Pro-Life Voting in a Complicated World

Is voting for the pro-life candidate always the right choice? In this episode, the conversation tackles one of the most challenging questions Christians face in the political arena. We explore the tension between single-issue voting and evaluating a candidate’s overall judgment, integrity, and impact. From compromised candidates to complex policy realities, they unpack why this issue isn’t as simple as it seems. Grounded in a biblical worldview, the discussion emphasizes wisdom, humility, and the ultimate mission of the Gospel—encouraging listeners to think deeply, act faithfully, and engage politics without losing sight of the bigger picture.

Read (or listen to) our 6-part series on The Christian and Government here.

Transcript

Why Politics Feels So Fraught

SPEAKER_02 0:01

On today's episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:03

I I often wondered when Jesus was challenged about paying taxes. Paying taxes, the Roman government was paying taxes to cover an awful lot of things that were very, very bad. And he didn't have any qualms about it. And I I've often wondered if there's a bigger picture here, and that is as important as the pro-life cause is, and of course I believe it's important. I mean, I've I've given thousands of dollars to it, I've spent the majority of my life devoted to it and so forth. But there is still a bigger picture, and the bigger picture is the proclamation of the gospel, the challenge that we've been given to glorify God in all things and to spread the message of salvation through Christ.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for life challenges.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Hi, and welcome back. I'm Christopo Tritz, and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samelson. And today today we're going to talk politics. Is that a dangerous thing to say?

unknown 1:33

I know, I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

We're going to tell you exactly who to vote for, when, and and and how much you should donate to which campaigns. Yeah. No, no, we're not doing any of that.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

No, no. That is not our focus today. But what we are going to talk about is this question of endorsing or voting for pro-life candidates and the maybe the the struggle sometimes when the pro-life candidate does not seem to be great in a lot of other areas. And we just kind of want to pull some of this all apart today and and kind of dissect that and talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

And maybe put it back together.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

And yes, so pull it apart, look at it, and um, and then hopefully be able to put some of this together as Jeff has mentioned, or at least uh be able to give a biblical perspective on on this as well. So, Bob, can you start us off? Because I know this has been something that you've really had to deal with a lot lately. I mean, you've gotten a lot of questions, or not even lately, but over the years. But can you just tell us uh just what about this topic um interests you and what about this topic made you want to record today?

