Tim Keller Just Gave Christians Permission to Support the Party of Human Slaughter

Written by Laurie Higgins

Just last week one of the founders of The Gospel Coalition, Manhattan megachurch pastor Tim Keller, formerly known as a mega-leader in the evangelical Christian community, published a foolish, destructive Facebook post on “Christians and the freedom of conscience in politics,” in which he said,

The Bible binds my conscience to care for the poor, but it does not tell me the best practical way to do it. Any particular strategy (high taxes and government services vs low taxes and private charity) may be good and wise—and may even be somewhat inferred from other things the Bible teaches– but they are not directly commanded and therefore we cannot insist that all Christians, as a matter of conscience, follow one or the other. The Bible binds my conscience to love the immigrant, but it doesn’t tell me how many legal immigrants to admit to the U.S. every year. It does not exactly prescribe immigration policy. The Bible tells me that abortion is a sin and a great evil, but it doesn’t tell me the best way to end abortion in this country nor which policies are most effective. The current political parties offer a potpourri of different positions on these and many, many other topics, most of which, as just noted, the Bible does not speak to directly. This means when it comes to taking political positions [and] voting … the Christian has liberty of conscience.

Rather than teaching Christians how to apply biblical truth to moral issues that the political left has politicized, Keller offers a get-out-of-sin-complicity-free rationalization that Christians can use to justify support for the presidential candidate and political party of human slaughter.

Keller is correct: there is no biblical prescription for the best practical way to fulfill the biblical commands to care for the poor or love the immigrant, but one would presume that killing the poor and immigrants would definitely be off the table—as in not within the realm of morally tenable options.

I’m not suggesting that any presidential candidate or party endorses the execution of the poor or huddled masses. I’m suggesting, rather, that Keller ignores the egregious nature of the abortion policy of Democrats whom he suggests Christians can in good conscience support. And he implies that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democrat Party have a policy to end abortion.

Indeed, the Bible does not tell Christians “the best way to end abortion in this country nor which policies are most effective,” but surely voting for a presidential candidate and supporting a political party that heartily endorse the slaughter of humans in the womb throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy for any and no reason and are fully committed to keeping human slaughter legal is definitely not within the range of possibly effective policies for ending human slaughter.

Imagine a pastor saying, “while the Bible binds my conscience to oppose slavery, it doesn’t prescribe policy on slavery nor tell me the best way to end slavery nor which policies will be most effective in ending slavery. Therefore, Christians are free to vote for the presidential candidate and political party that enthusiastically affirm slavery and are committed to keeping it legal.”

In reality—that place where Christians should live and move and have their being—electing a president and supporting a party that heartily endorse human slaughter throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy for any and no reason is evil. It’s as evil as voting for a leader and supporting a party that endorse slavery, or genocide, or the bodily mutilation of gender dysphoric children.

The current political parties do not “offer a potpourri of different positions” on abortion. The Democrat party and its leaders Biden and Harris offer one position, and in case Keller is blissfully unaware of it, here it is straight out of the Democrat Party Platform 2020:

Democrats believe every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion. We oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to women’s reproductive health and rights, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment and protecting and codifying the right to reproductive freedom.

I hope Keller notices that in their bloodthirst, Democrats have changed their language with regard to abortion. They used to say they wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” No more. They no longer care if human slaughter is rare.

Being a Christian is not synonymous with being a Republican. It just so happens, however, that right now in this cultural moment, the most pressing cultural and political issues are issues on which the Bible is clear.

The issues that are destroying individual lives figuratively and literally, the issues that are destroying families and churches are essentially biblical. The nature and purpose of the human person as created by God male or female, the nature and purpose of marriage, the nature and purpose of sexual activity, and the rights of children to live and be raised by a mother and father are first and foremost biblical issues that rebellious humans have made political. And right now, there is only one political party whose policies reflect biblical truth on these critical issues.

Not every member of the Republican Party affirms truth—and that’s a serious problem—but for now, the Republican Party is the only party that endorses policies that reflect biblical truth on these issues the abandonment of which will destroy America.

God has graciously given Americans the good gift of self-government. Using that blessing to vote for a man and a party that affirm, not only human slaughter, but also homosexual faux-marriage, compulsory placement of orphaned children with homosexuals, and the sexual integration of all private spaces—including the private spaces of children—is a grievous act of thanklessness and moral malfeasance.

A potpourri is a “mixture of dried petals and spices placed in a bowl or small sack to perfume a room.” Keller’s post is a potpourri of words placed on Facebook to mask the stench of what he’s rationalizing. Gotta grant this much to Keller, he’s become a semi-skillful Sophist—or to borrow from Mick Jagger—“practiced  at the art of deception.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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