The Foundations of Life: God’s Word vs Human Reason

The Foundations of Life: God’s Word vs Human Reason

Oct. 8, 2026

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Patricia Engler

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 10/08/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to Stand in the Gap today, and it’s our monthly focus on creation, apologetics, and biblical worldview. Today, our special guest, she’s back with us again, Patricia Engler. She’s a Christian apologetic speaker for Answers in Genesis. She’s a host of her own podcast, Zero Compromise, and already in her young age, author of a couple of books, one Prepared to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students, and then another one, Modern Marxism: A Guide for Christians in a Woke New World, both of which we’ve had some discussion on briefly in previous programs. Now, today we’re going to take on a topic that sits at the very heart of the culture war and I’m going to say spiritual battlefield, because they go together, foundations of life. Well, modern culture relentlessly attempts to normalize the destruction of the pre-born, some say unborn, but they’re really pre-born.

A reality underscored by recent state constitutional ballot measures and the flood of mail-in abortion chemicals, it forces us to confront a very plain truth. In a recent presentation entitled Abortion Exposed, which you can find on YouTube and on the Answers in Genesis website, Patricia, my guest today, made a compelling statement citing the explicit references of the United Nations World Health Organization in 2021. They made an estimate and they said this, “The most catastrophic human rights disaster…” They said this, “The most catastrophic human rights disaster in history is unfolding all around us worldwide. 73 million babies are aborted every single year,” and that’s from their statistics and Patricia cited that. Now, in the US alone, put it in perspective, since 1973 to 2022, so there’s four years that are not included in that, it’s estimated that between 63 and 65 million babies here in America never saw and took their first breath.

They lost their lives. Now, if we claim to love God and love our neighbor, we cannot remain silent while millions of image bearers are systematically denied the right to life. And true compassion demands that we build our worldview on the firm foundation starting in Genesis, where God alone defines the sanctity and the value and the dignity of every human life starting at the moment of fertilization. Now today, Patricia Engler joins me to identify and dismantle the deceptive arguments and unmask, I’m going to say the dark secular origins of this murder movement and equip us with a bold biblical response for such a time as this. And with that, Patricia, thanks for being back with me on such a topic and thank you for dealing with it in your research and presentations.

Patricia Engler:

Absolutely. Thanks for speaking to these issues as well.

Sam Rohrer:

All right. Now in your presentation, I’m going to reference it all along so people can go and look at and find it on YouTube, but you call it abortion exposed. In that you point out that even during devastating military conflicts like the Civil War or world wars, the total loss of life pales in comparison to the 73 million pre-born lives lost globally every year. So from a biblical worldview foundational perspective, why is establishing God’s word as our starting point rather than human reasoning the only true basis for defending human dignity and value? So let’s get this established and start on the right foundation here.

Patricia Engler:

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, those two starting points you mentioned, God’s word and human reasoning are the only two possible foundations for our thinking when we think about it. And when we start with God’s word as the authority for truth, we understand there’s a creator, his character is the source of truth and morality. He has the right to define the immaterial value of the material objects and creatures he makes, and he makes us as morally accountable beings who need to live according to those values. So that’s why from a biblical view, the material facts of creation, like maybe the fact that an embryo is a biological human being, correspond to immaterial values like being made in God’s image, and it does so in a way that then demands a moral response. We can’t take the life of this child. On the other hand, if we reject God as the authority, then it’s up to us as humans to define what we think or feel should be the values of the facts of creation.

There’s no correspondence between facts and values as other apologists point out. So it’s up to us to come up with our own moral rules for what we currently happen to think is right or wrong based on our values. And we have no basis for explaining why those rules should value every human life if humans are just meaningless evolutionary byproducts. There’s really no way to get around that, whether we try to pick maybe some sort of criteria we like, like sentience or high reasoning abilities. We might say that’s what gives humans value, but we don’t have a moral foundation for explaining why those are valuable in the first place. There’s no basis for explaining why we ought to respect people’s rights. So it’s only theism and specifically Christianity, which reveals we have a savior who is the image of God and came in human flesh to redeem the descendants of Adam who put their faith in him that gives us that foundation for recognizing every human life as sacred.