Disqualifying Issues And Sound Judgment

When The Pro-Life Brand Is Fake

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Well, every election cycle uh this comes up for us, you know, that who's the pro-life candidate, should we be voting for him, that kind of stuff. And uh yeah, you know, a lot of people think very linear on in this regard. You know, they'll they'll tend to say, who's the pro-life candidate? That's the one we vote for. My own approach to this has always been there are certain disqualifying issues when we go to vote for someone. We talk about it as if they're qualifying issues, but they're really disqualifying issues. For example, if I told you that vote for me, there'll be a chicken in every pot, the car in every garage. But I do think people should be able to torture their pet dog until the dog dies. You don't care how much I like your a car in your garage and a chicken in your pot, you're gonna disqualify me based on that perspective. And so we tend to view pro-life issues that way. You know, if you're willing to to terminate the life of a child, I got a feeling you're just not going to have the judgment and the values that I want for you to represent me. What seems to happen and where the collision begins to occur is when we forget that there are many issues that a candidate has to vote on and that it involves compromise. Sometimes you don't get everything you want. And of course, when you get the people who think only ideologically, in other words, if he's not a pro-life candidate, how can you ever vote for them? If you get people who think like that, um, they seem to almost have a deafness to any type of argument that there might be other factors coming into play. And so if you are one of those who I and I know you're out there because you have written me. But if you are one of those, I want you to just just take a deep breath, release it slowly, and just hear hear out a perspective on it. So that's what it is. I I get the letters, I get the complaints, and and I mean I've had people write the president of the Senate that I'm not pro-life enough because I I refuse to endorse a candidate, or I refuse to to to I refuse to throw the other guy under the bus, you know. And but let me first of all assure you, I don't think knowingly, I have ever intentionally voted for someone who's in favor of abortion. I d I just don't think so. I think I it's been tough sometimes, I I will say that, but I've always voted for what has been considered the pro-life candidate. You also should know that while I work in the spiritual realm, in the theological realm here at Christian Life Resources, I have served on secular pro-life boards. And I have I have served as heads of secular pro-life education committees. So I'm very engaged with endorsing the candidates that they've endorsed and that kind of stuff. So we're not talking, but I'm trying to give you a different way to look at it. And what started this probably was, I don't know, a half dozen years ago or so uh when Ford and Christ published a Q ⁇ A article. The the author of the the Q ⁇ A wrote that there might be a circumstance where you don't vote for the pro-life candidate. And of course it they got a qu quite a flurry of now. Jeff and I have talked about this, I think, off off uh mic. Sometimes that w it wasn't the right timing for that article. You know, it was you know, n the time to start debating this stuff is not in the heat of battle, but you know, kind of like before the battle comes up. And this is that came up in the heat of battle. So uh, you know, I I've said that in general he was right. I didn't agree with the way he worded everything. But in general, there are circumstances. And if you if you look back over some of the pro-life candidate, I g a good example, and I hate throwing people under the bus like this, but there was a candidate, and I won't give his name, but there was a candidate in Georgia. He was endorsed by the pro-life people. Of course, if you follow this linear thinking that we should always vote for the pro-life candidate, so and everything. Well, then they found out all of a sudden, all the all of the stuff was coming out of the woodwork that he had paid for girlfriends to have abortions. So, in other words, the pro-life candidate, the one who was endorsed by all the leading pro-life, pro-family groups, was in fact hiding the reality that he was living a double standard. So you you can't you can't tell me that just being linear and saying you've got to vote pro-life is always going to do it. Because this is where Jeff can probably because he's uh much more in the political science arena, but in a representative form of government, you technically don't vote for a particular single issue. You vote for the person with the best judgment, overall the best judgment.

Compromise And What A Vote Means

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yeah, and you know, r related to that is think of the particular position that you're electing someone to, and is that real something that really is going to have an effect on pro-life issues or not? People say, Oh yes, I'm you know, I'm a great pro-life candidate, you should vote for me. And it's like, okay, what's actually going to come up, you know, in this session or whatever that that actually has any bearing on the pro-life stuff? You know, it's like it's good, you know, when it gets to the point of judgment, you know, that can be very helpful. It's like, okay, yeah, I know this because this guy is pro-life and says all the right things, okay, I think that that that assures me that he's he's on you know on the right track with other things. But then you also have to figure in that people lie, and politicians are known for doing that too. And sometimes it's not so much lying, it's just that they're saying what they think needs to be said without really having a whole lot of uh belief behind it. And so we that's another thing. It's just like, okay, this guy is saying all the right things, this lady is saying all the right things, but can I really trust him or her to follow through in the way that they're supposed to? And this this was a real uh frustration uh for a lot of um pro-lifers who voted Republican from yeah, the 80s the 80s and 90s uh roughly. Lots of Republican candidates would say, Oh yes, I'm pro-life and pro-life and get all that support. And then when it came time to actually voting on something or you know, taking a stand, they were just like, oh, well, yeah, now's not the time. And there was a lot of frustration with that. And it's like, well, were these people really pro-life, or were they just saying the words because they they knew they needed to? And that's still a reality, and that's still something that like the candidate that Bob was was talking about down in in Georgia. I highly doubt that he actually believed pro-life beliefs and just was inconsistent with those in his personal life. More likely he just said, Well, I'm this kind of candidate, so I need to say these kinds of things. Uh and maybe he even would have voted that way. But we have to take all these things into consideration. And that's why it gets back to what Bob was saying about judgment. Do I trust this candidate to have the right kind of judgment on these issues? You know, it's just one that that's come up recently uh in our politics. Okay, this guy says he's pro-life and that he's against abortion. Okay, this is good. All right, but at the same time, he says he's all in favor of promoting and expanding IVF, which results, as it's normally done, in the death of countless children in embryonic stage. That shows me as a voter that this is somebody who either just doesn't get it or else is being somewhat uh transactional. It's like, okay, I'm gonna say the right thing about abortion to get your votes, but this other thing, you know, I I actually have some beliefs on too, or I think I'm gonna get somebody else's votes on that, and they're not being consistent, which to me signals, okay, maybe their judgment isn't all that reliable because they're saying two things really on the same basic issue. It's a big picture, and you've got to take a look at the whole thing. Now, now certainly when you're facing an election where there are you get a ballot and there are 20 choices that you have to make on that. That's a case where getting the candidate list from your local pro-life political organization that says these are the candidates that we support, yeah, it's easier. It saves you a lot of trouble to say, okay, okay, these are these are the ones they've been vetted. Okay, I'm gonna, you know, vote for these. But you don't have to, you know, that that that's like the default that's I don't have time to do any more research, so this is the minimum I'm doing. But it's the minimum, not the maximum. We as voters, as responsible citizens who are stewards of this wonderful privilege we have of voting, we should be doing more work of saying, okay, you know, what about this guy? Is he reliable? Should I maybe be thinking about this? Or, you know, this guy's really strongly pro-life in what he says, but the office that he's wants to be elected to, he doesn't really have much to do with the abortion issue. Maybe this other person actually is going to be better for the societal issues that we're dealing with, which is actually, you know, another issue for me. So they're just it's not as simple as people want it to be.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

I guess where I struggle to is that even if the pro-life candidate doesn't seem to be that great, and even if don't know if I really can trust him or her on it, there is still just this inside me, like, I just can't vote for the person that is pro-abortion. That just seems like throwing in all the chips. Um is my thinking messed up or like that that's the point that I get to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

And almost all of us have a tendency to binary thinking. Think, okay, I've got two choices. It's either A or B. Well, what we often forget when we're voting is it's not just two choices. It's not candidate A who's pre pro-life and and um candidate B who's pro-abortion. You also have option C, which is I'm not gonna vote on, you know, for either of those candidates. Maybe there's uh actually a third candidate out there that you you can vote for, or maybe it's just I'm gonna leave that blank on my ballot. That is an option.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

And um Is that a good option?

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Or I mean Well, it it's gonna depend. Okay. I mean, you look at the totality of the situation. I mean, we'll put it at a national level, just say presidential candidates or whatever. Candidate A is pro-life, says all the right things, makes all the right promises. Candidate B is uh very pro-abortion, um, says all all all those kinds of things. You say, okay, there's there's absolutely no way I can vote for candidate B. But you look at the rest of what candidate A is is promising and say, this candidate is if he does any of these things, he's gonna tank our economy. He's gonna put all sorts of women in desperate situations so that they're gonna be seeking out abortions. He's going to make it that much harder to do X, Y, and Z that are important for us as Christians. I don't know that I can vote for him either. And that would be a case then where you might say, I'm just not gonna vote for either of them. Because you you see that the damage that could be done by the guy who's saying the right things outweighs the good that would be done on the pro-life side. And again, I'm this is this is a hypothetical. I'm not trying to link that to any particular real person.

Clearly Caring Resource Break

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Aaron Ross Powell Well, and you know, the fact that since the Dobbs ruling, the number of abortions has gone up tells you that that even the pro-life candidates just are not that committed to going the one step further and saying, well, we've got to get rid of chemical abortions. And that's that's always the problem. Consider some numbers here for a moment. If you are in the U.S. House of Representatives, you vote on average, a roll call vote on average of 390 votes a year. Those are they they average 390 roll call votes. That doesn't include voice votes. That's just where their vote is recorded. 390 different issues. When Jeff was saying they make a big deal about electing a pro-life candidate, and then you find out that there's not even any pro-life legislation coming up. So yeah, there's sometimes bigger pictures. And yeah, I know that the argument that I've heard from pro-life people who vote for non-pro-life candidates is always there's more issues than abortion. And they are absolutely correct. Really the debate is are they more compelling issues? And my argument is a good way of putting it. And my argument is sometimes they could be. Maybe rarely, but to simply categorically say no, you have to always go. Quite honestly, I have been in debates with I'm gonna say Republican because it's in the platform, you know, it's pro-life position. Uh so I've been in debates with with Republican pro-life uh candidates that if if they represented my district, I don't know if I could vote for them. Because they seem to be so linear in their thinking that they alienate everybody around them. Nobody wants to work with them. When I talk to other legislators, they don't, they they just basically isolate them. And we had somebody on our staff who used to work for the uh small business administration in Washington, and then he worked, he headed up a U.S. Senator's state office. And he had told me that one of the mistakes that he always saw when when new candidates go to Washington is he said, they all come oftentimes with a single agenda, whether it's pro-life, pro-family, traditional marriage, or the other side of the spectrum, some liberal causes. But he said that what they fail to remember is that in a representative form of government, everything is compromised. You have to meet the other side someplace in the middle so that you can make baby steps towards what you're going for and so forth. He said, So as a result, they're so determined and stubborn in their position that nobody wants to work with them. And you've got to understand that the way that the politics work is you want your entire party to to vote as a block. If you're the majority party, you know, you want that party to vote in a block. And if you alienate them because they're just not pro-life enough, just not conservative enough, and even if your position isn't abortion, if the position is traditional marriage and and their son is gay, so you d so he decides he's going to support gay marriage, the point is that you alienate and then you can't work as a block. So it's I think our Christian pro-life candidates, the really good ones, understand this, that I have to I have to walk this fine line between standing my ground, but giving enough ground so I can make progress, and I'm not going to accomplish it all this year. The thing is, is I when Krista was saying about I I just don't know if I could bring myself to vote. And and I don't think I ever have. I don't think I could bring myself to vote for someone who favors k killing children. But generally when you're in that predicament, abortion is not the issue, you know, because you have local races. When when I go, you know, to the to the local town hall to to do and and I'll tell you, voting around here is like voting in Mayberry, you know, on on the Andy Griffith show. You know, it's as everybody knows everybody, you know, and so you you elect people to your county boards and so forth. And and those are important races because they're determining if the adult bookstore gets into town, they determine if someone's gonna get the zoning rights to open up a strip joint. They determine whether uh you've got the regulation that allows an abortion clinic. You know, it and a lot of times we don't get into that stuff because those are not hot button issues. They around here, you know, the hot button issues are somebody wants to put in a wind farm, you know, they want to sell their farm for a wind farm, you know, and and that of course the neighbors don't want it, or you know, why do we deprive this guy of what he wants to do with his property? Those are the kind of issues they wrestle with. But so when we get onto the big stage, the national stage or the state stage, we begin to think in these magnificently strong, powerful, volatile single issues. But like I said, if you're going to the House of Representatives, it's uh there's 390 other things you're going to be voting on. If you're in the U.S. Senate, it's 240, and that the president in one year signs, on average, 175 bills. There's a broad spectrum of things to look at, and you're always trying to gauge their judgment, their ability to do it. There are people who have run for pro-life offices, even pro-life candidates within our own church body, that I've not been comfortable with because they seem to almost want to fight with the other side. And you can't, if you're going to go into fight with the other side, then we have deadlock, then we make no progress. And remember this, I'll tell you, I have lived by this axiom for almost 40 years, and that is you're always known by your lowest denominator. So, you know, the pro-life side is always going to be known by the legislator who doesn't give an inch, who doesn't budge at all. And then it creates this animosity that affects all the others who are recognizing that progress comes through compromise. In a changing world, it's easy to lose sight of eternal truth. Clearly Caring points you back to Scripture, where God's word still speaks clearly to today's ethical and cultural changes and challenges. Each issue explores one pressing topic after another, engaging minds and hearts through Christ-centered insight. You can read Clearly Caring online or receive it free by mail. Simply visit Christianlife Resources.com and click on Clearly Carrying under Publications.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

One of the things maybe where I come at it a little bit too is I mean I know like uh we talk about like sin in the Bible too. It's like I mean, there is the whole idea of okay, s a sin is sin, which commandment is the worst to break or whatever. But then there is this, well, I mean, it can't be for murder. I mean that that seems it it kind of seems to trump the other sins. I don't know. I mean uh pest. Perspective here.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

But we just had a whole episode about this.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

But I just I I do feel that that is that's the big one, right? And that even if there is somebody, you know, who lies or who doesn't do like great things or lives an adulterous life or just I don't know, it's like, well, at least they're not for murder.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

