The Difference between a Christian Conscience and a Secular Conscience

The Trump conundrum is now well understood. Though his positions and decisions as president were surprisingly good in some ways, his self-centeredness, history of crudeness, and penchant for insults have led many to say their Christian conscience won’t allow them to vote for him. A growing number claim their Christian conscience is so offended by Trump they feel compelled to vote for Kamala Harris to ensure Trump doesn’t take office. “Evangelicals for Harris,” a group that recently hosted a Zoom call attended by 200,000, declares on their X bio they are “voting for someone who better reflects Christian values.”

To her credit, Harris doesn’t have an insulting nickname for everyone she perceives as a political obstacle, but she is the most radically pro-abortion presidential candidate our country has ever seen. She is in favor of taxpayer-funded abortion up to the point of birth and favors no restrictions of any kind. When, as attorney general of California, she learned the abortion industry was illegally harvesting and selling aborted baby body parts, she did nothing to the people who dissect babies but aggressively went after David Daleiden, the man who exposed it. She is also the first vice president to visit an abortion facility, a move intended to demonstrate just how supportive of abortion she is.

Unfortunately, abortion is just the beginning of her joyful war on the Imago Dei. Harris has aggressively opposed state legislation protecting minors from chemical and surgical mutilation. She staged a photo op in the White House with a bearded man in a dress as if men in dresses and six-inch heels have always been discussing important ideas in the White House. She is also the first vice president to appear on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” to show her solidarity with drag queens.

Not only was she an early proponent of same-sex marriage, she refused to defend California’s natural marriage law as AG even when it was her sworn duty to do so. Though Harris talks about the importance of following the law, she doesn’t follow laws she doesn’t like either.

America’s vice president formally opposes everything God said was good. She denies God made us male and female. She denies God ordained marriage to be a relationship between a man and a woman. She denies we should be fruitful and multiply but believes people are a threat to the planet, part of the reason she is an evangelist for reducing the population generally. But never mind all that, she laughs a lot.

Christians are forced to navigate the reality that perfect people are never on the ballot, so we’re always picking sinners — and it’s appropriate to have minimum qualifications for our leaders. But not all sin is the same. Yes, all sin separates us from God and requires forgiveness, but not all sin is equally harmful. This is part of the reason Jesus warns us not to neglect logs in favor of specks and mentioned that those who delivered Jesus to Pilate were guilty of “greater sin” (John 19:10-11). It’s also the reason Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for straining at gnats while they swallowed camels (Matthew 23:24). Indifference to grave evil because you’re busy being outraged over real but less serious matters is its own form of sin.

We do not want our children speaking disrespectfully to their teacher, but even more than that we don’t want them planting pipe bombs in the school bathroom. “Evangelicals for Harris” is overlooking the pipe bomb in Johnny’s backpack so long as he promises not to talk back to his teacher.

Kamala Harris works to advance the agendas of people who dissect babies and sell their organs for profit. Other things are also evil, but there is nothing worse than that. However bad you think January 6 was, it’s less bad than dissecting babies. Just because good-looking people in expensive suits are telling you it’s not a big deal doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal. If you can get over baby organ harvesting because it’s done with joy, but you can’t get over the fact that Trump is insensitive, that’s not a Christian conscience in operation.

Yes, Trump has made repeated, awful statements about women — including jokes about assaulting them. There’s no excuse for it. But if your moral outrage compels you to affirmatively support someone who facilitates the mutilation and sterilization of children in response, that’s a cultural conscience, not a Christian one. That’s a conscience formed by “The View,” not the Bible.

People have convinced themselves that because they agree with God slavery is wrong, they’re on God’s team. Not so fast. While we have fortunately reached a consensus about the evils of slavery, the test of whether you have a Christian conscience or a cultural conscience occurs when the culture and God disagree. There’s no cost to taking God’s side on the issue of slavery, but there is a cost to taking God’s side on gender, marriage, identity, sexuality, sin, and a host of other issues. If you take sides with the culture against God every time there’s a conflict, you don’t get to claim to be on God’s team just because you also want to help the poor. Everyone wants to do that. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.

A blessing of living in a free country is that we get to vote for anyone we want or abstain entirely. Obviously, I have opinions, but this is less an effort to persuade you to agree with me and more an effort to get us to stop lying to ourselves. Efforts like “Evangelicals for Harris” are lying to themselves and others. Take your “better reflects Christian values” nonsense elsewhere. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. There are a lot of people in the process of straining out gnats and swallowing camels right now. Kamala Harris is at war with God, and I’m not joining that war.