It is a privilege to consider with you today how the crucial realms of philosophy and theology intersect, particularly as we are called to defend the precious gift of human life in a culture that increasingly challenges its fundamental value. Our aim, in considering these matters, is quite simple: to equip ourselves with powerful and persuasive pro-life arguments and to refine our tactics and strategies for engaging people who do not necessarily share a biblical worldview on this vital topic.
Reflecting on my own journey, I’ve learned that navigating the complexities of the abortion issue, especially when finding oneself on the “hot seat,” requires a different approach than I might have taken in my younger days, before becoming more adept at handling these arguments. Often, when faced with a rapid-fire assault of points – the unborn aren’t persons, consciousness is required for a right to life, objections based on rape or mental health, and so forth – the most helpful initial step is simply to slow down the pace of the exchange. This allows us to move out of an immediate defensive or “attack mode”.
Consider a recent discussion I had with a stranger. The issue of abortion arose, and his core assertion was this: until you have self-awareness, there is no right to life. My goal in such an exchange is no longer primarily to force the other person to admit I am right; frankly, that rarely happens, and it requires significant mental courage and processing time to shift one’s deeply held position. Instead, I sought to adopt a strategy of asking questions and striving to understand his perspective rather than merely refuting it.
Deconstructing the “Personhood” Argument
My colleague was quite willing to grant a point often debated elsewhere: that the unborn are, scientifically speaking, human beings. He acknowledged that combining sperm and egg results in a new living thing. However, for him, being human was insufficient; species membership meant nothing. What mattered was personhood, which he grounded in having self-awareness and the ability to value one’s existence over time. If these capacities were not immediately exercisable, he argued, one might be a potential person, but not an actual one.
In earlier days, I might have immediately launched into counter-examples to dismantle this position. And it is true that whenever one attempts to divorce the concept of “human being” from “human person,” a “train wreck of counter examples” inevitably follows, demonstrating the untenability of the view. But on this occasion, I chose to draw him out with a series of questions.
First, addressing his claim that species membership doesn’t matter, I asked: “Tell me why species membership does not matter. Why should we just say that being a member of the species homo sapien is irrelevant to the question of human value?“. This wasn’t something he had evidently given deep thought to. Yet, we intuitively recognize that species membership does matter. Consider the stark difference in our reaction to a hit-and-run involving a squirrel versus one involving a newborn infant, even a severely disabled one whose cognitive ability is minimal. Why the difference? Because we recognize, at a fundamental level, the inherent value tied to being human. As Christopher Kaser aptly puts it, there’s a profound difference between eating a hamburger and eating a Harold burger, regardless of Harold’s cognitive state.
Our understanding of pathology also underscores the significance of species nature. A dog unable to read is not a tragedy; a 16-year-old girl unable to read is one. Why? Because she is failing to flourish according to her nature as a human being. It is inherent to human nature to potentially read, think abstractly, and process complex ideas in a way that is simply not part of a dog’s nature. Thus, species membership – or more precisely, nature – is intrinsically linked to our understanding of potential, flourishing, and value.
Following this, I posed a second question to challenge the concept of a human non-person directly: “Have you ever met a human that wasn’t a person? Have you ever met a human being that was not a person?“. This question, asked gently to seek clarity rather than effect a “gotcha,” pressed him to describe what such an entity would look like. Would it be someone with Alzheimer’s? Someone with severe cognitive disabilities? He struggled to articulate a clear picture.
My third primary question went to the heart of his assertion: “You say that we must be self-aware to have a right to life. What do you mean by self-awareness?”. This is a crucial question we must consistently ask, as people often make claims without defining their terms. I explored the possibilities: Did he mean actual self-awareness? That would strip us of personhood when we sleep. Did he mean the immediately exercisable capacity for self-awareness? This would mean we lose personhood under anesthesia. Did he mean a natural capacity for self-awareness, even if not immediately exercisable? This standard, while protecting those asleep, under anesthesia, or in a reversible coma, would also protect the standard fetus and embryo, which possess this same natural capacity. Pressing for definition helps uncover the implications and potential inconsistencies of their position.
These questions are not merely tools for winning arguments; they are means to help people think more deeply and clearly about their own foundational assumptions. As Christian ambassadors, our role is to help others think within the framework of truth, not simply to “beat” them with logic.
My fourth and final question gently asked him to consider the implications of his view. If self-awareness is the sole determinant of the right to life, we must understand that this standard is failed not only by fetuses and embryos but also by newborns and even toddlers. Research suggests a meaningful sense of self-awareness doesn’t develop until close to age three. Philosophers who defend this view explicitly state that if self-awareness is the decisive trait, it logically permits infanticide and the killing of toddlers. The critic must grapple with the fact that their argument proves too much, opening the door to far more than just abortion. Furthermore, this view endangers cognitively impaired individuals.
Beyond proving too much, grounding human value and the right to life in cognitive ability has a devastating impact on the concept of human equality. Our culture is preoccupied with various forms of equality. But what is the fundamental basis of human equality in the first place? If it is cognitive ability, then those with more cognitive ability would logically have a greater right to life and be fundamentally more valuable than those with less. This leads to a hierarchical view where academics might have greater fundamental rights than blue-collar workers, which clearly contradicts our intuitive and societal understanding of equality.
Moreover, relying on a trait like cognitive ability or self-awareness creates “episodic problems”. If having the immediately exercisable ability is what gives us value and a right to life, then we literally pop in and out of existence as persons whenever we temporarily lose that capacity – while sleeping deeply, under anesthesia, or in a coma. This is an untenable foundation for human dignity, equality, and the fundamental right to life.
Grounding Value in Nature
There is a better, more solid way to ground human value: not in the traits that come and go and that none of us share equally, but in the one thing we all share in common as human beings – a human nature. When rights are grounded in nature rather than the immediately exercisable traits that stem from that nature, we establish a firmer basis for human dignity, equality, and the right to life.
Consider the example of an amoeba and an early human embryo, borrowing an analogy from Stephanie Gay Connors. Neither is self-aware. An amoeba isn’t self-aware because it is simply not in its nature to be. A human embryo, however, is not yet self-aware because it needs time to grow and mature. It is in its nature, as a human being, to develop the capacity for self-awareness. By grounding human dignity and rights in this common human nature, we avoid the trap of declaring some humans more valuable than others based on the degree to which they possess certain traits. This approach bypasses the problem of “savage inequality”.
Working Across Worldview Divides
Having explored some of the philosophical arguments, let us turn to a common question that touches upon both theological conviction and practical strategy: Should Christians, particularly Protestants and Evangelicals, work with Catholics and others of different theological views on the issue of abortion?. While a colleague of mine was adamant against this, I hold a different view.
To be fair, there is a legitimate concern that we should not “paper over” the real and significant differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, which exist on fundamental issues like justification or the grounds of ultimate authority. These are not minor points. However, the question is not whether we should work together theologically to imply we believe the same things. Our point of unity, in this context, is co-belligerence – working together against a worldview that is destructive of human value.
When I work with Catholics, Jews, Muslims, or atheists on the issue of legally protecting human life, the purpose is not to pretend we share all worldview assumptions; we emphatically do not. But agreement across the board is not a prerequisite for being beneficial in the fight to save unborn lives. Consider the abolition of slavery in 1860. Would one refuse to work with Catholics, Spiritists, Jews, or even Darwinists who opposed slavery simply because they held different theological views? To insist that only those who share one’s precise theology can be allies in such a moral cause seems misguided. The point of agreement is the outcome – protecting life – not the theological foundation for that outcome. I have spoken at numerous ecumenical pro-life events and always emphasize that while we differ in faith traditions, we can agree morally that it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings and that a just society should not sanction it.
