There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. - Proverbs 16:25
Surely all of us care very much to see the wickedness of our nation reformed. And knowing "the king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes" (Proverbs 21:1), none of us despair. That said, there's much area for disagreement, so let's argue trusting our goals are largely the same despite our differing strategies.
So why did I not mark my ballot for Governor Romney?
Well, it was a change. I've never cast a vote for either a Democrat or Independent candidate for the presidency since I voted for Jimmy Carter.
Bad move. Learned my lesson. Don't want my president scheduling the use of the tennis courts at the White House.
But as I've voted for Republican candidate after Republican candidate, I've had this growing sense that we've already established what I am and the only thing left to dither over every four years is what my vote will cost them. Clearly the price has been going down with no end in sight. Along with ever other pro-life Christian who believes our public servants should be held accountable to honor their vows of submission to our Constitution, I've been commodified. Each candidate fronted by the Republican party is likely to be worse than the one before him. I mean Bush the Elder? Dole? Bush the Younger? McCain?
And now Romney? You've got to be kidding me! There are so many things wrong with this picture, but focus particularly on the defense of life.
Over all the years I've been voting for Republican candidates for the presidency, we have seen not one iota of change to the bloodshed as a result of a principled and costly stand by a Republican president. We've gotten lots and lots of showboating; many wives who differ from their husbands on the issue (and isn't that some indication of their husbands' sincereity?); some SCOTUS appointees who gave us some little hope; but across the country, abortion is the same and newborns and the feeble and the elderly are more than making up for any decline there may be in abortions. (I say "any decline there may be" because of the weasel factor ECPs and chemical abortions have brought into the counts; and that weasel factor will only get worse as abortifacients like the Pill, Depo-Provera, ECPs, and RU-486 type pharmaceutical regimens displace surgical abortions).
When I entered the ministry almost thirty years ago, I wrote a pro-life piece that received some national circulation and an academic tenured at a state university in New York who was known for his scholarship and advocacy for the disabled and elderly wrote thanking me for the article. In that letter, he said that he believed around 225,000 elderly men and women were being killed each year in these United States through...
various forms of neglect by their caregivers. He was a serious academic, nationally known, and that was his estimate back around 1985. It's only gotten worse--much, much worse--since then. Ask any Christian who cares for the elderly.
Back when I was the pastor of a church of elderly men and women in Wisconsin, I had to deal with the witholding of antibiotics from one of the women in my church who was in the nursing home and developed a simple case of pneumonia. Other than the pneumonia, she was perfectly fine. Perfectly cogent; perfectly ambulatory; perfectly sweet; no other significant physical problems, but when she got pneumonia, they would not prescribe an antibiotic. Why? Because she was in her early eighties, so they set out to murder her!
In the intervening years, such bloodshed has become so common as to be a yawn. The feeble and elderly across our nation routinely are denied love and food and water, and so they die. They know what's expected of them, and they comply. You think I'm being alarmist? Did you read Ken Kesey's testimony I linked to last week? I told you to--did you? If not, read it now. (Here's the first page and the rest.) We have very few Christians writing that way, so read a pagan who has served the least of these and came back to testify to us concerning the value of their lives.
So today, we have redefined food and water as "treatment" rather than "care," and under that rubric we dehydrate and starve to death souls created in the Image of God. It is wicked. It is commonplace. And I haven't even mentioned increasing dosages of morphine which ostensibly are given for the comfort of the dying, but actually suppress the patient's vital functions and become the cause of death.
It is always open season on souls at the margins of life--the unwanted unborn, the defective unborn, the defective newborn, those in a persistent state of some degree of unconsciousness, those who are sick, those who are elderly, those who are feeble, and the dying--and Christian physicians who work to sustain life are routinely persecuted. No, I'm not referring to extraordinary measures like ventilators or other aggressive treatments. I'm referring to food and water and patience in feeding and leaving multiple pregnancies in the womb and giving an antibiotic to an elderly man or woman who has developed a lung infection.
