By John Stonestreet\/Andrew Carico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prophet Isaiah warned, \u201cWoe to those who call evil good and good evil.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0A modern example, as Dr. Al Mohler recently described on\u00a0The Briefing, is the \u201cmoral incoherence\u201d of believing life is sacred and valuable while also rejecting any consequences for those who take it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, the state\u00a0of\u00a0Georgia charged a\u00a0woman\u00a0with the murder of her 22- to 24-week-old baby, who died within\u00a0an\u00a0hour of birth after her mother took abortion pills at home to\u00a0terminate\u00a0the pregnancy.\u00a0This is the first murder charge\u00a0in the state related to its\u00a0six-week abortion ban.\u00a0
The\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0article\u00a0that\u00a0covered this\u00a0story\u00a0concluded\u00a0by\u00a0citing\u00a0a\u00a02022 Economist\/YouGov poll.\u00a0According to the poll,\u00a019% of respondents\u00a0think\u00a0a woman who has an abortion that violates state law should be charged with\u00a0murder, while\u00a054%\u00a0think\u00a0she should not be charged\u00a0and\u00a026%\u00a0are\u00a0unsure.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A more recent\u00a02025\u00a0Pew Research report\u00a0described the moral confusion about life in even starker terms. Entitled \u201cWhat do Americans Consider Immoral?,\u201d the study asked about various behaviors ranging from eating meat to abortion. According to their data, \u201c47% of Americans say having an abortion is morally wrong, while about half say an abortion is not a moral issue (31%) or is morally acceptable (21%).\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An interesting parallel exists between the abortion issue and the other great moral evil in American history: slavery. Americans made many compromises in the decades leading up to the Civil War\u00a0in attempts\u00a0to address slavery, most notably the\u00a0Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This law sanctioned \u201cpopular sovereignty,\u201d\u00a0the idea that\u00a0federal territories\u00a0should\u00a0decide by a simple majority whether they wanted slavery\u00a0or not. That\u00a0law provided the seeds for the expansion of\u00a0slavery\u00a0throughout America, including in territories where it was previously forbidden.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abraham Lincoln responded by\u00a0appealing to the\u00a0moral\u00a0standard\u00a0found in the Declaration\u00a0of Independence. Given the\u00a0principle of human equality\u00a0articulated there\u00a0and the natural law,\u00a0even majorities must obey and teach that\u00a0slavery is wrong.\u00a0According to\u00a0Lincoln,\u00a0Stephen A. Douglas,\u00a0who authored the Kansas-Nebraska Act,\u00a0was\u00a0guilty of\u00a0\u201cblowing out the moral lights around us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the\u00a02022\u00a0Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0Supreme Court decision, the Court overturned\u00a0Roe\u00a0<\/em>on a\u00a0legal technicality,\u00a0rather than\u00a0on the basis of a created, moral order that\u00a0establishes that every human\u00a0life is sacred.\u00a0Because the Court\u00a0returned the\u00a0question of legality\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0states,\u00a0the issue of\u00a0abortion\u00a0is now handled\u00a0in a way\u00a0like\u00a0popular sovereignty. The\u00a0Dobbs\u00a0<\/em>decision was a\u00a0major victory for the pro-life\u00a0movement,\u00a0but\u00a0because\u00a0the Court\u00a0failed to\u00a0declare abortion morally wrong, some states\u00a0have now\u00a0enshrined it as a basic human right.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where does that leave us in 2026? Like with slavery and Jim Crow laws, the United States is fundamentally divided state by state on a question of essential moral status and incredible moral gravity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In such a setting,\u00a0these words from C.S. Lewis,\u00a0on the moral decay\u00a0of\u00a0culture, are just as\u00a0appropriate as\u00a0when he wrote them:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n For my part I believe we ought to work not only at spreading the Gospel (that certainly) but also at a certain preparation for the Gospel. It is necessary to recall many to the law of nature before we talk about God. For Christ promises forgiveness of sins: but what is that to those who, since they do not know the law of nature, do not know that they have sinned? Who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease? Moral relativity is the enemy we have to overcome before we tackle Atheism.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The ongoing debates about abortion and a myriad of other contemporary issues \u2014 from gender dysphoria and the LGBT crusade to Critical Theory and immigration \u2014 underscore the importance of returning to and answering the basic moral questions: Is there a transcendent moral authority? By what standard do we judge what is right and wrong? Is every human being valuable or not? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Christians believe that God is the ultimate standard for all morality, above any traditions, values, laws, norms, or majority opinions. By this objective moral standard, revealed in both natural law and biblical revelation, all actions and policies can and should be measured. That requires not only pushing back against the moral relativism that has captivated hearts and minds, and still pervades contemporary culture, but also appealing to and upholding God\u2019s clear moral standards amid vast moral confusion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By John Stonestreet\/Andrew Carico. The prophet Isaiah warned, \u201cWoe to those who call evil good and good evil.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0A modern example, as Dr. Al Mohler recently described on\u00a0The Briefing, is the \u201cmoral incoherence\u201d of believing life is sacred and valuable while also rejecting any consequences for those who take it.\u00a0\u00a0 Recently, the state\u00a0of\u00a0Georgia charged a\u00a0woman\u00a0with the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[423,1026,179],"coauthors":[976],"class_list":{"0":"post-12086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-apostacy","8":"tag-apostacy","9":"tag-isaiah","10":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12088,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12086\/revisions\/12088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12086"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=12086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n