Some argue that the only solution to abortion is the gospel of Jesus Christ and that until the gospel permeates the culture, abortion will never end. This claim, I would argue, is “Godlimiting”. While I fully agree that conversion through the gospel leads to sanctification and values more aligned with a biblical worldview, the Bible presents two ways God restrains evil and deals with injustice. One is indeed the proclamation of the gospel to change hearts. The other is through the practice of civil law, which restrains the heartless. The law’s primary function is not to convert people, although the Holy Spirit can use many things to draw people to himself. As Martin Luther King Jr. observed, the law cannot force love, but it can restrain harmful actions, and that matters profoundly. So, we have a dual strategy: sharing the gospel and promoting just civil law to protect the vulnerable.
It strikes me as inconsistent that some are troubled by working with people of different faiths on abortion but not on other matters. Nobody questions working with a Catholic business partner to sell insurance. Why, then, is it acceptable to cooperate in business but not in saving lives?
The analogy of the bucket brigade during a brush fire is powerful. If fires were approaching your home, and neighbors of diverse faiths and worldviews were forming a bucket brigade, would you stop to interview them about their theology before joining in? Of course not; the immediate goal is to put out the fire. Working with others who differ from you in such a scenario is promoting human flourishing, which is a biblical value. This is not theological compromise unless you are asked to abandon your own theological distinctives to participate. Ironically, while I’m sometimes accused of compromising by working with those who disagree with me, I have never once been asked by a Catholic to surrender any part of my Protestant theology to work on the abortion issue. Instead, I’ve experienced gratitude that Protestants are now engaged, after decades of relative silence.
Another example: if your toddler fell into a swimming pool and the paramedic arriving to save him was Catholic, would you quiz him about his beliefs before allowing him to act? The idea is absurd. If it’s right to work with a Catholic to save your child, it is also right to work with them to save someone else’s child – the unborn. These objections seem deeply foolish.
Conclusion
In conclusion, defending the pro-life position in the modern world requires engaging with both philosophical challenges to human value and theological questions about how we ought to work together in the public square. We must be equipped to articulate a robust defense for the inherent value of every human being, grounded not in fleeting capacities but in our shared human nature. We must also recognize the biblical mandate to restrain evil through both the proclamation of the gospel and the pursuit of just civil law. And crucially, we must understand that working alongside those who hold different theological views to achieve the common moral objective of protecting the most vulnerable is not theological compromise, but rather essential co-belligerence in the fight for human flourishing.
Our culture fundamentally disagrees on the question of human value and truth. This will not change unless we are equipped to make a difference. Let us step up, equip ourselves through study and practice, and fulfill our calling as Christ’s ambassadors on these vital issues, striving to save as many lives as we can.
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 show. We’re delighted to have you with us. Our aim here is very simple. We want to equip you with powerful and persuasive pro-life arguments and give you tactics and strategies for engaging people who don’t hold a biblical worldview on the topic of life. I was thinking today about how I would respond if I were on the hot seat. How I would respond today versus how I used to respond when I was younger and not as adept at in dealing with these arguments that come up on the abortion issue.
And one of the things I learned early on is that often when you’re being grilled about your pro-life beliefs, the best thing you can do is just slow down and slow the pace of the exchange. Because what tends to happen is people start throwing a ton of stuff at you. They’ll bring up things like, “Well, the unborn are human, but they’re not persons, and you have to have consciousness to have a right to life, and why do you hate women who’ve been raped and need an abortion for their own mental sanity?” And the list goes on and on.
You’ve all been in these types of discussions. And I think it can be very helpful to just slow down and kind of get yourself out of attack mode. So recently in a discussion with a stranger that I had not met, the issue of abortion came up and his comment to me was that until you have selfawareness, there is no right to life. And I’m going to walk you through how I engaged this person. Now, keep in mind, we’re not in a position to talk for hours.
And I modified what my goals were. I think it used to be the case. I wanted to get the person to admit I was right. And I want to tell you something that almost never is going to happen. When it does, you know, be glad, but it’s a rarity. It’s not something that’s common occurrence. I mean, most of us, if we admit it, we don’t like to admit when we’ve been wrong. It takes a lot of courage mentally to do that.
And sometimes it takes time to process even if you know your own position has been bested by a superior one. You got to take some time to let that settle. So what I did in this particular case was adopt a strategy of asking some questions and trying to go in the mode of understanding what my colleague was saying rather than just refute. So the issue was this. He was quite willing to grant that the unborn were human beings. He said, “Yeah, you know, the science is clear.
