This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability: filler words and the mid-show announcements have been removed. It may still contain transcription errors.

Hello friends, welcome to The Case for Life podcast. I want to talk today about something that was raised in a Q&A that I was involved in. The questioner said the following. Is it okay or more accurately, can Christians fellowship together when they differ so radically on moral and political issues? I want to talk about that because my answer might surprise some of you. Welcome to The Case for Life podcast. Today we want to help you think more clearly about your pro-life convictions and give you the tools you need to do just that.

I want to remind you that we have a course up called Prolife 101 where in just one week using just a few minutes a day you can master the moral logic of the pro-life view and be adept at defending the unborn in the womb. The question was very interesting because it came at the end of a speaking event and this sister, I’ll call her a sister in the Lord because I believe she was a believer, raised a concern she had. She said, you know, I see more and more Christians becoming polarized on issues of politics and morality.

And this polarization bothers me because it seems to interrupt fellowship. And wouldn’t it be better if somehow as Christians we could just ignore our political differences and come to church with one heart and one mind in the spirit of unity to just worship the Lord and dive into scripture and leave it at that. And again she had a very good concern. It is true we should be on the lookout for things that disrupt Christian fellowship and unduly disrupt Christian unity. She’s not wrong about that.

The problem is this. The old political divide is not the new political divide. Here was the old political divide. You had Republicans and you had Democrats and they disagreed on the means of solving the very problems they did agree on existed. For example, Republicans and Democrats would agree that poverty was a problem, but they disagreed on how to solve it. They would agree that there is a need for national defense. But they disagreed on how best to pursue national defense. Those are the kinds of issues that I think there’s a lot of wiggle room for Christians to discuss and differ on.

They’re not issues of orthodoxy. However, the new political has become in large sense the moral. We may wish that weren’t so, but it is so. For example, you’ve got one political party now that says boys can be girls that is willing to promote surgeries that mutilate children so they can become a different gender if they think they are a different gender. You also have a major political party here arguing that it’s okay to intentionally kill innocent human beings in the womb.

And they will attempt to squash anybody who says otherwise. You’ve got a major political party that has redefined marriage away from a covenant relationship between one man and one woman to a contract where you can marry your canary if you want to as my colleague Greg Kokal points out about the culture today. In other words, on these big moral issues, it is no longer a political debate about how can we best pursue common objectives we agree on. It is now a political divide between a party that is rushing headlong to deconstruct all that is moral and good and another party that to some extent is willing to show some restraint, though never enough restraint to satisfy me at this point.

So that’s the divide that confronts Christians. And the question becomes, if you are committed to the sanctity of life in the womb, if you’re committed to marriage being the best institution for not only preserving the family structure, but also helping society flourish. If you’re committed to the fact that God created male and female and called each of them good and that genders are God-given, not man constructed, can you legitimately fellowship with people who reject all of that? And I’m going to go out on a limb here.

I may tick some of you off and too bad. I’m going to say no. I’m going to say that in the old political sense, yes, you could fellowship. But in today’s world, I don’t know how I could possibly fellowship with someone who denies and seeks to undermine politically all that I see as good, true, and beautiful. Now, again, people are going to say, “Oh, there you go. You’re throwing Christian unity out the door.” No, I’m taking a stand on non-negotiables. It is not good for society.

It is not good for those who claim the name of Christ to affirm and actively work to deconstruct things that are necessary for our working order together. These are things I don’t think Christians can just overlook. I know for me, I’m just going to speak for myself here just at the feeling level before we go deeper into just the doctrinal issues. But on the feeling level, I will just tell you, I feel much more at home having dinner with secular atheists who affirm my moral convictions than I do progressive Christians who deny them.

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m fellowshipping with a secular atheist, but I’m not sure I’m fellowshipping with progressive Christians either. Now, I do want to say this. I do have friends who are progressive Christians, and I break bread with them in terms of having dinner with them. I’ll hang out. We might hang out by the fire pit and enjoy an evening conversing. I’m okay with that. I’m not saying you can’t be friends with people who differ from you fundamentally on political and moral issues.

But I am saying if you’re a committed pro-lifer, how do you find the common ground to have Christian fellowship with people who deny the image of God and the unborn? Who deny that right and wrong are real and God-given, who deny that God assigned the sexes at creation, and who look at marriage as something we’re free to rearrange any way we want. I don’t know how biblically you fellowship with people like that. Where’s the common ground? In fact, I will tell you this, and again, I’m speaking anecdotally here without the benefit of presenting an empirical study, but everyone, and I do mean 100% of my progressive friends not only are pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and protransgenderism, but they also deny fundamental Christian doctrines like the substit stitutionary penal atonement of Christ on the cross.

They deny that Christ is the only way to salvation. They’re religious pluralists. These are things that don’t fit comfortably. In fact, they don’t fit at all within the framework of a biblical worldview. So, allow me to talk to you for a moment. If you’re at a church that is denying essential Christian truth, and I’m going to tell you this as lovingly as I can as I can, I don’t think you’re going to be able to change that church. As Churchill famously pointed out in the early 1920s and early 1930s when he was trying to warn England that Germany was rearming and he was doing his best to get the government to take the Nazis seriously, he said, “I found that it’s impossible to carry out a grand scheme from a number two position or from a subordinate position.” In other words, when you’re not in the leadership structure of an institution like a church, you’re going to find it nearly impossible to change the direction it’s going.

So, here’s what I would say to you. If you’re in a church that denies the truth of the pro-life position, denies that marriage is between a man and a woman, denies that genders are assigned by God and they are good the way they are and we are not free to remake them. If you’re in a church that denies those moral truths that some would call merely political, get out. You’re not in a church that’s biblically grounded. You need to find one that’s going to affirm those moral truths.

Now again, we’re going to get the push back, oh, you’re just being judgmental. You’re just being unduly critical. But where in the Bible does it say we’re not to judge? Now, I know what people are going to say, “Oh, Jesus said, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” Okay, fine. Are you willing to read the rest of that chapter, or do you want to just stop with your selected verse? Because in that same chapter and elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus makes it very clear that we are to judge, but we’re to do so righteously.

And one of the ways we righteously judge is to ask the tough question, does this particular belief or political position or theological position line up with scripture as we know it? We should discriminate based on that question. We shouldn’t make room for error. It is not somehow a blessing of unity to wink while fundamental Christian truths are tread aunder. We should not do that. And Jesus was clear that we do need to judge. He drew distinction between sheep and wolves. He even called the Pharisee names.

He said, “Your father is the devil.” that’s pretty strong language. That seems judgmental. So if Jesus was saying we’re to never judge, why did he use language like that? He called the Pharisees snakes. Again, you are of your father the devil. That’s pretty strong rhetoric. I think Jesus was pointing to something that goes way beyond drawing conclusions about right from wrong that are somehow petty. He was pointing to our need to call out evil and clarify it for what it is.

So, I say to you gently as I can, if you find yourself in a church that denies the truth of the pro-life position, promotes evil wholesale, and preaches moral truth that they think is true, but is actually false, you need to get out. You’re not going to change that church. I know so many people who think, “I’m just going to stay because I think I can make a difference.” Meanwhile, you’re supporting that church as it purports to spread evil with your tithing, with your resources.

You don’t want to do that. No relationship is worth it for you to deny fundamental biblical truth. And the Bible is clear that all humans have value because they bear the image of God. And thus, the shedding of innocent blood is strictly forbidden. We know from the science of embryology, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Therefore, the commands against the shedding of innocent blood apply to the unborn like they do everybody else. Don’t fool around with people who want to dismiss these distinctions as being merely political.

Abortion is not merely a political issue. It is a moral issue that entails political responsibility. If you were a Christian in 1860 and a pastor stood up in a church and said, you know, we should not allow ourselves to get caught up in political issues like slavery. We should not let our differences about the right and wrong of slavery divide us from fellowship. And imagine the pastor said, “Look, fellowship with each other is more important than these pett petty political issues.” I think you would look at him and say, “Pastor, does each other include the slave, the black man?

Aren’t you assuming something here?” None of these arguments work once we state them explicitly as a justification for intentionally killing an innocent human being. And if your pastor won’t grapple with the issue, what is the unborn? He won’t grapple with the issue, are they members of the human family or not? And if he presents no arguments for why you should ditch your pro-life convictions other than phony appeals to not judging and not getting political and oh your motives are all wrong.

You just want to advance your political agenda. And he never makes an attempt to refute your pro-life arguments. He is intellectually lazy. He’s a wolf. Get out. Find a church that is biblically grounded. And if you can’t find one, email us. We’ll try to help you find one. It’s vitally important you have biblically grounded fellowship. Now, when we come back, I want to take up an aspect of this that also came up in a Q&A that has to do with what do you do when you’ve got people you’re close to who disagree with you on abortion and they claim to be Christian?

What do you do? What are some things you can do to begin to move the conversation forward? We’ll take that up when we jump back.

