows that the fetus is merely a physical appendage of the mother and not an independent human life, then favoring abortion and opposing nuclear war are not inconsistent. If freedom is a higher value than justice, then majoring on religious and political liberty even at the expense of a decent life or even life itself for the poor is not inconsistent. If Peter Singer is correct and people and animals have essentially the same value, then speciesism joins racism and sexism as dreadful evils. It all depends on what one means by life.
Defining Life
Whether consciously or unconsciously, one’s definition of what it means to be “prolife” emerges from one’s deepest beliefs. My understanding of what it means to be prolife is grounded in what the Bible says about life.
Every part of God’s creation is very good and very special because it results from the loving design of Almighty God. But it is in no sense divine, as some of the New Age religions suggest. It is finite, limited, and dependent. You and I are not divine, even though we have a special status above all other earthly created things that the Bible ascribes to persons.
As persons created in the divine image, however, we are very special. The dignity and worth of every human being flows from divine decree, not human decision. Our essential dignity does not come from government fiat, social usefulness, or self-actualization. It comes from the Creator of the galaxies who selected human beings alone out of the almost infinite multitudes of the created order to bear the divine image. No matter how poor and defenseless, old and weak, crippled and deformed, young and helpless, human beings enjoy a God-given worth and dignity that sets them apart from the rest of creation.
Today, however, this special status is under attack from another direction. Some secular thinkers denounce as speciesism any claim that persons have a higher status than monkeys or moles. The Bible, on the other hand, elevates persons to a unique status only slightly lower than the angels (Psalm 8). We have been given dominion over every other living creature (Gen. 1:26–28). But dominion is not devastation. We insult the Creator of the garden if we rape and destroy it.
The opening chapters of Genesis sketch a glorious picture of the fullness of life intended for humanity by the Creator. A harmony of right relationships prevailed everywhere—with God, with each other, and with the earth. Although it is not used here, the Hebrew word shalom (peace) is perhaps the best word to signify this fullness of life enjoyed as Adam and Eve walked in obedient relationship to God and responsible stewardship over God’s garden.
Sin, however, shattered this shalom and disrupted relationships with God, neighbor, and earth. But God refused to abandon us. Beginning with Abraham, God called out a special people to be his instrument of revelation and salvation for all. Through Moses and the prophets, the judges, and the writers of wisdom, God patiently showed his chosen people how to live the abundant life.
As in the garden, God said that shalom starts with a right relationship with himself. But it also includes right relationships with the neighbor: economic fairness; respect for all persons, including a special concern for the poor and weak; faithful family life; fair courts; and, of course, an end to war.
Moses starkly clarified the options at the end of Deuteronomy. Life in every sense would follow if Israel obeyed God’s commands; if they disobeyed, death and evil would follow. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that I have set before you life and death …; therefore choose life that you and your descendants may live” (Deut. 30:19).
They chose death. Worshiping idols and oppressing the poor, they defied the Author of Life. Still, God would not give up. God’s prophets looked ahead to a time when the Messiah would come to restore life and shalom. In Christ, we receive abundant life. “I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Why Human Efforts Fail
Increasingly since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, however, secular thinkers have promoted purely human paths to wholeness of life. If only we will offer quality education to all; if only we will modify our social environment; if only we will change the economic system; if only we will undertake this or that bit of human engineering—secular thinkers promise a new person and a new social order freed from the stupidity and selfishness of the past. The Marxist promise that utopia will follow the abolition of private property is merely one of the more naive versions of the Enlightenment’s secular humanism.
Christians know this is dangerous nonsense. Certainly we can and should affect significant changes by improving social structures. But no amount of social engineering will create unselfish persons. Tragically, the human problem lies far deeper than mere (even very unjust) social systems. It lies in the proud, rebellious self-centered heart of every person. A transforming relationship with the living God is the only way to heal the brokenness at the core of our being.
That is why Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again (John 3:1ff.). It is only as we believe that God has sent his only Son to live and die for us that we experience genuine life—indeed, eternal life (John 3:16). As the Gospel of John says so beautifully and powerfully, eternal life begins now as we believe in Christ because “this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus whom thou has sent” (17:3). As the Spirit begins to transform believers, we enjoy the first fruits of eternal life even now. Thus, already in this life, we enjoy an abundant life as we live in Christ, and our personalities are now being reshaped according to the pattern of his perfection.
But even the shalom of abundant Christian living pales by comparison with the glorious life of the age to come. “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain” was Paul’s confident cry (Phil. 1:21; cf. Acts 20:24).
