THE FIVE TENETS OF ABOLITIONISM
TENET 1. GOSPEL-CENTERED
Abortion is sin, and the cure to sin is the gospel. We must not engage in sub-Christian strategies that do not hold the gospel as preeminent. Why would we look elsewhere? Where is the power to change culture? Where is the power to change politics? Where is the power to awaken the Church? Where is the power to abolish child sacrifice? It is in the gospel. Abolitionists bring the gospel into conflict with the culture of death, as is necessary for our faith to be a living one (James 2:14-26). By this conflict, the kingdom is advanced as souls are reconciled to God and darkness is pushed back. The curse of sin affects all of creation, but God, through His gospel, promises to restore all of creation; to make everything new (Revelation 21:5). The abolition of abortion must be gospel-centered, and the gospel must progressively extend as far as the curse is found.
TENET 2. ALIGNED PROVIDENTIALLY
God upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures and things by His most wise and holy providence. With this truth in mind, abolitionists rely on the wisdom and providence of God, not on the worldly wisdom and pragmatism of man. As abolitionist John Quincy Adams put it, “Duty is ours, results belong to God.” We have a responsibility to be faithful to His command, which is for justice to be established and legal iniquity to be stamped out in full. In our declarations to our magistrates and to the world, we have no right to make pragmatic calculations and retreat a single inch from the Biblical truth that life begins at conception nor from the Biblical prohibition on murder.
TENET 3. THROUGH THE CHURCH
The gospel is the cure to abortion, and the only entity in the universe that possesses the gospel is the Church of Jesus Christ. We alone have been charged by our Lord and equipped by the Spirit to drive back the darkness, and drive back the darkness we must. In the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus teaches that religious people will often neglect a neighbor in need and that they sin in so doing, regardless of any particular callings they may have. In the modern American context, there is almost no one who does not pass by the places of murder on a daily basis. If there is not an abortion mill in your area, there is a hospital or OBGYN office that performs abortions or a pharmacy that sells abortifacient drugs. Child sacrifice is all around us. We must utilize our spheres of influence to expose this evil in all of its horror and point people to the cure. We must go to the murder mills and plead for the lives of the children being taken away to death while offering spiritual and physical help to the mothers and fathers going in. We must bring the gospel into conflict with the sins of abortion, abortion apathy, and compromise with abortion.
TENET 4. ENGAGED BIBLICALLY
Is not God’s Word God-breathed? Is not God’s Word sufficient? Is not God’s Word profitable for every good work? It is. Given this reality, everything we believe and do must be governed by God’s Word. This does not cease to be true when we step into the political realm because God is the God of every realm. The ideology of abolitionism springs forth from the pages of God’s word, not from the advice of pollsters and political parties. His Word is the sword we bear against the rampant wickedness which rules in our halls of power, making fatherless preborn children into prey. This tenet stands in stark contradiction to the vast majority of Pro-Life leaders who intentionally exclude God’s Word from their argumentation and activism for the sake of not offending secular and otherwise unbelieving conservatives. Unlike secularly-minded incrementalists, abolitionists believe that we must - as Wilberforce put it - “give an account of [our] political conduct at the Judgement seat of Christ.”
TENET 5. SOUGHT IMMEDIATELY, WITHOUT EXCEPTION OR COMPROMISE
Incremental pro-life bills which regulate-and thereby sanction-abortion 1) are unbiblical, 2) are unconstitutional, 3) dehumanize preborn children, 4) entrench judicial idolatry, and 5) are substitutes for abolition which delay justice.
31 май 2024
