Missing the Point About the Contraceptive Mandate

We at Answers in Genesis have been praising God this week for the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the Hobby Lobby company regarding its free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. It should have been an easy decision, but the vote was 5-4. Four justices ultimately had wanted to decide to oppose the free exercise of religion for certain Christians—the Christian owners of Hobby Lobby, who did not want to offer abortion-causing drugs to their employees as mandated by Obamacare. Instead they wanted to abide by Christian principles and not be forced to accept a secular view on the sanctity of life (i.e., not be involved in killing children in the womb).

Denying the sanctity of life by four justices and tens of millions of Americans is reflective of something alarming in our culture. Many who supported the Obamacare mandate seemed either to miss the biggest problem with the law or flatly opposed what God says in His Word. (Or they just didn’t care.) Regardless, many people have bought into the false religion of man’s word determining truth—and that it is greater than God’s Word on a host of issues.

A recent poll from the Kaiser Foundation revealed that two-thirds of Americans supported the Obamacare mandate. And even after being asked specifically about the Hobby Lobby case and the religious rights of Christian business owners, 55 percent still said Christian-owned companies should have to abide by the mandate, “even if it violates their owners’ personal religious beliefs.”

Sadly this attitude paralleled the prevailing view in Nazi Germany in the 1930s! Christians opposed many of the things the National Socialists were doing, but many Germans sided with the government’s new Nazi religion, which forced Christians to adhere to their (immoral) standards. (I have been told that the book The Swastika Against the Cross: The Nazi War of Christianity by Bruce Walker deals with this topic.) And look what that Nazi religion led to!

Our Western culture by and large has abandoned God’s Word from the very first verse, and so there is a mentality that “anything goes,” including when it comes to the sanctity of life.

You see, Scripture is clear that life begins at fertilization:

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me. (Psalm 51:5) [Note: the medical definition of conception today has changed; this passage utilizes an older definition of conception, which means to fertilize. Compare the definitions in Stedman’s Medical Dictionary entries for “conception” in the 26th edition and the 27th edition to see that the current usage means implantation, which is 6-9 days following fertilization).]

[The psalmist David says of God:] For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. (Psalm 139:13–14)

[God said to the prophet Jeremiah:] “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

But these polls (and really the entire Hobby Lobby case) are proof that the rights of Christians in America are continuing to come under fire from secularists who are trying to impose their worldview religion on Christians. I believe the sanctity of human life will continue to be reduced further as time goes on if this nation continues to believe we are all just rearranged chemicals in an accidental universe, where there is no right and wrong.

This nation is already under judgment—but it’s not too late for Christians to take a stand on God’s Word. I urge you to speak the truth to a world that is lost and in need of the gospel, and to unashamedly stand for the principles of the Bible like the owners of Hobby Lobby have done. Remember that the God of the Bible is greater than all else.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken