Idaho Senator Bob Nonini has come under fire recently for nodding his head in agreement with the view that those who murder a baby in the womb should face criminal charges. CrossPolitic hosted a live show interviewing three of the Republican candidates for Lt. Governor in Idaho on Monday, April 2nd at the historic Nuart Theater in downtown Moscow, Idaho. Senator Bob Nonini, Janice McGeachin, and Steve Yates were the candidates present. The show covered topics such as civics, education, taxation, and healthcare as it specifically relates to abortion. Since then media outlets and social media forums have blown up with shock and outrage that Nonini would ever consider criminal charges, including up to the death penalty for abortion. But the hypocrisy is deep and thick. In a nation that currently averages 3,000 legal murders a day, we have the audacity to call Nonini barbaric? Who are the savages really? So-called “doctors” who dismember little babies for a living? Planned Parenthood who sells baby parts to increase their financial margins? Abortion clinics that target minority neighborhoods to “reduce poverty” by crushing the bodies of black and brown babies? Or a politician who suggests criminal charges for these monstrosities?
According to the World Health Organization, there are 40-50 million abortions worldwide every year. That’s around 125,000 abortions a day worldwide. Over 10 million abortions have been performed in the world this year already. In the US alone 22% of all pregnancies end in abortion. 60 million babies have been slaughtered in America since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. As Jesus might say, it will be more tolerable at the day of judgment for Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia than for us if we do not repent.
As we explained on the live show, the Bible puts such a high premium on the value of life that it clearly teaches that in the ordinary course of things, all things being equal, with due process, and two or three witnesses, premeditated murder deserves the death penalty: life for life. This is the standard of basic Biblical justice. The point of this is to make clear judicially just how valuable life is. The price you pay for taking human life indicates how valuable any given culture thinks human life really is. Of course in the case of abortion, there are sometimes extenuating circumstances: heavy pressures from doctors, threats from boyfriends or parents, or acceptance of widespread lies about what an unborn baby actually is. But American case law is built on the Biblical requirement for due process, which always presumes the accused innocent until proven guilty. This also includes the right to a fair trial, competent defense, and all extenuating circumstances taken into account. The Bible requires that every murder, every crime be investigated judiciously and brought to fair trial. We repeated this point several times in the course of our live show. But the woman who is on her 3rd abortion, in the third trimester, who openly boasts that she is killing her baby and she doesn’t care, should absolutely go to a fair trial and face murder charges. The so-called “doctors” who knowingly perform these gruesome procedures should face murder charges. The Kermit Gosnells of the world should certainly face the death penalty.
But our situation is actually far worse. None of us are clean. None of us are innocent. All of us in this nation are implicated. This kind of sin is not just out there, in the world, as though we who profess the name of Jesus are some how uncontaminated. We are all unclean. There is blood on all of our hands. Christian men prop up the pornography industry by their lust, paying for women to be objectified, dishonored, and then thrown away like so much fetal tissue. Christian men fail to love their wives like Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. We have not trained up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We have stolen, lied, cheated, and pretended we are basically good people. We have stood by, often silent, as our nation systematically codifies immorality into law in the forms of no-fault divorce, unjust taxation, blatantly racist city codes, unbiblical prison systems, the Obergefell decision, and in recent years, protecting and condoning transgender perversions. We say Jesus is Lord and we fail to obey Him. And the wages of all this sin is death. We all deserve the death penalty. The Christian Church has not been salt and light in this world. We have led the way into this confusion. And therefore, we in the Church must repent, and as we do so, we must call upon the world to repent with us.
And the thing that we need to come to grips with is that the only thing that can wash away the blood on our hands is blood. In God’s economy, only blood can wash away blood. But all of our blood is contaminated. All of our blood is unclean. All of our sacrifices, all of our good deeds will never be enough. And this is why Jesus came. He lived the perfect life; He obeyed God’s law perfectly. And then He willingly laid His life down. He took our sins and crimes upon Himself. He took our abortions on Himself. He took our lies upon Himself. He took our lust upon Himself. The Bible says that He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ. He took our death penalty so that we might go free. He took our filth so that we might become clean. The wrath that we deserved for all of our sins was poured out on the only Savior Jesus Christ, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; by His stripes we are healed.
Senator Bob Nonini was absolutely right. Those who take part in the bloodshed of abortion should pay. But God comes to all of us with the offer of mercy in His Son Jesus. He offers pardon in the blood of His Son. Given how we are all implicated in the blood of abortion, this is the only way out: running to the cross of Jesus. This is the only way the holocaust of abortion will end. But as we run to the cross, Jesus graciously calls us to repent, to go and sin no more, to turn away from all our evil deeds and He clearly warns us that if we refuse, if we harden our hearts and refuse to change our ways, if we do not change our laws, if we do not punish evil doers and defend the innocent in the face of His glorious mercy to us, we will be destroyed. He who judges the nations, will He not rebuke? Jesus is Savior and Lord – He offers amnesty to all who humble themselves and cry out for mercy, but the impenitent He will judge. We pray for Senator Nonini, and politicians do their best to speak truth in our blood thirsty society, to stand firm.
In the meantime, as a tactical matter, we have no interest in starting this conversation talking about executing a scared eighteen-year-old girl. We want to start with the gospel. And we completely understand the concerns that some fellow pro-lifers have with appearing to begin with the most difficult cases, and we welcome that pushback gladly. But to the pro-abortion advocates–we raised a “what if” scenario on our live show, but the current reality embraces over 3,000 innocent murders per day due to abortion. You are outraged at the possibility that one eighteen-year-old girl could ever be tried for murder, but you would have no problem at all if she was murdered via abortion eighteen years earlier along with hundreds of thousands of others completely undeserving of that death penalty. Please excuse us for not taking your outrage seriously at all.
Pastor Toby Sumpter, David Shannon, Gabriel Rench