Sam Rohrer:

Well, Patricia, like everything in life, there is God’s way and God as creator has the right to establish what the best way is. And then there’s the human side who has to say, “We either agree with you, God, or we think we have a better way.” Now you cite in your presentation one remarkable story. Dr. Bernard Nathanson and most people familiar with the pro-life movement and so forth understand he was the co-founder of NARAL and he presided over tens of thousands of abortions even himself before a scientific and a moral awakening turned him into a staunch defender of life. And here’s my question. How does his story illustrate both, I want to say the blinding power of secular deception, but the transforming power of biblical truth?

Patricia Engler:

Well, on the one hand, the blinding power of secular deception can make you think like you’re doing the right thing and helping people by actually doing the opposite of that, something that goes against God’s designs, which only ends up harming us. So as he mentioned, he came to a realization of the truth. In this case, it was enough for him to understand the truth that pre-born babies are real humans. He started to understand that when he was working not only at the first and largest abortion clinic that he helped to found in the Western world at the time, but also at the same time he started becoming the director of an OB – GYN clinic at a hospital and started seeing babies as patients. So he was able to recognize that the truth that humans are persons means that we cannot support abortion. Unfortunately now there are ethicists like Peter Singer and Michael Tooley who recognize that babies are biological humans, but as culture moves further from God’s word, we’re having to deal now with the fact that people are saying being a human isn’t enough.

You need some other moral status like sentience or higher reasoning abilities on top of that. But the good thing about that is even though people are more and more suppressing the truth of the facts in creation as Romans 1:20 tells us they will, the transforming power of the gospel of Christ still remains. God is still working on people’s hearts, still unblinding eyes. We see that in testimonies of people who have come out of the abortion movement and that is a strategic direction that the church can be praying in as well.

Sam Rohrer:

Absolutely, Patricia. And ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just joining as I’m talking with today, my guest is Patricia Engler. She’s an apologetic speaker for answers in Genesis and our theme today is this, the foundation of life, God’s word versus human reasoning. In the next segment statement, we’ll come back and we’re going to talk about how the moral devaluation of life, not sacred as God says, but turned it into something else, how that is happening, unmasking the origins of abortion. We’ll talk about the history of abortion in the next segment. Well, welcome back here to Stand in the Gap today. This is our second segment and our theme and our focus today on the foundation of life, God’s word versus human reasoning, because there’s only one of these two ways as to how we approach life, the beginning of life. What is life? The sacredness of life, the ability for people to decide when and if they have a right to end life at any age.

So that’s all a part of what it is we’re talking about today. Patricia Engler is my guest. She’s a Christian apologetic speaker for Answers in Genesis. She just did a very excellent expose on the matter of abortion and you can find it on YouTube and I’ll refer to that again. But prior to the break, we established that human dignity, and I’m emphasizing again, is sacred. Why? Well, because it rests on the foundational truth of Genesis, the beginning that God created mankind, that’s one part, and created in his own image. That’s the second part. That’s what makes it sacred. In this segment, we’re going to turn our attention to the moral devaluation and unmasking the origin of abortion because where did this idea come from? Well, to understand how modern society or modern culture has arrived at a point where terminating unborn life is defended as, well, in some cases, healthcare, right?

You’ve heard that. We must examine how secular worldviews intentionally chip away at biblical authority. When a society replaces God’s word with man’s reasoning, which I’m going to say our culture has without a doubt, embracing evolutionary assumptions and expressive individualism, sounds great, but it’s not necessarily not like this. Human value ceases to be an inherent gift from the creator. Instead, human worth becomes subjective, defined by some arbitrary standard, other people, like self-awareness, physical development, or social convenience. And this philosophical shift, I’m going to say, did not happen by accident. From the historical origins of the abortion industry to the deceptive arguments used in public debate that we’ve heard for so long, the moral devaluation of the pre-born relies on these things, redefining of words, cleverly done, deceptively done, promoting logical fallacies, some say, and then obscuring biological realities. Patricia, as we peel back these layers in this movement, let’s examine how these secular ideas that you’ve laid out so systematically have eroded the respect for the sanctity of life.

So in your presentation, I’m going to go back there, you contrast a biblical worldview with secular humanism and use the words expressive individualism. Here’s my question. How does starting with man’s word rather than God’s word inevitably lead to a culture where human value is treated as subjective rather than absolute? Because I think that goes right to the heart of considering this whole aspect.

