In a recent CNN town hall, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders had a shocking answer to a question on climate change. A voter asked him if he would support a campaign to curb population growth to combat it. In response to this, Sanders reiterated his support for abortion, especially for those in poor countries so that they could control the number of children they have.
Sanders’ answer is a perfect example of the wickedness of man’s rebellion against God. In his radical efforts to combat climate change, Sanders shamelessly proclaims that he will support what is effectively eugenics in order to achieve his goals. If human life must end in order to achieve the supposed higher goal of saving the planet, so be it. By looking at how God has ordered creation and how evil men order it in their mind’s, the depravity of Sanders’ worldview will be apparent to the Christian.
The first chapter of the Bible gives us the foundation for everything we need to know. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) and later, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). God has created everything in existence, including man. Thus, he rules over them and has the authority to tell man what he must do. We cannot live our lives by our own rules. God has set them, and we must obey them.
One task God has given man is to rule over creation. He says, “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth…The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” (Genesis 1:26b, 2:15). Although the specifics of how we practically live this out as individuals and as a society requires balance and wisdom, taking care of the world that God has given us doesn’t automatically make you a crazy tree hugger. God has entrusted his creation to us, and we must care for it because it ultimately doesn’t belong to us; it belongs to God. Recycling, fuel efficient cars, and clean sources of energy are all practical ways that we can steward creation well, but we cannot take this too far.
In his efforts to combat what he sees as an immanent planetary threat, Sanders is willing to exterminate human life, especially in the poor communities that he claims to want to help through socialism. In this, Sanders places the created order as god. Instead of accepting the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus’ blood to God for the sins of his people, Sanders instead wants to sacrifice human life to his god of creation. This is a direct violation of God’s command to worship him and to not murder. Standing in judgment over God and his law, he has completely reversed the created order and is one of the fools condemned in Romans 1. “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:22-23). He has traded the true God for a lesser god, worshiping that which he should be ruling over in submission to God. Instead of the gulags of the communist dictatorships that he continuously praises, Sanders has replaced them with the blood-soaked linoleum floors of the abortion clinics in his mad quest to be god over other men’s lives and God himself in service to his god of creation.
For some candidates, whether a Christian should or should not support them is not clear cut and requires wisdom and charity for those that think differently. For others, like Sanders, they encompass a worldview that is anti-Christian to the core. As we evaluate our options for 2020, it is important that we understand the worldview that the candidates promote and reject those that oppose Christian ideals.