Hello friends. Before the break, we were grappling with this question. Can Christians have true fellowship with people who differ from us radically on moral issues like abortion, like same-sex marriage, like transgenderism, and the like. And my answer was, true Christian fellowship is built around shared principles, shared values, and a shared theology. And I don’t know in today’s world how you do that when people deny essential moral truths. And of course, the point I was trying to make is in the old world, maybe when I was growing up in the early 60s, even maybe into the mid70s, it was very common to draw a distinction that you could legitimately hold between a person’s political party affiliation and what they might hold to theologically.

Because political debates in yestery year tended to be about means to an agreed upon end. Both parties agreed that national defense was important, but they disagreed on how they ought to be prioritized. They both agreed that we ought to somehow solve the issue of poverty, but differed on how it ought to be done. Should it be done with a welfare state or should it be done by encouraging free market economies? That’s a legitimate debate Christians can have without violating core essential moral or theological doctrines.

They might have disagreed on how we ought to educate our kids. But again, that could be discussed within a fair-minded exchange on shared values. The problem today is this. We have two political parties that are going in radically different directions. Party A wants to promote wholesale, and I do mean promote wholesale. Things like intentionally killing the unborn in the womb, redefining marriage to whatever you want it to be, and affirming transgender desires, and treating mental illness as if it’s a legitimate right we ought to protect in law and punish anybody who won’t affirm that transgender desire.

I don’t know how as a Christian you can legitimately fellowship with people who work politically to promote those evils. And my answer is if you’re in a church that is promoting those evils and looking the other way on what is clear biblical truth, you need to change churches. But I do want to address this question as well. And that is how do we engage people we’re close to who seem to be drifting toward those things? And I think it’s very important for you to not fall into this fake sense of humility that says, “Well, I don’t want to be appearing to be proud because I’m correcting someone.” In fact, I had a progressive pastor say to me, “Scott, the problem with you is you’re always wanting to correct people and tell them they’re wrong.

We shouldn’t be correcting people.” Now, right away, you ought to be going, “-oh, something’s off here.” Notice what he said. We shouldn’t correct people, and you’re wrong to correct people. Well, of course, that raises the question, what was he doing to me? Obviously correcting me. Otherwise, he should just shut up. But no, he wanted to correct me. If it’s wrong to correct anybody, why is he correcting me? And this gets to the point I want to drive home. Everybody you’re talking to, and I do mean everybody, brings a world view to the table that they’re either arguing for explicitly or they’re assuming to be true and they’re going to try to get it past you without having to argue for it being true.

You are not being uncharitable. You are not being mean. You’re not being judgmental to either challenge their worldview or make a case for your own. That is not what scripture means when it says we shouldn’t judge. It was talking about us needing to judge righteously. It was not saying never make assessments about whether things are true and reasonable to believe. So as a Christian, don’t fall for this phony nic niceness that says, you know, as a Christian, let’s not disrupt fellowship.

Let’s stay committed on unity and therefore I’m not going to challenge anybody who holds a view that I think is wrong. Listen, if you believed your friend was about to swallow arsenic and you had good reason to believe that pill he’s taking is not aspirin, it’s arsenic. I got to believe you would aggressively assert your concern and you would intervene in that situation. Friends, what we’re talking about here when it comes to people denying essential Christian doctrine like the deity of Christ, like salvation being found in Jesus alone, like the substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross.

These are salvation issues, not just in this life, but eternally. You must intervene. And I would argue that on the moral issues, you must as well. And here’s why. You intervene not because you’re a partisan political hack. You intervene because you love your neighbor. You love your unborn neighbor and so you don’t want to see them systematically butchered in the womb. You love women who are often forced into abortions by men and others in their lives who pressure them to make a decision that is not morally correct.

You’re motivated by love for your neighbor when you say, “You know what? Marriage should be a man and a woman. And children deserve to grow up in a home with a mom and a dad because they flourish best in that structure. You’re not being narrow-minded and intolerant when you insist that gender is given by God at conception and that from the moment you begin to exist, God assigns your gender, not your own desire. Okay, that is a good thing to assert for.

And it’s also okay to say look people who are asserting transgenderism this is something of a mental distortion in their own minds and we need to help these people not affirm their insanity. So that is not being judgmental to stand on what a man and a woman really are that it’s not about what we desire. It’s not being intolerant to say children in the womb are human beings we ought not to intentionally kill. And it’s not being intolerant to say marriage needs to be between a man and a woman.

And of course, the problem is this. When you’re supporting a political party that wants to deconstruct all of that and tear down all of the structures that God has put in place for human flourishing, you have to ask the question, what do I have in common with people that want to do that tearing down? And it’s got to go deeper than, well, I just kind of like them. Listen, I told you before the break that I have progressive friends who claim to be Christian, but here’s a key thing.

