As we approach Sanctity Of Life Sunday, I want to encourage you to embrace a reasonable pro-life view. And by “reasonable,” I do not mean “compromising.” I mean that pro-lifers need to use sound reasoning to make their case. That means using science, philosophy, and clear thinking to convince others of the wrongness of abortion. Approaching it that way can be wildly effective. It may even convince a raving atheist to take God seriously.
Don’t Lead With The Bible
One way to promote a reasonable pro-life view may sound shocking to my Christian readers, but here it is — Don’t lead with the Bible.
The inclination to do so may be tempting. After all, the Bible supports the pro-life message. And the authority of the Bible deserves respect. I certainly have no disagreement with either of those points. But there are two reasons you shouldn’t lead with the Bible. They are both tactical. First, the Bible doesn’t have much to say about the particulars of abortion itself. Second, and more importantly, most people who defend abortion “rights” couldn’t care less what the Bible says about anything anyway.
That’s why it’s important to be reasonable. Your goal is to make effective arguments, not convert unbelievers. But being a reasonable pro-life advocate can lead to both.
Silence Does Not Equal Consent
Searching the Bible for the word “abortion” will generally get you zero results. The word just isn’t in there. But “silence” does not equal consent. The Bible is silent on many things. As my friend Scott Klusendorf puts it:
“The Bible does not expressly condemn … racial discrimination against blacks, killing abortion doctors as a means of fighting abortion, or lynching gay people, and yet [no one is arguing] that these acts are morally justified.”
What the Bible is clear about is the nature and value of human life. And that means it exhorts us to protect children, pursue justice, and refrain from shedding innocent blood.
Each of these is central to the pro-life message. And each of these points will work well with those who share the convictions of your faith. But for the majority of those who defend abortion, none of them apply. Any discussion of them will fall on deaf ears for a very specific reason.
Changing The Subject
When you lead with the Bible in our contemporary culture, people who defend abortion will dismiss your argument with the wave of a hand. They won’t engage you because they see your position as just another religious claim. And because it’s “religious,” they think it has no bearing on reality. Here’s how it works:
You invoke the Bible. They point out that the Bible doesn’t mention abortion directly. You explain the “tangential” evidence I mentioned above.
Voila! You’re on a rabbit trail.
Before you know it, you’re in a debate about biblical inerrancy, or the proper translation of some specific word, or the cultural context of a passage. There is no discussion of the unborn’s value as a full-fledged member of the human family. Nobody is talking about whether it’s right to take the life of an innocent human being. For that matter, you have lost the opportunity to make the case that the unborn even is a human being.
In short, leading with the Bible gives an abortion supporter a short cut to changing the subject. And changing the subject is their primary goal.
Being Reasonable
Instead of leading with the Bible, be tactical. Maybe you’re explaining your position. Or you might be responding to some justification for abortion. No matter what you’re doing, the first thing that should pop into your mind is a simple question:
“What is the unborn?”
“If it’s not a human being, no justification for abortion is necessary. If it is a human being, no justification for abortion is sufficient.”
The science of embryology tells us that the unborn is a human being from the moment of conception. Philosophy tells us there are only four differences between you today and the embryo you once were. They are differences in size, level of development, environment (location), and degree of dependency. None of those differences is morally significant. And none of them justify being able to kill you when you were an embryo but not now. This is the core of the pro-life argument we teach at the Life Training Institute. It’s a case you can make in Five Minutes or Less.
That’s reasonable.
A Bigger Point
As thinking human beings, we have a moral obligation to clarify the status and defend the value of innocent, unborn human life. But I bring this up for another reason. Engaging in the pro-life project is also a way to make the case for the truth of Christianity in general. The scientific, philosophical, and moral arguments we offer in defense of the humanity of the unborn also happen to align exactly with the biblical notion of what it means to be a human being made “in the image of God.” So, it stands to reason that if the Bible gets that right, it also has something to say about other matters of importance.
This is a point that was driven home for me in a very concrete way by an article I read in Salvo magazine about the story of a “raving atheist.”
I didn’t call him that. He did.
Raving Atheist Meets Reason
The “Raving Atheist” was a secular skeptic, law school professor, and renowned blogger. He regularly mocked religious believers as deluded “Godiots.” But one day he attended a blogger meeting where he serendipitously sat next to a Catholic blogger named Benjamin. As the “Raving Atheist” explains:
“At one point the conversation turned to abortion, and I asked Benjamin’s opinion of the practice. I was stunned. Here was a kind, affable, and cogently reasonable human being who nonetheless believed that abortion was murder. To the limited extent I had previously considered the issue, I believed abortion to be completely acceptable, the mere disposal of a lump of cells, perhaps akin to clipping fingernails.”
Benjamin the blogger wasn’t just throwing slogans around. He was being reasonable. And the impact of his thinking about the injustice of abortion was hard to ignore.
Benjamin’s Blog
The “Raving Atheist” left the blogger meeting, but Benjamin’s reasonableness didn’t leave him. As he put it:
“This unsettling exchange spurred me to further investigate the issue on Benjamin’s blog. I noticed that pro-choice Christians did not employ scientific or rational arguments but relied on a confusing set of ‘spiritual’ platitudes. More significantly, the pro-choice atheistic blogosphere also fell short in its analysis of abortion. The supposedly ‘reality-based’ community either dismissed abortion as a ‘religious issue’ or paradoxically claimed that pro-life principles were contrary to religious doctrine. Having formerly equated atheism with reason, I was slowly growing uncertain of the value of godlessness in the search for truth.”
Though the “Raving Atheist” continued to rave about mindless religious people on his own blog, there was now a stone in his God-rejecting shoe. That stone was placed there by a reasonable pro-life view. He couldn’t disconnect himself from it. Later, the “Raving Atheist” admitted that the “selfless dedication [of pro-life advocates] to their cause moved [him] deeply.”
Ashli’s Actions
Then he met a woman named Ashli whose work in a pregnancy care center drew him to further consider the pro-life position. Soon thereafter, the “Raving Atheist” became, in part, a pro-life blog site. The response was not cordial:
“[My writing] stirred an angry mutiny among my readers. But I had become convinced that the secular world had it wrong on the very foundational issue of life … The tangible expression of pro-life work was life itself. It was becoming clear to me that people who lived out their Christian faith were happier and better people as a result … [Then] I saw [a] woman’s sonogram ripen into a baby. In honor of Ashli’s efforts, I vowed that the birth of the child would be the death of atheism on my blog. Late that month I announced that I would no longer mock God on my site.”
And the rest, as they say, is history. The hard-core atheist became open to considering theism because of his encounters with some reasoned pro-life thinking.
Today he is a Christian theist.
An Approach Worth Thinking About
To be sure, there were other factors that contributed to the “Raving Atheist’s” conversion. But the simple fact remains that it was the cogency of the Case For Life, and the concrete reality of the injustice of abortion, which led him to doubt his atheism. A reasonable pro-life view made him realize that Christianity offered a better explanation for the world as we know and experience it. And the actions of a dedicated pro-life worker sealed the deal.
Defending life is a moral imperative in itself. But it is more than that. Being able to make the case against the injustice of abortion is also enough to turn a raving atheist toward a saving faith. It turns out that making the case for life and engaging in evangelism are not mutually exclusive. A reasonable pro-life view may give you both.