Patricia Engler:

Oh, certainly, because when you get rid of the idea that God is the creator who defines the facts of creation and defines their values and demands that moral response, what happens is we lose that absolute foundation, so instead we as humans have to look within ourselves and decide what we value and then exert our will on the material world and make choices that bring the world’s facts in line with our values. And that’s the idea of expressive individualism you mentioned, the idea that as individuals, we’re basically our own gods able to make up our truth and define our destinies. We see this thinking in things like transgenderism, euthanasia, transhumanism, but there’s some serious ethical consequences of this. For example, a Christian legal scholar, O. Carter Snead describes how this thinking harms society’s most vulnerable people because it encourages the people who can make choices for themselves to do so at the expense of people who cannot, which includes embryos and disabled people, unconscious people, elderly people.

So human value is not absolute anymore by this thinking. It’s in the subjective opinion of the people who currently happen to be able to make choices for themselves and that has major consequences.

Sam Rohrer:

It sure does. You didn’t say it, but I’m going to say that approach where human life is now made subjectively evaluative as to its contributional value and response, boy, when that happens, it becomes a very hardened society, doesn’t it? Now you also, you walk into this area of what you call embryological milestones from fertilization to early heartbeats, and that shows that science affirming a pre-born baby is a distinct human living human individual. And you say that some have recognized that, some are still thinking that that’s not. Here’s my question. What are some of the historical evolutionary fallacies like Hekel’s embryo drawings? You can refer to that. Some people might not recognize what that is, or claims about Gill slits, going back to evolutionary thought, that some have used to deceive women into thinking that their babies are not really babies, but just clumps of developing cells.

Patricia Engler:

Oh, sure. Yeah, this goes back a long ways. So right after Darwin popularized evolution, there were biologists like Heckel who decided that the similarities in embryos must be evidence for being evolutionary related to animals, and the drawing in his book suggests that. But for one thing, these drawings made embryos look more like than they really are. And for another, even if embryos do have similarities like similar structures that become backbones and limbs, that doesn’t necessarily point to evolution because biblically it makes sense that a good creator would apply the same types of good designs like limb buds and backbones or limbs and backbones to different creatures that would benefit from them. So Heckel was wrong on both those levels, and he also wrongly believed that humans reenact evolution as they develop passing through a fish stage and up to an amphibian stage and a human stage.

And with that fish stage idea, women might be told that their babies have gill slits, kind of like fish stew, but in reality, these structures that people point to in the 28 day old human embryo are neither gills nor slits. They’re folds of tissue that develop into parts of the head and neck and don’t have anything to do with breathing. So all of these are historic examples of evolutionary propaganda that fosters dehumanization.

Sam Rohrer:

It just makes me think again, they’ve laid these quote unquote authorities have laid out these deceptive ideas that may be on its face like, well, yeah, that’s what that looks like, but in reality they’re deceptive and it’s not true as you just said, those slits as an example, they’re not breathing mechanisms, they’re part of a developing head and so forth. So again, anything contrary to God’s established order, ladies and gentlemen, is and must be promoted through deception, and that’s what we’re talking about here. So let’s get into this now next, Patricia. When secular arguments try to separate biological humanity from, and here’s another big thing, personhood, claiming a baby only gains value when it meets certain criteria like self-awareness or viability able to live on its own, you apply what you call and refer to as the right to kill test. So I’m going to ask you, what exactly is the right to kill test and how does this logical test easily expose the fatal flaw in those personhood arguments and people who try to diminish and say a pre-born baby is not a person?

Patricia Engler:

Well, the right to kill test is simply taking any reasoning that people don’t use to try to justify aborting a prenatal person and asking if you could apply that same reasoning to gain the right to kill any other person who’s already been born. So this is just a quick way to show the logical inconsistency in these abortion hood arguments and personhood arguments. So for example, some people might say that, well, a baby isn’t a real person before they can have a heartbeat or be self-aware and a number of things. But if you think of certain hospital patients, they might also not be self-aware or maybe they’re having a heart attack at the moment or they could meet these criteria too, but would that give us an excuse to just go into hospitals and start killing patients? Certainly not. Similarly, some people might say early embryos aren’t persons because they can still divide to become identical twins.