Physical human life is not the highest value. There are many things worth dying for. To say that Christians seek to reverse the nuclear-arms race because human life is exceedingly precious is not to say that life here on earth is the ultimate good. “Thy lovingkindness is better than life,” the psalmist exclaimed (63:3). Jesus taught that we should sacrifice eyes, limbs, possessions—indeed, even life itself—for the sake of the kingdom of God and the harmony of right relationships that make up the righteousness of that kingdom (Matt. 6:25–34; 18:7–9; Luke 12:13–31).
Because Christians know that Jesus is the resurrection and life (John 11:25), they will sacrifice their own physical life for freedom, justice, peace, and evangelism. Jesus has conquered death in all its terror. Therefore, we know that death is only a temporary transition to life even more abundant.
The Coming Kingdom
The biblical vision of the fullness and perfection of eternal life in the coming kingdom is finally the only adequate answer to the question: What is life really all about? What, after all, is genuine living? True life is eternal life in the presence of the risen Lord in a kingdom of shalom from which all the devastation of sin has been cast out.
But this biblical teaching about eternal life does not refer to some ethereal, spiritual fairyland totally unrelated to human history and the created order. Paul clearly teaches that this groaning creation will be freed of its bondage and decay and will experience the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:18–25). In Colossians, he describes God’s cosmic plan of redemption. God intends to restore all things (that is not a universalist claim that all persons will be saved), whether in heaven or on earth (i.e., everything in the created order), to their original wholeness (Col. 1:15–20).
How God will do that we do not know. The coming kingdom is certainly not a purely human construction that we weld together with slow incremental improvements. There will be fundamental disjuncture between fallen history as we know it and the shalom of heaven. Revelation 21:1ff. describes the coming kingdom as a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. But notice, on the other hand, that it is a city and it is called earth. And God dwells with us, wiping away tears, banishing pain and death. Poverty, warfare, broken families, and abortion will give way to an unspeakable fullness of life in the presence of the Lord of life.
If there is a fundamental break between life now and the coming kingdom, there is also significant continuity. The Book of Revelation says that the kings of the earth will bring their glory into the holy city (21:24–26). The crystalline river of life waters the tree of life, whose leaves are given for the healing of the nations (22:2). Apparently God intends to transform all that is good in human culture, purify it of all sinful distortion, and make it a part of the abundant life of the eternal kingdom.
Until Christ’s return, all attempts to realize that fullness of life in American or any other society will have only very imperfect results. On the other hand, history demonstrates that it is possible to combat racism, end slavery, and foster democracy.
To be consistently prolife, then, is to allow the full biblical picture of life abundant that God gave at creation and will finally restore at the eschaton to shape our thought and action. Such a view demands that we say no to abortion and the nuclear-arms race, no to murder by environmental pollution, economic oppression, and euthanasia.
Obviously, in each case, one would have to construct a careful ethical argument showing that abortion or nuclear war or whatever was incompatible with the biblical teaching on life and shalom. Here I do not have time to do more than sketch arguments that I have developed elsewhere.
Ultimate Abortion?
Abortion is wrong. Both the Bible and biology point away from the modern notion that the fetus is merely a physical appendage of the mother rather than an independent human being. We must act on the belief that from the moment of conception, we are dealing with a human being created in the image of God. We must stop aborting millions of unborn babies each year.
But if annually aborting millions is wrong, then walking down a path that increases the likelihood of the ultimate abortion, where a nuclear exchange obliterates hundreds of millions of people, is also wrong.
Most evangelical Christians stand within the just-war tradition. Under certain circumstances, the just-war tradition permits killing to promote justice and peace. But the just-war tradition teaches that aiming at civilians is murder. Nuclear weapons are clearly targeted at civilians as well as military and industrial targets located in the middle of population centers. Precisely because using nuclear weapons targeted at non-combatants would be murder, prolife people must redouble their efforts to reverse the nuclear arms race. Adm. Hyman Rickover, the man who built America’s nuclear navy, declared when he retired that we will destroy ourselves if we do not abolish nuclear weapons. Even President Ronald Reagan, who clearly does not espouse pacifism, endorsed the goal of a nuclear-free world. Prolife people should work hard for bilateral and multilateral, verifiable steps to move toward that goal.
Similarly, if human life is precious, then it is a terrible sin to stand idly by in suffocating affluence when we could prevent the death by malnutrition and starvation of 12 million children each year. And yet some Christians urge us to focus all or most of our attention on combating abortion, apparently placing concern for the poor in a category that is less urgent.
Nor does the list of consistently prolife issues end with abortion, the nuclear-arms race, and poverty. In the United States alone, 350,000 persons die prematurely each year because of cigarette smoking. William Pollin, director of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, pointed out recently that these 350,000 deaths from smoking are “more than all other drug and alcohol abuse deaths combined, seven times more than all automobile fatalities per year, … and more than all American military fatalities in World War I, World War II, and Vietnam put together.” The global death toll from cigarette smoking already runs in the tens of millions.
Alcoholism enslaves 10 million Americans. Their personal tragedies entangle another 30 million family members, close friends, and coworkers in a hell of crippling car accidents, fires, lost productivity, and damaged health that cost the nation $120 billion annually.
Racism in India, South Africa, and South Philadelphia maims and kills. More than 200,000 black children in affluent South Africa die every year of starvation.
The rape of our environment, finally, is also a prolife issue. The United States loses three million acres of agricultural land each year. Annually, erosion carries away 6.4 billion tons of topsoil—enough to cover all cropland in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Alabama, California, and Florida with one inch of soil. Since farming began in North America, one-third of all our topsoil has been lost forever. Every day, erosion and development remove enough productive land to feed 260,000 for a year. In a world of hunger and starvation, that is a prolife issue.
A hasty survey of the current religious scene in the United States might lead one to despair of any realistic possibility of promoting this consistent prolife agenda. But that would be a superficial judgment. Increasingly today, especially in the churches, there is a growing movement of Christians who care about justice and freedom, the sanctity of unborn life and the lives of the poor, the family and the environment, an end to murder on the highways, and concern over the nuclear-arms race.
In short, if biblical norms set the Christian’s agenda, then we will reject one-issue approaches in favor of a commitment to all that for which God has a concern.
Target For Left And Right
What does it mean to be prolife? It means letting the Author of Life set our agenda. It means saying no to right-wing ideological agendas that make freedom, family, and the crusade against abortion more important than justice and nuclear disarmament. It means saying no to left-wing ideological agendas that do the reverse. It means letting the balance of biblical concerns set the priorities for our political engagement.
A biblically consistent prolife stance will say no to abortion and nuclear weapons, no to the deadly pollution of our lungs and our environment, no to racism and sexual promiscuity. A biblical prolife stance will say yes to the unborn and the underemployed, yes to justice and freedom, yes to the family and nuclear disarmament.
Championing that whole agenda will produce harsh attacks from Left and Right. One side will attack us for our stance on the poor and the arms race. The other side will attack for our defense of the unborn and the family. Being willing to be the target for both left-wing and right-wing ideological attack is the price Christians must pay for biblical faithfulness today.
The acid test of the integrity of the Christian prolife movement in this generation will be whether we have the courage to let God, rather than competing secular ideologies, shape our agenda.
Charles White Responds
JustLife is right that God cares about the ends of achieving economic justice and peace as much as he cares about ending abortion, but it is arrogant to think that it has a God-given mandate for the human means it has chosen to achieve those ends. Looking at the ten House and Senate votes it picked to evaluate during the 1988 national elections, one can see that for JustLife “economic justice” simply means spending more on social programs and less on the military. While spending millions of dollars to set up job-training programs, increase federal subsidies for school lunch programs, and to supplement college budgets may actually help the poor, there is a large body of evidence to suggest that such spending not only wastes money, but actually hurts the poor by rewarding exactly the kind of behavior they need to eliminate. Further, to call such income redistribution “economic justice” borders on dishonesty. Where is the justice in taking money from those who have earned it and giving it to those who have not? One group’s economic justice is another group’s socialism.
JustLife’s humanly chosen means for promoting God’s end of peace are similarly suspect. Here again the positions JustLife has chosen to support show their agenda. For example, they are against the testing or deployment of any new weapons system. This unilateral restraint may encourage similar behavior in the Soviets, but it may also tempt them the way Allied weakness encouraged the Nazis in the 1930s. Why support a position that could even remotely encourage the possibility of a nuclear war?
JustLife wants to prevent nuclear war at all costs. They rightly know the destruction of humanity is contrary to God’s will. But if we believe what the Bible says about God’s control of the affairs of the nations, we should realize that obeying God’s will is the key to national safety. Israel could not buy security when she armed herself to the teeth through alliance with Egypt, nor could she quiet her enemies when she bought them off with economic assistance. The only way she could be safe was to obey the law of God.
Likewise, if we can learn anything from Israel’s experience, we should realize that the best way to avoid the judgment of God is to rid our nation of the sin of abortion. At least on this question we clearly know God’s will: Stop the killing. If I prevent one death by blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic, or if I help to stop millions by campaigning for a reversal of Roe v. Wade, I am obeying God. I do not have that certainty when it comes to preventing nuclear war or eliminating poverty.
Since obedience to God is more important than anyone’s political agenda, Christians ought to unite in the campaign to outlaw abortions. Allowing abortions as a national policy is more likely to bring the Soviet missiles down upon us than is some mistake in military strategy.
Charles E. White
Ever since Constantine’s conversion in 312, Christians have tried to use their political power to make their societies more pleasing to God. Hosius, bishop of Cordoba, tried to persuade Constantine to become a Christian as they marched east together toward Rome. After the emperor saw the cross in the sky, the good bishop continued to suggest policies God would favor. In 529 a later emperor, Justinian, replaced all the laws of the Roman empire with a single code that he hoped would bring all of society into conformity with God’s will. At the turn of the twelfth century, Pope Innocent III proclaimed himself a latter-day Melchizedek who had combined both church and state into a unified Christian community, with himself at its head.
After the Protestant Reformation, Christians no longer claimed to have enacted God’s will as law throughout the whole world, but they still tried to set up a perfect government on the smaller sections of earth they controlled. Under Calvin’s guidance, the citizens of Geneva attempted to set the pay scale for the local print-shops and to regulate what people would eat, drink, and even wear. King James I of England went so far as to publish a Book of Sports suggesting Sabbath recreations for his subjects, and some Puritans moved to New England rather than endure its levity.
In Catholic countries, the Roman church has tried to enact its policies through the Christian-Democrat political party. More recently the Moral Majority informed Americans that it was immoral to sign over control of the Panama Canal.
And now, many Christians are attempting to shape public policy challenging the church to be more consistent in its advocacy of life. Led by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin on the Catholic side and Evangelicals for Social Action executive director Ron Sider on the Protestant, these Christians want believers to broaden their concern as they use the political process to advance the kingdom of God. Directing their appeal especially to Christians who are working to stop abortion, these “consistent Christians” urge prolifers to champion a whole range of other issues just as passionately as they fight abortion. The Catholics say the “consistent ethic of life” involves opposing nuclear war, stopping capital punishment, and changing current policy on Central America as well as ending abortion. My colleague on these pages, Ron Sider, and the organization he represents, JustLife, says that to be “consistently prolife” Christians must add promotion of “economic justice” and opposition to nuclear war to their antagonism to abortion.
Unquestionably, the motives of the “consistent Christians” are commendable. Like each of the leaders and groups since Hosius, they are right to urge that God’s will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Unfortunately, when it actually comes to implementing what they believe to be God’s will, they have not succeeded.
Confusing Principles With Policies
One reason why the results are usually mixed when groups with good motives try to promote God’s cause in society is the complexity of moral issues. Unfortunately, few political issues present us with simple moral choices. Most political choices consist of two elements: the ends and the means. The ends suggest where we want to go and the means propose how we should get there. Just as travelers must decide both what their destination is and what is the best route to get there, so politicians must first decide what they want to accomplish and then determine how to do it. To accomplish anything political, people must agree on both the ends and the means. In the same way, to be consistently Christian in one’s political position, both the ends and the means have to be correct.
Those who call for the church to be “consistent Christians” are undoubtedly correct when they say that our political ends, the goals of our political action, must be morally correct. They rightly urge us to be certain that the goals we are pursuing, the ends we want to accomplish, are truly Christian. Where they are incorrect is that they sometimes forget the complexity of politics. This mistake leads them to confuse principles with policies, ends with means.
Because of this error they tend to think that if they are right about the ends, then they must also be right about the means. They think that anyone who disagrees with them must be ignorant of the scriptural ends God wants us to attain, so they pile on a few more Bible verses to persuade the ignorant to be consistent. They forget the complexity of political issues, not realizing that many Christians who disagree with them share their God-given ends but differ about the human means to reach those ends.
Does God really have a position on the location of the capital of the Roman empire, the closing of the Academy in Athens, the legitimacy of Prince John as king of England, the wages of printers in Geneva, the use of Maypoles in Morris dances, the composition of Italy’s forty-seventh postwar government, the Panama Canal Treaty, and the funding of “star wars”? Apparently so, if we listen to all who claim to speak in his name. Unfortunately, however, the Almighty has not chosen to make his political position obvious to all his followers.
If God does indeed have a position on these and other political issues, he does not reveal it clearly through the only authoritative source we have, the Bible. Christian legislators will search the Scriptures in vain for unmistakable direction on how to vote on federal day-care funding or any other specific legislative item. The Bible is not an oracle to be consulted for mystical guidance in every decision. It is, rather, the history of a nation that God established, gave a perfect law, and then judged when it departed from his standards. From the specifics of Israel’s laws, history, and experience with God we may infer the general principles of his dealings with all nations. For instance, God told Amos that one reason he was punishing Israel was that “they sell the needy for a pair of sandals” (Amos 2:6). So low was the price of labor that poor people were cheaply sold into slavery. From this one case we see the general principle that God sets himself against any society that exploits the poor.
