Murder your children, and society demands release her. That is a topic we'll discuss today on the Christian Worldview Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. On January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, Lindsey Clancy. A former labor and delivery nurse in Massachusetts sent her husband off for some errands, and while he was away, she took their three children—Cora, age five; Dawson, age three; and Callen, only eight months old—into the basement and one by one strangled them to death.
Fast forward to this year and the recent murder trial for. Lindsey Clancy, women in pink shirts amassed outside the courthouse day after day, not to demand justice for Clancy's three murdered children, but to urge the jury to acquit Lindsey Clancy. Here's what that sounded like outside the courthouse. Thank you.
So the question is, why are these women cheering on and thanking the murderer, Lindsay Clancy?
Well, the surface reason of her defense attorneys is that Lindsay was suffering from mental illness, where she was not able to understand what she was doing. Postpartum depression, and possibly antidepressants, caused a psychotic break to occur inside her. Thus, the I Am Lindsay supporters outside the courthouse and around the country empathized that this poor woman was a victim who should be acquitted rather than be found culpable for murder. The jury deliberated and deliberated. And finally, submitted their verdict.
Eleven of twelve voted to acquit Lindsay Clancy of murder, while just one remained steadfast that she was culpable. Because of a non-unanimous jury, the case ended in a mistrial.
So, what does the Lindsay Clancy murder case say about our justice system, the worldview of our society about women, children, and even abortion? How is the quote second victim narrative employed for women who murder their children or abort their unborn babies? Missy Ropeknack is the mother of nine children. She has spent years doing sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics to persuade women not to abort their babies, but instead repent and believe the gospel. Missy recently wrote a series of articles on the Lindsay Clancy case.
One of which appears in the September-October issue of the Christian Worldview Journal. She joins us to discuss the worldview at play in this case that has drawn national attention. Let's get straight to the interview with Missy Ropek. Missy, it's great to have you on the Christian Worldview Radio program for the first time. Let's start out by you telling us about your background.
How God brought you to saving faith in Christ, and what your life is like now. David, thank you so much for having me on the Christian Worldview. I admire not only this ministry, but just like the endurance of it over the past twenty years, especially when so many ministries are being sidetracked. And as you're even asking me about my testimony, I'm just amazed to even be sharing it here because I was so lost for so many years. I was actually born again when I was 33 out of false conversion, and my husband.
And I both attended a Christian school for most of our lives, but we were not born again. And I definitely lived that double life of a false convert in high school. What that looked like was, is I was on an evangelism team and was even a co-host for a Christian radio program. I was in the prayer clubs and honor clubs, and yet my life was just full of these shocking sins under the surface that would sometimes be revealed. And as I went on to college, the mask fell, and my life was.
Just. Openly sinful, and I hate to even think about those years. After college, I sort of cleaned up my act enough to get back to church, and kept getting rebaptized at various beach baptisms. But I could not control my sins or addictions for any length of time, because I wasn't actually born again.
So I was just operating under my own strength, and I even became a Christian school teacher around this time, and met my husband, who was also living this double. Life and we really felt like we'd hit the jackpot in each other, and found someone that we could go to church with and then live how we wanted. Fast forward to the age of thirty-three, we have two young children. One day while they're napping, something prompted me to pick up the Bible that my parents had given me in middle school. While I was reading, the Lord opened my eyes and showed me that I had gotten it all wrong.
I was a workspace girl, and you know what? My works were. Bad. The Ten Commandments fell hard on me that day and showed me my own sin, which opened my eyes to my need for Christ. I had true repentance for the first time in my life, understanding that my sins had separated me from a holy God, and that He was offering me a mediator.
I remember lying down on my floor, just overwhelmed by a sense of how holy God is, and it's something that I had missed entirely. And with it, I'd miss the gospel. But the Lord revealed it to me in His perfect timing. All those years of Christian education that I never really understood at Christian school clicked into place, and I had this salvation moment by the grace of God. And I remember I started it on my husband as he would come home from work each day, just sharing what I was learning from God's word, and the Lord saved him as well in such a beautiful way.
And we were actually baptized together, and we went on to have nine children by adoption and birth, and immediately were called into adoption and evangelism. Evangelism is truly my passion, and that eventually led to sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics, and now based on the season of life I'm in. Seven teenagers and two littles. I've moved into discipling teenagers within the local church, which I really feel that abortion ministry prepared me for by giving me this vision of what was at stake in these young people's lives.
So basically, I'm a homeschool mom by day and by night I'm a writer, and my writing focuses on family discipleship and evangelism. Amazing salvation story, Missy. Just to hear how you grew up around the church and so forth, but weren't genuinely saved, and how God convicted you of your sin just through His Word. It's just I never get tired of hearing that story.
So thank you for sharing that.
Now I want to hear more about your family because you have a unique family makeup with nine children. And that you also do sidewalk counseling, as you mentioned at abortion clinics. Tell us more about your family and adoption, and then what you try to do as you meet with women at abortion clinics as they're going in for abortions.
Soon after we were born again, God called us into adoption. It was clear we had two toddlers at home and adopted two beautiful children from Ethiopia. And afterwards, I took up advocating for hard-to-place cases. And a file from China came across my desk that just broke my heart. She was a six-year-old little girl who had a severe form of dwarfism with limb deformities, keeping her the size of a four-year-old for life.
She had this short. Of time for someone to adopt her, and the Lord led us to say yes.
So we ended up adding another boy from China with dwarfism to that same adoption, who's also now our son. And after four adoptions, we've just seen our own spiritual adoption mirrored in those processes. And one illustration I like to give is that for the first five years of Haven's life in the orphanage, they kept her swaddled in a crib and bottle-fed with a shaved. Due to her dwarfism, she had seen families come for other children, but she just had no reason to believe anyone was coming for her because of her age. And we knew this, and we knew that the process would be long before we actually got to her.
So we wanted to let her know that we were coming for her.
So we sent her this photo album full of pictures of our family, and we labeled each picture with Haven's mom or Haven's sisters, and we had one that showed. Haven's room, which was filled with dolls and dresses laid out on the bed for her, and we had someone give her this photo album at the orphanage and take pictures of her as she was receiving it.
So she walked into the room in just total despair, and as the promises of that photo book hit her, she just exploded with absolute joy. She was shrieking and laughing as she learned that she now had seven siblings and a giant dog, and that some of her Siblings were from Ethiopia, and she just instantly believed all of it. And what strikes me is, why did she? She had no reason to believe us, but she left the room with a sustained, lasting joy, even though her circumstances were not actually going to change for several months. And we saw her belief a few months later when my husband flew in with her.
I was there at the airport waiting to meet her, and there's this walkway. At the Raleigh Airport, where you can see people coming, but no one from the receiving side can cross the security line that's there.
So we've got this crowd of our friends and family waiting on the other side of that line. And as she caught sight of me, she took off running as fast as she could go, and she was screaming, "Mama, mama!" And it felt like the whole airport stopped to watch. And you know, I just think this is a picture of the belief that God gives us. Us to trust in His promises. It's the already and the not yet of our own spiritual adoptions, and this is how I feel about God's word.
I cling to it. God has sent us like a photo album filled with His promises for us, and we have to wait in faith in a broken world and trust in the unseen. And for me, God's word is where I'm placing all of my hope and faith.
So that hope is what I am carrying and speaking into the women. That I counsel at the abortion clinics or in the youth room for student ministries, and I know that some of what you and I are going to discuss today, David, is going to be hard for some of you to hear, especially for those of you who have already had or helped someone have an abortion.
So let me state clearly and definitively that the sin of abortion is no match for the cross of Christ. His blood. For yours, he died so that you might live. Abortion is murder, and you're going to hear me call it that. But God's standard for what makes you dead in your sins isn't some line where abortion and murder is just above the cutoff.
The cutoff is below us at birth. We have all sinned, and our sins separate us from a holy God. Jesus also says that if we have murder in our hearts when we hate our brother, and if we have broken one. Of his commandments, we've broken them all, and those commandments are the standard for righteousness. And our sins separate us from a holy God, so we all need a mediator.
And all of the Old Testament points to this: all the sacrifices in the desert, all of the blood, all of those lambs pointed towards a final spotless lamb who would pay for the sins of the world, live the sinless life we could not, die the death we deserve, and then rise again. Again, defeating sin and death. This is the gospel, and so you do not have to carry your guilt and shame over a past abortion or any other sin for that matter. You can turn to Jesus in repentance and faith, and your sins will be nailed to that cross. Secondly, if you're already born again and you have repented in faith for your sins, including a past abortion, don't try to pry your guilt back off that cross.
It's gone. As far as the east is from the west, Psalm one hundred three twelve, and this is the message of hope that I offer to post abortive women. It's also the message that keeps me focused on the purpose of my ministry. That being said, I need to be able to speak directly to the misplaced victimhood of abortion. Missy Ropnak with us today here on the Christian worldview.
We're about to get to the Lindsay. Clancy murder case in a minute, but just one more thing about sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics. In the videos I often watch of that, Missy, it just comes across. As an intense place where there's a raging spiritual battle taking place between those who want to tell these women, "Don't murder your child. Your child's made in the image of God," and then those who just hard heartedly go forward.