What you're talking about is the irretrievable nature of the consequence.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

So you you abort a child, it isn't like, oh, oops, you know, oh, we'll bring it back. You can't do that. But what if that same person has their finger on the button for nuclear war? What if that same person has their you know, in other words, there are other irretrievable consequences and it and I think, you know, when we get to the end of this episode, I think where we want to be is, you know, we may not all be in agreement, you know, on uh on it, but what we want to be is we want to be to the point where to allow the latitude that maybe you see a greater judgment issue of greater irretrievable consequences. You know, for example, if let's say you're voting for a pro-life guy who's a warmonger, you know, just lives for everything and thinks that, you know, if if we can't get Russia to shape up, we can't get China to shape up, can't get North Korea to shape up, why don't we just drop the bomb on them? You know, just and so forth. Well, you know, of course, as a Christian, you know, those are also the mission fields. And so you go you got somebody in there who's who's going to be a pro-life leader, but they really want to destroy people who don't agree, you know. And like you said, does that trumpet? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

No, I I think a a general principle for life that I think actually helps with this is uh one that um actually I heard it first from one of my seminary professors. There's not always a sinless solution to a sinful situation. And that's gonna be the case with a lot of this. It's like we want there to be the sin a perfect sinless solution, but when we're talking about the sinful situation of abortion, well, that's connected to a whole lot of other things. I mean, there are a lot of other things that that affect what a a a candidate or a politician can can do in relation to it. To expect that there is going to be just one perfect solution, elect this candidate, or elect only candidates that make these promises is going to solve everything and you're gonna have the perfect solution to everything. It's it's just not a reasonable or even for that matter, even a scripturally correct assumption. Because we live in a sinful world with full of sinful people and we ourselves are sinful. It's always going to be complicated. And if we are impatient or just uh simplistic in our thinking of it, it's like, well, this is the only way, this is the only thing that matters. We're going to end up ignoring other things. And very often, as is, you know, we end up causing more problems, you know, when we're so single-minded, which is basically what Bob Bob was talking about with some of these people that he wouldn't trust. Um, you know, we so we we've got to look at the the the totality of things again.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

I I often wondered when Jesus was challenged about paying taxes, paying taxes, the Roman government was paying taxes to cover an awful lot of things that were very, very bad. And he didn't have any qualms uh about it. And I I've often wondered if there's a bigger picture here, and that is, you know, as as important as the pro-life cause is, and of course I believe it's important. I mean, I've I've given thousands of dollars to it, I've spent the majority of my life devoted to it and so forth. But there is still a bigger picture, and the bigger picture is the proclamation of the gospel, the challenge that we've been given to glorify God in all things and to spread uh the message of salvation through Christ. And so when when I looked at that article from a half dozen years ago uh and I I saw the criticism of it, I I kept coming back to um perhaps provide the latitude that other people might see a different way to accomplish the big picture. You know, in other words, um Yeah, I I was interviewed by the uh newspaper um right after the Dobbs ruling, and I made the statement and it went into the article. I just said regardless of the legality of abortion, my my goal would be is to make abortion, making the taking of a child's life the least desirable of all available options. Think of the other things that we've got going on. We've got you could you can uh we've got all sorts of um hurtful, harmful, you know, uh drugs, alcohol, pornography, all of these things that could go on that could destroy souls, that could damage people, damage families, damage relationships. You know, the issues become very complicated. And early on in the history of CLR, the part of our our way of trying to s prevent abortions is to teach on chastity, to teach on um on leading a chaste life. Well, what what is the ultimate motivation for leading the chaste life? You know, well, lead a chaste life so your girlfriend doesn't get pregnant and she aborts it. Well, that's not going to be very motivating. Lead a chaste life so you don't catch a venereal disease and and sick of the rest of your life. No, that's not really great motivation. Uh lead a chaste life because this is what God asked from you and he gave his son's life for you. That becomes the legitimate motivation. And so we constantly are looking to to to form that, you know, and and and but I'm gonna and I've said it many times, if you think that this is such a simple matter, you are not even remotely equipped to handle it. Because it's there are so many intertwining, connecting dots, you know, like you know, so so you you get a pro-life candidate, you they make pro-life decisions, they they vote every way the pro-life, but in the process they create such an undercurrent of of problems in other areas that they immediately get unelected the next cycle around. Now you've got the other side, now you've got a pendulum swing. So so we finally got our pro-life justices, we finally got Roe overturned, we got Dobbs, and abortions went up. Think about that for a moment. You you just accomplished your desire and more children died. You know, and and if you're saying, well, it's not that simple, that's my point. Because that's exactly my point.

Loving Neighbor Beyond One Issue

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Yeah. I think it's, you know, I mean, I I know um uh remarkable Christian people who have voted differently than I have. And um I don't know. I I mean, and sometimes I think like, how could they do that, right? Like how could they they be different than me in in this thinking? I I don't really know like the answer to that other than just kind of the things we've been talking about too, because they they really, I mean, again, remarkable Christian people definitely love life and love the Lord, and um we we just see differently.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

I th I think one aspect of of this, you know, which is part of why on an instinctual level, we're like it it should be this simple, you know, and w why why are we even talking about this, you know, kind of thing? Is sadly we absorb some of the arguments of from the other side in in in feeling that, well, we gotta do the opposite. Because they say, How can you possibly be against abortion when it means that you know you're you're turning your back on these issues of poverty, of equality, of of opportunity or or whatever. And they make it the either or. Either you're you know, against abortion or you're um for you know all these good things about looking out, you know, loving your neighbor, you know, kind of issues. And our response shouldn't be, oh no, no, no. We we are so absolutely against abortion that that means that we're gonna stand up and we're gonna do everything we can to eliminate abortion and forget about all that other stuff. Because that's your stuff. That's your issue, not ours. And the Christian answer is like, you do the one, but you don't leave the other undone. We should, as Christians, be looking at all all these issues and saying, yes, absolutely, being pro-life is super duper important, you know, because it, you know, as you were talking about earlier, it's like, yeah, somebody's dying as a result of this. This is really important for us. As Christians, we we are called especially to look out for the voiceless and the vulnerable and so forth. But at the same time, we also say, you know, these other things are important too. It's important that I love my neighbor by thinking, okay, what's going to be best for the economy? What's going to result in the f fewest number of people uh who end up in really bad situations? You know, what's going to be the best way to spend the government's money so we don't, you know, get into a a deep situation where people are finding solutions that aren't solutions. All of these things should be how how should we be thinking about crime? All of these are things that that are part of the greater picture. And it doesn't have to be an either or. It's a you look at the totality as like, well, yeah, I care about that. Okay, I care about this issue more than the others. But that doesn't mean I don't care about the others at all.