Hearing God’s words through the prophets to Israel, measuring the nation’s performance against the standard of his law, and reading his commandments to the church in the New Testament teaches us that God cares intensely about justice, integrity, faithfulness, and compassion. It does not, however, give us much guidance about how we should structure our governments or economies to achieve those goals. The Bible is silent when we ask it whether God favors monarchy over democracy, or whether he prefers socialism to feudalism. Apparently God considers it more important to give us general guidelines for society than to give us specific direction on every political decision. In his Word he tells us much more about the kind of society he wants than about what we should do to establish it. Instead of revealing the forms our governments and economies should take, God gives us the standards to use in judging our nations. In his Word he gives us the criteria for deciding the ends toward which our societies should move, but relatively little about the means we should use to achieve those ends.
In American political life most issues involve only means. When the majority of Democrats and Republicans argue about the economy, they agree that the end they are trying to reach is increased prosperity for all Americans. But they disagree about the means that will bring us that end result. Republicans generally think prosperity will come if we get the government off the peoples’ backs. Democrats usually think giving the government more money and power will help people. Both sides agree on where they want to go—the end; they disagree on how we should get there—the means.
A few political issues, however, involve ends. Before the Civil War, Americans disagreed about slavery. This was a dispute about ends, not means. The question was not what was best for blacks, but what kind of national government we should have. Some said slavery was wrong, and should not be tolerated by a government designed to protect human freedom. Others felt that slavery was right, and the main role of the government was to protect property rights. Since slaves were property, the government needed to defend the institution of slavery. This disagreement between those who were for and against slavery was a fundamental conflict over the goals of American society. It was a debate about the ends for which our government was established. Was the government’s primary role to promote human freedom or to protect private property? This was not a conflict about the means of making life better for black people. It was about ends: Should blacks be free or slaves?
Three Lively Issues
Those who espouse the consistent life ethic think they know the mind of the Lord on several political issues. Because the Protestant organization JustLife has taken a stand on specific political issues and even published ratings for individual politicians, it can serve as an example of this view.
JustLife has picked three issues about which it thinks it knows God’s will: abortion, economic justice, and the nuclear arms race. JustLife is right to say that God’s will is plain in its opposition to abortion, economic injustice, and war. The elimination of these three wrongs is clearly God’s goal for our society. Saving lives by ending abortion, poverty, and the threat of nuclear war is certainly an end that God wants us to reach.
The problem with JustLife is that it forgets that having the right end is only part of the answer. The issue is more complex. In the real world of politics, we have to have the correct means to achieve our good ends. Good intentions are not enough. Most Americans have good intentions about peace and the economy. Almost every American politician professes to agree with God’s goals for our national life in these two areas. They all say they want to help the poor and to promote peace. Their ends are godly, but the means are uncertain.
For example, is economic justice best served when the government redistributes the people’s money or when it lets market forces determine who gets what? Some people point to the thinking of economist John Maynard Keynes and the experiences of the Great Depression and New Deal to argue that government intervention is necessary for a fair economy. Others cite Charles Murray’s book, Losing Ground, which shows that poverty decreased in the fifties when the government ignored it, and increased when the poverty programs of the sixties were created. These thinkers say the government only hurts the poor when it redistributes income.
Similarly, people do not agree whether nuclear war is more likely to be prevented if we unilaterally disarm, arm ourselves to the teeth, or take some moderate way in between. Some think that the turn-of-the-century European arms race made World War I inevitable, and others feel that recent progress in arms reduction came only because the United States rearmed itself after the weakness of the Carter years.
Unfortunately, there is one obvious area where not every American political figure shares God’s goal for our society: abortion. God’s Word makes it clear that he wants society to protect weak, innocent, and defenseless people. Scriptures such as Psalm 139:13–16; Jeremiah 1:5; Luke 1:15, and Exodus 21:22–25 make it clear that God considers the unborn child a person, someone whom he can know and fill with the Holy Spirit, and an individual whose death must be avenged. Proverbs 24:11–12 calls upon us to prevent the killing of innocent people. Some Americans want the government to fulfill God’s mandate by outlawing abortion, while others ignore his law and want government to protect so-called freedoms that end all too often in abortion. Here there is a clear division that involves ends, not means. This is not a conflict about the means of making life better for unborn children. It is about ends: Should some unborn children be alive or dead?