And you see these confrontations there. This is a difficult environment. I want to read just a short portion of an article that you wrote recently. This article is featured in our. September October issue of the Christian Worldview Journal.
I'm just going to read a paragraph. You say while I was sidewalk counseling, a mother once explained to me why she could not accept her unborn baby's medical diagnosis. She felt she had no choice but to murder her baby by abortion. After a longer conversation, I offered to adopt her baby. You write, and I was dead serious to her.
In response, the woman placed her hand protectively over her visible pregnancy bump, right over her baby, and locked eyes with me. She said, "I would rather deliver my baby girl alive and strangle her with my own hands than allow a Christian to adopt and raise her." Then she turned on her heel and walked into the abortion clinic, leaving me outside. I watched her leave a few hours later, laughing with her companion. She walked lighter, and her shirt hung looser in the front. And then you finish by saying, "When I repeat these stories, people who don't do abortion counseling are visibly overwhelmed by the shock of it, and inevitably say something like, 'They don't mean that.'" I tell you today, you write they absolutely do.
So, Missy, I'd like you to tell us more just about what the spiritual battle is like, and why that is a statement that you heard. I'm sure that was maybe an extreme case, but I'm sure there are more like it. It's not so much that the women don't really mean saying that. There's an intentionality here of murdering your unborn child. Yes, David.
It is a spiritual battle for sure. In terms of maintaining a God glorifying perspective through this, I look at why I went to begin with, which was my daughter Haven. Doctors had told us. Quite bluntly, that the reason for the lack of medical data available for treatment options for her is because the other children with her conditions are aborted.
So much so that there have only been a handful of people in the world like her who've been allowed to be born. And yet we know that babies with infirmities are created for God's glory to be displayed. And we see that in John nine three when Jesus says that the man was born blind that the works of God might be displayed in him. It was thinking of. Children like her that were lost to abortion that motivated us to try abortion clinic outreach with a local ministry here in Raleigh called Gospel of God Ministries, and I remember thinking on my first day that I was just going to show up with love and explain to these poor women walking in that it was a baby, not a fetus, because they probably didn't know this, and that I could show them a picture of Haven and they would instantly decide not to abort their own baby that was dying.
Diagnosed with something in utero, and perhaps I would even offer to adopt their babies as a last resort, like what you just discussed.
Well, after my first day, I just sat in my car and wept over so many things: the darkness of just standing on that property, the wickedness or slavery of the women walking in, and mostly my own naivety over what this ministry should look like. I had to identify and repent from what I realized was my own doubt. That the gospel was sufficient in all ministries, and that it has the power to save even at the abortion clinic, because when you drive by, you think. Why are these people protesting? Why are they even mentioning sin or murder?
Just offer them resources and love, because these women are victims of their circumstances who need help. They don't need Bible verses. And I was thinking when I thought that way in terms of a misapplied concept called the second victim narrative, and this narrative is something I've been addressing in my discernment series on Substack because most of us now have fallen into this way of thinking. Even just a little bit, without realizing it, and it affects how we do evangelism and ministry. It's also something that the church and the pro-life movement have been influenced by for decades.
And it's this idea that the mothers who are walking into the abortion clinics are also the victims of abortion, and that we should treat them as such in our outreach towards them. It's also affecting how we discern the issues like feminism, politics, race, gender, and how we discern world events, and we. Seen this revealed with the Clancy case, which is one of the biggest recent examples where the lie of the second victim has been played out, and this lie replaces the victim with the perpetrator, trading evil for good, which is something God hates. And it's so evident at the abortion clinic.
So, like going back to the first day serving, I didn't meet any victims of abortion that day, except for the babies being carried to their death in their mothers' wombs. And to this day, after over a decade of abortion-related ministry, I have not met anyone who's a victim of abortion alongside their babies, except for in two cases. One is when mothers do not want an abortion and are literally forced to have one by their parents or captors, and another, which is not often discussed, are the fathers who have no legal power to stop women from killing their child, husbands and unmarried alike. And that's the truth: the father has no say, and. There's no paper to sign.
The fathers have been removed or have removed themselves by their own desertion.
So abortion ministry really is wrapped up in Isaiah one seventeen, which tells us to bring justice to the fatherless. These children are the fatherless, and the hearts of a majority of the mothers we meet at the clinic are not anything close to a victim. They pull in with school pickup tags hanging from their rearview. Others with Christian bumper stickers. Women of means tell me that they don't want to be pregnant for their trip to Italy, and they'll try again for another baby when they get back.
And women in poverty tell me that abortion is empowering to them, and they use it as birth control.
Some having five or more abortions. They absolutely know it is a baby at this point in modern science. They are not denying that anymore. And some have argued with me that they should be able to kill their toddler if they want to. And if you look at some of the recent.
Laws, it's clear that if it were legal, women would kill their toddlers. I'm no longer even surprised by this because Romans one tells us that human wickedness would increase to this point, and not all moments are like this either. There's these moments of such beauty in abortion ministries.
Sometimes a woman hears the gospel and responds by turning to life by God's grace, and she raises her baby or places him for adoption. Although I must say. The majority of the cases are shocking, and we're mislabeling the victim in all of them. It's pretty much ubiquitous, the second victim narrative, heavily at play in the worldview of our society. Missy Ropnak is our guest today.
We have links to her writing at thechristianworldview dot org. One of her columns on Lindsey Clancy is also in the September October issue of the Christian Worldview Journal. Much more coming up with Missy after this short break. I'm David Wheaton. You are listening to the Christian Worldview Radio Program.
The September-October issue of the Christian Worldview Journal features a column by Rod Martin explaining why Christianity commands capitalism. Missy Ropnak writes about Lindsay Clancy, who murdered her three young children, and the widespread sympathy she has received. And Pastor Matt Morell turns to beloved Psalm 23 and shows how God's names compel deeper love and trust in Him. The Christian Worldview Journal is a print and digital publication designed to sharpen your biblical worldview on current events and issues of the faith. The journal is sent to Christian Worldview Partners as a thank you for their support of this radio ministry.
To become a Christian Worldview partner or order an individual issue of the journal, go to thechristianworldview.org or call one eight eight eight six four six twenty two thirty three or write to Box Four Zero One Excelsior, Minnesota five five three three one.
Socialism is on the rise in America. The democratic socialists of America are winning elections all across the country, often promoted in Christian terms: equality, dignity, common good, rights for all. The reality of socialism ends in human misery and rebellion against God. Kell Beisner, founder and president of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, has written two excellent booklets that refute socialism and its supposed merits. The first is social justice versus biblical justice, and the second is: is capitalism bad for the environment?
To order one or both, visit our website thechristianworldview.org, or call one eight six four six twenty two thirty three, or write to Box four zero one Excelsior, Minnesota five five three three one. That's one eight six four six twenty two thirty three, or thechristianworldview.org. Welcome back to the Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit thechristianworldview.org where you can sign up for our weekly email, the Christian Worldview Journal, monthly print publication, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry.
Our topic today is "Murder Your Children and Society Demands Release Her," and our guest is Missy Ropek, Christian writer and teacher. Missy, I want to transition over from sidewalk counseling and abortion clinics because this is related, I think, in a very strong way what took place with Lindsay Clancy. I described earlier in the program some of the details of that particular murder case. But I'm going to quote here from independent journalist named Joseph Fosco. He said on July 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy.
Searched a restaurant farther than the family's usual takeout. She mapped the drive so she would know how long her husband would be gone from home. She added a pharmacy stop, and then she strangled Cora, who was five years old. Dawson, who was three years old then, and Callen, her other child, who was eight months old. With exercise bands in the basement, he goes on to say the command voice—that's what it's called—the command voice that she said she was hearing, now carrying the defense attorneys.
That's their case. Was not what her treating clinicians had recorded. They saw severe depression in Lindsey Clancy. They did not diagnose psychosis. The male voice that she was hearing, telling her to kill the children so she could kill herself, entered the record after the fact when it became useful.
Massachusetts, where this case took place, does not ask whether she was suffering; it asks whether she retained substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or to conform it to the law. In other words, did she know what she was doing? Is what they're saying here. And this independent journalist, who I don't think is a believer, just reporting on this, said what she the afternoon she built on January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, the maps, the errand for her husband, the three ligatures that she used to strangle her children, shows that she did know what she's doing.
Now this case drew all sorts of national attention. The trial concluded. With eleven of the twelve jurors voting to acquit Lindsey Clancy, there's only one person on the jury that held out. He would not come over to the other side. It needed a unanimous decision to either acquitter or to convict her.
There was one holdout, and so the case ended in a mistrial.
So, Missy, my question is, why has Lindsey Clancy? Had so much support, particularly from women. These women in pink, standing day after day, cheering her on, outside the courtroom in Massachusetts. David, we've fallen into a secular victimization worldview, thinking that sin is something that happens to people. We've fallen prey to thinking that abortion is something that is happening to these mothers, but it's happening to these babies.
And similarly, Lindsay Clancy's hands happened to hers. And I talk about this in my Substack series about how, in the aftermath of the Clancy case, the second victim narrative has escalated and joined forces with feminism. Wokeism, socialism, and a bunch of other isms. Right off the bat, we've laid the framework for this leftward movement with our own movement in many ideological gaps, like social justice, not just feminism. And we've fed the monster of the second victim narrative in our own compromises with abortion.
So women now need someone else to be guilty, not just in abortion but in murder cases. And I think that there's something going on under the surface that the Clancy case has really brought to light, and it's who. Who is behind all of this? All of the isms of our time—feminism, wokeism, socialism—which is just a gateway to Marxism—they all have a fruit that points to the tree, and the tree is Satan. All of these worldviews attempt to trade the innocent for the guilty, which is something only Christ has ever accomplished in His life, death, and resurrection.
He traded our sins for His spotless record, and in all of these isms, Satan is attempting to do the exact opposite. In feminism, he asserts that babies must die so that women can live how they want to, and he goes a step further to make sure that the woman who is guilty appears to be the victim instead of the baby. Wokeism judges people's innocence or guilt based on their skin color, and then with socialism, it's the agenda that says that those who are poor are all victims just because of their poverty, and that those who are wealthy or flourishing or capitalists are guilty just by being those things.
So this is not biblical. As God's love is for the rich and the poor, and we see this in His love for both the blind beggar and King David, Missy Lindsey Clancy's defense team. Has pointed to postpartum depression, the depression that women can often get, kind of a hormonal change after they have a child. I can't remember how much the use of antidepressants came up into the trial, but I think that was part of it as well. But basically, it was a mental illness had left her unable to understand what she was doing.
They called it a quote-unquote a psychotic break. She had said that there was a commanding hallucination. That she had seen from a male voice, in a sense that an outside force was controlling her body, that overrode her will. And I was quoting all of that there from some of the testimony. My question is, from a biblical standpoint, though, should these kinds of things, these mental illnesses?
Should those be exonerating in a murder case? I mean, it seems to me I don't see any of that in Scripture. Whether you're quote unquote crazy, or you get a note from your doctor that you're crazy, if you go and kill someone, the death penalty should be for you. If you think about this, Missy, what if Lindsay Clancy had said, "I'm so mentally ill, I have so much postpartum depression that I went and murdered my neighbor's children instead of my own." Would this have flown in this particular situation, or is there some really extra biblical lack of justice going on here? Starting with mental health, comparing this to abortion, it's clear that the person walking away from an abortion who just paid for someone to do murderous things to their baby is not the victim, and neither is Lindsay.
So that's no matter how you view mental health, you can have a mental health issue and still be guilty of murder. And if Lindsay were to be placed in a mental institution instead of prison, she would be reevaluated for release every six months, according to Massachusetts law. She may be released. She may have more children. In 1954, a woman named Constance Fisher was remanded to a mental institution instead of prison for murdering her three children.
She was reevaluated and released some years later, and she then went on to have more children, and she murdered them all as well. Wow! That six children murdered by one woman, with the justice system failing every single one of them.
So mental health has become a murderous loophole, and it is a big one, David. For late-term abortion, women can get a late-term abortion even today. Postops in 23 states, some of them all the way up to birth, often just by getting an online therapist to say that delivering their baby would stress them out.
So this mental health issue is a slippery slope, not just in murder cases like the Clancy case, but in the issue of abortion, and it's all displaced victimhood.
Now, biblically. I think there are those who would argue that they see proportional accountability and the principle of intent within scripture, such as provisions for accidental manslaughter, which in the Clancy case this was not. But these might be a reason to treat those cases differently, is kind of what people are saying. But we have to work within the judicial system that the Lord has provided us today in this country, and women who kill their children cannot re-enter society. We cannot ignore.
Or the passages that lay down God's law, an eye for an eye. And honestly, I wish that our country would take a swifter and more aggressive stance on sentencing those who hurt children in any capacity, because I believe that would bring the justice system more in line with God's ordained purposes for the government, which is to restrain evil. Per Romans thirteen four, which says that if we do wrong, we should be afraid, and that the government is a servant. Of God that acts as an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer, and I think we need more of this fear in our society. Missy, I want to give an example of the sort of support, and I think what you could call it's been called misguided or sinful or toxic empathy that is particularly evident with many of the women in our country.
Supporting and standing with Lindsay Clancy after the murder of her three children, she did herself. This is a medical doctor, an OB/GYN, out in California, and she made a video with a personal message to Lindsay Clancy, and here's what she said. Hi, Lindsay. I'm Dr. Sterling.
I want you to know that I believe you. From my perspective as an OB/GYN, I believe that you were over-functioning throughout your entire postpartum period. I am blown away by how hard you were working to get better, while also working as a mom. I've got three kids. Know how much work it is, even when you are mentally well.
It's so hard to take care of three kids. Hindsight's 2020, but I don't know what else you could have done. You were far beyond what should be expected of a single individual. You have galvanized us women in a really powerful way. And I'm not quite ready to tell my story yet.
But when I eventually do, it's going to be because you came first. And you showed all of us that we can, we can be honest and we can be real about what we experience as mothers.
So thank you, and you know, I hope that you are seeing our support because we believe you, and we are proud of how hard you advocated and how hard you tried for yourself, and we know you miss those babies every day. Truly, an unbelievable audio clip. There, Missy. This is a doctor, OB/GYN, basically saying, "We believe you. We support you." And then she said, "I don't know what else you could have done in this situation." My question is, Missy, how do you respond to this kind of human reasoning, David?
Listening to That clip and sort of the word salad that we just heard. There's a point when you have to address a person where they're at. I'm asking the type of questions what logic would call building the claim a house, and these kind of questions show people the long view of the unbiblical moral truth claims they're making. These kind of questions are actually rooted in the wisdom of Solomon as he faced the two prostitutes who were just arguing over a baby and asking for a verdict, and he asked them presuppositional questions that reveal the truth in their hearts. And as they both claim the baby.
Was theirs? He allowed their truth to play out, and as we're listening to that clip, we're hearing her truth.
So Solomon's offering to cut the baby in half and give each of them their rightful share. This, in turn, revealed the true mother who would give up her child rather than see it murder. Likewise, I'm asking some questions like, what if a trans man? And I'm meeting. A man pretending to be a mother and a woman claimed to have postpartum depression and was the one doing the killing.
Would such a case also deserve women's support? What if Lindsay had killed your children instead of her own because the voice told her to? What if she wandered into an unlocked door in your home and killed your children while you were out running errands and then she pleaded insanity? Would we be confused about the verdict then? And the Bible.
Sets this example for how to tease out justice even from those who are not Christians, like Solomon's case of the two prostitutes. If we have reached this point of accepting misplaced victimhood and giving an ear to those kind of clips in abortion and court cases, because we've been pandering to the perpetrators of abortion with our laws, our ministries, and even our evangelism, compromising our message and our convictions for the sake of pragmatism, are we afraid? To confront those having abortion in love, using strong biblical language, just because we believe the lie that they're victims of their circumstances and a second victim, and I'm also asking Christians if the addiction within the church to conspiracy-laced theories of influencers like Candace Owens, who trains people to slander the innocents, has caused many to accuse Lindsey's husband, who is a victim of this crime. Of being the murderer, is this level of conspiracy-based slander really just asking questions? Has this opened the door to what we're seeing outside the courtroom, where women are holding up signs of support for Lindsay and accusing Patrick of murder, and recording personal messages like the one you've just played?
There's a lot more here than just a typical murder case. It says something a lot more about our society and the worldview of our country and people at this point. Christian writer Missy Ropnak is our guest. We have links to her writing at thechristianworldview dot org. In the final segment coming up, we'll hear what was said about the Lindsay Clancy case on Oprah Winfrey's program.
I'm David Wheaton, and you are listening to the Christian Worldview Radio Program. David Wheaton here. For a limited time, we are offering my boy Ben for a donation of any amount to the Christian Worldview. The book is the true story of a yellow lab that I had back when I was competing on the professional tennis tour. It's about relationships with Ben, my parents, with a childhood friend I would eventually marry, but ultimately with God, who causes all things, even the hard things, to work together for good.
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Socialism is on the rise in America. The Democratic Socialists of America are winning elections all across the country, often promoted in Christian terms: equality, dignity, common good, rights for all. The reality of socialism ends in human misery and rebellion against God. Kell Beisner, founder and president of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, has written two excellent booklets that refute socialism and its supposed merits. The first is social justice versus biblical justice, and the second is: is capitalism bad for the environment?
To order one or both, visit our website thechristianworldview.org, or call one triple eight six four six twenty two thirty three, or write to Box four zero one Excelsior, Minnesota five five three three one. That's one triple eight six four six twenty two thirty three, or thechristianworldview.org. Welcome back to the Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit thechristianworldview.org, where you can sign up for our weekly email, the Christian Worldview Journal, monthly print publication, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry.
Our topic today is "Murder Your Children," and society demands release her. And our guest is Missy Ropeknack, Christian writer and teacher.
Now I want to play another soundbite. Oprah Winfrey, of course, did a program on this particular murder case of Lindsay Clancy as well. She did it with a room full of women, and there was one particular woman there who I believe was one of the featured guests for the day. I didn't get her name, but she was a doctor. Not sure if a medical doctor, maybe a psychiatrist.
I'm not sure what she was, but she had to say this toward the end of the program that day. On the Oprah Show. What I was just going to add finally is, when you see your obstetrician, you're thinking about pregnancy. Start to have these conversations. It is not shameful to talk about your risk factors, which could be depression, bipolar disorder, not having a supportive spouse, limited resources.
All of these are little risk factors that, when you tick away at them and add a baby sleep deprivation on top, Can really have you tip over, and the other thing that I would just be remiss to not say is, I, I hope this never happens again. We know statistically it really will. It will. I want us to have the same passion for people who don't look like Lindsey, who don't have her same access. Yeah, yeah.
Who, who don't have her same access and education. Her melanin, her privilege. There are women of color sitting around this country in prisons for this same thing that we've never heard of, and I just want to remind us to have the pink shirts and the energy for them as well. What that guest on Oprah Winfrey's program just said at the beginning is all these reasons why this can happen. Like if you get pregnant, you need to prepare for all these risk factors so you don't turn into this.
Almost like by even saying that, you're sort of suggesting that there's going to be people who are going to do this, and it's kind of normal because of all these risk factors you get when you get pregnant and have a child. But then, secondly, she went right into the woke agenda: how that Lindsey Clancy. Being white, and this this guest, by the way, was black, was saying that we need to remember that Lindsey Clancy was made so well known because she's white. If this had happened to a black woman, and black women who have done this who are in prison right now, they were just convicted. I'd like you to explain, Missy, how this audio clip from the Oprah Winfrey program.
Demonstrates the worldview that we are working with in our country now, and it's specifically its impact on women, according to this quote. Victimhood is extended to no actual victims, only to perpetrators. And we must not forget to show our love and support to the women of color who've killed their children and are not as advantaged as Lindsay. That Oprah set is about as close as we can get to an actual witch coven in these modern times. This is racism and gender bias at its absolute peak, and I know this because I used to stand among them before Christ.
I was a women's study major at the University of Florida, and I was all in. Victimhood was the scaffolding that held up all of the feminine, gender, and race theory classes for which I paid my hard-earned money. The truth is that the feminist frame of mind that defends Lindsay as a victim would charge Patrick to the fullest extent of the law if this situation were reversed, and this is why the justice system exists to weed. Agendas and prejudices like secular feminism, and to restrain evil, ascertaining guilt is not meant to be viewed through social justice, and reform is getting mixed into verdicts. And a Clancy juror admitted this.
So this is not how the system works, or what it's designed to do. Innocent is not determined by perceived levels of victimhood, and guilt is not to be passed along from the guilty to the innocent. The only time that ever occurred was at the cross of Christ. And the hope of the gospel is in this that Jesus died so that we might live. In reverse, abortion is an anti-gospel, and it says that babies must die so that we are not inconvenienced.
The mothers walk away with their hearts beating, and their babies are often disposed of in the most gruesome ways.
So, if we're going to talk about The hardship of being pregnant. Let's talk about the hardships of what happens to the babies' bodies.
Okay, babies are burned for electricity at power plants, put down garbage disposals or septic systems. And sometimes their bodies are even used in lab experiments. What she's selling and what she's saying in that sound clip is so damaging for women, because it puts such a doom on. Pregnancy it puts so much fear into women about something that God designed to be a beautiful thing. Secondarily, the way that she's shifting the victimhood just shows where we're at as a society.
That we not only need to consider Lindsay, we need to consider women of color and make sure they get the same celebration and attention that Lindsay's receive. Missy Ropnak is our guest today here on the Christian Worldview, Missy. In one of those Substack articles you wrote, I'm just going to quote here. You said the Jews were demanding that Christ be crucified, and Barabbas, the criminal, the insurrectionist, be freed. And you write, "Free Barabbas!" They yelled, "Free Barabbas!
Free the murderer! Free Lindsey!" Is what the women were saying outside the courthouse. It's the echo of the ages, and this hatred for biblical justice and for God's authority continues. We are in a culture that rejects truth and trades evil for good. People not only condone the specific sins of Romans chapter one, they celebrate them and declare their allegiance to those sins.
How could the evangelical church do much better, perhaps in informing their congregants of this kind of thing, to helping them understand the genocide? Because that's what it is—genocide of abortion—and even cases like this Lindsay Clancy situation. I really think even our ministries to these women has become softened to the point of being ineffective, and that our compromise in pushing bills that allow for the death of some babies but not others, like heartbeat bills, are dangerous and pragmatic. It's like proposing a bill that says rape is okay in some situations but not others.
So there's a compromise there, and I do think there's a path forward, and it may be too much to unpack today, but I. Summarized by saying that it would mean a return to the saving gospel that includes what people need to be saved from, their sins and hell, and a removal of the victim-based humanistic language we sometimes see in the counseling resources at crisis pregnancy centers. All of this compromise has really paved the way for Clancy thinking, not speaking clearly that sin leads to death and that Jesus is the answer, and not looking to His justice system to inform our own.
So just a return to Scripture as our lens for both. And there's a point when we have to ask ourselves if these influences of the second victim narrative has affected even our evangelism. Do people's sins and pride labels for themselves? Cause us to view them as victims of their sin instead of as sinners who need to repent, or cause us to believe that the gospel is somehow insufficient for their unique sins. Are we believing the lie that people are too frail to hear the truth of the gospel?
And in ministry, are we front-loading resources and a soft message that enables sinners to remain in their perceived victimhood? And I think we have to speak to conspiracy because we have to ask. ourselves, if conspiracy has become the topic of our evangelism, if sharing conspiracies about the government or Erica Kirk or Patrick Clancy has become more important to us than sharing the gospel, and as Christians. Is this becoming what we're known for? And I would say that this is the path forward: that we refocus on the gospel and its power to save.
People cannot think rightly on the issues until the Lord renews their minds and their hearts. And I've learned over my years as an evangelist that world events and issues are just a vehicle by which to share the gospel in conversations and in print. Our focus is not that controversy; it's how. The controversy can be used to share Christ.
So my encouragement for the church, or for just individuals, is if you're listening, and you're realizing in this broadcast that your own worldview has been unknowingly corrupted by feminism, wokeism, socialism, any other isms, that the Holy Spirit will renew your mind if you ask Him to, and He certainly did mine. According to James one five, God gives generously; He gives wisdom generously without. Approach, and this sober-mindedness is found in the sanctification that comes through Scripture.
So that's really where we need to be focusing our attention, and gleaning wisdom. God's Word is the means of giving us the proper Christian worldview. We all want to see justice done, but we're all in the midst of a greater trial over the state of our own souls, and the outcome of that one matters infinitely and eternally more because Jesus is coming to judge the quick and the dead, and people need to be ready, and we're supposed to be telling them. Missy, that was just a really powerful way to end our conversation today. And having thought through this Lindsay Clancy issue, it's far greater than the enormous murders that took place of her children.
But society's response to it, and the second victim narrative you're talking about, and abortion, how it's related to it, and how if you gave people the opportunity to kill their born children, they would do it. It just goes right back to what you said: the only solution to this is the gospel.
So thank you for making that clear today, and thank you for coming on the Christian Worldview Radio Program today. We just wish all of God's best and grace to you and your family. Thank you, David. If you missed any of the program today, you can hear a replay at our website, thechristianworldview.org, or contact your local radio station to see if they replay the program at another time. Or click on the podcast app on your phone and search for the Christian Worldview with my name, David Wheaton.
You can also find links to our guest, Missy Ropnak, and her writing on Substack at thechristianworldview.org. In Christian Worldview Partners, be sure to read her column on Lindsay Clancy in the September-October issue of the Christian Worldview Journal. Missy has also written a Bible study for family worship. She is looking for a publisher for that, so Lord willing, that will be available in the future. Christian Amir Sarfati, president of Behold Israel, wrote this about the Lindsay Clancy case: When a nation can no longer distinguish good from evil.
Devalues human life, destroys the family, rewards irresponsibility, and disguises wickedness as compassion. Its foundations begin to crumble. America's greatest threat is not China, Russia, Iran, or terrorism. Its greatest threat is forgetting God, rejecting His truth, and abandoning the moral foundation that once taught the nation to protect innocent life. He goes on to say, "This is not merely a time to condemn; it is a time to pray, repent, and bring our petitions before God." Daniel was a righteous man, yet he did not separate himself from the sins of his people.
He identified with them, confessed before God, and pleaded for mercy. He prayed in Daniel nine verse five: "We have sinned and committed iniquity; we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from your precepts and your judgments." We must confess the sins of our nation, plead for mercy, and ask God to awaken His people before judgment comes. Thank you for joining us today on the Christian Worldview and for your support of this nonprofit radio ministry. Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of the Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.
We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out what must I do to be saved, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll free one eight hundred eight six four six twenty two thirty three. The Christian worldview is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, order resources, become a Christian Worldview partner, sign up for our weekly email, or the Christian Worldview Journal print publication. Or to contact us, go to thechristianworldview.org, call one eight eight eight six four six two two thirty three, or write to Box four zero one Excelsior, Minnesota five five three three one.
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