This week I've received many emails echoing the sentiments expressed by my friend Lana:

Dear Matt, I've seen you write a few times this week that "Democrats can't be Christian" or some such nonsense. I've come to expect horrible things from you but these kinds of statements are despicable even by your standards. You should be ashamed. I know very many Christians are ashamed of you. Guess what, Mr. Walsh? I'm doing the impossible! I am a devout Christian AND a loyal Democrat. I go to church AND I vote for the D on the ticket. I believe in the Bible AND in the principles of the Democratic Party. See it is possible! And come November I will be proudly voting for Hillary Clinton BECAUSE I'm a Christian. So now hopefully you can stop spreading lies. Thanks. - Lana

Hi Lana,

Please don't misunderstand me. A Christian can certainly be a Democrat, just like a Christian can be a Buddhist, or a Christian can be a Scientologist, or a Christian can worship a goat or a join a suicide cult. Christians can do anything and believe anything while still retaining the title of Christian -- that is, so long as we define "Christian" as "Someone who says they are one." It's no surprise that Democrats would define the term in such a way, seeing as how these days they even define "man" and "woman" that way. In the liberal world, in order to be something all one must do is declare that they are that thing. This is a view shared by my 3-year-old and by Michael Scott from "The Office," who famously declared bankruptcy by standing outside and shouting, "I declare bankruptcy!"

[mattwalsh-social-instory]

I'm of the opinion, however, that being a man involves more than merely saying you're a man, and being a Christian involves more than simply saying you're a Christian. So what else does it entail? A Christian, by definition, believes that Christ is the Son of God; that He was sent to Earth to suffer and die for our sins, opening up the gates of Heaven for all who follow Him (John 3:16). If we accept and believe this great Truth, we are Christian. And we remain Christian even if we stumble, sin, and fall short of perfection, as I have done and continue to do more often than I care to admit.

When I say that Democrats can't be Christian, then, I'm not saying that you're all a bunch of filthy sinners and those of us outside the party -- Republicans, Libertarians, and so forth -- are perfect angels. That's not the point. I'm saying that being a "loyal Democrat," as you describe yourself, requires that you fundamentally reject the authority of Christ. Not in the sense of sinning and falling short, but in the sense of actually disbelieving and condemning some of His most important teachings and some of the most essential lessons of Scripture.

The question is this: Can you believe that Christ is Lord and that the Holy Bible is the inspired Word of God and also believe that Christ was, in some cases, a liar or a fool, and that the inspired Word of God needs to be trimmed and updated? And if you disbelieve these massive chunks of the Bible, how can you believe in Christ, considering the Bible tells us about Christ? And if you don't believe everything Christ said, how can you believe that He is Lord, considering we only know that He is Lord because He told us? You can believe and fall short at the same time, but can you believe in Christianity and resolutely reject its precepts at the same time?

No, obviously not. To believe in Christ is to believe and accept what He taught us.

So now that we've figured out what it means to be a Christian, we need to consider what it means to be a Democrat. Specifically, what it means to be a loyal and current Democrat, as you've announced. If you go to an old folks home and stir up a political debate (one of my favorite pastimes), you'll find that many of the elderly conservative gentlemen and women also identify as "Democrats." That's because they stopped following politics sometime in 1953 and have no idea about the state of "their party" or what sort of hideous, slouching beast it has become. Perhaps someone should tell them, but I'm afraid they could not physically handle the shock of learning that women like Lena Dunham and Sarah Silverman exist, and are now the perfect mascots of the new Democrat Party. These types of "Democrats" -- oblivious to the modern reality, either because they're very old or they've been living in the rain forest for most of their adult lives -- can be Christian and Democrat precisely because they're not really Democrats. They're about as Democratic as Jefferson Davis, and some of them may have even voted for him.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

As for the fully aware and fully contemporary Democrats, I think their beliefs have been very well demonstrated by the convention this week. On Tuesday night, the DNC trotted the CEO of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, up to the podium to deliver a 15-minute sales pitch for abortion. The next night, after the sales pitch, the president of the National Abortion Rights Action League strode confidently onto the stage to give a sort of client testimonial. Not only does she run the abortion industry's propaganda machine, but she is, as she happily professed, a satisfied abortion customer. She bragged about her abortion, explaining that she had to kill her child because he would have been too inconvenient at the time. The crowd roared with applause.

Literally cheering for abortions. That is the modern Democrat Party.

But their abortion love isn't just hot air. They put their money where their mouth is -- or our money, I should say. The Democrat Party is almost solely responsible for legalizing, funding, and facilitating the murder of 50 million humans. And they're quite proud of it. They've placed abortion front and center, making it exceedingly clear that any "loyal Democrat" must not only approve of abortion, but respond with deafening applause at the sound of a baby's skull being crushed.

Let me ask you this, Lana: Would Jesus be in that crowd applauding as a mother boasts of killing her child? Would Jesus nod approvingly at politicians who take money from families and use it to fund an industry that slaughters a million kids a year? Is Jesus pro-abortion? Can you be pro-abortion while at the same time believing in and trusting Him?

No, No, and hell No.

The Bible repeatedly condemns the killing of the innocent, most notably in the the Sixth Commandment. Scripture says that God "knit us together in the womb" (Psalm 139) and that He knew us even before we were born (Jeremiah 1:5). Jesus taught us to love children and to treat them with a special respect (Matthew 19:13). He said that we must protect them and that it would be better to drown in the sea with a stone around your neck than to cause harm to a child (Luke 17:1-3). The Bible begins right at the outset with a staunchly pro-life statement: "God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Can a Christian endorse the legality or morality of dismembering a human being who was, as Scripture tells us, made in the image of God?

Aside from the verses explicitly condemning the act of murdering or hurting the innocent (there are many more that I did not list, in the interest of time), we know that the very story and life of Christ already disqualifies a Christian from supporting abortion. Jesus was Himself at one point an unborn child. If there were any questions before His arrival about the sanctity of human life, those questions were answered 2,000 years ago. Answer me this: If unborn babies are not human, or are not people, or are not worthy of protection, then was Jesus not human, not a person, or not worthy of protection? If the life of the unborn is not sacred, then was Christ's life not sacred? Christ was fully human and fully God. Whatever can be said of any human in the fetal state must also be said of Christ. A worthless blob of cells, right? Are you willing to say that about the fetal Christ?

AP

You tell me, Lana, but make sure you're not standing near any metallic structures in case a lightning bolt strikes. You tell me -- no, tell Him-- how you can remain a Christian after insisting that He was, in His earliest moments on Earth, an unhuman puddle of disposable material. Just be careful and consider that you're much better off committing heresy against Planned Parenthood than against the Almighty God.

If the point needs to be driven home any harder, remember that Jesus told us on multiple occasions that whatever we do to the least of these, we do to Him (Matthew 25:40). If we feed or clothe the vulnerable and the helpless, we feed and clothe Him. But what if we rip them apart, limb from limb, and toss them in the dumpster? I suppose then we've ripped Christ apart and tossed Him in a dumpster. And what if we vote for politicians who will passionately protect the right to rip babies apart, and who promise to fund the practice and make it more accessible across the country? Well, according to Christ, we've voted for politicians who passionately protect the right to rip Him apart, and who promise to fund this brutal sacrilege and make it more accessible across the country. And what if we support a political party that makes this one of the foundational tenets of its platform? You get the idea.

And it's not just abortion, of course. The Democrat Party, as you know, also considers the deconstruction of traditional marriage to be one of its crowning achievements. Meanwhile, Jesus explicitly defined marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman (Matthew 19:5), and Scripture more than once condemns homosexual relationships as "degrading," "unrighteous," and "depraved" (1 Corinthians 6:9, Romans 1:26). Granted, the Bible condemns all forms of fornication -- homosexual or otherwise -- and many (all?) Christians of every political persuasion have struggled to obey these difficult commandments. But can we, as Christians, fundamentally deny God's authority in this area? It is one thing to stumble, but can we say, "Man can do what he pleases in the realm of sexuality and it is not a sin because God was mistaken"? Yes, we can certainly say that, but can we say it as Christians?

This is what the Democrat Party stands for now. It asserts the absolute supremacy of the human will. It strives for a society where the whims of the individual not only override every previously existing law, institution, and tradition, but are celebrated as sacrosanct. Say what you want about that, but you cannot say that it is Christian.

Perhaps nothing better encapsulates the new Democratic creed than its most recent cause du jour, transgenderism. Although the Bible tells us that we were made male and female (Genesis 5:2), the Democrat Party declares that a man exercises total agency over his own biology, and that citizens should be forced by law to recognize and affirm his self-centered delusions.

Photo Credit: FILE

Speaking of forcing by law, the Democrat Party has, over the past several years, attempted to stamp out and destroy the very faith you claim to profess. It says not only that the institution of marriage should be opened to gays, but that Christians ought to be forced by the State to participate. It says not only that abortion should be legal and celebrated, but that Christian companies, Christian individuals, and even nuns should be forced by the State to fund the abortion industry and pay for contraceptives and abortifacients.

So, can you be a Christian and agree with the Democrats on all of these points? The answer is clearly no. Agreeing with them means rather forcefully disagree with God. Can you, then, disagree with the Democrats on all of these points and still be a Democrat? Well, outside of the elderly and the fantastically ignorant, I have not found a single Democrat who does oppose the Party's agenda in all of these areas.

If I ever located such a misguided specimen, I would ask them why they vote for, and claim membership in, a party that is so single mindedly dedicated to undermining their faith, killing the innocent, normalizing deviancy and perversion, and restricting the liberty of their brothers and sisters in Christ. I would tell this person that it's probably time to choose between the two. One or the other. You simply can't believe in both anymore.

Listen to Matt's latest podcast here.

To request Matt for speaking engagement, contact Clint or Matt at Outreach Speakers. Email: events@outreach.com Phone: 866-400-2036. For all other comments and hate mail, email Contact@TheMattWalshBlog.com.

–

TheBlaze contributor channel supports an open discourse on a range of views. The opinions expressed in this channel are solely those of each individual author.