I don’t care if you like it, is it true?

Article adapted from episode content.

Hello friends, welcome back. In today’s cultural climate, it seems we’ve increasingly elevated personal comfort, emotional resonance, and marketing appeal above the unwavering bedrock of truth. Whether discussing profound moral issues or navigating the intricacies of personal life choices, the prevailing sentiment often seems to be: “Does this feel good? Is it convenient? Will it win friends and influence people?” But as we delve into some of the challenging questions facing us today, I want to pivot to a far more critical inquiry: “Is it true?” I don’t care if you like it, if it’s easy, or if it makes you popular. The fundamental question must always be about truth, about the merits of an argument, and about adhering to a biblical worldview, even if it gets me in trouble with some of my own people.

The Illusion of “Having It All” and the Pro-Life Message

Recently, I attended a graduation at a Christian college, eager to hear a message that would inspire graduates to pursue God-glorifying activity or embrace a biblical worldview. Instead, the keynote speaker offered a pep talk, largely directed at the graduating women, assuring them, “Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do it all”. Her core thesis was that a woman could achieve an inspiring career and still be just as good a mother as one who stays home to nurture her children, encouraging them not to resign themselves to being wives and mothers.

Now, I have no problem with a woman pursuing a career or having a drive to make a difference in the corporate or non-profit sector, especially in her young adulthood. But we must challenge the notion that a woman can equally pursue a career and simultaneously be equally invested in nurturing her husband and children. I don’t know that that’s doable. In fact, I think it’s not. I think you got to pick one.

This kind of thinking has unfortunately seeped into pro-life circles. Some pro-life messaging suggests that women don’t need abortion because they can have great careers even with kids, or their husbands can stay home. The idea is to oppose abortion by promoting the notion that women “can have it all”. I find this approach deeply troubling.

Let’s be clear: If we are engaged in a sales pitch about who offers the easier solution to a problem pregnancy, pro-lifers are not offering the easier solution. The pro-abortionists have the “easier and better answer” in terms of expediency. Their solution involves a 15-minute procedure that ends the “problem” of a child interrupting a career path or requiring financial investment. What do we offer that pregnant woman? We offer her 18 years of challenge, potentially more, where she will need to provide for that child, and usually set aside her career and education path to commit herself to being a mother. We are not going to win the sales pitch marketing battle with Planned Parenthood. We need to be done with that.

Instead, we must make our primary case a moral one. The moral case is straightforward:

  • Premise one: It’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings.
  • Premise two: Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.
  • Conclusion: Therefore, abortion is wrong.

Whether we are influencing ballot initiatives or speaking to women, our primary case should be that abortion is a moral wrong because it unjustly takes the life of an innocent human being. We have to keep the main thing the main thing.

We bend over backwards trying to make it seem like we have a great solution for women facing crisis pregnancies. We do have a great solution if we’re talking morality, because we convince her not to kill her child. But we do not have a great solution if we’re talking marketing. The abortionist can indeed offer the woman both her career and a quick way out. We simply cannot do that.

If we are being honest, a woman who gives birth after a crisis or unintended pregnancy will face a solution that is costly to her, involving significant investment of her time, energy, and emotions, and requiring sacrifice of many things she could have done otherwise. We ought to be upfront about that, and not try to pretend we can create superhuman women who can do it all. I am simply not persuaded that you can have both worlds at the same time if you are a woman. I believe you have to pick between a career, which is fine if chosen, or being present in the home for your children.

I often hear the excuse, “It’s not quantity of time, it’s quality of time that matters”. I think that is entirely bogus. Anyone involved in parenting knows you cannot simply schedule meaningful moments. They emerge because you are present in that moment. Deep, meaningful connections and conversations with children don’t happen because you schedule them for a specific time on a Tuesday. They happen when you’re tucking a child into bed and they ask a profound question about suffering or faith. They happen in the car on the way to school. These are moments where you need to be present.

A child needs both a mom and a dad to provide the right responses and immensely contribute to their development. I believe we, as Christians and pro-lifers, have too easily bought into the world’s assumption that women “have to have it all”. I don’t know how you can bring home all the stress of the working world – and a good argument could be made that women’s bodies were not designed to handle that stress – and still be psychologically fully present for your children during the minimal hours you have with them.

