Darrow Miller and Friends

The Gorsuch Pushback: The Culture of Death on Full Display

The pushback to the Gorsuch nomination is another indicator of the inroads of the culture of death in the US.

Perhaps the most serious challenge the church has ever faced in her long history is her present confrontation with secular progressivism and postmodernity in the West. Secular progressivism is a comprehensive worldview that functions as a rival and chief competitor to the Judeo-Christian worldview that shaped the West for more than a thousand years. It has largely displaced Christianity in Europe, and is steadily eroding the church in North America.

Gorsuch nomination opposed by abortion rights groupsNowhere is the divide between these two religious rivals more stark than on the question of human life. The Judeo-Christian worldview views life as a gift from God, and human life in particular is sacred because people are made in the image and likeness of God himself. There is no religion, past, present or future, that has a higher view of human dignity.

Secular progressivism, on the other hand, fosters a culture of death.  Nearly 60 million babies have been killed in America since 1973, legally, under the unspeakably horrific Roe v. Wade ruling of the United States Supreme Court.

Contrast that with the estimated six million Jews killed by the Nazis in concentration camps, and you begin to see just how deadly the secular progressive religion is, right here in our own country, and in our own generation.

I was reminded of this today in reading the response of the New York Times Editorial Board to the selection of Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

In searching though Gorsuch’s judicial record, looking for statements and rulings that would, in their view, cast him as an extremist and out of the mainstream, they wrote:

While Judge Gorsuch’s views on abortion are not known, he has written extensively about assisted suicide and euthanasia. In his book on the topic, he wrote that “human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

Gorsuch is simply stating the basic Judeo-Christian view of human life. It is “inherently valuable,” and, drawing from the Ten Commandments as well as the law written on human hearts (Rom. 2:15): “The intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

And yet, shockingly, the New York Times Editorial Board suggests that this statement somehow makes him an extremist, not worthy to be confirmed.

Rod Dreher identifies Gorsuch opposition for what it isRod Dreher, commenting on this, writes:

For the Times editorial board and the people for whom it speaks, not even life itself has precedence over individual autonomy. Notice that the editorial doesn’t even attempt to argue the point; its authors simply assume that Gorsuch’s statement is obviously beyond the pale. Utterly chilling — and also clarifying. (emphasis added)

The overriding value of secular progressivism is individual autonomy, as I’ve written before.

This value even trumps the taking of human life—shocking, but true. What more proof do we need than 60 million fellow human beings who should be with us, but are not?

I’ve always said that abortion is the moral equivalent of slavery. It is the powerful asserting the right of life and death over the powerless, for the sake of convenience or economic self-interest. This is the secular progressive culture of death. It is what underpins both abortion and euthanasia in the west. It serves as a justification for unspeakable evil in the same way that slave-owners in the old south justified their wicked beliefs and actions.

The great gift of the church to human flourishing in any nation has been its uncompromising stand for the fundamental, inherent value of human life. Thank God for men like Judge Gorsuch who stand up for that supreme good in the public square, and shame on the New York Times editorial board for acting as if that is some kind of extremist view.

  • Scott Allen

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About 
Scott Allen serves as president of the DNA secretariat office. After serving with Food for the Hungry for 19 years in both the United States and Japan, working in the areas of human resources, staff training and program management, he teamed up with Darrow Miller and Bob Moffitt to launch the DNA in 2008. Scott is the author of Beyond the Sacred-Secular Divide: A Call to Wholistic Life and Ministry and co-author of several books including, As the Family Goes, So Goes the Nation: Principles and Practices for Building Healthy Families. His most recent book is Why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice. Scott lives with his wife, Kim, in Bend, OR. They have five children.

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