You put sperm and egg together, you’ve got a new living thing.” He was fine with that. But on his way of thinking of this, being human was not enough. Species membership did not mean anything. What matters was personhood. And personhood is based on having self-awareness. So he alleged and having an ability to value your existence over time. And if you don’t have that that capacity that’s immediately exercisable, you are not yet a person. You might be a potential person, but you’re not an actual person.
Okay. Now I think in my earlier days I would have immediately gone into counter example and attack mode to show why his position did not hold up well. And you know there’s truth that in that approach in the sense that any time you divorce the concept of human being from human person you’re going to end up with a train wreck of counter examples that show how untenable that position really is. But I decided to try to draw him out a little bit.
So here are the questions I put to him. First of all, when he made the claim that there could be such a thing as a human that’s not a person, I asked him two questions. I said, “Tell me why species membership does not matter. Why should we just say that being a member of the species homo sapien is irrelevant to the question of human value?” And he had not really thought of that. Again, he was just asserting these things. But if you stop to think about it, we should not so lightly dismiss the idea that species membership is irrelevant.
Let me give you a couple of examples. Let’s just take one that comes to mind immediately. Think about a hit and run with a squirrel and a hit and run with a newborn. Even a disabled newborn that is cognitively nowhere near the level of a normal newborn. Say we have a severely disabled newborn that has the cognitive ability of a calf at best. Wouldn’t we still consider a hit and run with that infant very differently than we would a hit and run with a squirrel?
And the answer is yes. Well, why? Because we recognize at the intuitive level that species membership matters. Or as Christopher Kaser likes to point out, we recognize there is a difference between eating a hamburger and eating a Harold burgle burger even if Harold’s cognitive development is nowhere near that of a squirrel. We recognize there is a difference. In fact, we recognize this in our understanding of pathology. A dog that can’t read is not a tragedy. A 16-year-old young woman who can’t read is one.
Why? Because she’s failing to flourish according to her nature as a human being. It is in the nature of humans to be able to read, to be able to think cognitively, to process complex ideas. It is not in the nature of a dog to do those things. A dog can flourish according to its nature without the ability to read, without the ability to think complex thoughts, and without a cognitive awareness that the normal human has. So, we recognize right away that species membership does matter.
But I then asked a follow-up question. Tell me this. Have you ever met a human that wasn’t a person? Have you ever met a human being that was not a person? And he didn’t really have an answer to that because I kind of pressed him gently. Again, I’m not trying to do a gotcha thing here. I’m trying to get clarity and help him think more clearly about his own position. What would a human that’s not a person look like? Would that be a person with Alzheimer’s disease?
Would that be someone with severe cognitive disabilities? Tell me what that would be. And he struggled to put his finger on what exactly that would be. So then after talking that through a little bit, I went to my second primary question, which was this. You say that we must be self-aware to have a right to life. What do you mean by selfawareness? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a crucial question to put to people. It’s so easy to let people say things without defining their terms.
Ask what he means by self-awareness. Did he mean actual self-awareness? Well, that would mean you cease to be a person when you sleep at night. Did he mean having the immediately exercisable capacity for self-awareness? Well, that means you’d be okay when you’re sleeping, but not when they put you under for anesthesia for surgery. Did he mean having a natural capacity for self-awareness, even if you can’t immediately exercise it? Well, in that case, that would protect you when you’re sleeping and when you’re under anesthesia.
But it would also protect you if you were in a reversible coma. It would also mean that the standard fetus, an embryo, which also has a natural capacity for self-awareness, would be protected. So, I wanted to press him on what he meant by selfawareness to try to get greater clarity. And this is something I think it’s very important for us to do as Christian ambassadors. Our job is not merely to beat people with an argument. Our real job is to help them think more deeply and do so within the perimeters of a Christian worldview.
We should be ambassadors, not mere arguers. So helping people think is a matter of asking good questions that help them think more deeply. So then after we talked about what he meant by self-awareness, I asked a third primary question and it went like this. Why is self-awareness valuegiving? In other words, why is it self-awareness that gives us a right to life? Now again, I want to point something out here that I’ve mentioned on a few previous episodes, but it bears repeating.