Changing Hearts And Practical Help

SPEAKER_01 32:10

What we debate uh in our circles, our conservative biblical circles, is that we don't debate that you shouldn't be taking the life of an unborn child. Because we're we're on the same page that way. You know, now if if someone is claiming, well, I still think a person should have the right to have an abortion, that a child's life is expendable, okay, maybe not now we have a problem, now we have a theological problem. But what we're really discussing is how to get to that point. And and the reality is that some of my Christian friends, some of which include conservative pastors who have voted for the other candidate and so forth, they just believe that the path there is different. And what makes abortion a little bit of a troubling thing is because the government isn't going out killing your children. You still, as a a mother, make the decision to terminate your child's life. And then you enlist a medical professional to help you. That's what's going on. So the fact that the government allows it isn't the problem. The problem isn't in the heart of the people who are doing it. And of course, we are uniquely equipped as Christians with the Word of God to communicate to them. So sometimes, you know, well-meaning Christians, we could differ on this, but well-meaning Christians are going to go, well, the problem is that if we go for this so-called pro-life candidate, it's going to create more animosity. They're not going to allow us to proclaim the gospel like we wanted to. It's going to close doors, it's going to close opportunities, and we're better off with the other candidate. Now, I've told you, and I think I've mentioned it on this podcast before, that it was much easier for me to operate New Beginnings, a home from others, in a liberal state like Colorado than it is for me to operate it in a conservative state like Wisconsin. Because it has to do with how do you take people who are generationally impoverished with a mentality of how do I get by through the next day, who are thinking always about the day-to-day worries to get them to turn around. Well, I have to buy time. I need time to work with them. And the problem is in a conservative form of governing, the kind of the there's a general attitude, and I'm being overly simplistic, but there's a general attitude like pull up your bootstraps, get off your dead butt, get to work, you know, that kind of thing. And the problem is when you've been generationally indoctrinated with a certain way of thinking, that's not their way of thinking. And you're not going to turn that around by giving them a turkey at Thanksgiving. It's going to take a whole lot more than that. And sometimes it takes time. So, you know, like for example, I'd sit down with my my f conservative friends, my conservative legislative friends, and one of my pet peeves is try finding childcare for an impoverished mother so that she could take classes, so that she could learn a profession, so that she could take care of her single parent family, and uh and do that with child care being rare and expensive. The state has to help. You can't you can't move a culture away from one-parent home watching children into a two-parent income family and do that. Well, how do you do that? Well, the conservative feeling is, well, you shouldn't have gotten yourself in that position in the first place. Well, you duh, you know, give give me give me something that's not obvious, you know, but you're not going to repair it by just making the statement. It takes time. And so I I'm willing to give people who differ with me on my pro-life, you know, supporting a candidate. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they see a different path to accomplishing the the greater agenda. And that's what what I think we're really talking about.

How To Vet Pro-Life Claims

SPEAKER_02 36:04

Any other final thoughts, Jeff?

SPEAKER_00 36:06

No, I'll just add, um haven't not really something that we addressed, but I think it is part of the thing. Particularly when you're in a situation where it's usually going to be on the Republican side because there are are pretty much no pro-life Democrats anymore. But if you're in the situation where you're actually trying to choose between two or more candidates that claim to be pro-life, how do you know which is the real one or the better one? They're listen to what they say, and and I say more listen than read. Things they write are they can have help with, but when they're speaking more off the cuff, when they're saying that they're pro-life, when they're saying they want to end abortion, are they actually articulating a pro-life argument? Or are they just saying the things that they think pro-lifers want to hear? Can this candidate say, well, the reason we want to end abortion or we want this vote to go this way or this policy is because that's a life in the womb and every life is precious and we we don't want this happening anymore. If it's a prepared speech, okay, they're they may say the right things. But if it's something where some they're just responding to a question or something like that, are they able to actually articulate that? Are they trying to persuade people who might have a different point of view of why their view is the right one? And that can be a good way to sort out out some of the good ones from the not so good ones uh on those issues.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Aaron Powell I want you all to vote pro-life. But I believe that there is room for differing how to get there. And I think that that's you know the thought that I want to leave with everybody is that you know, I may not agree with your logic. I may think that you're naive or whatever it is, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. And I I also want to say that if you have decided that there is cause to not vote for the pro-life candidate, okay, that just think through the logic. You know, what what do you what are you doing? Is it is it really all about somebody who's just going to lower your tax bill and then really it's all about you and not about others and not about God and not about protecting life? But I want you to vote pro-life. But I'm I'm willing to give you the latitude to say you might feel there's a different way to go about it than than electing candidate A. And I think we have to uh encourage that. Meanwhile, the ultimate vote for pro-life is is how you and I share the gospel and talk to people who face the abortion decision uh with the hope that they uh choose life, that they don't abort.

Questions Welcome And Closing

SPEAKER_02 38:51

Well, thank you both for this discussion. Um, and uh, as our listeners, if you have any questions on this topic, um please send them directly to Bob. He loves questions or objections. Um but you can um always reach us at lifechallenges.us and we thank all of you for joining us today. Um thank you for your support. This is not made possible without you, so thank you so much. And we look forward to seeing you back next time. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

Thank you for joining us for the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it, and sharing it with friends. We're here to help. So if you have questions on today's topic or other life issues, you can submit them as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallenges.us, or email us at podcast at ChristianLiferesources.com. You can find past episodes and other valuable information at lifechallenges.us, so please check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit Christianliferesources.com. May God give you wisdom, love, strength, and peace in Christ for every life challenge.