“In the name of Jesus Christ, shut your vile, sick mouth,” called one Pro-life demonstrator to a Pro-choice counter demonstrator at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. From all records of Jesus’ speech, we never heard him speak to a human being, unless perhaps a demon, like that. Jesus could always separate the sin from the sinner.
The Pro-life lobby has never had trouble separating the sin from the sinner, when it came to electing Pro-life candidates. We have that potent political voice to thank for the immoral Presidency of Donald Trump. Trump brazenly admitted his lascivious inclinations in the notorious “Access Hollywood” interview, which details much more predatory language than the “grabbing pussy” quote revealed [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html?searchResultPosition=1 ]. That interview would have sunk most Pro-choice politicians permanently, but Trump knew his Christian voter base would tolerate much more because he was Pro-life. He knew them better than I did.
Candidate Trump knew that his Pro-life voter base was going to make any moral compromise necessary to gain justices on the Supreme Court. To his credit, he fulfilled his end of the bargain. It turned out to be a devil’s bargain, as we watched his Presidency compromise the integrity of the Justice Department by firing high-minded FBI directors like James Comey and pushing out a series of attorneys general until he found one willing to compromise his conscience in William Barr. But no Pro-life politician was going to criticize President Trump as long as he delivered his end of the bargain.
Because the end justifies the means in abortion politics. It is not shocking to hear Jesus Christ linked to the language “vile, sick mouth” when the rights of the fetus are at stake. No behavior, including murder, was off limits where this cause is concerned. Not that the movement officially sanctioned murder, but all the behaviors leading up to murder, including smearing and ostracizing well-meaning Christians and voting for immoral Presidential candidates, were going to be sanctioned. From the beginning the line was drawn, and God help you, if you were on the wrong side of the line.
The cost of electing Donald Trump is beginning to be realized, as the Republican Party has fallen to the level of a cult, and democratic institutions are crumbling because of the curse “fraud” leveled at them. Trump holds an eerie supernatural power over once-thought honest politicians, infecting Congress with corruption rarely witnessed in national politics. How many sincere Christians have re-considered their blind allegiance to this President and realized the cost of “the end justifies the means”?
Because there is no such doctrine in Christianity. We know that mercy and forgiveness are the central principles of the Sermon on the Mount, and that Jesus defended the outcasts of society. Jesus was no moral crusader in the modern sense. He got off the donkey on Palm Sunday and went straight to the Cross. He had the chance to lead a political movement and blew it. Why won’t his followers do the same?
With the mortal enemy, Roe v. Wade, about to fall, what has the Pro-life party really gained? To shut out certain classes of society from abortion? To create an underground industry for those who can not afford a legal abortion? To bring children into drugs and poverty, whose children will also be born to drugs and poverty? To tolerate rape and incest?
They have also gained a canker on American politics that will not be easily cured. They have created a cult-following that has forgotten how to differentiate between integrity and “the end justifies the means.” They have turned the Supreme Court into a political playground. They have mortally wounded the public’s ability to differentiate between evidenced-based truth and conspiratorial rumors. The consequences of ignoring conscience for the sake of a cause run deep and long.
The crusade is all but over. Was the battle worth the casualties? Are we a better society for this victory? Are we happy with the historical precedents we have set? Can we even be honest about the gains and costs? Did the end justify the means?