Tim Keller is wrong about abortion By Steven Begakis, Op-ed Contributor for The Christian Post
GNN Note – Tim Keller is wrong about a lot of things. / END
American Christians are on the precipice of a new era. For 50 years, ever since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, courts have struck down almost all legal restrictions on abortion, making it nearly impossible for state governments to protect the lives of unborn children. Many Christians have been working quietly and patiently to end the Roeregime, and now those efforts may finally pay off.
If the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks, everything will change in this country. For the first time in generations, Christians who understand what abortion is — the intentional killing of unborn children — will be able to work to pass new laws that could save millions of unborn lives.
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It was at this moment, just days before the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade (which is not yet final), that Tim Keller, the well-known theologian and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, wrote a provocative tweet thread explaining that Christians should not divide over the politics of abortion. The entire thread is worth reading carefully, but I will quote only part of it here:
I recently wrote about how churches should not destroy unity or fellowship over political differences … Here are two Biblical MORAL norms: 1. It is a sin to worship idols or any God other than the true God & 2. do not murder. If you ask evangelicals if we should be forbidden by law to worship any other God than the God of the Bible — they’d say ‘no’ … We allow that terrible sin to be legal. But if you ask them if Americans should be forbidden by law to abort a baby, they’d say ‘yes.’ Now why make the first sin legal and NEVER talk about it and the second sin illegal and a main moral/political talking point? … The Bible tells us that idolatry, abortion, and ignoring the poor are all grievous sins. But it doesn’t tell us exactly HOW we are to apply these norms to a pluralistic democracy. … I know abortion is a sin, but the Bible doesn’t tell me the best political policy to decrease or end abortion in this country, nor which political or legal policies are most effective to that end … [W]e are allowed to debate that and so our churches should not have disunity over debatable political differences!
Keller is right to call abortion what it is — “murder.” But two things are troubling about this statement. The first is that Keller is ambivalent over whether murder, which is the killing of innocent human beings made in the image of God, “should be forbidden by law.” That is an odd position to take. To see how odd, simply reread Keller’s thread, but replace the words “abortion” and “murder” with “slavery.”
