A lot of Christians think that taking the Lord's name in vain means nothing more than uttering a swear word or yelling, "Oh my God" in horror as the opposing team intercepts a pass and takes it 65 yards the other way. But the Lord did not issue this commandment simply to prohibit slips of the tongue and overly emotional exclamations during football games. If you want to know what taking the Lord's name in vain really sounds like -- and why it's considered such a grave moral violation -- all you have to do is watch the end of last night's vice presidential debate.
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In fact all you really need to do is listen anytime a pro-abortion "Christian," particularly a Democrat politician, speaks up to defend their position. After all, when a Christian who endorses the slaughter of innocent children is called to justify this detestable and heretical view, there are only two ways he can respond: 1) he may break down in tears, fall to the floor, repent of his wickedness, and beg God to forgive him for allying himself with Satan, or 2) he may further defile the holy name of the Lord by publicly claiming that faith in Him could rationally lead one to a belief in systematic baby murder.
I have yet to see a Democrat select the first option.
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine speaks with Moderator Elaine Quijano of CBS News as Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence, not seen listens during the vice-presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Instead, every time, they do what Tim Kaine did at the debate. They betray Christ with a kiss and a few sly talking points about the importance of "reproductive choice." Last night, when Mike Pence smartly introduced the subject of abortion, Kaine -- a rabid pro-choicer who believes that abortion at all stages should be legal, including partial birth abortion, and who has been rewarded with perfect grades from Planned Parenthood and NARAL for his slavish devotion to their agenda -- lied and pretended that his faith and his abortion views are not in conflict. He even quoted Scripture in his own defense, practically daring God to strike him down with a lightning bolt right there on stage. That is taking the Lord's name in vain.
And it's more than that, of course. Christians who support abortion are guilty of creating scandal, leading others away from God and into evil. I should note that Jesus said it would be better to jump into the sea with a stone tied around your neck than to cause someone else to sin. Not that I'm urging Tim Kaine to drown himself. I'm simply telling you what Christ had to say on the subject.
These Christians are also guilty of denying countless passages in Scripture and rejecting some of the most fundamental and foundational doctrines of our faith. In other words, they're guilty of renouncing their faith completely. They're guilty of being religious hypocrites who confess the faith from their mouths but deny it with their deeds and in their hearts. This, bear in mind, is the definition of hypocrisy. Not to say one thing and do the opposite (that's called being weak, and we're all guilty of that), but to say one thing and believe the opposite. A Christian who supports abortion cannot possibly believe what his faith actually teaches. A pro-choice Christian cannot possibly accept the Bible as the definitive Word of God.
At a minimum, he would have to tear out and discard Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139, and Psalm 127, which all speak about children being formed and made in the womb by God and given to us as a gift. He would have to extract those pesky Ten Commandments, which forbid the taking of innocent life. He would have to throw Luke chapter 1 into the shredder, which tells us that children are "filled with the Holy Spirit" even before they are born. Later on in the same chapter -- Luke was obviously an anti-choice propagandist -- we're told of John the Baptist "leaping in the womb" when Mary visits Elizabeth.
Clearly, you cannot believe that children are formed in the womb by God, given as a gift to us, and filled with the Holy Spirit while at the same time supporting legal abortion. Neither can you take "thou shall not kill" at face value while supporting abortion. Indeed, the only way to get around "thou shall not kill" is to deny the humanity of the unborn, but all of the verses I just mentioned make that impossible. So you must deny all of these verses to have abortion, or you must reject abortion and accept the verses. It's our faith or abortion. There is no "C: all of the above" option on this exam.
And, as clear cut as these Scripture passages are, we don't actually need them to prove that abortion and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible. We can't even get past the very beginning of the Old Testament or the very beginning of the New Testament without being smacked upside the head with a gigantic glowing sign that says, "PRO-LIFE."
Genesis 1:27 tells us that we were created "in the image of God." This is not just the starting point for our religion, but the basic foundation for human rights across the globe. If we are made in the image of God, then whatever violence we perpetrate against a fellow human, we perpetrate against God Himself. If there was any doubt about how that works, Christ made it clear in Matthew 25 when He said whatever we do to the least of these we do to Him.
I can think of no other way to justify human rights for anyone -- born or unborn -- without beginning here. And I don't believe anyone has ever successfully come up with a rationale for human rights apart from Imago Dei, although the secular humanists have been trying for centuries. But if we are Christian then we don't need to get around the religious implications.
We believe man is made in the image of God, and therefore a human being's life is a sacred and precious gift. It is, I would think, quite difficult to support the dismemberment and destruction of human life while believing that the lives being dismembered and destroyed are sacred gifts made in the image of God. And if you do somehow hold both beliefs simultaneously -- if you actually say to yourself, "Yes, a sacred life made in the image of God is being dismembered and destroyed in abortion but I'm cool with that" -- then you are something far worse than simply un-Christian. You are a Satanist. You are looking God directly in the face, acknowledging His existence, and spitting on Him anyway.
Some "Christian" Democrats try to get around this by saying they personally oppose abortion but they don't believe the government should get involved. I've already addressed this ridiculous hairsplitting elsewhere, but I'll say here again that it is incoherent to personally view something as murder yet defend someone's right to engage in it.
The only reason to personally oppose abortion in the first place, especially as a Christian, is that abortion takes the innocent life of a child who was created in the image of God. By definition, nobody can have a "right" to commit such an act. The baby, on the other hand, has the right to live. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that God has the right to bring the child into the world. Abortion infringes on the rights of God Almighty, and nobody has that kind of authority.
Again, you have to believe this if you are a Christian. You don't get an option. These are essential doctrines of our faith. And if you accept the doctrines, it is nonsensical to also accept the competing doctrine that a human being has a right to murder a life formed and sent forth into existence by an all loving and all powerful God.
Finally, we recall the beginning of the New Testament. It's rather an important story. In fact, we celebrate it every year during the advent and Christmas seasons. Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, was conceived in the womb and born into the world like every other child in history. Jesus Christ was a "fetus," if that's the word you want to use.
Unless you reject either Christ's divinity or his humanity -- and you can't, by the way -- then you must believe that Christ, as man, went through all of the same stages of development every other human goes through. Therefore if an unborn child is "only a blob of cells," then Christ was only a blob of cells. And if a blob of cells in the womb has no value, then Christ had no value. To say that Christ had value in the womb while every other baby does not is to say that Christ was not really fully human, which, as we discussed, is a heresy.
Pro-choice Christians like to say that Christ never said anything about abortion. Well, He didn't have to say anything about it. Rather than say something about it, He literally became an unborn child. If there were any doubts up until that point about the sanctity of life in the womb, they were officially put to bed in the first glorious and miraculous moment of Christ's incarnation. Christ lifted all of humanity, including unborn humanity, to Himself when He became man. We were all "sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ" (Hebrews 10:10), and there is no doubt that the unborn are included in that sanctification considering the fact that Christ ventured into the womb Himself and was unborn before He was born.
Leave it to modern day Christians to argue that a God who chose to physically exist inside a woman's womb for nine months "didn't have anything to say about abortion." Abortion is perhaps the modern "social issue" about which he had the most to say. God was an unborn child. Period. I shouldn't need to move from there to quoting Jeremiah and the Book of Psalms. God was an unborn child. Did you get the message, Tim Kaine? It's not that hard to understand.
It's time for pro-choice Christians to choose between the abortion industry and their faith. Clearly, Jesus did not intend to leave them any room in between.
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