The Overton Window is quickly being moved as Southern Baptists increasingly shift closer to the progressive position of the last decade on abortion. The Democrat mantra on abortion used to be “safe, legal, and rare.” It was their way of disguising their pro-abortion stance as compassion for women who may have the “rare” need to kill her “inconvenient” child—you know, because it was occasionally necessary to do so. A lack of financial stability, the inability to finish school; an unwanted and surprise pregnancy that caught these mothers off guard certainly needed a failsafe to bail them out of their horrible nightmare.

The Southern Baptist Convention has clearly joined the mantra of “safe, legal, and rare,” but without actually using the words. Instead, Southern Baptist leaders are crafting “clever” arguments against the full and equal protection of unborn children with some of the most asinine twisting of Scripture we could ever imagine.

During the annual meeting of the Louisiana Baptists, one pastor offered an amendment to a resolution to abortion that would include language urging Christians and lawmakers alike to support equal protection for unborn children under the law. In other words, it would recommend holding mothers who seek to murder their unborn children criminally accountable for the act just as they would be if their child were any other age.

Louisiana Baptists overwhelmingly voted “no” to that amendment and, instead, argued that mothers should not be held accountable for murdering their children because God had mercy on Paul for killing Christians.

Senior Pastor of Jefferson Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, David Goza, argues vehemently against the equal protection of unborn children, stating that “the way I see it, if we go down this path, the argument is that we should criminalize the mothers who are getting abortions…and I want to make just a couple of comments about why we should not go any further with this.”

“It’s hard to argue with the reasoning…the mothers involved in this are clearly choosing to murder their children,” Goza continued. “I do not argue against that reasoning, it is accurate.”

“I do want to say this,” he continued, “when the Apostle Paul was still Saul, he consented in Acts of murder, per Steven. Then he went on a personal crusade, if you remember, attacking other Christians. The Scriptures said it led to their destruction. It destroyed many other families.”

“Paul, many years later reflecting on his actions, he said this to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:13, ‘Although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persectutor, an insolent man, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly, in unbelief.'”

“Paul believed lies about Jesus and about Christians,” Goza continued. “He was misled, he was misguided, it caused him to make decisions that he would regret for the rest of his life. Paul caused Christians to be murdered, led to their deaths. But, in his heart, at the time, he was not a murderer. The Christians, the Church, they knew that he was a murderer. But in his mind, he was a patriot defending God.”

“These are actions that he had to live with for the rest of his life,” Goza said, “but he says that he did them in ignorance and unbelief. And I would argue that these women who get abortions, they make decisions that they regret for the rest of their lives, they believe lies, they’ve been misled, they’ve been misinformed, they’ve been told lies.”

“Christians…we all know that they are killing babies. They are ending life, but in their hearts, they believe that they are only ending a pregnancy,” he continued. “But if Paul found mercy in God’s eyes because he did evil in ignorance and unbelief, how can we not proclaim mercy to those who end a pregnancy in ignorance and unbelief?”

Now, if that isn’t the most ignorant, biblically uninformed argument you’ve ever heard for denying equal protection to unborn children, there is something seriously wrong with your reasoning skills. First, we are not God. God decideds who He will have mercy on and the mercy that God showed to Paul was predestined before the foundation of the world for His own purposes. That has absolutely no bearing on the laws the civil government must enact to protect innocent life.

For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” —Romans 9:15

It is true that Paul found mercy and salvation in God through faith and repentance, and the same can be had for mothers who commit abortions. But that does not preclude them from criminal penalties for committing these acts.

Goza’s ridiculous argument, if taken to its logical conclusion, suggests that it should be legal to kill innocent Christians and those who do so should not be held criminally accountable so long as they’re doing it out of ignorance and unbelief. HELLO EVERYONE! That’s every leftist in America.

Is this the stance that Southern Baptists want to take? Because, if you’re going to be logically consistent, then you’re going to have to agree that murdering Christians should be legal. The problem with the Southern Baptist Convention is that it is led by weak-minded pastors just like this who are biblically illiterate, irrational, unqualified pragmatists who couldn’t reason their way out of a paper bag—but these are the men we’re supposed to look to for leadership. And the fact that the majority of the people in that room agreed with Goza speaks volumes about the state of the Church today.

God’s judgment is upon us.

Goza’s absurd argument starts at around the 8-minute mark, but you should listen to the whole presentation if you have time: