A couple weeks ago, my co-worker in Christ
had posted a note regarding our need to help adopt children who were unwanted by their Mothers. Here’s his original post:I had an issue with the way that it was framed, so I made an entire episode responding to the 2nd Victim Narrative that I felt was assumed at the start.
After this, Lee quickly drafted a response to my episode where he systematically dealt with my objections that I brought up. I thought it was well written, easy to follow, and a good read all in all. You can check it out here:
However, I had several issues with Lee’s response that I wanted to deal with, and since we have agreed to publicly debate the issue, I wanted to be thorough so that you can come to your own conclusions.
Connecting Adoption and Abortion
Joe says, “If we tie [adoption] to abortion it sounds like unless we have [adoption] the mom has no other choice but to get an abortion” In other words, it is fine to talk about the need for adoption, just not in the same conversation as abortion. His reasoning for this is it would imply abortion is acceptable if adoption is off the table. This is a very weak argument designed to deflect attention away from a very real problem.…First of all, when would adoption be off the table?…The only time I can conceive of adoption not being an option is if the adoption system is so overwhelmed there is literally no room for more children…
In the book of Romans Paul spends the first few chapters laying out the reality of sin. Then he makes a marked shift and begins talking about grace saying, “but we have been delivered from the law” (Romans 7:6). By Joe’s line of reasoning, Paul was in error here and should not have had a conversation about being freed from the law in the same letter he was addressing sin because some would take that to mean we are free to sin.
My point isn’t that you can’t mix topics in one body of communication. My point is, framing a smaller issue at odds with a bigger issue can be deceptive to readers (more on that below).
To be specific, if adoption agencies have no room, and no parents that the Mom knows personally are willing to adopt the baby privately, the Mom is still responsible for raising her child because she is the baby’s Mom. If we tie adoption to abortion in the way Lee has, that means if there was no one willing to adopt, even if they had the means to do so, they could be seen a partially responsible for the abortion. That would be crazy obviously, they should only be responsible for not being willing to adopt if God has called them to that. We don’t owe Moms adoption as a wage, it’s a grace we ought to give when we can in light of the grace Christ has given us.
If we merely ban it and ignore the underlying causes of why women choose abortions, we are putting a band aid on a severed head. So no, you cannot separate the discussion of helping women who consider abortion from adoption.
I never said to ignore the underlying causes of why women want to sacrifice their baby, I’m saying we should ban it regardless of how caught up the adoption system is.
According to him only 3% of women have an acceptable need for abortion which includes life threatening medical issues, rape, or incest and the other 97% percent simply don’t want to “face their consequences of their actions”. I have a huge problem with this broad stroke assumption. It is a very smug attitude and shows no compassion for those women who, whether real or perceived, are scared to death and have been told abortion is their only option… Joe operates on assumptions the 97% are purely selfish but I prefer to operate on facts.
First off, I never said 3% of women have an acceptable need for an abortion. There is no justification for child sacrifice. See this article I wrote going through the most common objections. I said 3% have a very good case to use adoption services.
Since there are no justifications for any baby murder, that means that 100% of all Moms considering abortion are accountable to not murder their child in the face of God.
Individually, 100% of Moms have something going on in their life, but none of them can use that hardship (that the church ought to help with) to justify the idea that child sacrifice is okay. I’m not saying don’t help a particular Mom in a particular situation, I’m saying don’t use those situations as ammunition to water down the horror of babies being ripped apart legally. Our culture has already watered down child sacrifice, we don’t need more of it.
97% of abortions are powered by intentional decisions leading up to conception. They made a choice to have sex, sometimes in an already bad situation (that also came from intentional decisions), and instead of facing that decision and living their life how God intends it, they murder their baby.
The other 3% are dealing with something out of their control (rape, incest), absolutely, but they’re still not justified to kill their baby. However, my point is, these situations are the cases where I think adoption is really crucial since its truly out of the persons control how the baby was conceived. This is not the case of the other 97%.
Finances
In a 2013 study it is reported that 40% of abortions are because of financial instability with 4% of those women being completely unemployed and having little or no income coming in*.* One unemployed woman with a monthly household income of a little over $1,000 stated “[It was] all financial, me not having a job, living off death benefits, dealing with my 14-year-old son. I didn't have money to buy a baby spoon.”
The cost to care for a baby today on the low end is about $9300 annually. That only leaves this woman with $225 a month for groceries, gas, housing, clothing, and food for herself and her 14-year-old son. This is a very real difficulty, not a simple selfish desire to not face her consequences.
For the sake of being conservative, let’s say 50% of these women find a way to keep the baby themselves, that leaves 229,926 babies who will most likely be placed in adoption or aborted illegally every year.
Why is she pregnant? Did the baby pop into existence Big Bang style, or did she have consensual sex with someone?
Children are a blessing from the Lord, regardless of the situation. Throwing out how “expensive kids are” only implies that if you don’t have enough money, you can’t have one, and if you have sex with someone and do have one, you should be justified to kill it.
We can trust God with any situation and be obedient to him. God never puts us in a place where we must sin
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:31–33
Abusive Spouse
So, let’s say half of these abusive men get gloriously saved and the mother decides to keep the child, that leaves 17,244 babies who will most likely be placed in adoption or aborted illegally every year.
Or…none of them are saved, and the Mom and Dad both need to repent, and God works in their life to do so. Maybe 4 years later, after experiencing parenthood, they both find Jesus. The baby still lives, isn’t put up for adoption, and now the baby can be brought up in a Godly household.
Alcohol and Drug Addiction
But for the sake of argument let’s say after an abortion ban, half of these women do get sober and live wonderful lives with their child, we would still have 34,488 babies who will most likely be placed in adoption or aborted illegally every year.
Someones life situation has no correlation with another persons value or the requirement to give them away to someone else. The parents are accountable to clean up their act, turn to Jesus, and from the inside out follow his commands about being a good parent. Killing their child so they can keep using drugs is a bad argument.
Mental Illness and Adolescents
In addition to all these issues there were 12% who cited mental illness as the reason and 8% under the age of 17. Again, if half of these women decide to keep their baby, despite these struggles, that leaves us with 114,963 babies who will either be placed in adoption or aborted illegally every year.
Why are they pregnant?
“3 Million Babies”
So, with all this, using extremely conservative and outrageously hopeful numbers, we would have on average 396,621 babies a year whose mothers will either put in the foster care system or abort illegally.
To put that in perspective there are currently 391,000 children in foster care in the U.S. and only 115,353 adoptions occur annually. At that rate, in ten years there could be around 3 million orphans in the system, assuming they do not get aborted illegally. Even if we cut those numbers in half to compensate for women who fall into multiple categories we are still talking around 1 million orphans in the system in 10 years.
So yes Joe, we will have a crisis on our hands and the orphanages will be inundated with an astronomical influx of kids unless we come up with a plan to how we are going to respond.
All this math assumes an arbitrary number of children must be put up for adoption if the alternative isn’t a perfectly easy situation. This is a false dichotomy. The ministries I’m involved with have seen countless stories of Moms keeping their babies in horrible situations. Are we trusting God or man?
“Are These Women Ignorant?”
Referring to those who get an abortion Joe says, “They know they are committing murder”.
While that is somewhat true, it is not looking at the entire picture from a biblical sense because the unregenerate mind is incapable of seeing the complete truth of their decision.
“The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” (1 Corinthians 2:14) … Knowing right from wrong in a worldly since and knowing right from wrong spiritually are two different things. As far as American law is concerned right now abortion is legal. To an unregenerate heart who does not know God, that makes it acceptable. Whether we like it or not, that is the reality.
This does not let those who get an abortion off the hook. Romans tells us all mankind is without excuse (Romans 1:20) and we will be held accountable for our sin. But until a person comes to Christ their knowledge is limited to worldly knowledge and easily swayed.
There doesn’t seem to be a clear stance or point here. If I had to summarize it, here’s what I got:
“Joe says they know it’s murder…that is true, but not totally true, here’s why…BUT that doesn’t let them off the hook! God says they’re accountable…But their knowledge is swayed until they find Christ…”
So, they’re accountable to God for knowing that what they’re doing is murder? Well, that was my original point.
The Inadequacy of Crying Murder
Should we confront their sin? Absolutely, because unless a person knows they are a sinner in need of salvation, they cannot be saved. But merely beating them over the head with their sin is not and never has been effective to bring one to saving faith.
I agree, I never said to not share the gospel, and only share sin. I simply have an emphasis on precisely defining the sin of child sacrifice because the majority of our culture doesn’t.
In the story of the adulterous woman in John chapter 8 the pharisees brought her to Jesus and told Him she was caught in an affair. They asked if they should follow the law and stone her. Jesus’ response was to ignore them. When they persisted, he responded with “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her”. Notice he did not turn to her with a condemning voice saying, “You wicked adulterer, you need to repent or you’re going to hell!”. He didn’t even speak to her at first. Instead, he brought the hypocritical Pharisees to shame by reminding them her sin is no worse than theirs.
It was not until the pharisees left Jesus said “Go and sin no more” but first he showed her compassion and grace.
I actually covered this objection in my post “Does the Bible Condone Abortion?” This passage is regarding a civil penalty under the Mosaic law, which Jesus wrote himself.
Mosaic law required that there needs to be at least 2 witnesses to confidently declare guilt, and that the man and the women would need to be put to death for the crime of adultery. It also required that the witnesses be the first to cast the stone.
If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 20:10
“A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.
Deuteronomy 19:15
then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones. On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
Deuteronomy 17:5–7
It appears in this passage that the witnesses and the man were not present. Instead of upholding justice without partiality, the pharisees were set on testing Jesus (like they’ve been doing consistently throughout the gospels).
This was Jesus upholding the Mosaic law, not violating it. Jesus didn’t hand-waive the law he wrote to let someone off the hook. Even if the women really did commit adultery (Jesus knows everything, this is likely why he said “Go and sin no more”), the fact is that the pharisees did not follow the correct process of declaring guilt in the presence of men to meet the conditions for the civil penalty to be executed.
Moving further, if we take this to mean that, since we’re all sinners, we shouldn’t uphold justice, then shouldn’t we just remove all of our laws? We can legalize rape again, because hey, you lie to your spouse, right? Aren’t we all just sinners?
Political Christianity makes the mistake of placing the overwhelming majority of their focus on getting in the sinner’s face with condemnation for their sin. In the case of our discussion, Joe spent the majority of his time on the “murderer” subject and then at the end spoke a few sentences about salvation.
How did I get in the sinners face with condemnation? Was there any part in the video I said “These moms have no hope, they’re murderers, and I’m excited for them to burn”? I talked about their sin for more minutes on the episode because thats the very thing we’re arguing about.
In this passage Jesus tells us when we minister to others, we are ministering to Him. Notice the words “I was in prison” which would include murderers. We need to lose this irrational fear that ministering to sinners is condoning their sin. Jesus healed sinners. He ate with sinners. He spoke kindly to sinners. Yet we think we are supposed shout at sinners with condemnation.
The amazing thing about showing compassion first is they will see Christ in us. This causes them to hunger and thirst for Him and when we explain our sin is what separates us from Him, the Holy Spirit will bring conviction and lead them to salvation.
If your point is that I don’t speak kindly to sinners and only focus on sin, I’m not sure what basis your making that claim?
I’ve never personally called someone a “murderer” at the clinic or online, especially not in an unhelpful, condemning way. But I have absolutely said “Please don’t murder your child.” That’s a true loving appeal.
Here’s an article documenting one of my times preaching at a clinic, you might want to see some of the stuff we said
Again, I think you’re taking my emphasis on making sure we’re correctly calling abortion murder because of our cultural decay, and taking it as “thats all Joe cares about.” The word “murder” is descriptive. The only reason it becomes offensive is because its drawing out the Image of God in the Mom and her knowledge of God’s righteous decree.
