Hot Air: Balloons, Bombast, and Ballots
by Pastor Walter Snyder

Sunday was an intriguing day. It included church, Bible class, junior confirmation, a mis-dated
invitation, and a hot air balloon. After running into the city, I came back in time to watch a hot air
balloon launch from the parking lot here in Emma. Since the breeze was up a tad, I helped steady
the basket while it was inflated and heated. Its bright colors in the late afternoon sun attracted a
large enough crowd that thoughts of an ad hoc outdoor service briefly crossed my mind.

The balloon was the week's largest and most memorable bag of hot air. Yet I spent a lot of time
driving with the radio on as I traveled from place to place. Sunday's launch tripped a switch in my
mind; I started comparing it to all the political gasbags whose ads fill the airwaves. Their bloated
claims and heated attacks on opponents kept me thinking about Christian life in the public sphere.

The winds of thought blow all this together for today's column. The elections season illustrates
false testimony, gossip, and other sins of the mouth. It also challenges Christians to consider how
they live their faith in public.

The religious left promotes attacks the positions of the Republican party. The evangelical right
blasts what it considers "godless" Democratic liberalism. Some want us to consider overall voting
records and evaluate candidates according to a number of criteria. Others desire us to be single-
issue voters, using desire, greed, and, especially, fear to urge us to decide based upon only one
position a candidate holds. Health care, national security, Social Security, war, the economy, and
terrorism all have certain religious dimensions in the minds of Christian voters and campaigners.
However, the largest religious single issue involves abortion and related life issues.

Promoting or attacking individual candidates gets a church body or congregation stripped of its
tax exempt status. But we can still weigh in on issues, and the abortion of unborn children,
assisted suicide, and euthanasia are all things that The Lutheran Church---Missouri Synod and this
writer strongly oppose. I believe that ripping, burning, or sucking an unborn infant from its
mother's womb is based on bad science, bad ethics, and bad theology. Bad science ignores
concrete evidence that pre-born human beings are fully human. Bad ethics establish a false
"greater good" of the pregnant mother versus her forming child. Bad theology ignores God's
concern and involvement in human life before conception, during gestation, and following birth:
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jer 1:5); "I am fearfully and wonderfully made"
(Ps 139:14); "He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways." (Ps
91:11);  "He is not God of the dead, but of the living" (Mt 22:32).

Voting for a "pro-choice" candidate, no matter how qualified otherwise, puts one on the side of
those who devalue human life. No matter how much good they want to do for the elderly, how
many wars they want to end, or how many starving people they want to feed, how can such
candidates claim that they promote the greatest good for society? This goes beyond a "hold your
nose and vote" option. Already our nation, its value for human life eroded by decades of abortion
on demand, has pockets where assisted suicide is allowed. Euthanasia (so-called "mercy killing")
cannot be far behind. A Dutch hospital grants a doctor the right to kill children under the age of
twelve if the doctor judges that their suffering is intolerable or if they have an incurable illness.
Belgium follows suit. Parents and patients often don't give consent; a doctor merely decides and
then commits legal murder.

We dare not say, "It can't happen here." If physicians in the Netherlands now do the same thing
that sent Nazi doctors to the gallows following World War II, if nations already devalue the lives
of the post-born to the degree that they devalue unborn life, if others countries' collective
consciences can be so completely numbed, what will stop this evil's spread throughout our land?

House Speaker O'Neil once said, "All politics is local." I offer instead, "All politics is religious." I
challenge every believer to consider the value that our Lord places on all human life. Remember
how He individually crafted our first parents (Genesis 2) and how His Son valued our lives so
much that He sacrificed His own on our behalf. Consider facing not only yourself in the mirror but
God on the day of Judgment. Rather than drifting along on society's winds, floating amongst a
candidate's hot air of promises, I pray that heaven's Wind, the Holy Spirit, guides you to a solid
and lasting position in defense of our divinely created, blood-bought lives. God grant you clear
conscience and firm resolve as you vote. It's not only the fate of your nation: You also hold in
hand the individual lives of the unborn, the elderly, the infirm, and even those of yourself, your
family, and your friends.

Choose life; live life; vote life.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from ~The Holy Bible, English Standard
Version~<TM>, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles.

Ask the Pastor, © 2004 by Walter P. Snyder. It may be reproduced in totality, including this disclaimer,
by anyone, provided that no profit is generated by said republication and redistribution. Translations
into other languages should similarly note the United States and any appropriate international
copyrights, as well as God's Scriptural injunctions concerning the property of others.

Walter Snyder is the pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Emma, Missouri and coauthor of the book
~What Do Lutherans Believe.~