But though experiment, if one of us has a talent where naturally we could create a clone of ourselves, would having that talent give someone else the right to kill us before we used it? Certainly not. So the point is that if you’re a living, innocent human being, no one else has the right to kill you. Whether you can make a genetic clone of yourself or not, whether you’re currently self-aware or not, whether you’re sick or disabled or living in poverty or not, people might point to those things and say we should be able to abort babies who might live in these situations, which actually all of us can face in the future. But the right to kill test shows us the inconsistency of these arguments and it works for a lot of different applications.

Sam Rohrer:

And I want to follow up just a little bit of time we have left. What you are arguing, and the way I would argue when I argued when I was debating matters of legislation in Pennsylvania House years ago, was that we come at this as you are and make a logical argument. That logical argument, if one plus one equals two, then that’s part of logic. But in this world, when the world is rejecting God, absolute truth and truth itself, logical arguments don’t make sense to these people. At least they reject them. How have you responded to that?

Patricia Engler:

Well, that’s something certainly to keep in mind because unfortunately when we give up the basis for God, we give up the basis for logic, because God’s character and mind are the source of logic. On the bright side, you can point out that it’s impossible to live without being logically consistent. There’s the classic response to postmodernism which says you can do what’s right for you, but it’s not right for me. Well, if you take that person’s wallet, they’re going to assume that there are actually some absolutes. So people do live as if there is logic, even though they say they don’t. And if they’re trying to make an argument against you, they’re probably relying on logic to do that. Even though they try to get around it, there really isn’t a way.

Sam Rohrer:

I think that’s a great response. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re listening to that, you’ve heard some of these arguments. Yes, it is the case. Even those who reject truth, they do think logically about the fact that they think they’re right. Stay with us. We’ll come back, talk about some consequences now. Well, welcome back as we now move into the second half of Stand in the Gap Today program. My special guest again is Patricia Engler. She’s a Christian Apologetics presenter for Answers in Genesis, and they have a website at answersingenesis.org. You can find information and many things that Patricia has written. This particular focus here today, she entitled Abortion Exposed. So if you were to check on YouTube, you can find it there. Just put in those words, abortion exposed, and you will find it, and I’m sure it’s on the website as well. But we’re building the program today off of this theme, and I’ve entitled this today, The Foundations of Life: God’s Word Versus Human Reasoning.

So in the first segment, we started with God’s Word, God as Creator, Book of Genesis, lays it out, establishes the foundation. Along comes man’s thinking, talked about that in the last segment, the origins of the whole abortion movement, where instead of saying and protecting life because God says it is sacred, made in his image, human reasoning says, “Well, no, it’s not really that way,” and come up with all kinds of ways that they can terminate that life. So that being the foundation, I want to move into this next segment here, because when a society abandons God’s word as its foundational authority, and we know in our land that has been done, the consequences do not remain theoretical. It’s not like, well, maybe then there’ll be some consequences. They happen, and they’re manifested in a number of ways, widespread human suffering, moral erosion, spiritual deception, and I’m going to throw in here a lot of other economic consequences.

In America, our nation here today, we’ve aborted nearly 65 million babies, and the consequences are extraordinary. I’m just going to throw this in at this point, and then we’re going to go back to the spiritual cost of this, but we’re all aware, right, of the social security system? Most of you listening to me may be older, or many of you are, and how that’s going to terminate and go insolvent in a few years, right? Well, if we had not aborted any babies in the United States, do you know that the social security fund would be totally solvent and it would be in a totally profitable position where there would be no discussion of insolvency? Do you know if our debt, sending a $40 trillion, if those babies would have entered the workforce in a normal percentage work, do you know that it would have contributed nearly a hundred trillion dollars to our GDP?

You wouldn’t have that debt, and Congress can spend whatever they want, and they do, but that’s just to say, consequences are extraordinary, and you can look all around and find it. Now, Patricia, let me just turn to you, because in this aspect, you’ve identified a number of deceptive rhetorical tactics. One you’ve identified as the Mott and Bailey fallacy, there’s bait and switch redefinitions, for instance, healthcare, calling abortion healthcare, lots of straw man arguments that are thrown up, and they’re continuously weaponized, these things, to trick society into calling evil good and good evil. Yet even in the midst of this, you’ve made it clear, and I’m glad, and we’re talking more about it, God offers hope even in the midst of this moral crisis, and through the gospel, true healing and restoration are available to those who bear the heavy burden, perhaps, of post-abortion grief. I don’t want to overlook that because there are many that are impacted by that, but spiritual healing is found in Jesus Christ.