Therefore, I think we as Christians need to rethink this idea that women can have it all. No, I think you have to pick between whether you want to be a mom or a career woman. And for young Christian men seeking a mate, you need to pick a woman who wants to be a wife and a mother; that’s what they aspire to. While there may be a need for two incomes early in marriage, when it comes to having a house full of kids, a parent needs to be there, and that parent needs to be the mom. Moms are the nurturers, dialed into their kids’ emotions and struggles. While dads help, moms pick up on these things, and there is a nurturing aspect that I do not believe can be present when the woman is consistently working outside the home.

The danger for pro-lifers is trying to compete with Planned Parenthood by telling the world we want women to “have it all” even with our solution. You cannot fool a serious thinker by promising they can have a baby and all their career aspirations. Pointing to a few celebrities who “managed to do that” is not persuasive. The way to persuade a woman not to have an abortion is not to give her a “phony idea she can have it all”. The way to persuade her is with moral reasoning that clearly states it is wrong to intentionally kill your unborn offspring. We need to talk morality before we start talking productivity or functionality.

Truth Over Expediency: The Infertility Debate and Embryo Ethics

Another challenging area where truth must prevail over convenience or sentimentality concerns Christian couples struggling with infertility. Allow me to speak pastorally first: there is a tendency in Christian circles to treat couples facing the incredible pain of infertility with a very cavalier attitude. Many Christians do not realize how devastating infertility is. It is too easy for us to glibly say things like, “Why don’t you just go adopt?” or “Maybe God’s got a better plan for you”. While these things may be true in the long run, they are not the first things you should say.

I believe that while some assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) are wrong, not all of them are, and they can be used if they fall within certain biblical guidelines or “fence posts”. So, what should we communicate to Christian pro-life couples dealing with infertility?

First, any assisted reproductive technology that involves discarding embryos, donating them to research, or screening them for defects and then subsequently destroying the ones that “don’t make the grade” would be biblically out of bounds. This is for the same reason abortion is out of bounds: it’s clear that all humans have value because they bear the image of God. Genesis 1 and James 3 teach that because humans bear God’s image, the intentional killing or shedding of innocent blood is strictly forbidden. Destroying embryos does exactly that, even at the earliest stages of development. You cannot use an immoral means to achieve a good result. Yes, getting a baby is good, but not if the technology used involves destroying embryos in the process.

This raises significant questions about In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). In IVF, eggs are extracted, fertilized with sperm in a test tube, and multiple embryos are created. These embryos are then either frozen or freshly implanted. The problem is the enormous wastage of embryos involved in current IVF practice. Clinics often create multiple embryos at once to avoid repeating expensive treatments like egg harvesting and sperm collection. The couple then faces the problem of leftover embryos, often encouraged to donate them to science (where they will be destroyed) or discard them. Both options are unethical if, as I believe, a distinct, living, and whole human being exists from the earliest stages of development. Furthermore, there is a substantial loss of life that occurs during the transfer of embryos to the woman’s womb. This raises the question of whether we ought to be creating embryos that we know have very little chance of surviving the transfer protocol.

So, when counseling these couples, the biblical message should be: not all ARTs are evil, but ensure that whatever one you choose falls within biblical fence posts. Do not offer glib, hurtful answers like “Why don’t you just adopt?”. Couples need to arrive at conclusions about adoption or foster care on their own timetable, not be driven to them impatiently.

Arguments Stand on Their Merits: Resisting Personalization and Moral Equivalency

This brings me back to the core principle of truth. Not long ago, I spoke with a progressive pastor who disagreed with my pro-life position. He argued that my position “can’t possibly be true” because it would imply that he and his wife were “murderers” for having discarded embryos during their IVF process. Notice what he did: he tried to refute the pro-life argument not by examining the evidence—whether abortion is wrong, or if IVF embryos are valuable human beings with a natural right to life—but by rejecting it due to its uncomfortable implications for his personal situation.

This is a critical error in reasoning. You cannot refute an argument by saying, “I don’t like the consequences where it might lead” or “I don’t like where the evidence leads, therefore that position can’t be true”. People do this with Christianity all the time, rejecting Jesus because accepting Him would mean giving up enjoyable sinful practices. But the case for Christ is either valid and sound, or it is not; you cannot dismiss it because you dislike the implications. People often avoid facing up to moral reality by pursuing what is expedient for them, rather than pursuing truth.

So, when people say to you, “Oh, if you’re saying abortion’s wrong, does that mean you think I’m a murderer because I had one?” it is perfectly fine for you to say, “I’m not going to get into judging you personally. I’m just going to stick to where the evidence leads. You draw your own conclusions.”. I think you should do that, especially in this post-Roe era, where people increasingly personalize everything. Accusations like, “So you think I’m the worst person in the world? As bad as Hitler?” are attempts to divert from the argument itself. Remember, arguments stand or fall on their merits, not on the person making them or the person hearing them. Stick to that, and you will always keep the main thing the main thing.

This applies also to the attempt of some Christians to aim at moral equivalency by lumping together disparate issues, arguing that they are all equal in moral weight. For example, claiming that “abortion is wrong, but so is denying people entrance to our country” and therefore “there’s no moral difference between abortion and closing the border”. Such reasoning, as I’ve previously discussed, simply doesn’t work.

Conclusion

In all these discussions, from the role of women in family and career to the ethics of reproductive technologies and the very nature of moral argument, our compass must be truth, not convenience, popularity, or personal preference. We must reject the notion that we can “have it all” if “all” includes contradicting fundamental moral truths or sacrificing what is truly good and right for superficial ease. We must approach difficult conversations, even on deeply personal issues like infertility, with compassion, but also with unyielding adherence to biblical principles, even when those principles reveal challenging truths about widely accepted practices. We must, at all costs, avoid the temptation to bend our arguments to fit current cultural whims or personal comfort. The question, always, must be: “Is it true?” Because if it is true, it stands, regardless of whether you like it.

Episode Transcript

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 program. We are delighted to have you. I have a couple of questions that have come through the mailbag and I’ve heard in conversations I thought we’d bring up today and we’ll get to those in just a minute. But before we do, can I just remind you if you have not taken advantage of our basic pro-life apologetics course, the course we entitled pro-life 101, what that course is about is equipping you in just one week to make a persuasive case for the pro-life view and defend it with critics.

So, I’d encourage you to take a look at our sites to see the information on that course. Another thing I want to remind you about is our primary sponsor, Life Training Institute. LTI has been in the business now for 21 years of getting persuasive pro-life content in front of students and adults for the purpose of giving them good reasons to believe the pro-life view. If you’ve not visited life training life training institutees website, I encourage you to do that. And you can find information about our speaking team there.

See where we’ve been speaking and get a sense of what it is we’re trying to do to help reach this culture with pro-life content. Now, I have had a number of interesting questions come my way in the last couple of weeks. Some of it is news driven. Some of it just happens to be stuff that is floating around out there and has been for a while, but Christians are now just getting around to talking about them. So, the first question I want to deal with is one that’s going to be a little bit controversial and might get me in trouble with some pro-lifers, but too bad.

We’re going to talk about it anyway. And that is this. Can women have it all? And what I mean by that question is this. Recently, I was at a graduation at a Christian college and the keynote speaker stood up at the podium. She didn’t talk about the impact of the gospel. She didn’t talk about how a biblical worldview makes society better and is true and reasonable to believe. She didn’t even talk about how her faith had made her a more compassionate, virtuous person.

None of that. Instead, she said to the women in the audience, I think she largely ignored the men, but what she said to the graduating women at this Christian college was this. Don’t let anybody tell you can’t do it all. And her whole thesis was that a woman can go on to have a an inspiring career and she can be just as good a mother as the one that stays home to nurture her children. And she encouraged the women in the crowd to not fall for this idea that they need to resign themselves to being wives and mothers.

Now, as I sat there and listened to this, I thought it was a terrible shame number one that a wasted opportunity was there. Why not talk to these graduates, both men and women, about pursuing God glorifying activity for the rest of their lives? Instead, they got a pep talk about how women in particular can do it all. Now, this kind of thinking has seeped into pro-life circles now. And what we’re doing or what we’re seeing is some pro-life messaging out there that goes like this.

