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Being Pro-Life Under a Pro-Choice President

January 20, 2009 in Blog

Today Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. John Piper posted on his blog an excerpt from a sermon he preached in 1993 just before Clinton was to be sworn in as president. The content is relevant for us today. I have included it below. You can get the full sermon here:

The text was 1 Peter 2:17, “Honor the king.” I closed with eight ways to honor a pro-choice president. The seventh was this:

We will honor you by expecting from you straightforward answers to straightforward questions. We would not expect this from a con-man, but we do expect it from an honorable man.

For example,

1. Are you willing to explain why a baby’s right not to be killed is less important than a woman’s right not to be pregnant?
2. Or are you willing to explain why most cities have laws forbidding cruelty to animals, but you oppose laws forbidding cruelty to human fetuses? Are they not at least living animals?
3. Or are you willing to explain why government is unwilling to take away the so-called right to abortion on demand even though it harms the unborn child; yet government is increasingly willing to take away the right to smoke, precisely because it harms innocent non-smokers, killing 3,000 non-smokers a year from cancer and as many as 40,000 non-smokers a year from other diseases?
4. And if you say that everything hangs on whether the fetus is a human child, are you willing to go before national television in the oval office and defend your support for the "Freedom of Choice Act" by holding in your hand a 21 week old fetus and explaining why this little one does not have the fundamental, moral, and constitutional right to life? Are you willing to say to parents in this church who lost a child at that age and held him in their hands, this being in your hands is not and was not a child with any rights of its own under God or under law?

Perhaps you have good answers to each of these questions. We will honor you by expecting you to defend your position forthrightly in the public eye.

You have immense power as President of the United States. To wield it against the protection of the unborn without giving a public accounting in view of moral and scientific reality would be dishonorable. We will honor you by expecting better.

Obama: Will You Pray For Me?

December 19, 2008 in Blog

Apparently there is a little controversy over Rick Warren accepting Obama’s invitation to pray at the inauguration. The reason is simple, policy differences. Albert Mohler who is the president of Southern Seminary wrote an article stating that he would not accept the invitation because he does not agree with Obama on abortion and stem cell research. I understand that this is one of those issues where genuine, intelligent, and deep thinking Christian-types will disagree. And I also think that we need to be gracious to one another on this. However, I cannot help but think that we will never be able to bridge the divide between conservative Christians and liberal Christians if we separate ourselves from people who do not agree with us. I do not agree with Al Mohler on this (as well as other issues such as singles and marriage). But the man has his convictions and who can fault him for standing by them.

Even though I did not vote for the man, if Obama asked me to deliver the prayer at his inauguration I would do it in a heartbeat. Call me crazy. But if you were asked to deliver the prayer at the inauguration of a president with whom you disagree on some very serious issues, what would you do?