Add in our civil magistrates taking over health care decisions (whether constitutionally on the state level as Governor Romney accomplished in Massachusetts or unconstitutionally on the national level as President Obama accomplished); add in the almost-exponential growth in health care costs; add in the mass of baby-boomers; add in any number of other facts; and only Pollyanna could fail to see that our national commitment to the elimination of "useless eaters" will undergo massive expansion in the coming years. Add in the growing proportion of souls murdered who will die at the hands of government committees, their policies, and their compliant and well-paid physicians; then mix in the insidious evil of the growth we're currently undergoing of off-the-radar pharmaceutical potions being the means-of-choice employed by mothers murdering their unborn children; and it's clear that the charade of Republican opposition to Roe vs. Wade has become largely meaningless.
A quarter century ago, C. Everett Koop put it this way in an interview that ran in "World's" predecessor publication, the Presbyterian Journal: "For every Baby Doe, there will be ten thousand Grandma and Grandpa Does." So it is. While birth-controlling Christians are fixated and simplistically reducing every election to surgical abortions, the bloodshed has undergone a massive expansion that has flown under the radar and has had virtually no impact on the Christian vote. We are principled simpletons and it's no wonder we haven't even gotten a reversal of Roe vs. Wade. One less (surgical) abortion because of my casting the ballot for Governor Romney is all it takes to keep me drinking from the trough.
Meawhile, who's counting the deaths from abortifacient methods of so-called "birth control?" Who's arguing there are deaths from ECPs, let alone counting them. (Not the National Right to Life folks, I found out.) Who's counting the Baby Does today? Who's counting the Terry Schiavos today? Who's counting the Grandma and Grandpa Does today?
Let me be very specific. I would estimate between a quarter and half the adults in any conservative Reformed church in these United States have directly participated in murder, often of a loved one whether born or unborn. But we salve our consciences by walking the March for Life, putting up little white crosses, collecting maternity clothes for our local crisis pregnancy home, and voting for whatever big-business Republican is being thrown at us this election cycle. We're pro-life, don't you know? We take the high road. We are people of conscience. We wouldn't vote for a county dog-catcher who wasn't pro-life!
Murders by surgical abortion continue unopposed as murders by chemical abortion, dehydration, and starvation increase and become institutionalized across our government's health care system.
Now readers may begin to understand why I refused to vote for Governor Mitt Romney for president of these United States. There's much more at stake than the reversal of Roe vs. Wade. Yet even if that was the only thing at stake, it's clear Republican presidents have done nothing principled or costly even to stop that bloodshed. They haven't called for the impeachment of Supreme Court justices. Not one baby has been born because the National Guard was sent in to walk the child to the delivery room. Neither President Reagan nor his Surgeon General of Tenth Presbyterian Church, C. Everett Koop, flew out to Bloomington, took Baby Doe into his arms, and fed him.
We conservative Christians pride ourselves in voting pro-life Republican and the band plays on.
Still, everyone knows Independents determine presidential elections. Why haven't conservative Christians mounted an independent strategy?
Because conservative Christians have taken their eyes off the ball and are fixated on the immediate.
For myself, it finally seemed time to show money-grubbing Republican leaders they can no longer count on my vote in return for their kiss and a promise. I'm in it for the long haul. I see chemical abortions and nationalized health care as equally insidious, blood-wise, as surgical abortions; and I will not support a candidate who hasn't demonstrated a track record of hatred for institutionalized and systematic and massive slaughter of innocents.
No more "one less murder is reason enough for me." I'm in it for the long haul and I will not support a candidate who is a little less bloodthirsty than the guy he's running against, because over my lifetime it's become clear to me that strategy has only resulted in more and more bloodshed more and more systemic and less and less recognized and opposed.
Our incrementalist justifications for voting Republican have boiled the frog and it's time to stop this foolishness. As Joe Sobran said when he finally climbed on the wagon, "Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me. Fool me three times? I'm a Republican!"
So here is my public announcment that, despite recognizing others see it another way, I am done with the Republican candidates for President of these United States--unless and until they have a truly pro-life candidate who will oppose the slaughters that permeate our nation. And if a few conservative Christians join me and begin to vote for a truly constitutional, pro-life candidate, we will change the course of our nation.
By God's grace.
For myself, despite others who will see this as perfectionism, I see it as a perfectly utilitarian act of faith. And no, that's no oxymoron.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
Want to get in touch? Send Tim an email!