Let’s tell women that they don’t need abortion because even if they have their kids, they can have great careers. Maybe their husbands will agree to stay home and watch the kids while they work or some other arrangement will be made. But the same idea is being promoted here. Let’s oppose abortion and convince people that abortion is wrong by making one of our primary messages the idea that women can have it all. They can work, they can be mothers, they can do everything really and they don’t have to pick one or the other.

Now, let me begin by saying I have no problem with a woman who says I want to pursue a career and I have a drive to do something. I think I can make a real difference in corporate America or maybe in the nonprofit sector and I want to devote the early years of my life my young adulthood years to that end. Fine. I’m okay with that. But should we just accept without challenge the idea that a woman can equally pursue a career and at the same time equally be invested in nurturing her husband and her children?

I mean, I don’t know that that’s doable. In fact, I think it’s not. I think you got to pick one. But what I’m most troubled with is this notion that we lead with how you know, you should be pro-life because you can have it all. You don’t have to choose abortion because you can keep your career and have a kid. You don’t have to have this idea that somehow if you’re pro-life, you’re saying goodbye to your productive years in the working world.

Again, I’m not against women working, but I don’t think that’s the primary pro-life message we ought to be delivering. Let’s be clear. If it comes to a sales pitch over who is offering the easier solution to a problem pregnancy, it’s not pro-lifers that are offering the easier solution. The proabortionists have the easier solution. Look, their solution to her problem pregnancy gets fixed in a 15minute procedure and she’s done with it. No more kid interrupting her career path. No more kids she has to spend money on to raise and feed.

Her problem is over if we’re merely pitching this debate and framing it around hey, how can you easily pursue the things you want to pursue? The proaborts have the easier and better answer. Now, it’s not the moral answer, but the expediency is on their side, not ours. What are we offering that pregnant woman? We’re offering her 18 years of challenge raising a kid or maybe more than one kid where she’s going to have to provide for that child, set aside her career path, usually set aside her education path and coni, you know, commit herself to being a mom.

We are not going to win the sales pitch marketing battle with Planned Parenthood. I think we just need to be done with that. We need to make our primary case moral. And the moral case goes like this. Premise one, it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Premise two, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Conclusion, therefore, abortion is wrong. Whether we’re talking about ballot initiatives aimed at curbing the advance of pro-abortion laws in even red states like Ohio, Arizona, Montana, Kentucky, Missouri, or talking to women in general, our primary case should be abortion is a moral wrong because you’re unjustly taking the life of an innocent human being.

We got to keep the main thing the main thing. Instead, what happens is we bend over backwards trying to make it look like we have a great solution for women who are facing a crisis pregnancy. We do have a great solution if we’re talking morality because we will convince her not to kill her child. But we don’t have a great solution if we’re talking marketing. There’s no doubt that the abortionist can offer the woman both her career and a quick way out of a problem.

We can’t do that. If we’re being honest, a woman who gives birth, who faces a crisis pregnancy or an unintended pregnancy, whatever you want to call it, her solution from our side is going to be costly to her. Going to involve a lot of investment of her time, energy, her emotions, and sacrificing a lot of things she would have been able to do had she not been pregnant. I think we ought to be honest up that about that. Let’s be upfront about that and not try to pretend we can create superhuman women who can do it all.

I’m just not persuaded that you can have both worlds at the same time if you’re a woman. I think you got to pick between career, which is fine if you pick that, or being present in the home for your children. And I often hear, you know, the excuse being, well, it’s not quantity of time, it’s quality of time that matters. I think that’s entirely bogus. Anybody who’s been involved in parenting knows you can’t just schedule the meaningful moments. They pop up because you’re present at that moment, not because you say, you know, next Tuesday we’re going to schedule quality time with our children where we have deep, meaningful connection and conversation.

It’s not like that. Here’s how it happens. You’re tucking your kid into bed and you get the big question, right? When you’re trying to get them to sleep, right? You get the question, “Hey, Daddy, why is it that you know, Aunt Ruth suffered so badly? Why is it that God allowed her to die from cancer? Or you get you know big questions like hey daddy my friends at school are saying that you know belief in God is just a fantasy that it’s something people made up.