Too often we as Christians assume the burden of proof. A critic makes a claim and right away we think, well, how do I answer that? How what’s my comeback? What’s my 5-second rejoinder here that that shuts the door on that objection? That’s not the way to proceed. Take a step back and simply ask the person to defend their own assertion. The assertion is that self-awareness is what gives us value and a right to life. Well, why is that value giving? And typically what pro-lifers do, and it’s a mistake, they’ll immediately punt to fetal development.
They’ll say, “Well, by week six, we can measure brain waves. By week 11, that child is dreaming in the womb. They’re having REM sleep patterns. We can measure on an electrophilogram and yada.” All of which are wrong answers for a very specific reason. You’ve just conceded the premise that self-awareness is what gives us value. I want you to challenge that premise by asking the person. Again, do it politely, do it graciously, but say, tell me why you believe self-awareness is what gives us value and a right to life.
Why is that decisive? And not say, for example, something else. And make them make an argument for that. Ask them for their reasons. Don’t let them just make the assertion. And then I would do this. I would very gently, as a final question and a fourth question here, ask if they’ve seriously considered the implications of their view. For example, if we assert that self-awareness is what gives us value and a right to life, you have to understand that not only do fetuses and embryos fail that test, so do newborns.
And by the way, so do toddlers. The latest research that’s out there indicates that toddlers do not have a sense of self. They do not value their existence. There’s no meaningful selfawareness there till almost age three. And you don’t have to take my word for this. I’ve been reading through the literature of some several pro-abortion philosophers who make the claim that when you say that infanicide is morally permissible, you’re not just allowing infanicide, you’re allowing the killing of toddlers. Because if self-awareness is the decisive trait, it doesn’t show up at birth.
It doesn’t show up at age one. It doesn’t show up until later in the toddler phase. So your critic here is going to have to grapple with the fact that they’re advancing an argument that allows for way more than abortion. This is something that’s going to open the door logically to killing toddlers. And I would also say people who are cognitively impaired would also fall into danger here on this view. Now I think you can also point out that not only does the argument prove too much, it has devastating impact on human equality.
You know, ask yourself this question. In fact, you could ask your critic this question. What makes us equal? I think we all understand that our culture is obsessed with equality. We want income equality. We want marriage equality. You can marry anyone or anything you want. And we should applaud that. So the argument goes, people want social equality and the list goes on and on. But what fundamentally makes humans equal in the first place? Is it our cognitive ability? Well, that’s a problematic thing.
And here’s why. If cognitive ability is what gives us value and a right to life, and if that’s the foundation of our equality, then those with more cognitive ability would have a greater right to life than those with less. Which means university professors, perhaps politicians, maybe economists, who knows? But those in academia would have a greater right to life than those who work trade jobs, for example. The bluecollar worker would have less fundamental rights than the academic elite in our nation’s most prestigious academic institutions.
Well, that doesn’t seem to square with our understanding of equality, does it? I mean, clearly not. But that’s what follows from a belief that it’s cognitive ability that gives us value and a right to life. You know, you also run into what we call episodic problems. If cognitive ability is what gives us a right to life, having the immediately exercisable or actual ability to freely engage in cognitive ability is what gives us value and a right to life so that we can’t be killed.
Then you literally pop in and out of existence anytime you temporarily lose that ability, then gain it back. For example, while having surgery and you’re under anesthesia or maybe you’re injured and you’re briefly in a coma or you’re in a deep sleep. Does that mean you go from being a person to non-person then pop back to being one again? These are problems that follow with grounding human dignity and equality and our fundamental right to life in a trait that can come and go that none of us share equally.
And there’s a better way to ground human value. And that is not to ground it in the traits that come and go, but ground it in the one thing we do share in common as human beings. And that is this. We all fundamentally share a human nature. We are all by nature human beings. Now, when you ground rights in nature rather than the immediately exercisable traits that spring from that nature, you have a more solid basis for human dignity, equality, and for saying, “Yeah, we have a right to life.” So, think for a moment to borrow an example from my friend Stephanie Gay Connors.
