Can Pro-Life Advocates Lie to Save Lives?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Pretty heavy topic today.
00:00:06.480 | Can we lie?
00:00:08.160 | Can we lie to women who are seeking abortions?
00:00:12.080 | If by lying, we increase the likelihood
00:00:15.960 | of saving the baby's life.
00:00:18.960 | When this question came in,
00:00:20.000 | it immediately grabbed my attention.
00:00:22.080 | It's a question from an anonymous woman,
00:00:23.520 | Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast.
00:00:26.240 | I work in a crisis pregnancy center
00:00:28.220 | in a small community in the Bible Belt,
00:00:30.440 | helping meet the needs of pregnant women
00:00:31.940 | and single mothers,
00:00:33.320 | along with providing access to clothing
00:00:35.080 | and parenting classes.
00:00:35.920 | We also share the glorious message
00:00:37.400 | of Christ's work on the cross for sinners.
00:00:39.640 | It is our desire that expecting mothers
00:00:43.000 | make the right choice.
00:00:44.360 | I know God is sovereign and only the Holy Spirit
00:00:46.560 | can make dead hearts come alive
00:00:48.320 | to make those right decisions.
00:00:51.160 | And this leads to my question.
00:00:53.240 | Our clinic has experienced pressure
00:00:55.240 | from volunteers and leaders,
00:00:56.920 | supported by local pastors,
00:00:59.000 | to pressure women and couples to save the baby,
00:01:03.160 | or else the mother and father
00:01:05.840 | will be condemning their child to an eternal hell
00:01:09.680 | for withholding from them a chance to be born,
00:01:12.840 | to live, and to accept Christ as their savior.
00:01:16.840 | You have made a strong case that babies who die
00:01:20.760 | or who are killed are saved.
00:01:23.120 | I'm thinking of APJ's 514 and 684,
00:01:26.640 | the theology I hear in the clinic is wrong,
00:01:28.680 | and I think others in the clinic know it's wrong too.
00:01:32.120 | I've come now to believe that this is an intentionally
00:01:35.120 | manipulative scare tactic,
00:01:37.720 | an anything-goes approach to the goal of saving lives.
00:01:42.120 | And that's my question for you.
00:01:43.320 | Is it permissible to intentionally scare
00:01:45.960 | and manipulate mothers with untrue doctrine
00:01:48.560 | if it increases the likelihood that a baby will live?
00:01:53.560 | If this question were simply a yes and no question
00:01:57.600 | with no other implications, I'd probably skip it.
00:02:01.120 | (laughs)
00:02:01.960 | I'd say, "Tony, let's just move on,"
00:02:03.440 | because nobody wants to listen to an episode
00:02:05.920 | where I say, "No, next question."
00:02:08.400 | But that is my short answer, namely, no.
00:02:13.400 | No, it's not permissible.
00:02:17.600 | From a biblical point of view,
00:02:19.080 | from a Christian point of view,
00:02:21.520 | it is not permissible to intentionally scare
00:02:25.320 | and manipulate mothers with untrue doctrine
00:02:28.680 | in order to increase the likelihood that a baby will live.
00:02:32.040 | No.
00:02:33.360 | And I'm not just focusing on the scare and manipulate part.
00:02:38.360 | That's bad enough.
00:02:39.860 | When I say no, I'm mainly focusing
00:02:45.200 | on the use of untrue doctrine.
00:02:48.320 | Doctrinal falsehoods lies in the service of a guess
00:02:53.320 | as to whether a child's life will be saved.
00:03:01.760 | In other words, I'm saying no to making a practice of lying
00:03:06.760 | about sacred things in order to increase,
00:03:12.600 | according to our own human guesswork,
00:03:16.120 | the possibility that a child would not be aborted.
00:03:19.280 | I'm saying no to that.
00:03:20.720 | But the reason I'm willing to say more about this question
00:03:26.480 | rather than just no is that there are wider
00:03:30.720 | cultural implications behind that question as I hear it.
00:03:35.720 | This practice of bending or marginalizing
00:03:42.480 | or flatly contradicting serious biblical moral considerations
00:03:47.480 | in a human invented so-called life-saving strategy
00:03:53.480 | has taken root in American Christianity in recent years
00:03:58.240 | with harmful effects, which we have scarcely seen the end of.
00:04:03.240 | In other words, I don't think this particular practice
00:04:08.040 | of compromising moral means to accomplish hoped-for
00:04:13.040 | good ends is the only case we're facing.
00:04:16.800 | So let me try to say something about this kind of strategy
00:04:22.560 | against that wider cultural situation.
00:04:25.680 | The biblical reality at stake,
00:04:29.000 | the biblical reality at the root of the issue
00:04:33.280 | is that God is a God of truth.
00:04:36.520 | God never lies, Titus 1, 2.
00:04:39.440 | Let God be true though every man a liar, Romans 3, 4.
00:04:45.440 | And consequentially, his people are people of truth.
00:04:51.920 | We are workers for the truth, 3 John 1, 8.
00:04:56.280 | We speak the truth with our neighbor, Ephesians 4, 25.
00:05:01.280 | We cannot do anything against the truth,
00:05:05.520 | 2 Corinthians 13, 8.
00:05:07.920 | We do not lie to one another, Colossians 3, 9.
00:05:12.120 | We do not join the devil in his nature.
00:05:17.120 | For when he lies, he speaks out of his own character,
00:05:20.960 | for he is a liar and the father of lies, John 8, 44.
00:05:25.720 | Truth is at the heart of who God is
00:05:29.400 | and at the heart of who we are as his people.
00:05:34.040 | So a so-called life-saving strategy
00:05:38.560 | built on regular deception
00:05:43.000 | is utterly contrary to who God is
00:05:47.320 | and who we are as his people.
00:05:51.000 | It aligns us with the devil,
00:05:53.600 | who is not only a deceiver from the beginning,
00:05:57.400 | but also a murderer.
00:06:00.040 | So to think we can borrow the devil's strategy
00:06:04.720 | of deception to save life is going to backfire.
00:06:09.720 | And we are going to be found serving his purposes, not God's.
00:06:15.160 | Now, add to this basic truth about God and his people,
00:06:21.160 | the biblical abhorrence of doing evil that good may come.
00:06:27.520 | In other words, coming up with human strategies
00:06:32.360 | that involve moral compromise
00:06:35.600 | in order to pursue human guesses
00:06:38.760 | that more good will come that way.
00:06:41.440 | The Bible opposes that presumption.
00:06:47.400 | For example, the apostle Paul defending himself
00:06:51.560 | against that very accusation in Romans 3, 5, following,
00:06:56.560 | if our unrighteousness serves to show God's righteousness,
00:07:01.560 | what should we say?
00:07:03.880 | That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?
00:07:07.080 | I speak in a human way.
00:07:08.440 | By no means, for then how could God judge the world?
00:07:13.920 | But if through my lie, God's truth abounds to his glory,
00:07:18.920 | why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
00:07:23.680 | And why not do evil that good may come?
00:07:28.080 | As some people slanderously charge us with saying
00:07:34.040 | their condemnation is just.
00:07:37.160 | Wow.
00:07:39.000 | When people accuse Paul of teaching that we may do evil,
00:07:45.200 | that good may come, he's angry.
00:07:48.680 | And he says, let them be condemned.
00:07:51.320 | That's serious.
00:07:53.280 | Later in Romans 6, he asks,
00:07:56.200 | are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
00:08:00.000 | And his answer is not just no.
00:08:02.720 | His answer is that it contradicts the very nature
00:08:05.720 | of who we are as new creatures in Christ.
00:08:08.840 | How can you who died to sin still live in it?
00:08:11.320 | In other words, new creatures in Christ trust God
00:08:18.320 | with the outcomes of walking in Christian integrity
00:08:23.320 | and holiness.
00:08:24.480 | We trust God with the outcomes.
00:08:27.120 | Christians should not do evil that good may come.
00:08:31.120 | It's a lack of faith.
00:08:32.520 | We should not embrace evil practices or evil people
00:08:38.480 | in the vain hope that such compromises
00:08:42.040 | will advance human created strategies for doing good.
00:08:48.000 | It is virtually certain that our duplicity will be exposed,
00:08:53.000 | indeed shouted from the housetops.
00:08:57.640 | And when it is, the undermining of Christian integrity
00:09:03.400 | may send more people to hell and more babies to the dumpsters
00:09:09.320 | than if we had spoken the whole truth,
00:09:13.160 | lived consistent lives of radical Christian integrity,
00:09:17.960 | loved others, made sacrifices,
00:09:20.400 | and been willing to suffer and prayed earnestly.
00:09:24.200 | I think that one of the great needs of the hour
00:09:29.360 | is for Christians to stop compromising
00:09:33.520 | our biblical faithfulness by using the weapons of the world
00:09:38.520 | in the service of strategies that we think
00:09:41.280 | are more likely to do good because we have calculated
00:09:45.360 | that compromise will work.
00:09:47.320 | - Hmm.
00:09:48.160 | - Here's a closing admonition from Paul
00:09:51.080 | in 2 Corinthians 10, 3.
00:09:54.960 | "Though we walk in the flesh,
00:09:58.760 | "we are not waging war according to the flesh.
00:10:03.760 | "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh,
00:10:08.400 | "but have divine power to destroy strongholds."
00:10:13.320 | God is able to make consistent, humble, trusting,
00:10:18.320 | sacrificial obedience have vast soul-saving,
00:10:23.800 | life-giving effects beyond all our human calculations
00:10:29.560 | of what good may come through compromise.
00:10:34.000 | - Pointed words.
00:10:34.840 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:35.680 | And that Romans 3:8 text is worth a lot of reflection.
00:10:39.600 | Why not do evil that good may come?
00:10:42.960 | That text came up another time on this podcast
00:10:45.480 | in another episode on abortion of all places.
00:10:48.160 | In APJ 684, that episode was about
00:10:51.640 | if all babies go to heaven, why oppose abortion?
00:10:55.920 | And you can find that one, APJ 684 at askpastorjohn.com,
00:11:00.400 | very much related on the other side of the spectrum
00:11:03.120 | to this question.
00:11:04.560 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:05.440 | And thanks for joining us today.
00:11:07.480 | If you wanna ask Pastor John, type out your question,
00:11:10.400 | even your most sensitive question,
00:11:12.160 | and email it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:11:15.400 | Feel free to make it anonymous
00:11:16.680 | if the question or your situation requires it.
00:11:19.480 | We always honor that, of course.
00:11:21.560 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:22.400 | Have a wonderful weekend,
00:11:23.440 | and we'll see you back here on Monday.
00:11:25.880 | (upbeat music)
00:11:28.460 | (upbeat music)
00:11:31.040 | [BLANK_AUDIO]