By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor Courtesy of The Christian Post
Over a month before election day, Pastor Tony Evans urged U.S. citizens to consider the value of life — both inside and outside the womb — before voting, warning that ignoring what God says about human dignity will result in “chaos.”
"When you don't start with the image of God, then you make life what you call it to be, not what God has created it and stamped it to be," Evans, the longtime pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Texas, said on Sunday. "Until we see it through God's eyes, we will not start in the right place.
“God views it as a personal insult when life is not given the value He gives ... to it because what you said is what God did is not worth protecting. So any discussion of life has to start there. Any discussion of life has to start with the divine mark. And the job of government, the Bible says, is to protect that life.”
When God is left out of government, “life and its value gets downgraded, reduced, dishonored and attacked,” he warned. “So when you think about Kingdom voting, you must think about life.”
“Life,” Evans explained, includes “pre-born life and post-born life; abortion before birth, and abortion after birth.”
“See, the problem we get in with voting is that we choose a term insurance policy, not a whole life insurance policy,” he said. “We choose a pre-born insurance policy and not a post-born insurance policy because we do not view all of life in terms of the image of God. And as a result, Christians take sides.”
Unless the sanctity of life at all stages is fully recognized, “you will not have a biblical view on the role of government,” Evans said. “You'll have a partial view or a personal view. But you won't be dealing with life as God does.”
The pastor, who also founded The Urban Alternative, highlighted the horrors of abortion, asking: “Can you imagine if Mary had the option of abortion and decided to take it? We know that couldn't happen in the providence of God, but [under] some of the laws today, it would be OK to kill the Savior.”
He cited Galatians 1:15-16, which speaks to the reality of life in the womb, adding: “So when the government talks about it, ‘it’s OK to abort,’ it’s saying it’s OK to attack God.”
Ignoring what God says about life in the womb will result in “chaos,” Evans warned.
“When you attack life in the womb, you have come against Him. He doesn't like it. That's why He said in Genesis 9, ‘You attack my life, I will attack you.’ Do you want the government to keep you safe? It better keep you safe by keeping God happy. It keeps you safe by keeping God happy by not ... legalizing death in the womb.’”
In the U.S., 40% of voters see abortion as "very important" to their vote, according to a summer poll from Pew.
Additionally, a spring poll from Gallup found that 30% of people who consider themselves "pro-life" say they would only vote for a candidate who shares that view compared to 19% of people who believe themselves "pro-choice."
In his sermon Sunday, Evans emphasized that there also “must be laws to protect the dignity of life” outside the womb. Slavery, Jim Crow laws, racism, police brutality, mistreatment of the poor and homeless, and red-lining districts are all examples of reducing or removing dignity, he said.
"When we allow the poor to have worse education than others because they don't have the same dollar bill, when we don't care about the health, the well-being of people who do not have access to adequate healthcare, when we reduce their dignity, we have attacked God. And when we reduce it by law or practice, that’s called post-life abortion because you are aborting either the length of their existence or the well-being of their existence, so it just depends on which abortion you are talking about.”
He contended that when Christians fail to “reject and rebel” against such policies, “we have become co-conspirators to oppressive regimes.”
Citing Psalm 89:14, Evans stressed that both "righteousness" and "justice" are the foundation of God's throne and that they can't be separated.
"Don't just talk to me about moral laws; talk to me about it, but don't put a period there. Talk to me also about the just application of the law without discrimination. Talk to me not only about what you're going to do with the poor but how you're going to handle the rich who are breaking my standard. But because they have money, they can bypass it or eat their way out of it," he said. "No, there are two kinds of abortions. There's abortion in the womb, but there's abortion on your way to the tomb, so people don't get to live out their divinely ordained destiny.
“Yes, we should protest abortion in the womb. But that same number of people or more are to righteously and peacefully protest abortion outside of the womb.”
Life starts at conception and ends with death, but between the two should be “dignity and protection." Because everyone has the “stamp of God” on them, they have divine value.
“It is time for Christians to adopt their whole life agenda and vote for the government to protect a whole life agenda,” he declared.” And if your government party is only going to protect one side of it, then you hold them accountable and responsible not to ignore the other side.”
“You do it righteously because if you try to do it unrighteously, God will not be with you there either. It is time for Kingdom voters who take their stand as best they can be based on their conscience, to take a stand for life.”
Evans’ sermon was part of a series titled “Kingdom Voting.”
“Kingdom voting is the opportunity and responsibility of committed Christians to partner with God by expanding His rule in society through civil government,” Evans previously explained. “It’s only to the degree that you include God’s person and God’s policies in society through civil government — as He defines it, not as you prefer it — that we can begin to see healing in the Church so that it can be modeled in the culture.”
In recent months, numerous pastors have weighed in on how Christians should operate amid a particularly contentious election season.
Scott Sauls, bestselling author and senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, previously told The Christian Post that Christians must “become more nuanced in our political engagement, become willing to critique the party that we align with, and also affirm the party that we don't align with.”
“In some respects, we ought to feel politically homeless,” he said. “And that doesn't mean we all need to become moderates. But we all need to transcend the American political system just as Jesus transcended the political system that He was part of. When we give ourselves to Jesus, it will become impossible to give ourselves wholesale to a political party.”