In the areas where our society says it shares God’s goals, we need to apply our minds to figuring out the best way to achieve them. We need to use our God-given reason to investigate the laws God built into nature and human society so that we can structure our government and economy to reach the ends God planned for it. In the areas where our nation does not agree with God’s standards, we face a different task. When people do not accept God’s ends we need to call them to repent—to turn around and start going in his direction.
Like the prophets of old we must announce God’s will for society. When speaking about ends, we have a special authority. On the authority of God’s Word we promise blessing for obedience and judgment for sin. We say, “Thus saith the Lord.” To do less is to be unfaithful.
But we must not say, “Thus saith the Lord,” when God has not spoken. He calls us to proclaim his standards, but he has not authorized us to tell people the ways and means to attain those standards. Evidently the Lord feels general revelation is sufficient for this task, because nothing in his special revelation specifically directs us to employ certain means. To pretend that it does simply confuses the investigation in the same way the theologians muddied the waters when they used the Bible to find the answers to Galileo’s questions about the heavens. What is worse, it makes us false prophets, putting words in God’s mouth.
Specifically, we cannot pass laws against poverty, nor can we legislate away the possibility of nuclear war. The means of eliminating poverty and the potential for nuclear war can be legitimately challenged. We can, however, work toward making abortion illegal. The means are clear: overturn the Supreme Court ruling that made abortions legal (Roe v. Wade), and enact a human-life amendment to the Constitution.
With each of these issues—nuclear weapons, poverty, the environment, and abortion—all Christians can and should use a variety of techniques to call attention to (and help solve) the problem. Pacifists may promote a ban on weapons development, and antiabortionists may try to close clinics. We may disagree on the extent to which these techniques will affect public policy, but we cannot say with certainty that God favors one technique over the other. We can, however, agree on the means to eliminate or severely reduce the number of abortions performed: make abortion illegal.
Thus, JustLife is biblically faithful in its stand against abortion. This issue is one where clear biblical principles apply. It is also an issue where the conflict is over ends. JustLife is also being faithful to God when it calls for economic justice and for peace. These, too, are obviously revealed in the Bible as goals God has for society. But in our society, few people are against the ends of eliminating poverty and preventing war. The conflict in these two areas is over the best means to use to achieve these ends. JustLife is not being biblically faithful when it identifies one particular political position as the God-ordained means to achieve these godly ends. Here it is going beyond the Word of God into areas where God has not authoritatively spoken. It is making conclusions it has reached on its own and passing them off as God’s inerrant revelation.
God’S Will Vs. Man’S Ways
JustLife’s inability to distinguish between the ends God has ordained and the means people favor also leads it into counterproductive political judgments. Consider their rating of candidates in the last national election. Colorado Sen. William Armstrong is one of the most outspoken evangelicals on Capitol Hill. He shares JustLife’s commitment to the ends of ending poverty and preventing war. Yet he disagrees with JustLife about the best means to achieve those ends. Because he hopes that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or “star wars”) will slow the arms race, and thinks that less government is the way to prosperity, his JustLife approval rating was only 36 percent. On the other hand, Ohio’s Howard Metzenbaum, a long-time champion of the ACLU’s seemingly anti-Christian agenda, received a much higher rating. He consistently votes to promote abortion, but because he shares JustLife’s commitment to income redistribution and arms reduction, he earned a 67 percent favorable rating. Can JustLife seriously contend that Metzenbaum’s votes are almost twice as pleasing to God as are Armstrong’s?
JustLife should stop its talk about a “consistent ethic of life” and make it clear that there is only one issue facing our government where Americans openly disagree about the ends we are trying to reach: abortion. God’s will is clear on the ends and means, and rejecting God’s will in this matter is such a moral monstrosity that it dwarfs all other squabbling about means. Christians should not be as concerned with questions of means like educational funding and the testing of antisatellite weapons in space as they are with the deaths of infants. The people in JustLife should stop trying to divert the concern, energy, and money of committed Christians away from the God-given ends of the prolife movement and into side issues relating to human means. They should give priority to the one issue where there is a clearly defined method of fulfilling God’s will, and then, with other Christians, seek his mind about how to do his will in other areas. JustLife ought to support those who share its commitment to God’s ends, and work with them where there is disagreement to discover God’s means for achieving them.
Support for abortion is not a minor flaw, it is a sin. Those who support abortion have blood on their hands. JustLife should not join hands with such people, but they should make the antiabortion cause their priority.
Ron Sider Responds
I agree with Charles White that divine revelation (whether general or special) does not provide direct guidance on specific political choices. Since there is a big gap between biblical principles (or ends) and prudential judgments, it is wrong to equate one’s political choices with God’s will. Unfortunately, White overstates this point and applies it inaccurately to JustLife.
For example, White correctly argues that the Bible is silent about whether God prefers democracy. But the biblical affirmation that each person has unique value and the warning that sinful people will use absolute power for selfish ends lead toward the conclusion that decentralized political power—as in a democracy—is the direction in which biblical principles point.
The fact that JustLife wants to apply biblical principles in this careful way in no way justifies the charge that we identify one particular political position as “the God-ordained means.” We do, however, claim that divine revelation demands a biblically balanced agenda that is concerned not only for life but also for peace and justice.
I will concede one small point. JustLife’s 1988 election study guide used percentages in our ratings that led some persons to reach conclusions that we in no way intended. Therefore, we will not use percentages again in that way.
From the beginning, however, JustLife has consistently supported only political candidates who oppose abortion and the nuclear-arms race and seek justice for the poor. Our words and actions have been public and consistent for three years. In mid-1988, I wrote: “JustLife denounces as fraud any attempt by pro-abortion politicians to hide behind other votes in order to claim they are substantially pro-life!” Just Life has never supported a Ted Kennedy or Howard Metzenbaum or any other prochoice politician.
Nor is White correct that on the issue of abortion we have “absolute certainty” about the means. Should we join Operation Rescue’s campaign of civil disobedience or work with National Right to Life through the normal political channels? Or should we focus, not on the political process, but on a private volunteer approach as White seems to prefer in the case of the poor? Believing, as White and I do, that God opposes abortion does not solve the question of means in this case any more than in the case of peace and justice.
Finally, White charges that JustLife diverts Christians from the issue of abortion. In fact, JustLife makes an antiabortion stance more attractive to many people who have long identified the prolife movement with what they consider reactionary politics unconcerned with minorities, the poor, and the dignity of women. Precisely when they see antiabortion people who are vigorously seeking equality for women and justice for blacks and the poor, then they are able to rethink and abandon their prochoice stand. JustLife attracts allies to the crusade against abortion.
Kenneth S. Kantzer
What are the real differences between White and Sider and between other evangelicals for whom they speak? To begin with, antiabortionists are convinced that antinuclear-war pacifists are usurping their “prolife” battle cry. They feel including the nuclear question under the prolife umbrella makes the term confusing because it tacks on to it a variety of controversial issues (pacifism, for example).
On the other hand, antinuclear “prolifers” consider antiabortionists to be extraordinarily inconsistent when they restrict their opposition to the evil of abortion. They are doubly faulted, so the argument goes, for limiting the issue to what may prove to be the lesser of the moral questions facing our generation. If 50 million Americans are destroyed—or, possibly, most of the human race—the issue of one million abortions per year will become insignificant.
These two approaches to affirming life also differ regarding the means by which we can best obtain the agreed-on good ends. Sider is certainly right when he stresses that a true biblical concern about human life should drive us to oppose nuclear warfare and that we should be at least as much opposed to nuclear warfare as to free abortion. But White is also right when he points out there are many ways to battle against nuclear warfare. One can be irrevocably opposed to nuclear war (after all, who could possibly favor it?), yet be thoroughly convinced that unilateral disarmament or mutual disarmament without guarantees and inspection would create a greater chance of war.
Fight Evil, Not Each Other
What shall we say, then, to the millions of evangelicals who stand on one side or the other of these divisive issues?
To those who feel “prolife” refers to abortion, the nuclear question, economic issues—the “consistent life ethic” camp—we say:
1. Stop wasting your time and ours arguing that the God of the Bible is opposed to nuclear war, poverty, and to injustice. We already know that. As evangelicals, we believe that human beings are created in the image of God and that all of human life is sacred. We are all committed to the lordship of Christ, and his message is prolife across the board. Evangelicals are also committed to the authority of the Bible, and its teaching is clear: abortion, nuclear slaughter, war, poverty, injustice—all are wrong.
2. Recognize that God may call individuals to a particular task. Evangelicals are opposed to all of these wrongs, but God may well call some of us to special areas of his kingdom. A Christian physician is committed to evangelism, but he has been specially called to heal the body through medical science. Similarly, it is legitimate and fully consistent with scriptural instruction about the Christian life for an individual to be opposed to all forms of evil, but to devote his talent and energies against one specific evil in the world.
3. Make appropriate distinctions. For example, all evangelicals must be opposed to nuclear war. But it is one thing to oppose nuclear war and quite another thing to advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament as do John Stott and the Catholic bishops (though Evangelicals for Social Action does not). Similarly, one must recognize that it is possible to oppose nuclear war, yet not espouse pacifism.
4. Finally, direct your arguments to the issues that really divide us. For example, we all agree that Christians are to help the poor. The disagreement comes in determining the best way to help the most people. Are massive government handouts the best approach, or will that only enslave the poor to perpetual poverty and bankrupt our government? How can we best get help to those who are really needy without destroying the initiative and motivation to work on the part of many? We do not expect a perfect solution to the problem of poverty and economic injustice, but we are sincerely troubled as to what is best for all citizens in a world of limited resources.
These are the problems that trouble the soul of evangelicals. It is on these issues that we desperately need light. We welcome gladly all the data you can provide that will help us answer these awesomely important, and also terribly difficult, issues that we must face as Bible-believing Christians. Share with us all the God-given wisdom you possess to help us on to the right answers. We need your wisdom, and we are grateful for all you can give us—not for exhortations to believe what we already know, but for Spirit-guided wisdom to find better paths to our commonly shared goals.
Prolife Or Antiabortion?
And to those who view abortion as the one issue all Christians should fight with equal vigor:
1. Signal loud and clear to all men and women that you stand unequivocally for the sanctity of human life. Show us that although you have chosen to fight abortion, you are equally concerned about the potential destruction of human life through nuclear war, and that you consider slow death through poverty and hunger to be a prolife issue. These causes are infinitely important to us, and we must do all we can, with God’s help, to rid our nation and the world from these evils. It would help now and then if you would take time out from your war against abortion to lend support to those who campaign for the millions dying of hunger in sub-Sahara Africa and for the tens of thousands who are undergoing continual racial indignity in South Africa. Show us that you, too, oppose a nuclear holocaust that could destroy 50 million people if either of the superpowers launches its missiles.
2. Make distinctions to show you have thought through the implications of laws against abortion. Should an exception be made for the life of the mother? We think so. Should we pass laws to force a woman who has been raped to carry the child to birth? Ordinarily we do not force a person to risk his life to save the life of another—even though morally we think such a person ought to be willing to take the risk. Not all morally wrong acts should be specifically prevented by law and punished as crimes.
3. Give us assurance that you are prepared for the consequences of a strict law against abortion. Tens of thousands now aborted would be brought to term, many to familes who do not want them. Will the church lead the way in providing support to those troubled families? Some of those babies will be deformed. Are we prepared to share in the care of these handicapped children? Will we dig into our pockets to provide for their nurture or adopt them into our homes when that is best? Are we willing to make the sacrifices, emotional as well as financial, that will be required to welcome them into the human family and provide for their needs? If we cannot respond with an unblinking “yes” to these questions, we have no right on moral grounds to oppose their abortions.
4. Do not forget that we live in a democracy where we are the rulers. Some evangelicals have turned from political persuasion to taking things into their own hands. They have moved to the streets, and in some cases have openly endorsed violence as a means to drive abortion clinics out of existence. While I defend the right of any Christian to demonstrate peacefully against a perceived evil, and acknowledge that in extreme cases force is justified in fighting moral evil, I do not believe this battle should be fought in the streets. It is not the wisest strategy in a day of general disrespect for law and quick appeal to violence. This seems an unusually bad time to revert to violence in order to achieve good laws.
5. Be willing to work together with others to secure the best laws for protecting life. Theodore Hesburgh, retired president of Notre Dame University, writes: “If, given a choice between the present law of abortion on demand, up to and including viability, or a more restrictive law, such as a limitation of abortion to cases of rape, incest, and serious threat to the mother’s life, the majority of Americans polled consistently have supported the more limited option.” He acknowledges that “there is not a consensus in America for the absolute prohibition of abortion,” but “there is and was a moral consensus … for a stricter abortion law. A remarkably well-kept secret is that a minority is currently imposing its belief on a demonstrable majority.”
Americans now clearly have it in their power to pass legislation outlawing the vast majority of abortions. Surely the path of moral and political wisdom would dictate support for a second-best law that would eliminate the deaths of nearly a million unborn children every year.
And now a final word to both camps: The real solution to the moral dilemma of our nation is not a law against abortions, nuclear buildup, or poverty—desirable as each of these may be. And that is why we must commit ourselves ever anew to the task of highest priority—that of winning all men to the gospel of Jesus Christ, who alone can save men and women from their sins.
Christians ought to be the first to speak out boldly in behalf of human life. We confess as a cardinal doctrine of our faith that human beings are made in the image of God and have infinite value in God’s sight. If that religious belief does not shape the whole of our life, including our thinking about abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, nuclear war, poverty, and much more, we have not really begun to fathom the power and depth of the gospel.