How do I talk to them? And really what’s going on there at that moment? Your kid is communicating to you very deep questions. You need to be present for those things. And a kid needs a mom and a dad to give the right response. They need both because both contribute immensely to that child’s development. And I think we as Christians and even on the pro-life side, we have far too easily bought the assumption of the world that women have to have it all.

Well, I don’t know that you can have it all. I don’t know how. I mean, people will get mad at me and I don’t care. I don’t know how you can bring home all the stress of the working world, which I think a good argument could be made that women’s bodies were not designed to handle that. How you can bring home all the stress of work and be psychologically present, fully present for your own kids for the minimal hours you get because most of the time you were away at work.

I’m thinking back to my kids when they were younger. Some of the most meaningful conversations happened driving to school. I would drive them to school because I had that ability. I could start my workday when I wasn’t traveling. I could start the workday from home. And I made it a point that I was going to drive them to school because I recognized the value of that time. We didn’t turn the radio on. The kids didn’t sit there with their headphones or their headphones on or looking at their phones.

In fact, we didn’t even allow our daughter Emily to have a phone until she was 18 and ready to graduate high school. I’m sure I’ll get hate mail on that. Too bad. She turned out great. And I think part of the reason she turned out great, she had parents who were dialed in to the culture around her and weren’t going to let people just have, you know, free launch at her behind our backs. That’s a topic for another show. But here’s the thing.

Those meaningful moments weren’t scheduled, they just happened. Or they happened when I took a kid on a trip, you know, whether it was a trip over to England or a trip maybe to go see a relative in another state, you know, these things just happen and you can’t schedule them. They come up. Kids don’t sit there and go, “You know what? My time to really connect with my parents and feel loved by them can be scheduled for 5:00 p.m. To 7:00 p.m.

Every other Tuesday. It doesn’t work like that. So, I think we as Christians need to rethink this idea that women can have it all. No, I think you got to pick between whether you want to be a mom or a career woman. And by the way, here, let’s just go ahead and go there because you’re probably already thinking it. If you’re a young Christian man and you’re trying to figure out, okay, what is the best marriage material out there, I would say this, you need to pick a woman who not only is Christian, let’s just be frank, dating non-Christians is absolutely off the table if you claim to be a believer.

And spare me the hate letters on that. I’m going to tear them up because there’s no way biblically to justify you dating someone who doesn’t hold your worldview. And not only that, dating someone who is not yet made alive in Christ. I mean, think of first Corin or excuse me, think of Colossians 1:13 where Paul says, “You have been transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God’s beloved son.” That’s what happened when you put your faith in Christ.

That non-Christian you’re with has not been transferred. They are still a citizen of the kingdom of darkness. And what how do you how do you explain or justify building a relationship in a romantic sense with someone who is still in the kingdom of darkness? And the answer is you can’t. But let’s keep going here. When you’re a young man and you’re looking at who would make a good mate for me as a Christian life partner, pick someone who wants to be a wife and a mother.

That that’s what they aspire to. Now, that doesn’t mean they may never that doesn’t mean they can never work outside the home, especially early in the marriage. There may be a need for two incomes. I get that. But when it comes to having a house full of kids, I think you’re going to have to have a parent there. And that parent needs to be the mom. Moms are the nurturers. They are the ones that are dialed into where their kids are in terms of their emotions and where they are with the things they’re struggling with.

Dads then can also help with that. But moms are the ones that pick up on this stuff. And there is something about that nurturing aspect that I don’t believe can be there when the woman is working outside the home. But again, the danger for pro-lifers here is this, that they want to go ahead and say, “Let’s try to compete with Planned Parenthood and make it clear to the world that we don’t hate women. We want them to have it all and they can have it all, even with our solution.” I don’t think so.

You can’t really fool someone who’s a serious thinker by saying, you know, we can have you go ahead and have this baby and have all the career aspirations you once had. You can have it all. And look, we’ve got these women over here. We can point to some of them celebrities that have managed to do that. Okay, there may be some women who have managed to do that. But the way to persuade that woman not to have an abortion is not to give her this phony idea she can have it all.