In Matthew 22 a lawyer came up to Jesus and asked what the greatest commandment is. Jesus didn’t say, thou shalt not kill as Joe references so frequently. Instead, He said, love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul”. Why? Because it all starts there.
You see what most political Christians don’t seem to understand is, you can address the sin, make someone feel guilty for that sin, and even create laws to stop law-abiding citizens from committing those sins, but until they have a desire for God which leads to surrender, they will still be dying and going to hell.
You’re right, until they have a desire for God through the regenerating power of the holy spirit, they will go to Hell. That’s a description, I’m not sure what that has to do with what we’re talking about? I’ve never claimed that people go to heaven by hearing about their sin and following our laws.
The Christian fight against abortion is not simply a fight for the life of a baby. It must also include a fight for the souls of the mothers who abort those babies.
There are 3 movements in our culture regarding the fight for abortion.
Pro-choice: The Mom should be able to murder her baby on-demand, it is not a sin to do so.
Pro-life: The Mom should not be able to murder her baby, but she is also a victim, and should never be criminalized under any circumstances.
Abolitionist: The Mom should not be able to murder her baby, and if she does she should be criminalized because it is sin to murder someone, and she needs Jesus as the only savior for her depraved condition.
Which one of these camps makes room for Jesus? The abolitionist camp. The minority camp. The other 2 are the MAJORITY viewpoint of our culture.
Ironically, the very movement ideology your critiquing (calling out sin more precisely / too much first) is the only camp that actually makes room for a savior in the first place.
P.S Here is a great resource from AR about the theology behind the movement.
Applying all of this to rape
I wanted to do something fun to wrap this up. I’ve obviously gone through a lot of Lee’s objections, but I wanted to circle back to the original reason this started…
I thought Lee framed his post wrongly. Although I know Lee wants to end child sacrifice, the vibe I got from the post was “instead of calling people to repent and trying to ban abortion, we should put more effort into helping adoption agencies, and if we don’t, that would be wrong.”
Is that what Lee meant? I don’t think so, but that’s how it read, and that’s how many people will take it.
Now was I right to get this vibe? To find out for sure, I took Lee’s post, and I substituted the topic of abortion with the topic of rape.
Let’s say for arguments sake that rape has been legal for the last 50 years in America because men wanted to retain “rape rights.”
This is a good parallel because
Rape is also worthy of the death penalty in God’s eternal law just like murder
Rape is something as Christians we know is detestable and evil
Here’s what it would look like:
I am extremely anti-rape, and my heart breaks that 1500 women a day have their bodies violated against their will. However, my wife and I were talking the other day, and she brought up a good point.
With all the screaming of “rapist!” and sanctity of the marriage bed, what I have not heard is a discussion about what we are going to do to help the 1500 rapists who for whatever reason need to or want to have sex with someone against their will. Sure, they can abstain, but let’s think about that.
1500 rapes a day, 365 days a year comes to 547,500 rapists EVERY YEAR that will not have their sexual needs met 😳
Do we have 547 thousand republicans who are willing to help relieve these rapists’ sexual frustration?
What are we going to do when there’s not enough people to marry these rapists?
I am not saying we should leave rape rights as they are. I am saying we need to come up with a plan for if and when they changed.
Does this post sound like legal rape is an actual problem? Or does it sound like we shouldn’t care about fighting it legally until we’ve got our act together on the practical support front? You decide ;)
The reason why this now sounds so bad (as opposed to the original post) is that rape is currently illegal in America. The law is a tutor, and it’s at least tutored us that rape is wrong. Our country, however, has turned away from God and legalized child sacrifice.
The solution is not to give any more ground to our enemies by contrasting adoption strategy and gospel preaching. We need both.
We need to preach about this, and we also need to criminalize abortion, not only to save babies lives, not only to love our neighbor, not only to deter future murders…
But to teach our culture as well.
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