Patricia, in your presentation, you trace the historical connections between the abortion movement, Margaret Sanger, eugenics movement popularized by Charles Darwin’s cousin, as you identified, Sir Francis Galton. Here’s my question. Explain quickly the connections between these influential people I mentioned and perhaps others, and then how that same eugenic mindset is operating today through modern practices like prenatal genetic testing and embryonic sorting and a number of other things you’ve identified.

Patricia Engler:

Yeah, certainly. So as you mentioned, Galton coins the term eugenics, and it’s supposed to be referring to the “science” of trying to improve the human gene pool. Galton wanted to do this mainly by encouraging the births of babies with desirable traits, and this is all evolutionary logic, but then Margaret Sanger advocated for doing this by preventing the births of babies with undesirable traits, including traits that she associated with being supposedly feeble-minded. Nazism exposed the horrible fruits of this thinking, but even though the word eugenics has fallen out of the favor, the practice is going on as when babies are tested prenatally and discovered to have things like Down syndrome, and then nearly 100% of Down’s syndrome babies are aborted in some countries like Iceland, and then practices like IVF, in many cases, parents are able to pick and choose which embryos to keep based on which genetic traits they have, whether that’s for down syndrome or even for things like having just a higher risk of future disease.

So we’re still seeing eugenics play out actually more prevalently than ever. It’s just more invisible.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. In regard to these logical fallacies that we just talked about, the bait and switch and all that, how do abortion advocates use these tactics to reframe the debate around women’s health, even that is one of those, and how can Christians effectively identify and expose those fallacies when they’re in conversation with others?

Patricia Engler:

Yeah, so first just to recognize what they are, the Motton Bailey argument takes a position that’s hard to defend, like saying parents should be able to kill their children in a certain timeframe and switches it for one that’s easy to defend, like we just want to protect women’s health. But as you mentioned, that answer has other fallacies built in, like a bait and switch fallacy, which involves switching the definition of words like health from the usual sense of being free of disease to something like being allowed to kill another person to get some benefit, and then that also involves a false either or claim saying that you either support abortion or you’re against women’s redefined health, and then that becomes what you mentioned as the straw man argument where you’re misrepresenting an opposing perspective to make it look bad, saying pro-life people are against women’s health.

So the key to responding is to bring back the Motton Bailey discussion to the hard to defend statement, but you can do that in a way that addresses the other fallacies. So if someone says abortion is important because we need to protect women’s health, first you can agree with the easy to defend part of that statement by saying, “Well, sure, women need access to great healthcare. There’s more to be done in our world to make sure that women stay protected from genuine harm.” So you’re establishing common ground and showing you’re not against women, so you’re getting rid of the straw man there, but then you bring the discussion back to the Bailey, the hard to defend statement, saying, “Can we also agree it’s important to protect vulnerable people from being killed, which biologically speaking would mean pre-born people. We can address the either or fallacy and the definition problem by then adding something like,” The good news is we almost never have to pick between these things, especially because it doesn’t make sense to define healthcare in a way that involves killing others.

We need to protect women and babies because all life is valuable. The Bible gives us the foundation for that. Has anyone helped you see what the big picture of the Bible teaches? “And then you can link the discussion into the gospel, which is what gives people true hope in the midst of hard circumstances.

Sam Rohrer:

All right, excellent. We could go so much deeper on that, but I’m going to move to this aspect because some of the powerful points you emphasize in the abortion issue here carries immense spiritual and emotional weight. The death of a child after birth is obviously emotional for that when that happens, but we’re talking about where there’s an intentionality in taking life, and there have been many involved in that. I’m going to give some percentages in the next segment, but pointing to King David’s repentance in scripture, and you offer this up, how does the gospel offer genuine forgiveness and hope and restoration to mothers and fathers carrying post-abortion grief?

Patricia Engler:

Well, this is key because for all of us, every single one of us has sinned. Romans tells us that we’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. We all struggle with grief because of sin or we are all under the weight of guilt because of sin. So it’s important to help people understand that there is hope and healing in Jesus who justifies us by his grace as a gift. Romans six reminds us that forgiveness isn’t just a free path to keep sinning however we want, but it assures us that God helps us to walk in the newness of life moving forward. And even with that, the past can still carry a heavy weight of consequences and grief, which is important to acknowledge, but it’s also important to help people understand that for anyone who’s bearing that weight, it’s not the unforgivable sin. Even in the Bible, as you mentioned, King David arranged for someone else’s life to be taken to hide a sin of adultery, and those sins grieved God and David and others around him and there were real consequences, yet the Bible records that when David repented, God lovingly forgave him and we can all experience that forgiveness through God and then extend that love and forgiveness to others and ministries that Answers and Genesis partners with like Healing Hearts International, their whole focus is that helping women move forward in the gospel to find hope and healing in Jesus post-abortion and having discipleship resources to prevent young men and women from getting in these situations.

So again, that’s Healing Hearts Ministries International, and that’s one of the ministries that Answers and Genesis has worked with in the past to help with this issue. All

Sam Rohrer:

Right. I think that that’s wonderful because we want to leave on a matter of hope. I mean, anytime we talk about this issue of humans deciding when to end life. Either pre-born or the nation from which you hail Canada at the end of life, particularly there. Give some comments on that because there’s really no real difference to that, is it? Either pre-born or older age? Oh,

Patricia Engler:

For sure. It goes back to that same expressive individualistic mentality where we look within ourselves, decide what we want to be true, and then make the world in that image of what we like. So with euthanasia, that involves, I don’t like my life anymore and want to take it away. So kind of making yourself the quote God over matters of life and death. So both the same problem, but in both cases, the gospel is the solution. Pointing people truth and the life.

Sam Rohrer:

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that you’ve experienced that life, life eternal. Jesus Christ who says, I am the way, the truth and the life. That’s what it’s all wrapped up in the gospel. Stay with us. We’ll come back. We’re going to talk about the path of restoration, standing for life and truth. Well, as we go into our final segment, I hope that if you’ve been with us from the beginning, that as we’ve progressed through our focus today, and the title has been The Foundations of Life: God’s Word Versus Human Reasoning. And Patricia Engler, my guest, she’s from Answers in Genesis with me quite often. Their website, answersingenesis.org. And if you look for her, you can find many things that she’s written and she’s done a very, very fine job. I also want to give you this, an hour approximately length program that she did, and you can find it on YouTube.

The name of it is Abortion Exposed. A lot of good information there. I’m pulling off a number of things here today as put it together. And all of you listening to me right now, I am sure the great majority are saying absolutely we want to protect life. Because if you listen to the program any length of time, we say here, God’s word must be the authority. It is absolute truth. That’s where we come to find out about who God is, his plan, his plan of redemption and how that what we find in scripture are not suggestions. They are his plan for a fruitful and blessed life. And we either follow it and experience his blessing or we oppose it such as killing of unborn, those created in the image of God, and then we find out consequences. Now through this broadcast, we’ve unmasked deceptive world views, logical fallacies, historical eugenic roots that drive the modern culture of death.

And facing the scale of this catastrophic crisis can feel rather overwhelming. But for the Christians, I think this is a call for deep spiritual alignment. Now, I want to be very clear here. I did a little research on this and this helps to put things in perspective and set the stage for asking Patricia to close here. But here is a sobering truth. Do you know that over 70% of women who obtain abortions in America identify themselves as Christian? 70%. Over a third, according to a multiple number of entities that research from Pew to others, over a third were active, they say, attending church and say they did it at least once a month during and at the time that they decided to give up and abort their child. Therefore, based on that, that’s a hard reality, but it can be safely concluded that simply attending church or holding nominal religious affiliations is not a barrier against cultural deception.

And what is required though is a complete transformation of the mind, thinking like Christ, embracing a biblical worldview and truly trusting God as our sovereign provider in times of fear and uncertainty. As Cain demonstrated when he slew Abel, fallen humanity continually seek creative ways to diminish and take life and viewing death as a deceptive escape hatch when in reality when they face difficult circumstances. But can I suggest that standing for life requires us to recognize that God alone is the author and the finisher of human existence. Patricia, survey data as I semi cited shows that more than a third of women having abortions were attending church at least monthly at the time that they chose. How does this fact prove that simply sitting in a pew isn’t enough and while instilling a true biblical worldview, one that trusts God to provide through hard financial and relational circumstances is the real key to transforming our hearts?

Patricia Engler:

Well, as you’re hinting at, not all churches necessarily teach a biblical worldview. And even for the ones that do, they’re not necessarily having these conversations about what God’s word teaches about the value of life and how that translates to the abortion issue. So churches though need to be having these conversations. Proverbs tells us to speak up for the voiceless and the cause of all who are appointed to die. And like you mentioned at the beginning, this is the scale of 73 million babies every single year. So if we were living through something like the Holocaust or slavery, we would want our descendants to be able to say that our ancestors did something about it even when it wasn’t popular. We spoke up. So it’s the same thing that churches need to be equipping people to do in the pews today. Also, just letting people know that church is a safe place to come if they need help, if they’re facing an unplanned pregnancy.

Those entire ministries like love life. They have the House of Refuge statement that pastors can use just to remind congregants of that once a year. Because of course the enemy would love to tell women that, oh, church is the last place you should go. You should go to Planned Parenthood instead. They won’t judge you. Well, no, no, no, no, no. That is not the answer. Churches need to step up and show God’s love to women and to congregants. It’s also kind of an idea in evangelical churches that being actively pro-life is maybe more of like a hobby for Roman Catholics or just for people who really like politics. But no, this isn’t a political issue. This is a human rights issue. And the starting point for this is, as we’ve been emphasizing, going back to God’s word and to the gospel. We’re not going to see a change in our culture thinking about abortion unless we see a change in people’s hearts.

So that’s why one of the greatest ways we can respond is by sharing the gospel, discipling people inside and outside the church, defending a biblical worldview, recognizing that this is a spiritual battle with physical consequences and walking closely with God in response.

Sam Rohrer:

All right. And just almost done. Let me just conclude with this by asking you in light of these things, and there are many other truths we could identify at this point, but what would you hold out there are ways to exercise our responsibility to defend life while we have time? Because that window seems to be closing and what are some practical ways that we can do that?

Patricia Engler:

That is the question. So first of all, starting with God’s word, as we’ve been talking about, defending that as the basis, sharing the gospel. Second, we can be praying. That is a powerful and indispensable weapon that every Christian who’s physically capable of praying can do to make a huge difference in the battle for life, praying for a heart for life, get ideas for how to use it, praying for families and parents facing difficult circumstances, for the ministries helping them, for the lawmakers fighting to help end abortion, praying for people in our communities who support abortion, asking God to change their hearts. So that’s a great place to start. We can also be supporting families and the ministries that help them directly, whether that’s offering encouragement to new parents, providing them practical help like babysitting and meals, reminding them that we’re going to be there for them for the journey.

There’s lots of pregnancy resource centers that often have a gospel focus and we can get involved with them, collecting baby items for them, going to visit with our church friends, small group of family, asking how we can volunteer, tons of pro-life fundraisers that we can join into. We can equip ourselves to defend life well by just knowing some of the facts about life, about what the Bible says about it, some of the strategies for answering arguments as we’ve been talking about today, avoiding bad arguments that don’t line up with God’s word, promoting good laws by being careful about who we’re voting for, making sure we understand what they believe and what are they actually going to do? Will they really vote for life issues in pro-life ways or do they just say they’re pro-life but not actually necessarily doing things about it? And then raising awareness.

This is an all hands on deck kind of thing just with the scale of the catastrophe going on around us, but all of us have spheres of influence that God has given us, whether that’s in our families, especially for parents equipping our kids to be pro-life individuals. We have a whole book called Crafted by God at Answers in Genesis that families can use to help disciple their kids to be pro-life. Churches have the opportunity. Anyone with social media can share life affirming resources. You can even just invite friends over for a pro-life movie night. There are tons of ways that we can be getting in the ring and I encourage you to lift the praise. What might that look like for you?

Sam Rohrer:

And Patricia, I asked you just for a couple of ideas, but you had a long list. Ladies and gentlemen, the point is understanding life and the need to defend it starts with understanding who God is the author of life in Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life. And when that is understood, then we will understand the sacredness of life. Patricia Engler from Answers and Genesis, thanks for being with me today.