For centuries, humans have tried to twist God’s Word to advance their political agendas. Texas state Rep. James Talarico proved this week that he is no exception.
Just this week, Talarico, who represents the wealthy suburbs north of Austin but clearly longs to do more politically, dedicated several minutes on The Joe Rogan Experience to rattling off what he dubbed “biblical evidence” for abortion.
Talarico’s debut JRE appearance was clearly a ploy to boost his electability (at one point in the show, host Joe Rogan even encouraged Talarico to run for president). The heresy the Democrat ended up spewing was just a bonus.
Shortly into the 2-hour-and-36-minute-long podcast, Talarico claimed he gets “suspicious when anybody, whether it’s a televangelist or a politician, tells me that something is central to my faith when Jesus never talks about it.”
“To me that should I think ring alarm bells as to, what is the agenda here? What is someone trying to get across?” Talarico continued.
He specifically focused his concerns on Christians’ defense of unborn babies and marriage between a man and a woman.
“I think, if we’re looking at the last 40, 50 years, the religious right has made a concerted effort to make homosexuality and abortion the two biggest issues for Christians,” Talarico claimed.
Talarico has it backwards. Christ followers didn’t suddenly begin hyperfixating on the sanctity of life and marriage in the last half century. In fact, both of those issues have always been important to Christians because the Bible clearly states they are important to God.
Our culture, however, continually wages a war on those values, which brings them to the forefront of political conversations. When society gets loud about killing unborn children up until the moment they are born and legalizing same-sex and other relationships as legitimate family unions, the salt and light of the Earth are biblically mandated to get loud too.
One would think a self-proclaimed pastor would see the urgency in speaking and standing on such significant principles. Instead, Talarico pretended that parts of the Old Testament include “some subtle instructions for how to perform an abortion in the ancient world” and claimed that because Jesus acknowledged and included women in his ministry, that must mean he wants them to have the option to end their pregnancies.
Just because Jesus didn’t specifically use the word “abortion” in his short ministry doesn’t mean he has nothing to say about it or, an even worse assumption, endorses it. The Bible, the infallible, inspired Word of God, has plenty to say about murder (that it is a grave sin punishable by death and eternity in the lake of fire) and life in the womb (that we are knit together, known, and consecrated before we are born). None of that aligns with what Talarico preaches.
“All I’m asking is that for Christians who are pro-choice and who respect the bodily autonomy of women, that we be given the space to make our theological argument, because I think there is a lot of, of biblical evidence to support that opinion,” Talarico claimed.
Except, that’s not “all” he’s asking. Never before has an American political party like Talarico’s so openly embraced the murder of unborn babies through all nine months of pregnancy.
During his time in the Texas House, he’s repeatedly voted against pro-life protections and resources for women and babies, as well as prohibitions on taxpayer-funded abortion.
Talarico concluded his blasphemous aside by arguing that abortion is a valid cause for Christians because he believes Mary was asked for “consent” by God and his angel before she became pregnant with Jesus.
“So to me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create — creation is one of the most sacred acts that we engage in as human beings, but that has to be done with consent. It has to be done with freedom. And, to me, that is absolutely consistent with the ministry and life and death of Jesus,” Talarico said.
Not only is this a bad theological interpretation of a key Gospel concept because it ignores God’s sovereignty, but it is also simply wrong.
In Luke 1, the angel Gabriel does not ask Mary anything. Instead, as a messenger of the Lord, he declares to Mary that she, a virgin, will conceive the “Son of the Most High.” It’s only after Gabriel reassures her that “nothing will be impossible with God” that Mary postures herself as a servant of the Lord who says, “let it be to me according to your word.”
Talarico claims to be a Christian who went on Rogan’s show to “bridge the divide.” His firm denouncement of what it means to live a biblical life, however, only confirms to the Christians who crack open and comprehend what’s in their Bibles that, in this day and age, the millstones Jesus warned us about abound.