What you believe matters. It is the core of who you are and when it is added to the beliefs of others it becomes who we are as a people and a nation. It is important not only to have core beliefs but also to understand their makeup and why we have them.
That is why so many people were taken by surprise when Donald Trump faced off against softball king Chris Matthews on MSNBC and failed to have much opinion on the killing of unborn children beyond “I’m pro-life.”
When pressed to define his views on abortion and the value of human life, Donald Trump was very superficial. Matthews, who identifies as Catholic, did not understand why people should hold a pro-life position and pressed Trump on what should happen to a woman who has an abortion, were the act to be made illegal. Trump stated that he guessed a woman would be punished if abortion were illegal but it was easy to tell that the Donald was out of his depth having never considered the question or the logical outcome of banning the murder of children.
This is where we come to the importance of core values or beliefs because Donald Trump has been back peddling his position due to the shear volume, as in loudness, of the outcry over his response.
What do we really believe about abortion? If we really see it as the murder of a child then making it a crime is critical to ending it. The argument that doing so would drive women to back alleys and coat hangers is not valid any more than having a nice room to end grandma’s life is valid.
Take the absurdity of the abortion argument and apply it to any crime or sin, such as prostitution. Do we really believe that everyone should have the right to sell their body to the highest bidder in the best room possible?
But really this is what is happening with sins such as homosexuality, cross-dressing and the single mother lifestyles; we demand that there is no condemnation for sin but instead accommodation.
When I watched Donald Trump painfully argue for a core belief he did not really hold, it was clear that he was pro-life in name only. While I will take that over a pro-choice position any day, I would prefer that he know the core value that held up the core value.
All life is precious because it is created in the image of God and that we cannot legislate morality but we can put safety rails to remind people that life is valued. Women should value their reproductive potential and guard against being treated as sexual objects while the Playstation cools down because birth control does have a failure rate and every sexual encounter could lead to pregnancy.
If a woman chooses to be intimate with a man, she has given permission for her uterus to be host to a new life that has been given certain inalienable rights by his or her Creator. This is a core belief that leads to the understanding that anyone involved in taking that life is guilty of murder and should, in fact, be punished to the full extent of the law.
We should not fool ourselves into thinking this is a popular belief nor will it win a presidential election. This believe has been used to end a great many careers in recent years but it should still be voiced as valid and defended vigorously.
See the video of Trump and Matthews below:
