By Douglas Groothuis
You shall not murder.
-- Exodus 20:13, NIV
Don't give any of your children to be burned in sacrifice to the god Molech –an act of sheer blasphemy of your God. I am God.
-- Leviticus 18:21, The Message
In his April 21, 2023 speech at the Heritage Foundation, former Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, said that any political movement that wants to abort and sexually mutilate children (through sex change procedures) is "evil" and that we should pray about it at least ten minutes a day for America. It goes beyond politics to the evil of child sacrifice, he said. (That remark may have lost him his job at Fox.) He downplayed humorously his theological credentials in making this point. However, he is entirely correct. Our country is being invaded by terrible spiritual evil. It is akin to ancient Molech worship, which required the sacrifice of children to this false god and the demon or demons behind him (Leviticus 18:21). Any movement that supports abortion on demand, without apology, for any woman who wants it for any reason up until birth (which is infanticide) is evil. Any movement that supports allowing minors to decide they are not their biological sex and allows them—even encourages them—to reverse the normal, God-given pattern of their sexual development (through cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers) and which allows—even encourages them—to have their genetically-given sexual organs surgically removed, is not just wrong. It is evil. It is evil because it is anti-child, anti-life, and anti-God. These young people are irreparably mutilated and sterilized. They will have no children and their childhood (and adulthood) has been stolen from them forever. We should have compassion on those who feel out of place in their own God-given bodies. This is but another result of the fall (Genesis 3). Such folks need help and they can find help spiritually and psychologically. They should not be vilified. But when anyone advocates abortion and transgender ideology, he or she should be called out and calmly but forcefully refuted because they are advocating no less than modern child sacrifice on the altar of human disposability and sexual perversion. Jesus, the Lord of all, loves children: “Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14). We should love them as well, and that love demands opposing abortion and supporting the unborn and their mothers. It also means opposing sex change mutilations and supporting the God-given complementary binary of male and female (Genesis 1:27; Matthew 19:1-6).
To engage this battle (spiritual, cultural, and political), we need biblical wisdom, sound logic, and facts on the ground, as well as spiritual discernment and empowerment. As the Apostle Paul said:
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).
This engagement requires donning the “full armor of God,” as Paul also writes about, this time in Ephesians 6:10-19. In his speech, Tucker emphasized the important of speaking the truth in the face of lies. Paul says we must buckle the belt of truth around our waists and wield the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, the word of truth. I will not further exposit the passage here, but I encourage and exhort all of you to read this passage, to memorize the parts of the armor, and to put on the armor daily, as I have been doing for decades. We are in a battle of good against evil, of God against Satan and his demons. But we can rest in the victory of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Colossians 2:13-15; see also 1 John 3:8).
Onward, Christian soldiers!