Yikes. I am writing on abortion.

I am feeling very conflicted about abortion law these days.

Don’t get me wrong; I think abortion is killing a human being made in the image of God.

However, I cannot agree with the absence of nuance many Christians bring to this issue, and often in a very unappealing self-righteous manner. As if a refusal even to acknowledge that while it may be murder, the killing of an uninvited resident of one's body (albeit a fully human resident) is not the same thing as killing an autonomous being. Both may be sins, but they are not the same sin. If you think so, then you are, in my opinion, wrong. Think about it some more. Think about why the civil law makes a distinction between burglary, robbery, and theft, and in the use of deadly force in responding to each of those crimes.

I could not look at a young woman who was raped by her father and tell her she must carry the baby to term. I would counsel her to do so, provide prenatal and postnatal health services, and arrange for the care and/or adoption of the child, but I cannot support the state forcing her to carry to term. I am compelled to leave it up to her conscience. She is a free moral agent.

There are all kinds of tricky theological questions that arise in thinking of abortion. Thorny God’s sovereignty in tension with free-will questions. But I’m not going there. We can stipulate that from a Christian perspective abortion is a sin.

That means Christians should not do it regardless of the law of the land. (It also means that some Christians will do it and that it is not the mythical unpardonable sin.)

However, we are talking about civil law, not God’s law. And when it comes to civil law I am an anti-theonomist. I support (or reject) civil laws based not on God’s law, but on the smooth and safe functioning of society. I think there should be laws against stealing, but not because it is a Commandment, but because society would be more chaotic without such laws. Christians should not steal (because it is a Commandment) even in a weird utopian society where it was not illegal.

I think anti-theonomists and theonomists are at least self-consistent, although at least one group is self-consistently wrong. But garden-variety Christians are hypocritical when it comes to civil law. They generally want laws based on God’s law in certain (easy-to-claim-the-moral-high-ground) cases—like abortion or same-sex marriage, but not on other less marquee sins. If you tell me you are for outlawing abortion and against the legalization of same-sex marriage because they are sins, then unless you tell me you are also for outlawing covetousness (which would most likely mean the end of advertising and capitalism) then I will view you as a hypocrite in regards to your approach to the civil law.