Price tags.

How much money would it cost for you to take a life? A million or two? A billion? Maybe only a few hundred thousand? What about a trillion dollars? Would that be enough to convince you? For one life? Would you kill someone? How about a couple hundred dollars? I hope most people would not be willing to take a life for a stingy two hundred dollars. Seriously, face a lifetime of prison for 200 dollars? Yet, I feel like in the United States today, that’s what the going rate is. 200 dollars. Not 2 trillion. Or even 2 million. Two hundred. This is how I look at it. Our national debt is around 9.2 trillion. The number of abortions since 1973 is around 48.5 million. I understand that these two figures normally have nothing to do with each other. The key word there is normally. This is election year, and I have met and talked with too many solid Christians who are basing their voting preference on the fiscal policy of the candidate rather than the moral convictions of the president. If we vote for a man because he might lessen the debt but do nothing about the number of unborn children murdered, then we are selling children’s lives for about $200 a kid.200 dollars! That’s all!! I spend that much on food in a month!

I think it’s tragic when we vote for people based on their economic, financial, or healthcare policy when there are issues like saving the lives of innocent children, or protecting the sanctity of marriage, or preserving the Christian freedoms this nation was founded on. If we had all the moral issues taken care of, then yes, the money, medicine, and education issues would take a new priority, but we are facing a moral crisis in this nation. Sadly, it’s not that there are not enough Christians to fight; instead, they are choosing to take the side of passivity when it concerns the moral issues in order to keep taxes low and save some money. As Edmund Burke once said, “Evil prevails when good men sit back and do nothing.” By voting for candidates based on finances or healthcare policy instead of actively fighting for life, marriage, and freedom, then we are sitting back and doing nothing. We are letting evil prevail.
This morning I heard a message about Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” I learned something new today. The pastor explained that in the Greek, there are two ways to translate “conformed.” The first is preventative. In essence saying “Don’t even go there, stop it before it can happen.” The second is after the fact, meaning “Stop being conformed. It’s been happening, now it’s time to stop.” The definition this passage uses is the second definition. Paul is telling Christians, Stop being conformed to the world!! The world has deceived you for far too long already! Stop it, be transformed! Change!
I think this is a message we need to hear. Stop believing that money is more important than morals! Stop believing that taxes and healthcare are more valuable than defining marriage as between man and woman or letting abortions continue in this country.
So, I ask once more. What’s your price tag for life? A couple hundred dollars? Who are you voting for? These questions are interlocked whether we would like to believe it or not.

“When you know to do good and do it not, to him it is sin.” James 4:17