The way to persuade her is with moral reasoning that says it’s wrong to intentionally kill your unborn offspring. You shouldn’t do that. And we need to talk morality before we start talking productivity or functionality. So I want to urge us to be more cautious in that regard to not just say, “Hey, you can have it all with the pro-life worldview.” I don’t think so. You’re going to have to pick one. And let’s be honest about that and let’s make the moral case before we start making the marketing case.

All right, we’re going to take a break. When we come back, I want to pick up two other questions very quickly. And the first is this. What do we do with Christian pro-life couples struggling with infertility? I’ll take a few minutes to talk about that because that is all the all the rage right now in conversations and I think it’s an important question. We’ve dealt with it here before, but we’ll take a quick revisit to that. And then thirdly, I’ll take just a minute to refer back to something we talked about a couple episodes ago.

The attempt of some Christians to aim at moral equivalency by lumping a whole bunch of issues together that they think are all equal in terms of their moral rate, their moral weight. So you get people saying, “Well, abortion is wrong, but so is denying people entrance to our country.” And both end up in lives lost. Therefore, there’s no moral difference between abortion and closing the border. We’re going to take a quick look at that and I’ll explain why that doesn’t work.

We’ll see you on the other side.

Hello friends. If I didn’t drive you away with what I said in the first segment, welcome back. Two other issues that have come up that I think we need to look at. The first has to do with what do we do with couples struggling with infertility. Now allow me to speak pastorally before I talk morality and logic. Okay. There is a tendency in Christian circles to treat with a very cavalier attitude couples facing really hard emotional struggles with their own fertility.

I don’t think a lot of Christians realize how incredibly painful infertility is for couples that are wrestling with it. It is devastating. And I think it’s too easy for us to just say things like, “Well, why don’t you just go adopt?” Or, “Maybe God’s got a better plan for you.” yeah, those things may be true, but is that the first thing you want to say? And I am one who believes that though some assisted reproductive technologies are wrong, not all of them are wrong.

And they can be used where applicable provided they fall within certain biblical guidelines or what some would say fence posts. So what should we look to in counseling Christian pro-life couples dealing with infertility? The first thing I would say to them is this. Any assisted reproductive technology that involves discarding embryos, donating them to research, or screening them for defects and then subsequently destroying the ones that don’t make the grade. Would be out of bounds biblically for the same reason abortion is out of bounds.

Biblically, it’s clear that all humans have value because they bear the image of God. Genesis 1 teaches that old covenant. James 3 teaches it new. Because humans bear the image of God, the intentional killing or shedding of innocent blood is strictly forbidden when it comes to innocent human beings. We are not to shed innocent blood. Abortion, destroying embryos, does that. Therefore, they are out of bounds because you’re destroying an image bearer even at that earliest stages of development. So, we can’t use an immoral means to get a good result.

Yes, it’s good to get a baby, but if you’re using a technology that involves destroying embryos in the process, well, then that’s going to fall outside biblical guidelines. So, what about IVF? Because people will raise questions about this in vitro fertilization. In vitro fertilization, we extract eggs from the mother. We give her hormones so she releases multiple eggs in a cycle. We then surgically extract those eggs and then we collect sperm from the father and we put them together in a test tube and then we take the resulting embryos.

And by the way, the way IVF is currently practiced involves creating multiple embryos that will then either be frozen or freshly implanted into the mother in hopes that we will end up with a pregnancy. The problem is this the wastage of embryos involved in this kind of procedure are is enormous. I mean, it’s just mind-boggling. And there is no way really, I shouldn’t say no way, but there’s an it’s very unlikely you can use this technology in a morally permissible way if you want to avoid you know, intentionally killing these embryos.

And what tends to happen is clinics themselves are unwilling to only fertilize one embryo at a time or create one embryo at a time. They rather what they want to do is create multiples so that you don’t have to do the expensive treatments all over again. The egg harvesting, the sperm collection, the IVF procedure itself. It’s better to do it all at once. Freeze the embryos and then go from there. The problem with IVF, I think you can imagine, you end up with leftover embryos.

