Written by Dr. Jeffery J. Ventrella |
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
In their desperation, beleaguered people often yearn for a “strong man” or a King or a Christian Prince to order and redeem the public square—yet there is always buyer’s regret—and death—when the State is seen as Savior, not Servant.

Introduction
Truthxchange exists to Inform the public, Equip the Church, and Protect the Future. Last week, we explained the origins of pagan Political Idolatry and concluded by noting that in many cases, the Church itself has acted as a change agent by unintentionally producing an idol-generating reductionism. To better confront and overcome this trend, we Christians need to first look in the mirror. Since judgment begins “at the household of God,”[1] the Church needs to understand how this idolatry incubates and impacts our culture. And, the church needs to humbly and honestly understand how we may tolerate, or even embrace it, in our thinking. We must learn to think Christianly about the public square, including law and policy. Only in this way can we equip the broader Church to effectively repel pagan political idolatry at its roots. This begins by understanding Biblical Cosmology, the structure of real reality. Let’s get to the gist.
Paul’s Cosmological Structure of Law: The Law above the Law
A fundamental issue lurks underneath all political idolatry: who or what operates as “god” in the culture. That is, what is the transcendent or ultimate authority functioning in the culture and therefore affecting that culture’s legal and political system. The Church must be clear on this. If an evangelical Christian is abstractly asked, “What’s your ultimate authority?” they would no doubt quickly profess, “the Bible.” However, the real question is not so much what they profess, but how they function day to day in real time; what is their actual authority, how do they actually assess and make political decisions, particularly when it comes to considering matters of law and policy. We may be surprised to see that inclinations to and elements of idolatry have crept into our thinking.
Why is this the case? This often occurs by failing to connect Christ’s Lordship with law and policy. How so? The Church rightly confesses “Christ is Lord!” We need to also see that law expresses lordship. The operational law of a culture or system is functionally driven by the “lord” or dominant transcendental (authority) of that culture or system. We must both say and act consistently with our Lordship commitments.
When the Church confesses “Christ is Lord,” it in effect means He reigns over all things, including political entities whether “thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”[2]This means, among other things, that Christ’s standards, His Law, applies to all reality —it may not be confined, truncated, compartmentalized, or ignored—including with respect to policy and law. To depart from Christ’s Lordship in this area is to functionally invite idolatrous thinking into our public life no matter what we profess on Sunday morning with our lips.
So, why would this then be the case? From Paul’s perspective, “real reality” is “Twoist,” meaning that there exists a Creator-creation distinction, a fundamental binary: Romans 1:25. In the apostle’s mind, the Creator is holy, not only morally, but metaphysically; He is holy and wholly other.[3]
Consequently, the Creator alone is independent, and Paul elsewhere makes this point in addressing the philosophers in Athens. He emphasizes that the true God is the Creator God:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place…[4]
Paul emphasizes the Creator-ness of the true God as well as His aseity, or self-existent independence of the created order. Note carefully: He makes this point as he addresses the public square.
Correlatively, the creation, including by implication its positive law,[5] is therefore necessarily dependent and derivative. This means that its function, purpose, and meaning can be ultimately understand only in relation to God and his transcendent authority. Paul likewise alludes to this as well in the same Athenian discourse:
for “‘In him we live and move and have our being;’as even some of your own poets have said,“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”[6]
Paul is saying we best and most fully understand the created things in relation to the Creator God. From this flows some key things. First, because the Creator alone is truly transcendent, His law will necessarily and properly be transcendent: the law above the law, sometimes called the natural law.[7] And, therefore, second, all law and policy must be dependent on and derivative from this ultimate unimpeachable standard.
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Yes, debate critical race theory, but let’s keep our eyes on the prize. We should spend far more time in the pursuit of excellence—implementing reading instruction that would improve literacy outcomes for kids of all races. That would erase the stain of racism far more than endlessly debating critical race theory.

With a new school year underway, parents, teachers and children anxiously return to classrooms amidst an ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
But this year, school board members, teachers, academics, politicians and parents continue to argue over critical race theory and how to enact its version of equity.
Last week, the U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution to support the teaching of critical race theory in public K-12 schools. The resolution initially listed among its sponsors liberal mayors like Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, Portland’s Ted Wheeler and Louisville’s Greg Fischer.
Over the summer, Oregon governor Kate Brown suspended a requirement for students to demonstrate reading, writing and math proficiency in order to receive a high school diploma, in a supposed effort to build “equity.” The governor’s office said the new standards for graduation would aid the state’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
These efforts by politicians to push critical race theory distracts from a real analysis of educational achievement in their states and cities. The real issue in American education is a failure to enable the majority of students—regardless of race—to achieve academic excellence or even, in many cases, basic skills.
We have a national crisis of education that most Americans aren’t paying attention to. Our school systems produce a small group of high-achieving students at the top and a massive group of low-achieving students at the bottom.
America has fallen into a multi-generational crisis of illiteracy. In terms of raw numbers, more white students are reading below grade level than Black students. Of the 1.8 million students who took the ACT in 2019, 36 percent did not achieve college readiness in any of the four subjects. That means about 650,000 American students, despite spending thousands of hours in school, were not prepared for college-level work in a single subject. And that number does not include the millions of students who did not take the ACT. Even worse, 19 percent of American high school graduates are functionally illiterate, unable to read well enough to manage daily tasks.
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Consider the monument of lady justice. She is often displayed with a blindfold. Why? Because true justice must be blind to the person being tried. To put it in biblical terminology, “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34). She has open and equal balances in her right hand, for “divers weights and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 20:10). She has a sword in her left hand, for rulers “do not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil” (Romans 13:4). In 1973, 51 years ago, the blindfold came off, divers weights replaced the balance, and the sword was laid aside. If a man kills a child in the womb without the mother’s consent, he is guilty of feticide. If a mother pays an abortionist to help murder her child, there is no legal consequence.

In her 2014 book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights: Reclaiming Abortion as Good for Society, Katha Pollitt suggested 6 myths regarding abortion:(1) The Bible forbids abortion. (2) Women are coerced into having abortions. (3) Abortion is dangerous. (4) There are too many abortions. (5) Abortion is racist. (6) Abortion opponents would never punish women.[1]
Ten years after the publication of her book, Pollitt’s ideas are widely embraced by abortion apologists and by parents aborting their children.
Pro-abortionists are not alone in promoting Pollitt’s feminist worldview. Last November the Louisiana Baptists, a publicly pro-life organization, rejected a resolution calling for an end to, and criminalization of, all abortion. In support of their decision, leading pastors promoted the myth that a majority of women are coerced into abortion and therefore it should not be criminalized.[2]
In 2024, 51 years after the terrible blight of legal abortion descended on this country and 18 months after the overturn of Roe, abortion is increasing, more children are dying, the gospel of God is obscured and withheld, and Christians are not clear on the facts.
May seven facts concerning abortion help Christians think and act biblically while pointing unbelievers toward salvation in Christ alone. 
1. The Bible Forbids Abortion
Does the Bible have anything to say concerning abortion? Some would say no. Pollitt suggested the Old Testament is virtually silent unless Christians misinterpret Exodus 21:22-23. This supposed silence leads some, including some Christians, to conclude that God accepts or is indifferent to the practice of child murder. Seeing the divisiveness and “brokenness” it causes, they deem abortion a topic unclear in Scripture and therefore one on which to be silent. Is the Bible unclear or silent on abortion? If we join Pollitt and argue the Bible is virtually silent, then we can leave what amounts to a modern holocaust to courts, politicians, and pseudo-doctors to work out—all while the death count rises.
God tells us to test the spirits whether they are from God (1 John 4:1). Is Scripture silent? Is Scripture unclear? When we allow Scripture to speak for itself, what do we find? From beginning to end, the Bible is replete with references to children in the womb and the abhorrent sin of intentionally taking a child’s life.
In the Bible: “We do not have to wait long to find a clear indication of the sanctity attaching to man’s life and of the wrong involved in the taking of one man’s life by another. It is noteworthy that, next to the sin of our first parents, the first recorded sin is that of Cain, which had its issue in the murder of his brother Abel.”[3]
In the Bible: God views the fetus (young human being) as being a life before conception (Jeremiah 1:5), after conception (Psalm 139:13-16), and through the full term of pregnancy (Luke 1:44). God knows children in the womb by name and, according to His sovereign will, saves some in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5; Luke 1:13; Luke 1:44)
In the Bible: God refers to the “clump of cells” in the womb as a “child.” Pregnant Hagar was told by the angel of the Lord she was “with child” (Genesis 16:11). The phrase “with child” is repeated no fewer than 16 times in Scripture. God uses the term to refer to specific children in their mothers’ wombs (Genesis 16:11; Luke 2:5) as well as to many children generally in the wombs of their mothers (Kings 8:12; Ecclesiastes 11:5).[4]
In the Bible: God views the personhood and value of children equally from conception to natural death. The “babe” inside the womb (Luke 1:41) is the same word in the original, βρέφος, as the “babe” in the manger (Luke 2:16) and the “infants” of whom Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me” (Luke 18:14-15).  