Imagine an amoeba on one hand and an embryo on the other. Neither is self-aware. Correct? Neither is I mean the early embryo is not self-aware. It doesn’t even have a brain yet. The amoeba is not self-aware because you rightly would say well amiebas by nature are not things that are self-aware. It is not in their nature to be self-aware. And you’d be quite right if you said that. But let’s compare now that amieba with the embryo. The embryo is not self-aware.
The amieba is not self-aware. But notice that in the case of the embryo, the reason why the human embryo is not yet self-aware is that it simply needs to grow and mature. The amoeba, on the other hand, will never be self-aware because it’s not in its nature to be self-aware. So when we ground human dignity and human rights in a common human nature, then we get away from the trap of saying some humans are more equal and valuable than others based on the amount of a given trait that we have decided they need to have to have a right to life.
It avoids this whole problem of savage inequality. Now, we’re going to take a break and when we come back, I want to switch gears and talk about this question. Should Christians who are Protestant and evangelical work with Catholics who identify as Christian on the issue of abortion? Should Protestants and evangelicals work with Catholics on the issue of abortion? A colleague of mine was very adamant that we should not. I’m going to give a little bit of a different answer when we come back and I’ll explain why.
Welcome back everyone. Great to have you with us. Let me remind you if you haven’t done so already, please visit the site of our primary sponsor, Life Training Institute. You can see that on your screen how to do that. At LTI, we have speakers available that can speak in schools at your church event. If you want to promote pro-life training at your church or your fellowship group, we might be able to help you with that. Or help with your pregnancy center dinner.
These are things we are equipped to do and would be happy to do so. All right. Just before the break, I mentioned that I had had a conversation with someone who was troubled about my willingness as a Protestant to work with Catholics and others who hold a different theological view than I do, but who agree with me on the abortion issue. And I want to take a few moments to just reflect on this. Now, to be fair, there is a legitimate concern that we not cloud over or more accurately paper over real differences between Protestants and Catholics.
The two traditions do in fact differ on some things. And it’s not the point of this show to talk about that, but there are differences, for example, that relate to how we each view justification, meaning how we get right with God. And for example where we ground ultimate authority. So those differences should not be made light of. However, the question here is are we working together theologically to somehow present this picture that we all believe the same thing when it comes to theology?
Or is our point of unity more about co-elligerance in attacking a worldview that is destructive of human value? And my view is this. When we work with Catholics or for that matter Jews or Muslims or atheists for that example on the issue of protecting human life legally in the womb, the purpose here is not to pretend that we agree on all worldview assumptions. We do not. However, I don’t have to have agreement theologically or even across the board to be beneficial in helping save unborn lives.
Imagine this. It’s 1860. Slavery is ravaging the nation. And there are Catholics, there are spiritists, there are Jews, and there are some Darwinists that are willing to work with you on abolishing the slave trade in the United States. And a group of fundamental Baptists come to you and say, “Well, we’re not going to support that effort because you’re working with people who have a different theology than we do, and shame on you for doing it.” Now, if the issue were I had to give up key theological tenants of my belief to work with other people on abortion, then yeah, you’re right.
I’m not going to do that. But what if the point of agreement here is the outcome, not what we’re putting forward as our theological foundation? And I have talked at ecumenical pro-life events for years, and I always do this. I make a joke about how, you know, it’s true. We don’t all agree on everything. We have differing faith traditions here today, but we don’t have to agree on everything theologically to agree morally that it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings.
And a just society should not sanction that. We can agree to do that. Now again, I’ve gotten push back saying, “Well, you have to understand the only solution to abortion is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And until the gospel is spread throughout culture, you’re never going to end the abortion issue.” Well, that’s just false. Did we end slavery by preaching the gospel? Did we end racial segregation by preaching the gospel? Quite frankly, that claim that only preaching the gospel will end abortion is godlimiting for this reason.
Number one, God has given us two ways to deal with injustice. One is to change hearts through the preaching of the gospel. And I fully admit a person who has been justified by faith in Jesus will begin a pre a process of sanctification where more and more their values line up with a biblical worldview and they walk in deeper obedience to Christ. I totally agree with that. However, the Bible also gives a godly solution for people whose hearts won’t be changed by the gospel.
And that solution is found in the practice of civil law. The law is used in this case not to convert people to Christianity. Though we’re always glad when the law plays a role in that, and the Holy Spirit can use a lot of things to convert people. But the law’s primary function is not to change the hearts but to control the heartless. It’s what Martin Luther King once said. The law can’t make the white man love me but it can stop him from lynching me and that matters.
So we see that in scripture really there’s two ways we can restrain evil in the culture. Proclamation of the gospel and by all means as Christians let’s do that. And secondly through the promotion of civil law that restrains the heartless. I also would add this that when I work with Catholics or Jews or atheists or anybody else on the pro-life issue, why is it only a problem if I work with them on abortion, but nobody flinches if I say, “Hey, my business partner and my insurance agency happens to be Catholic.” Nobody cares.
Nobody would say to me, “How dare you sell insurance with a Catholic?” But wait a minute. If it’s okay for me to work with Catholics selling insurance, why is it wrong for me to work with them saving lives? Now, here I should say in California, where I was for the last couple of weeks, as you know, there’s been a series of devastating brush fires. Pacific Palisades was just wiped out by uncontrollable flames and a lack of water supply. There were other areas in Altadena near Pasadena that suffered greatly.
Suppose you have a home in Pacific Palisades and the brush fires are heading your way and people on your block invite you to join them in a bucket brigade to put out the advancing flames. Would you quiz your neighbor and say, “Well, you know, I need to know what you believe theologically before I help you put out this fire.” I mean, you’d be nuts to do that. You’re going to jump in that bucket brigade. Whether you’re dealing with someone who holds to Islam, philosophical naturalism, Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, it isn’t going to matter.
Your goal is to put out the fire. And therefore, working with people who differ from you is actually promoting human flourishing, a b a biblical value. By the way, it’s not compromise with your theological principles. Again, it’s only when you are being asked to give up your theological distinctives to work with people on a cultural issue that we run into compromise, but not when you’re simply working to protect the weakest and most vulnerable amongst us. Ironically enough, though I’m often accused of working with people I don’t agree with and that somehow I’m wrong for doing it, I have yet to be asked by any Catholic to surrender one little part even of my Protestant theology and distinctives to work with them on abortion.
I’m never asked to do that. In fact, what I get is people showing a lot of gratitude that Protestants are willing to help them in opposing abortion because for a lot of decades, we didn’t. So, they are very grateful and I’m not being pressed to give up anything I believe theologically to work with my Catholic friends on the issue of abortion. I don’t have to pretend I agree with them on everything, but I can work with them to save children. That’s a common co-belligerant objective we can coalesce around without compromising our theological views.
I mean another example imagine your toddler falls into a swimming pool and the Catholic who show or the paramedic who shows up to rescue him and resuscitate him and spare him from drowning is Catholic. Would you quiz the paramedic before you allowed him to save your child? If not, why is it okay to work with Catholics to save your child, but not okay to work with them to save someone else’s child? I find these objections extremely foolish, and I wish that some pro-life Christians, principally on the evangelical side, would think a little more deeply about this.
Yes, we want to be true to our theological distinctives, but we can work with others who disagree for the sake of common human flourishing, which includes the right to life to the most vulnerable, the unborn. Thank you for joining us again today. I want to remind you that if you want to dig deeper into pro-life ethics and pro-life persuasion, we have a basic level course for you. We call it pro-life 101. And in just seven days, you can master the art of pro-life persuasion.
You can get that at our websites. I encourage you to do that. Equip yourself to engage men and women. We are part of a culture that fundamentally disagrees with us on the question of human value and the question of truth. And that’s not going to change if we aren’t equipped to make a difference. We need to be Christ’s ambassadors on these issues. I hope you’ll step up and equip yourself and join us in the fight to save as many lives as we can.