I was still a high school student the first time I read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I will never forget the powerful impact the book had on me. Of course, as a second year student, I did not fully digest the book. In spite of subsequent readings, I am sure I have not yet fully comprehended it. But it did give me a new view of murder. Naturally, I had always thought of murder as something awful. But Dostoyevsky taught me to think of murder as something dirty, filthy and foul in the utmost. As Dostoyevsky’s protagonist Rodion Raskolnikov learned, murder dehumanizes by polluting the soul.
I do not mean that all killing is wrong. The Bible is clear: “there is a time to kill” (Ecclesiastes 3:3a). For example, the Bible commands capital punishment for first degree murder, a command first expressed in the poetry of Genesis 9:6.
“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood,
by man shall his blood be shed:
for in the image of God made he man.”
This principle is repeated and elaborated in the Torah of Moses (Exodus 21:12-14; Leviticus. 24:17; Numbers 35:31-34). Perhaps the passage in the book of Numbers is the most emphatic.
“Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer, who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death. And you shall accept no ransom for him who has fled to his city of refuge, that he may return to dwell in the land before the death of the high priest. You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I Yahweh dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.” (Numbers 35:31-34)
Note that the Torah regards murder as something that defiles and pollutes the land. Yahweh God, in other words, regards murder as especially foul, to the degree that there is no possible ransom or exception to the death penalty for murder. There are other crimes in the Torah for which the death penalty is the maximum prescribed penalty, but in most cases, payment of a ransom provides a way of escape. Not for murder.
The Bible also condones certain kinds of war, a principle that has been much discussed and debated throughout Christian history, especially from the time of Augustine, who defined the principles of “Jus Ad Bellum” (Justice Before War) and “Jus In Bello” (Justice in War). The doctrine of a just war is much too complicated to consider here, but, however complicated the theory is in its details and application, the fact remains that just as the Bible allows for self-defense for individuals who are criminally attacked, it also allows for nations to defend themselves — not an adequate statement, to be sure, but true nonetheless.1
In sum, then, the Bible and Christian tradition do not take a pacifist position that all killing is always wrong. The command, Thou shalt not kill, refers to murder, not all killing in every context. Indeed, in the Bible, God Himself kills, at Mount Sinai and in the wilderness, and also, on occasion, commands His servants to kill. Murder, however, is condemned in the most unequivocal and incontrovertible terms. Furthermore, and this gets us closer to the point of this article, the Bible includes abortion in its definition of murder.
There are two interrelated bases for this statement: 1) from the moment of conception, the child in the womb is God’s image, fully human (cf. Psalm 51:5; 139:13-16; Jeremiah 1:4-5; etc.); 2) the Bible includes a law which clearly requires the death penalty for killing an unborn child: Exodus 21:22-25. With unadorned, and perhaps shocking, clarity, James Jordan states the implications of the law in Exodus.
“. . . in either situation, the unborn child is considered a person, and is avenged. The Biblical penalty for abortion is mandatory death. The “physician” responsible for performing the abortion is a murderer and should be put to death. Since at least two people are always involved in it, abortion is conspiracy to commit murder, and the “mother,” the “physician,” the anesthetist, the nurses, and the father or boy friend or husband who pay for it, all are involved in the conspiracy, and all should be put to death for conspiracy to commit murder. Until the anti-abortion movement in America is willing to return to God’s law and advocate the death penalty for abortion, God will not bless the movement.”2
Note, Jordan is advocating the principle of the law, neither vigilante action nor retrospective application of future newly-formulated laws against abortion. Obviously, no such laws will ever appear on the books in the United States unless or until there is a massive conversion of American people to sincere Christian faith. It is not the kind of law that either should or could be imposed by a powerful minority. But the principle needs to be stated and taught — while also strenuously and unqualifiedly advocating against all unlawful violence, which is indeed essential to the law in Exodus 21:22-25.
What does all of this have to do with Lady Macbeth? Complicity! The definition of what constitutes “complicity” in murder is complicated and varies from State to State in the US, from country to country, and from age to age. To “aid and abet,” to be an “accessory,” and similar terms imply a stricter definition of a person’s involvement in a crime than what I am considering because in a court of law, the presupposition of innocence and the requirement of proof of guilt demand bias in the favor of the accused. However, no court of law would or could excuse Lady Macbeth. She not only encouraged Macbeth and aided him in covering up the crime, she actively participated in the murder of King Duncan, defiling her own hands with the king’s blood.
It is highly doubtful that under any circumstances, even in a nation which outlawed abortion as murder, Christians who voted for politicians that supported abortion would be held guilty of aiding and abetting a crime. But it is not before the laws of the United States, Canada, or Great Britain that Christians will finally stand, nor are their laws and judgements the final standard. The question is: How does one stand before Christ, the Lord, before His law and in His court?
To vote for a politician that advocates and openly promotes abortion when there are options to chose against him is to participate to some degree in his espousal of abortion-murder, just like to vote for Hitler — knowing what he was doing to Jews — would have been to “aid and abet” his criminal murders, though not, of course, in the law courts of men. However, it is as easy as it is common to condemn Christians in Germany for not actively opposing Hitler, knowing what he was doing. Among the few matters about which one can obtain a consensus among modern Christians, the duty of the German church to oppose Hitler is one of them.
Of course, there are complications when it comes to voting because there is often no real alternative to voting for men and women who advocate and promote policies that go contrary to Biblical standards of ethics. Debt spending, for example, transgresses the Biblical command, Thou shalt not steal. But in most places where leaders are chosen by democratic process, finding politicians who take a principled stand against debt spending would be difficult, to say the least.
Does that mean we should just grin and bear it? No matter who I vote for, I will be an accomplice to some crime, some unjust war, some international travesty of justice — so why care? We should care because 1) murder takes precedence — as the unconditional demand for the death penalty shows; 2) the case of abortion is clear; 3) it is a battle that can be won simply by principled voting. To fight against abortion — by peaceable means, such as casting ballots — is therefore a moral imperative.
The handwringing excuses, the litany of weak and unbiblical arguments, the effort to drown the issue in abstruse and complicated qualifications and conditions, the attempts to deflect the charge of complicity by counter accusations, etc. all exemplify Lady Macbeth Christians attempting desperately to wash their smelly blood-defiled hands.
Ralph Smith is pastor of Mitaka Evangelical Church.
- See, Tamar Meisels, Contemporary Just War: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2018) — a brief and relatively recent statement and defense of just war theory by a Jewish political theorist. In the larger context of Christian history and political philosophy, Peter J. Leithart’s Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010) includes a chapter with historical and theological discussion of pacifism and the just war tradition (pp. 255-78). ↩︎
- James B. Jordan, The Law of the Covenant: An Exposition of Exodus 21-23 (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), p. 11. ↩︎