Time for clone-to-kill lobby to hear from Missouri
There are all kinds of reasons to vote “no” on clone-to-kill Amendment 2.
It undermines Missouri’s legislative process, it forces taxpayers to pay for the endeavor and puts women’s health at risk. All of these have been articulated in The Pathway and other media over the past several months. If these are not sufficient, then consider this: Why has the clone-to-kill lobby spent $28 million to get Missourians to vote “yes?” That is twice the amount spent recently by the state’s casino gambling lobby and is more money than has ever been spent on any senatorial campaign in this state.
All of these reasons surely pale in comparison to the one that should provide the most motivation for Missouri Southern Baptists, and indeed all Christians, to vote “no” on Amendment 2: The destruction of life. An embryo is human life. Only God has the right to create and end life. Consider Luke 2:21: “And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, His name was called Jesus, which was so named by the angel before He was conceived in the womb” (emphasis is mine).Both Jesus and John the Baptist were named before conception. Jesus was an embryo and it is clear God had a plan for the embryo before the embryo even existed.
Now consider Proverbs 24:10-12: “If you faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. If you forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, ‘Behold, we knew it not,’ God will search your soul and know it. He will render to every man according to his work.” God will hold us accountable and will punish those who harm the innocent and weak. Is there anyone more innocent and weak than an embryo? God alone has the authority and power to plan and create human life. Just as in the days of Noah, and at the Tower of Babel, there are severe consequences when others act as though they are God.
For the life of me I do not understand Christians who feel they should not be involved in the political process. Christians are citizens of two realms – earthly and spiritual – and we have rights and responsibilities in both. Christians are told to be obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ (Ex. 20:1-5) and our Lord instructed us to “render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s” (Luke 20:25). It means paying our taxes, but it also means much more.
The Apostle Paul instructs us to be good citizens because God has ordained government to punish and restrict evildoers and to reward and protect moral behavior (Romans 13:1-7). Christians are to obey civil government unless the government requires believers to support or do something that contradicts their allegiance to God. Christians are not to be merely obedient to the state, but involved in society – especially on Election Day.
Amendment 2 is motivated by greed and the lust for money. The clone-to-kill lobby wants to get the jump on cornering the market when it comes to the patents that could be issued with embryonic stem cell research. If it’s not about money, then why are Amendment 2 proponents wanting taxpayer funding for their weird science?
Our Baptist Faith and Message confession of faith states that “every Christian is under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in his own life and in human society.” It goes on to say that Christians not only “should oppose, in the spirit of Christ, every form of greed, selfishness and vice,” and “should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth and brotherly love.”
“When we bring our religious and moral convictions into the public marketplace of ideas and involve ourselves in the political arena, we are standing solidly within the best of our traditions as Americans and as Baptists,” said Richard Land, president, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. “Far too often in recent decades we have allowed ourselves to be driven from the arena of debate by false understandings and misleading applications of church-state separation and religious liberty.” (Land is scheduled to speak Nov. 1 at the Missouri Baptist Convention’s annual meeting and I encourage you not to miss his address.)
There have been those who accuse Missouri Southern Baptists with attempting to impose our morality on the rest of the state. This is ridiculous. All governments legislate morality. If we had no laws prohibiting murder, the death rate would skyrocket. If we had no laws against theft, property losses would escalate. Government must legislate morality in order to fulfill its God-ordained purpose. God requires us to hold government accountable so that it punishes evil and protects its citizens – even its most vunerable, the unborn. As Land said, “In so doing, we do not impose our morality on the murderer and the thief so much as we prevent them from imposing their immorality on their victims.”
Missouri Southern Baptists cannot sit by and let Amendment 2 pass. We have an obligation as the redeemed children of a Holy God to act. Vote on Nov. 7 and vote “no” on Amendment 2.