One criticism that is often made against people who have conservative political positions is this; how can you be pro-life (against the killing of babies) and pro-war at the same time? In this past election for example, Senator John McCain was praised by social conservatives for his pro-life and anti-abortion positions, but he also wants to keep American troops in Iraq until the job is finished, whereas Senator Obama wanted to pull American troops out of Iraq by a certain deadline.

So the question critics raise is, “How can you be so morally opposed to a candidate who supports abortion, but be okay with a candidate who supports war?” Let me try to answer this question.

First we’ll handle the pro-life question, as this is the easy one. Aborted babies are not just clumps of cells in their mother’s womb; they are real, tiny people. Babies have beating hearts, faces, and even tiny fingernails when they are aborted (this is true even in the case of early term abortions). This should be an unambiguous moral issue for any thinking Christian; abortion is 100% wrong. It’s murder; you’re intentionally stopping a beating heart! So that’s why I will never, under any circumstance, support a pro-abortion candidate.

Next is the more complicated issue; war. Personally, I hate war, and again all thinking Christians (and even non-Christians) should feel the same way. War is always a terrible, terrible thing and should be avoided whenever possible.

But in this sick, fallen world we live in, it’s not always possible. Sometimes, wars have to be fought, in order to stand up for what’s right, defend your homeland, or rescue oppressed people. It’s a terrible reality in our world.

And I think almost all of you reading this would agree that there are situations where society must use force to enact what is right. We would all agree that if a police officer sees a man about to kill a child, it is right for him to use whatever force is necessary to stop the man from doing the deed. And most of us would agree that if you knew that a certain nation was about to attack your nation and many would die, it is right for your nation to defend itself through violent means, if necessary.

So the thing with war is, it is a sometimes ambiguous moral issue. All war is unambiguously horrible, but not all war is avoidable at all times, as our world is full of sick and violent people (just like not all violence is avoidable; it may take violence to stop a criminal from perpetrating violence on an innocent victim). And reasonable people and reasonable Christians can disagree on exactly when war is unavoidable and when it is not.

In the case of the Iraq war, whatever your opinion is on whether or not the war should have been started, my opinion is that to just pull out the troops now would be terribly irresponsible. It would do irreparable harm to the Iraqi people. In the long run, much more human suffering would be caused by a premature evacuation of US forces than by them staying there until order is finally restored.

So again, please understand me…is war good? No, war is horrible. If I thought there was a presidential candidate who could make everyone in the world turn into good men and thus war wouldn’t be necessary, I would vote for him. But there is no such man.

Until Christ comes back, there will be wicked, wicked men on earth, and some of these men will rise to positions of power where war is the only way to stop them.

So that’s why being “pro-life” doesn’t contradict with supporting some wars that have to be fought.

i support his stand too. today, i've realised something. there's some places that weren't meant to be treaded upon and some boundaries that were never meant to be crossed. sometimes, i wonder whether the people i thought i knew were reallly the people they really are on the inside. am i being naive? sometimes, i wish that i've never walked down that road. yet again, there's a purpose for everything that happens. im wondering what's becoming of me. i've been ever changing and yet steered to the wrong direction. but i praise God that He always leads me back to the right place.

there's nothing more that i need right now but You. there's no one and no thing that can change this heart of mine and this world that im living in but You.