Tag: Abortion and Evangelicalism

Of MAGA, MALA, and MABA – A Conservative Christian Case for Donald Trump

I am a theologically conservative evangelical, a fundamentalist, and a biblicist holding to the inspiration and authority of the Bible.  I wish that there were a presidential candidate in 2024 who shares my faith, who understands salvation by grace through faith, who understands what Jesus has done for us in offering Himself as the atonement for our sin and offers us salvation if we but repent and believe the Gospel.  I lack confidence that Donald Trump has that commitment.  As a political conservative, I wish Mr. Trump held to a conservative political philosophy more in the likeness of Calvin Coolidge or William F. Buckley or Ronald Reagan.  I wish that Mr. Trump’s personal ethical history were more like that of Mike Pence and less like Bill Clinton.  I wish that he did not choose to battle with people in his political party who may disagree with him but whose support he needs.  I wish he were ten years younger, and that he were much more careful not to give soundbites to his critics through unguarded remarks.  It would have been better that on January 6 he had told his supporters to leave Washington a better place than they found it and to express their thanks and respect to law enforcement, in contrast to the BLM rioters months earlier.  Nevertheless, despite these and other areas of disagreement, I am convinced that given the available alternative it is imperative for the nation that Mr. Trump be elected in November.

Americanists vs. Transformationists. John Fonte of the Hudson Institute, in a speech reprinted in “Imprimus,” concluded that “Today’s polarization should be viewed as an existential struggle between Americanists and Transformationists.”  That is an apt description.  He said, “The conflict today is not simply a normal policy argument between conservatives and progressives. It is over the future of the historic American nation, both its creed and its culture.”  Americanists believe in traditional values, believe in the American Republic, its exceptionalism and its founding documents – to some extent, MAGA ideas.  Transformationists like Mr. Trump’s opponents are essentially socialists, collectivists, internationalists, even Marxists, who seek to effectively destroy the Republic.

The presidency is about more than just the president.  The American president is surrounded by a large number of people and appoints a vast number to various positions.  Mr. Trump would be surrounded by and appoint people who are Americanists.  His opponent Ms. Harris would be influenced, even controlled by, transformationists, as is the current president.      

To the transformationists, everything of traditional America is “racist” or some other “ist” or “ism” to be demolished.  The free-market economic system that has brought great prosperity is something to be disdained and destroyed.  There is no ethical barrier to bringing about their desired change; indeed, traditional Judeo-Christian ethics are perceived negatively.  To the far Left, the end always justifies the means. 

The Rite of Abortion.  Celebration vs. Regulation.  It is almost unimaginable that an American political party would present abortion as their signature issue, as do the Democrats.  It is a rite of their secular religion, something to be almost celebrated.  “Safe, legal, and rare” is long gone.  Abortifacients are to be dispensed like aspirin, at taxpayer expense when necessary.  This, as well as late-term surgical infanticide is to be considered an absolute right, a healthcare procedure of no more consequence than a tooth extraction.  Speech against abortion is considered “hate speech” to be opposed, and even presenting alternatives to abortion cannot be tolerated.  The Democrats offer a sort of grand bargain: Let us micromanage every other aspect of your life, and we will guarantee your freedom to fornicate at will as you please, and we’ll make sure there are no inconvenient unintended children as a result.

Most conservative Christians wish that Mr. Trump were more outspoken in opposition to abortion.  But in the absence of a societal consensus on the issue, absolute opposition to abortion is a losing political issue.  A Trump administration, however, would allow and encourage free speech and open debate on the issue.  We will be free to offer alternatives to abortion, to point out the barbaric nature of it, to attempt to educate and persuade and attempt to make opposition to abortion a winning issue. The states will continue to be free to regulate the issue, with some states, like the one where I live, having laws and policies that promote abortion on demand for any reason, with some states effectively banning it.            

MAGA vs. MALA (Make America Latin America).  The current immigration situation is a disaster for the country.  This cannot be overstated.  It is not a “failed border policy,” as some conservative critics call it; the flood of illegal immigrants is intentional on the part of the Left, part of their goal of transforming the country, overwhelming society and overwhelming the welfare state to create conflict.  Multilingualism and multi-culturalism inevitably create division and conflict and weaken society.   A Trump administration will work to stop and hopefully reverse this situation.

MAGA vs. MABA (Make America Broke America).  Elon Musk recently wrote on X (Twitter), “The rise in prices (inflation) is caused by government overspending, which increases the amount of money faster than the increase in goods & services output. That is the vast majority of the problem. Inflation was particularly bad during the Covid years, as there was massive government spending, despite productivity plunging, as people were forced to stay home. This is further exacerbated by excess regulation, which prevents the market from solving an unmet need (e.g. housing in high-demand areas).”  He is correct.  The Left will continue to spend the country into economic ruin.  Free stuff isn’t free; it must somehow be paid for. The immigration disaster guarantees further government overspending on an ever-expanding welfare state.  Price controls and vilifying business as the supposed cause of inflation will bring more economic harm to the country.  A Trump administration will be much less inclined to gross overspending, and the first Trump administration was marked by cutting regulation, likely to be repeated in the second.

“Democracy.”  The Left somehow imagines that Mr. Trump is some sort of threat to traditional democracy. (He IS a threat to democracy as it is defined by the far Left.)  The current bloated administrative state and ever-expanding governmental regulation is anything but democratic.  This is the true threat to democracy that we face, and a Trump administration would be inclined to reverse this situation. “Drain the Swamp.”  Further, there is nothing democratic about weaponizing the justice system against a political opponent, as has been done to Mr. Trump.

Free Speech.  It is hardly democratic to oppose free speech and freedom of expression.  Government has begun to “collude,” a word the Democrats like, with media to control free speech and to amplify falsehoods.  The false Russia collusion narrative, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and suppression of COVID information contrary to the official narrative are but three examples.  According to the Left, one must not distribute “misinformation” as defined by Big Government. Speech must be regulated and censored. Expressing Christian truth on issues is being silenced in Europe, and such censorship is a real threat in America.  The Left does this to further their objectives.  A Trump administration will not do this and is likely to facilitate free expression of ideas.

MAGA vs. MABA (Make America Burn Again).  The Democrat vice presidential nominee, governor of Minnesota during the 2020 Minneapolis riots, did nothing to stop those riots, and reportedly he, his wife, and his daughter almost celebrated them.  Kamela Harris also celebrated the 2020 riots even to the extent of raising bail money for the few rioters who were arrested.  She expressed sympathy for the defund the police movement while it was politically expedient to do so.  Crime destabilizes a a country, and the Left uses it to their advantage. Arresting criminals is wrong or “racist.”

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In a sermon preached five years ago, pastor and theologian John MacArthur noted that “God has warned our entire culture.  The election coming up next year is basically a referendum of divine wrath.  All the things that mark wrath—insanity, immorality, and homosexuality—are the very things that the Democratic Party makes a platform out of protecting.”  More recently (reported in an article in “The Christian Post), this pastor expressed that

“when a society “turns to sexual immorality, homosexual immorality, and a reprobate mind, God gives them up,” noting that the current administration is a manifestation of the societal punishment described in Romans 1.  “When He gives them up, it means he gives them up to the consequences of their choices . . .  If you follow that pattern, what you get is Joe Biden, who is the epitome of all those things that I just talked about.”  . . . The pastor did not mince words when discussing the personal and familial aspects of Biden’s life, claiming immorality ran “rampant” at an “epic level.”  He dismissed the notion that political figures like former President Donald Trump could be the solution to the nation’s moral and spiritual decline, although he considered a second Trump presidency a “huge move in the right direction.””

He is correct.

America faces great peril.  The Bible’s book of Leviticus tells us that

‘You shall not make idols for yourselves . . .  ‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them, then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. . ..‘But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, but break My covenant, I also will do this to you: I will even appoint terror over you. . ..I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies. . .. I will bring the land to desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it.”

This passage was given to the ancient Jewish nation, not to America, nor to the church (and we must never conflate the Jewish nation with America or with the church).  But it reminds us of a principle found in Proverbs 14:34 – “Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a reproach to any people.”  The United States, truly an exceptional nation, has been uniquely blessed by God.  It will be preserved as a free and prosperous nation not by any political party nor by any politician.  It will be delivered from destruction by people who commit to live by the principles of scripture, by people who turn to the God of our Founders.    

MAGA.  MARANATHA!

Abortion, Conscience, and the Church

I recently read an editorial page piece in my local newspaper, reprinted from The Washington Post.  Titled “When I Needed It, Abortions Weren’t Illegal,” the author shares, “I had an abortion in Alabama when I was 14.  If the state’s laws had been the same then as they are now, my whole life would be different.”  The article was written in response to recent pro-life legislation in that state and at least two others.  The author relates her story of that abortion experience, aided by her mother and an aunt who “wanted to inform and empower me,” although it was opposed by her father.  Of the abortion experience, she notes, “The doctor was kind. While taking the ultrasound, he said that I could look at the screen if I wanted to – that, in fact, it might make me feel better. I’d had little in the way of sex education and could barely conceptualize what was happening in my own body. Was there really a baby inside me?  What I saw was gray and cloudy, a barely perceptible swirl of cells. That simple encouragement has stayed with me to this day. The doctor knew that an abortion was a routine medical procedure — he wanted to reassure me, to give me a sense of normalcy, to inform me about what was happening in my own body.”

What really caught my attention were two statements later in the article.  She goes on to note, “Today, I live in Texas with my three children, where in my spare time, I volunteer to drive people seeking an abortion to and from their appointments,” and later, “From my own experience, having two more abortions after I became a mother, and from my volunteering, I know the reality of the procedure.”  Although I know that this attitude is commonplace, I was stunned at the almost celebratory and militant attitude toward the subject.  The article, obviously, remained in my mind, enough so that I was moved to pray for this woman, and her living children, when I prayed the next few mornings, rather than being merely angered.

Later, I happened across a piece entitled “The Epidemic of a Seared Conscience” on the internet site News With Views, authored by Dr. Mark Spaulding, a Calvary Chapel pastor, a portion of which reads,

“What has happened to a great number of men and women in America is that their conscience has become seared. Their mind is in a state of depreciating ability to grasp morality personally and interpersonally. They have become incapable of moral reasoning and logical analysis that lead to guilt or shame related to their thinking and behavior. They are being turned over to the darkness they crave and prostitute themselves to and on behalf of.

Depending on the severity of the behavior, psychologists call this psychopathic or sociopathic behavior. The difference between the two is that a psychopath has no conscience remaining. The psychopath’s conscience is completely seared and devoid of any emotion of shame or guilt associated with their behavior. Ironically, Hollywood glamorizes this behavior, giving tacit approval to the violent and murderous results of psychopathic people.

The sociopath has a small amount of conscience remaining. This person might still feel a twinge of guilt but not enough to stop their evil behavior. Both the psychopath and sociopath are dangerous to others with which they interact and especially those with whom they disagree.  Courtrooms across this nation are filled with cases involving the egregious behavior of people with little to no functioning conscience.

All of the examples above demonstrate varying states of the inability to reason morally. America is well down the path of being wrested from its moral foundations by psychopaths and sociopaths whose faculties have been impaired by evil. What can be done to correct this development? We must first understand what we are dealing with.

The late J.I. Packer said concerning conscience that:

“An educated, sensitive conscience is God’s monitor.  It alerts us to the moral quality of what we do or plan to do, forbids lawlessness and irresponsibility, and makes us feel guilt, shame, and fear of the future retribution that it tells us we deserve, when we have allowed ourselves to deny its restraints…Satan’s strategy is to corrupt, desensitize, and if possible kill our consciences.  The relativism, materialism, narcissism, secularism, and hedonism of today’s Western world help him mightily toward his goal.  His task is made yet simpler by the way in which the world’s moral weaknesses have been taken into the contemporary church.”  (J.I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness)

Packer identified the real crux of the issue. Conscience is a God-given warning system that has been deliberately turned off today in a large number of Americans. An alarm cannot warn of danger if it is not connected to a power source.

Slowly and over time the innate ability of Americans to determine right from wrong has been strategically and with malice corrupted. The constant drive to remove and even erase Christianity from the public mind and memory has borne the rottenest of fruit culturally speaking.

How can a culture sustain moral uprightness from generation to generation when even the Church, that instrument of God meant to inform and when necessary, correct culture, begins to emulate the culture? When a society becomes seared in conscience, when a critical mass of people begin to think and advocate for evil under the guise of good, and exchange light for darkness, their minds become seared as with a branding iron and the resultant scar tissue renders them incapable of returning to correct thinking and behavior absent a radical surgery.

The Church is meant to be God’s scalpel, guided by His hand to make perfect incisions to remove the cancer of evil, the scar tissue of a seared conscience, and in so doing, restore right thinking and behavior to all individuals. When the Church refuses to do that mass deception is allowed to congeal and that environment creates hostility toward the truth of man’s precarious condition and toward the only solution to his dilemma.”

The woman in the editorial is a demonstration of the observation that “When a society becomes seared in conscience, when a critical mass of people begin to think and advocate for evil under the guise of good, and exchange light for darkness, their minds become seared as with a branding iron and the resultant scar tissue renders them incapable of returning to correct thinking and behavior absent a radical surgery.”  Again, I was moved to pray for her after reading her story.  She needs to believe the Gospel and come to Christ by faith and repentance, just as all humans do.  She needs to realize her true guilt, as we all do as part of the human race in rebellion against God, and find freedom from that guilt and sin at the Cross where Jesus died as the One Perfect Sacrifice in atonement for the sin of all who would believe.

There is no moral social consensus currently concerning abortion.  Some states have recently passed legislation to make abortion legal at any stage of pregnancy, even suggesting that if a late-term abortion results in a live birth, it is permissible to let the child die without medical attempt to save the child.  The Empire State Building was lit up in celebration of the passage of New York’s extreme abortion bill.  Statistics tell us that repeat abortions, abortions after a mother has already had an abortion, are common.  It is regarded merely as a form of birth control, a minor medical procedure, almost akin to having a tooth pulled.  The New York legislature is, meanwhile, considering legislation to stop the declawing of cats.  The ancient prophet Isaiah wrote, in Isaiah 5:20, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness: Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

I am ardently pro-life, and perhaps only somewhat comprehend the complexity of the issue.  We have two adopted children whose birth mothers could have, I suppose, chosen to abort them.  We were recently blessed by the birth of a granddaughter, who we saw for the first time via ultrasound before her birth.  I understand that situations are different, and many women with unplanned pregnancies agonize over their situation.  An unplanned and unwanted pregnancy can be devastating.  Recent legislation in at least three states is solidly pro-life; I have no doubt that the progressive left judiciary will not allow these laws to stand.  Without a societal consensus, legal restrictions on abortion will have only minimal effect.

The American religious community in many ways fails to effectively address this issue.  Some pro-lifers do not realize that threats of violence and hateful rhetoric do not aid their cause.   Liberal progressive denominations not only do not oppose abortion but in many cases support it.  The Evangelical community broadly is ineffective in addressing moral issues as well, sometimes through silence, but perhaps more importantly by diverting away from emphasizing the need for believers to grow in their faith and develop a truly Christian perspective so they can effectively live out the Gospel.

Evangelical churches in twenty-first century America often seem to be caught up in post-modernism and focus on attracting adherents through motivational speeches and pop psychology and prosperity theology and trendy contemporary entertainment and love and acceptance without mentioning sin and forgiveness.  But when the Church fails to rigidly adhere to Scripture and the consistent teaching of the Gospel and its ramifications for all of life, it will not have an impact.  Churches must be committed to the job of “equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:12)” so those mature believers can effectively minister to people and have an impact on their communities.  Again quoting Dr. Spaulding, “The Church is meant to be God’s scalpel, guided by His hand to make perfect incisions to remove the cancer of evil, the scar tissue of a seared conscience, and in so doing, restore right thinking and behavior to all individuals. When the Church refuses to do that mass deception is allowed to congeal and that environment creates hostility toward the truth of man’s precarious condition and toward the only solution to his dilemma.”