Actually, Mrs. Vice President…
In America, it’s a few days out from the debate and there is still a lot of talk happening about the debate, what was said, and who won the debate.
This is good, people should be talking about the debate. Elections are important. Elections matter. As Allie Beth Stuckey likes to put it, “Politics matter because policy matters because people matter.” Politics affect which policies and laws come to fruition and those laws and policies affect people, guys.
I know there are a lot of people in the Christian realm that try to stay out of politics because there is a lot of turmoil in politics and it can get ugly. In fact, I saw a friend post on another friend’s political post, “Can we just love like Jesus did and not talk about politics?”
Man, I wish it was that easy. If all we had to do was love like Jesus the world would look a lot different. There is a pesky little problem though, nobody can agree on how exactly to love like Jesus did. There are non-Christians weighing in on the subject, calling out anybody who mentions sin as being unloving. There are Christians who misinterpret the Bible or omit verses to help their own worldview that doesn’t match the Bible. There are Christians that point to biblical truth and get called legalistic. I’m going to stop myself here because this could be its own post just on this topic right here. I did start talking about it a little bit though in another post, if you are curious.
After decades and decades of being told that Christians need to keep their religion out of politics, out of state matters, out of government, Christians have begun to believe it. Christians have become quiet and are afraid to rock the boat. Christians have allowed themselves to believe the lie that their worldview has no place in government because it comes from God. Christians have believed that if their beliefs and stances come from God or the Bible, they have no place in government.
Ugh. Now we have another pesky problem. Let’s just take a glance at the Declaration of Independence— “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Dang, we have to keep our religion out of government yet, our rights don’t come from the government. The founding fathers clearly state where our rights come from. “their Creator” is clearly a point to the Big Guy Upstairs. So I can’t bring my biblical worldview into my politics because why?
Wait, wait! There’s the first amendment! That tells us that we are to have freedom of religion! That’s why Christians have been told for decades to keep their opinions to themselves and to not bring their Christianity to the politics. Well, the first amendment makes it so that “congress cannot make a law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”
One of the definitions of “respect” is to hold in high or special regard. The first amendment isn’t telling Christians that they cannot hold a biblical worldview when it comes to politics or even government. The first amendment protects Christians from being told that Atheism is now the religion of America and we have to follow it. Remember when the Pope and high priests used to have a lot of say over what happened in government, especially in England? Well, probably not because we didn’t live through it. We see it throughout history though.
Now, for the end of our history lesson, I am going to bring up the “separation between church and state” argument that some are probably thinking about. It would be hard not to think about that argument because it has been taught to us for decades. I remember hearing about it from my history teachers in middle and high school. Is separation between church and state in the Constitution though? What about the Declaration of Independence? The answer to both those questions is no. It isn’t. Check out this article about where the phrase comes from and how Thomas Jefferson was using it when he wrote it to a church. It is also worth noting that the government only gets its power from the people. That is why we have elections. This is why every election matters, especially the local elections. We get to vote for the president but the local elections decide who represent us in government. We cannot only pay attention to the presidential election every four years and think that is enough of our political dabbling for the time being.
Alright, history lesson over. Why does any of this matter? I mentioned the debate earlier. I mentioned how people are talking about it and as I said, it is good that people are talking about it. A lot was said during the debate and I think a lot wasn’t said during the debate. A lot of non-answering of questions, for starters. That could be another post for another day though. Something was said last night that I want to talk about. Something that at face value sounds good, right, and possibly even true. This goes into what I said in my previous post about why words matter and how we need to mean what we say. In that post I also say we need to dig deeper. We need to check meaning. We need to check context. So that is what we’re about to do. We are going to check context and meaning in a statement that was said by Vice President Kamala Harris.
In last night’s debate, she said, “One does not have to abandon their faith, or deeply held beliefs, to agree that the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”
At face value, I would bet that most of us would agree with that statement. I don’t believe the government has any place to tell me what to do with my body. However, if you didn’t watch the debate, if you are just hearing that quote or reading it online, you miss the context of the quote. This was said during the abortion topic during the debate. The Pro-Choice or Pro-Abortion side of the abortion debate claim that not allowing abortion is the government telling us what to do with our bodies.
This is simply untrue. The government is not telling you what to do with your bodies. In fact, banning abortion is telling you what to not do to your bodies. However, in the case of abortion, we are not talking about your bodies, ladies. Terminating a pregnancy is stopping the life of an unborn baby. Unborn babies, while inside women’s bodies, are completely separate from the woman’s body. This is a separate body, this is a separate life. There are just a bunch of euphemisms and slang words to cover the truth of what abortion is. We have things that sound good and sound right but when we dig a little deeper, we see a completely different meaning.
In fact, this argument of the government telling women what to do with their bodies is annoying to me because of how untrue it actually is. Let’s dig a little deeper. What would it look like for the government to tell us what to do with our bodies? Well, it doesn’t look like allowing us to kill innocent babies before they are born.
“We are not talking about your bodies, ladies.”
Let’s take a look at the novella, Anthem by Ayn Rand. (This link is not the book I used for source, check source information at the bottom of the post for specific book. The link is provided if you wanted to check out the book yourself.) In this novella, we meet Equality 7-2521, who lives in a world where there is no individuality. Equality 7-2521 starts writing (this novella is almost like a diary of storytelling) with “It is a sin to write this.” (Rand, Pg 17). As the first chapter goes on, we learn that Equality 7-2521 speaks in the plural because there are no individuals. “We have a curse.” “We are twenty-one years old.” “We are six feet tall.” (Rand, Pg 17) As time goes on, we see that children are raised by the state, by the government. There is the “Home of Infants” where the babies are raised until they go to “Home of Students” when they turn five. After that, when they turn fifteen, men get to work. They go before the “Council of Vocation” and they are told what their vocation will be. From there they get sent off to the house that homes those in that vocation. In the spring, there is the “Time of Mating” where men older than twenty and women older than eighteen are sent to the Palace of Mating (Rand Pg. 41) It is one night of mating. Babies are born in the fall/winter and they never know their parents. Parents never know their kids. They are told when to rise, what to speak, (they have a mantra they speak at bedtime), when they can socialize (three hours at the end of the day, in a specific location), when they go to sleep. They are not allowed to have hobbies and anything that isn’t permitted by law is forbidden by law.
In two short chapters you can see a very clear, albeit fictional, picture of what it would look like for the government to tell you what you can do to your bodies. In this novella, the people have zero personal choice. There are no hobbies, there is no friendships. To have friendships would be committing the Sin of Preference.
If you don’t want to read a classic book, we can look to dystopian novels of the modern day. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins became really popular and when they announced the movie was coming, people were outraged because it appeared as though society was glorifying the idea of children killing children. The whole premise of The Hunger Games is how the government was in charge and controlled everybody and told them what they could and could not do with their bodies. They had some freedoms. They had more freedoms than our friend Equality 7-2521 had. Regardless, they didn’t have a choice about being throne into a raffle of death. Let’s not forget that if you needed more government help, you had to put your name in more times for the drawing. There is the YA series, Matched where you are assigned a spouse from the government when you are a teenager and that is who you will be marrying. Then there was the novel, Uninvited, where if you had a certain gene (called the kill gene, which they believed if you had this gene you would eventually kill someone) you were deemed a second class citizen and were told what you could and could not do. Your freedoms were revoked out of fear of what you might do.
Now, a lot of the modern day dystopian novels have some freedoms, the overall theme of government control, overreaching, and lack of freedoms is still evident, despite the freedoms we see these fictional characters have. I will also point out that a lot of the dystopian novels end up being series as we watch the main character rebel against the government.
Some might read this and think that Pro-Choice advocates are doing the good work then. That is what they are doing. They are rebelling against the government that tells them they cannot do something.
The government also tells us not to steal. The government tells us not to hurt each other. The government has a lot of laws, many that are similar to the ten commandments even, yet, we are not rebelling against those. I don’t need my Christian worldview though to tell me that abortion is wrong. Abortion is ending the life of an unborn baby. It is the termination of a pregnancy. Being pregnant is to have an unborn offspring within the body. Banning abortion is not the government telling you what to do with your body. Banning abortion is telling you what you cannot do to someone else’s body, which is something we have entrusted government to help facilitate. Hence all the laws and elections for representatives.
“Banning abortion is not the government telling you what to do with your. body. Banning abortion is the government telling you what you cannot do to someone else’s body.”
When we dig a little deeper, we see that in order to follow Vice President Harris’s sentiment to not want the government to tell us what to do with our bodies, we do have to abandon our beliefs in the value of life. In the context of which she is speaking, she is advocating for abortion. Based on other aspects, like her running mate’s track record and the abortions that were given freely at the DNC, it is easy to see that Vice President Harris supports any and all abortion. Her own record in California and the things she has voted against also point to this. Without her saying anything explicitly* during the debate though, even when she was pushed to answer by President Trump in the debate about whether or not she supports abortion in the 7th, 8th, or 9th month, she pointed the finger back at him and didn’t answer the question. The things we didn’t answer are just as much of an answer as the things we say. What we say and what we don’t say should always be evaluated.
I agree that the government shouldn’t tell us what to do with our bodies, however, upon looking at the context and looking at what it would mean for the government to actually tell us what to do with our bodies, her sentiment rings false. It would take me abandoning my beliefs in order to support abortion. The crazy part is that I don’t have to even claim my christian beliefs as the reason for why I am against abortion. The laws we have as a country tell me that we value life. It’s why we don’t have a yearly purge like in the horror movies. It is why, when lives are ended, the government and authorities hold someone accountable. We value life in America. To allow abortion would be to go against those values, regardless if you are a Christian or not.
However, if you are a Christian, the Bible tells us clearly what a blessing children are. We see how Jesus values children in the gospels. We see how God feels about murder in the ten commandments and in the laws he gives the Israelites. The Christian should know very well how God feels about the topic of abortion, despite the fact that abortion is never explicitly named in the Bible. However, we see in America that we do value life, it shows up in our laws. I don’t need to be a Christian to be against abortion. Again, to follow the sentiment of what the Vice President was trying to convey, it would take abandoning my beliefs to support the very thing she is advocating for in her words.
Context matters, this is why we always need to dig deeper, find the meaning and to not take everything at face value.
“To follow what the Vice President is advocating for, I would have to abandon my beliefs.”
*During the debate, Vice President Harris did say that she wanted to reinstate the protections granted in Roe V. Wade. Roe V. Wade wasn’t a law or actual legislature though. Therefore, it was on the states to decide any and all limits to abortion. This is why we cannot have laws come through the Supreme Court. The Court doesn’t make laws, it creates precedent with its rulings. This is why the Dobbs ruling was able to overturn Roe V. Wade. All this ruling did was put the decision in state’s hands to then go and create laws for their states.
I could go on and on about this topic (abortion) and the flawed arguments. However, there are people who have already done tremendous work in this area. Check out Allie Beth Stuckey’s podcast, “Relatable.” She has talked about abortion many, many times.
Works Cited:
Rand, Ayn. Anthem. New York City, First Plume Printing, 2005.