I’m not treating them as Christians. And here’s why. I can’t treat them as Christians if they deny fundamental Christian doctrine. They deny substitutionary atonement. They deny moral issues that are central to the Christian sexual ethic and moral ethic. I do treat them as friends in the sense that I’m cordial. I hang out with them. I laugh at their jokes. I’ll share a supper with them. I’ll share a meal with them. I’ll even pay for it. And I haven’t cut them off.

And I think that’s the important distinction we need to make when you’re dealing with family members or friends who hold these views. Keep the relationship channel open. Don’t sacrifice your core convictions, but keep the relationship channel open. But when it comes to affirming Christian fellowship where I’m coming together with like-minded sinners, and yes, I am one. I’m a wretch just like you are. When I’m coming together with fellow wretches to both plead the mercy of God, call upon the blood of Jesus to save us from our sins, and worship God in his greatness, and affirm his moral laws.

I don’t know how I can do that with people who deny my need for a sinbearing Christ to deal with my sin problem. And I don’t know how I do that with people who deny essential Christian ethics. So, I would say this, fellowship with progressive Christians, no. Friendship with progressive Christians, yes. And by the way, if they push you to say, “Are you saying that I’m not a Christian?” I would suggest you don’t answer the question. Just say, “Let me tell you what I am saying.

We differ significantly on these issues. They are vitally important, and we better get to the bottom of who’s right. Because if I’m wrong, I want to change my mind in line up with truth. And if you’re wrong, eternity could be at stake. So these are these are weighty matters we need to be willing to grapple with. And I find it so disheartening when some spiritual leaders say to me, “Well, I don’t want to take these issues on. There’s no consensus on them in my church.” To which my reply is this, pastor, it is not your job to respect a consensus in your church.

It’s your job to forge a consensus and one that is biblically grounded and defended. That’s your job. You forge a consensus around biblical truth. You’re not there to respect people’s feelings. You’re there to convey eternal truths taught in scripture that are vital to the life of the Christian. And if you’re not doing that job, get out and do something else. But don’t stand in the pulpit as a voice of authority when you will not step forward courageously and forge consensus on issues.

You must be willing to do that. And will it cause some people to leave the church? Yes, it may. But you know what? They were never part of your church to begin with if they’re going to leave when you preach biblical truth. Oh, they might have shown up on a Sunday morning. Yeah. But were they part of what we call the invisible church? Those that are known by God that he’s drawn to his son. Are they part of that fellowship when they deny all the essential moral and theological truths?

The answer is no. And you shouldn’t be afraid to warn them about that. But don’t cut the relationship off. But I wouldn’t pretend to have fellowship. You know, I’m not going to say to my progressive Christian friends, I use that term Christian in quotes. I’m not going to pretend that, hey, it’s all good. We’re just having a difference over secondary issues. No, we are not. And as a pro-life Christian, it’s vital that you stand firm on what you believe and convey that truth even in the face of withering criticism.

Now, we’ve got a tool that will help you do that, and we’ve mentioned it before. We have a course out called Prolife 101, and it’s based on this idea that in just 7 days, for a few minutes a day, you can be equipped to stand solid on your pro-life principles. You’re going to learn how the abortion issue is not complex. It comes down to one issue, what is the unborn? You will learn how to defend the unborn with the science of embryology.

You will learn how to philosophically make a case for the value of the lives of the unborn. And you’re going to learn the five bad ways people argue about abortion where they try to change the subject. For example, you make a case that abortion is wrong because it intentionally kills an innocent human being. And your critic says, “Well, why do you hate women?” Notice what just happened. They didn’t answer your argument. They changed the subject. They made it about you and your alleged motive rather than actually doing the hard work of refuting your argument.

This is the kind of stuff we’re going to teach you to detect. We’re going to help you have a very sharp phony baloney alert mechanism in your brain where you’re going to recognize that what they’re doing there is changing the subject. We want to we want to equip you with that. We want to give you the tools to make a difference in your church so that you can stand for truth. Now, hopefully the people you’re engaging will change their minds. And maybe they will, but sometimes it doesn’t happen right on the spot.

That’s okay. With the stuff you learn in the course, you will be able to do what my colleague Greg Kokal says, put a pebble in their shoe that will wear on them and wear on them until they deal with it. Your job is to give them something to think about. And this course will do just that. Give them something to think about. All right, folks. Don’t let false teachers stray cause you to stray from the gospel. Look forward to seeing you next time.