Formal Fallacies and the Erosion of Our Witness

It showed up again on my social media feed again today. It actually makes a regular appearance and I keep thinking – “why do we do this kind of stuff?”

Here’s the most recent version – all dressed up in Facebook graphics. “Why would someone be upset about deporting children . . . but not upset about aborting them?” I think this fits the definition of a formal fallacy that I found on a reasonably academic, but not too dense, website: “Comparing one thing to another that is really not related, in order to make one thing look more or less desirable than it really is.”

Really – do I have to make a choice between being upset about deporting children or being upset about aborting children? What if I turn that statement around? “Why would someone be upset about aborting children . . . but not upset about deporting them?” I almost guarantee that if I were to put that statement on my social media, I would be covered up with responses declaring concern for both. But logically, the second version seems as “reasonable” as the first version.

The problem is, neither version is fair – they are both fallacies. Any given person can be upset or not upset about both sides of the fallacy. But it is so alluring to sound like “I’ve got you” with the fallacy of assuming that if deporting children upsets me, I don’t care about abortion.

To be honest – I’m upset by both! The fact that we separate children from their parents, even if illegally present in the United States, is deeply troubling. Even in the densest expressions of the Law of Moses, we read frequent reminders about caring about “sojourners.”  And when it comes to how a follower of Jesus deals with “the law of the land,” I’m pretty sure Peter made that plain in Acts when he said that to obey God will always trump obeying man!

While it is probably a bit more complicated a subject than some would say, I find abortion upsetting as well. The Bible tells a story of life over which God is sovereign – and our casual ignoring of that culture of life for the convenience of abortion is deeply troubling. However, if that is where I am theologically, then I have to own up to some responsibility to provide needed care for “the inconvenient births” I insist must happen. What if I make the formal fallacy something like this: “Why would someone be upset about aborting babies . . . but not upset about the fact they may grow up without basic necessities?”

Even more confusing – and fallacious in its logic – is that some of the most anti-abortion people I know are also the most pro-capital punishment people I know. Can I object to violating God’s sovereignty over life when it comes to abortion, but assume privilege when it comes to capital punishment? What if I make the formal fallacy this: “Why would someone be upset about abortion . . . but not upset about capital punishment?” 

A number of years ago, in the same class during the same semester I had a student who was vehemently anti-abortion, insisting that Christians should go to abortion clinics, with poster-sized pictures of aborted fetuses. But at the same time, he insisted that the state of Georgia should not pardon a woman on death row who had hired someone to murder her husband, and was given the death sentence, even though she had become a deeply committed believer who was described by the prison chaplain as an incredible resource for ministry in that prison. Is it less sinful to kill a repentant sinner because "the law of the land says so" than it is to abort a yet unborn baby?

So if you’re still reading . . . let me be clear. I’m upset about both issues: abortion and deporting children. But equally upsetting to me is that we play these little nonsense games with false comparisons that gives anyone with a brain an excuse to think, “Followers of Jesus don’t make a lot of sense!”

Please don’t make assumptions that I have to be one or the other! When we do that, we erode our witness to the world that desperately needs to hear about Jesus.