The couple comes to the end of their reproductive years and then they are encouraged to donate these embryos to science where they will be destroyed for medical purposes or to discard them. And both options are unethical if you believe as I do that from the earliest stages of development you have a distinct living and whole human being. So IVF is currently practiced involves a lot of embryo wastage and I haven’t even gone into we’ve done this on a previous show the loss of life that happens transferring that embryo to the woman’s womb.

It is the failure rate is substantial. So it does raise the question ought we be creating embryos that we know stand very little chance of surviving that transfer protocol. That’s a question I think we need to look at as well. But Christians are struggling with this. And I would say to you as a Christian, if you have couples in your church struggling with infertility, do not just come out of the gate and say things like, “Why don’t you just adopt?” or “God has something different for you.” It may be true that they end up at a point where they have to trust in the sovereignty of the Lord for something else that will work for them in terms of children.

Maybe adoption, foster care, I don’t know. But that’s something they need to arrive at on their own timetable, not just be glibly driven to by impatient Christians. Okay? So, we want to look at the full options of what’s there. And I think the biblical thing to communicate to these couples is this. Not all assisted reproductive technologies are evil, but make sure that whatever one you choose falls within biblical fence posts. That’s the message we should be giving these couples, not glib answers like, “Why don’t you just adopt, which can come off very hurtful to couples struggling with this?” Okay.

A third thing, and I’ll wrap the show up here, has to do with people personalizing decisions about abortion or maybe embryo discarding. Not long ago, I had a conversation with a progressive pastor, and I’ve actually met with a guy. We’re friends. He’s very wrong and his worldview does not align with a biblical worldview on many many points. But one of the things he said to me is your position can’t possibly be true because it would mean that anybody who’s practiced IVF would be a murderer for discarding the embryos they didn’t use.

And it was true that he and his wife had in fact discarded many embryos that they did not use ultimately in getting their own children through IVF. All right, so let’s stop for a moment. Notice what was done here. This progressive pastor made the argument that the pro-life position can’t be true because, as he put it would make him and his wife murderers. Now, you could als you could do a couple of things here. The first thing you could do is point out that you as a pro-life advocate making an argument don’t have to jump to the next conclusion of moral judgment against the person involved.

You can just say, “I’m going to refrain from calling you anything. I’m just going to lay out the truth and logic of my position and let it lie there without making a moral judgment about the person involved.” That’s perfectly acceptable and I would say in most cases advisable. But notice what was done here. The progressive pastor was not looking at the evidence. Is abortion wrong? For example, does it intentionally kill an innocent human being? He’s not looking at the evidence of were these IVF embryos valuable human beings with a natural right to life.

Rather, he said that his position had to be true and mine had to be false because of the implications that fall from it. Well, that’s not going to refute the pro-life argument. You cannot refute an argument by saying, “I don’t like the consequences where it might lead. I don’t like where the evidence leads. Therefore, that position can’t be true.” And of course, people do this with Christianity all the time. They say things like, “Well, I’m not going to accept Jesus of Nazareth as being the Messiah, the only way to salvation, because if I do, that would mean I have to give up living with my girlfriend, who I’m not married to, or I have to give up practices of sin that I currently enjoy.” Look, the case for Christ is either valid, sound, or it’s not.

You can’t dismiss it by saying, “I don’t like the implications.” And usually that’s what happens here. People don’t want to face up to the moral reality of what’s in play here. They don’t pursue truth. They pursue what is more expedient for them. So when people say to you, “Oh, if you’re saying abortion’s wrong,” does that mean you think I’m a murderer because I had one? It is perfectly fine for you to say, “I’m not going to get into judging you personally.

I’m just going to stick to where the evidence leads. You draw your own conclusions.” Perfectly fine for you to say that. And I think you should do that because I’m noticing more and more in the postroad days that we’re in right now, people want to personalize everything. Oh, so you think I’m a murderer? Oh, you think I’m the worst person in the world? I’m as bad as Hitler because I had an abortion. How does that deal with the argument? Remember, arguments stand or fall on their merits, not the person making them or the person hearing them.

They stand on their merits. Stick to that and you will always keep the main thing the main thing. Thank you for joining us today. I’ll see you next time.