In the Bible: God calls the shedding of innocent blood murder. It is the sixth commandment of the ten—forever preserving the divine principle concerning the sanctity of life (Exodus 20:13).[5] Murder is one of the six things, yes seven, that the Lord hates (Proverbs 6:17). No murderer has eternal life abiding in him (I John 3:15).In the Bible: God particularly highlights the abomination of murdering children—a regular sin of Israelites and Canaanites as they made sacrifices to their idols. God refers to the parents as sacrificing their children to demons (Psalm 106:37). For the particular sin of child murder (among others), Israel was given into the hand of its enemies during the time of the Judges, its Kingdom was divided during the time of the Kings, and eventually Israel and Judah were brought into captivity and ruled by their enemies.[6]In the Bible: God views children as a heritage (inheritance) from the Lord (Psalm 127:3). Men and women prayed to the Lord for extended periods of time and with much weeping for the blessing of a child (Genesis 25:21-28; 1 Samuel 1:6-12). The willful ending of a child’s life could not be more inconsistent with the will of God and the whole of Scripture as emphasized when God said of child sacrifice — “nor did it come into My mind” (Jeremiah 19:5).
In the Bible: God regards children both in the womb and outside the womb as equally valuable. As the practice of child murder was all too common, God gave specific prohibitions against it. Therefore, all the commandments against murder generally are equally applicable to children, whether they are born or unborn.
Does the Bible have anything to say concerning abortion? The Bible has much to say! In all that Scripture says on the topic, God categorically forbids and condemns the sin of abortion.
The Bible forbids abortion.
2. Women and Men Want Abortion
One of Pollitt’s central arguments is that women are not victims in abortion—they want abortion. She argues that less than 1% of women who have an abortion are coerced. Here Christians should find themselves in unusual agreement with pro-abortionists—albeit for vastly different reasons.
Pollitt’s conclusion: We should support the legalization and availability of abortion because women want abortion.
The Christian’s conclusion: Men and women are sinners, desperately wicked, and therefore want to commit the sin of abortion (Romans 3:10-18).
PR campaigns such as “Shout Your Abortion” and “We Testify” merge with organizations like Planned Parenthood to validate Pollitt’s claims from a decade ago. Men and women are rarely coerced into abortion—they want abortion.  A large number of pro-life organizations and many Christians believe the myth that most women are being forced or coerced into abortion.[7] They shrink back from the truth and ignore God’s teaching to protect, preserve, and promote life. In various settings I have been challenged on use of the word “murder” to describe abortion because, “It sounds very harsh.” Christians would benefit from spending time with women on the brink of having an abortion to gauge firsthand the women’s state of mind regarding their babies.
The worldview that considers people to be basically good is a humanist one, in contrast to a Christian or biblical one. “It’s not murder, just a very difficult situation.” In a humanist worldview anything bad is not really an individual’s fault—they probably did not want to do it in the first place. Christians would do well to reclaim the “T” in “TULIP,” remembering that men and women by nature are totally depraved. The heart is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). Given a license to sin, 25% of women will have an abortion by the age of 45. 
While parents of aborted babies may end up regretting their abortions, the horrific reality is that the vast majority of them eagerly pursue it.[8]
Women and men want abortion.
3. Abortion Is Deadly Dangerous
Pro-abortionists like to talk about the safety of abortion. They debunk the idea that abortion is dangerous on the ground that few women have negative medical complications. If ever there was a red herring in the abortion debate, it is this issue of safety. Safety in the same sentence as abortion insults common sense. Nevertheless, with Roman Catholic and Pro-Life organizations moving the discussion from the actual victims (babies) to the perpetrators of abortion—“abortion hurts women”—safety in abortion is a regular talking point. Meanwhile, the little children in the womb are never safe in abortion!
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