Is Surrogacy Worse Than The Gospel Coalition?

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Christ Alone, Divine Judgment, and the House Built on the Rock

People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ, therefore, forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our head.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

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Why the Episode Is Framed Around Surrogacy and the Gospel Coalition

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we're joined by Michael Coghlan as we answer the age-old question, Is surrogacy worse than the gospel coalition?

So, in case you're wondering where that question came up with, it actually came from Michael. So, if that question for some reason offends you, you know who to crucify tonight. But it's a pretty funny question if you ask me, especially given the recent circumstances.

So, before we get started, Michael, thanks for coming back on the show. You've been on before, and you're brave enough to decide to come on again. Congratulations.

Yeah, the normally non-offensive Bible Bash podcast needs to add me to become offensive to people, huh?

We bear no responsibility for this episode whatsoever. This is all Mike.

Yeah, we're using you as a shield. You didn't know that, but we're using you as a shield tonight.

It's important that people understand that the timing of this episode, if you're listening to it much later, is the same week that the gospel coalition published what was ultimately a somewhat sexually explicit article comparing even the Lord's love for His church to a sex act.

And so, we were just kind of making fun of the gospel coalition there. And I think you can read into where we're going to go tonight with surrogacy that we made that comparison, right?

Yeah, you know, it is pretty funny given that article came out. I've seen pretty much everyone is upset about that article. Obviously, conservative Christians are, but I've seen even a lot of liberal people in general be really frustrated by this article.

So, it seems like the gospel coalition has really started uniting everyone, like it seems like they wanted to set out to do. They're finally doing it.

Yeah.

But, Michael, so why don't we just start there with that title question, and then we'll let that kind of dictate the way the rest of this conversation goes. What are your thoughts on this? In terms of surrogacy, is it worse than the gospel coalition?

Surrogacy, God's Design, and the Problem of Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands

So, when we talk about surrogacy, there are a few different definitions that people might have. And Tim graciously put a couple in the chat that we can read at some point. But generally speaking, I think when we want to talk about any way that we do things as humans, we want to first think about what's God's actual design.

And then we can start working out what are the definitions of all of the things that deviate from God's design in some way. And then we can start to evaluate are those deviations things that cause concern?

Do they describe outright sin? Or does it delve into an area where at least we could say there's a lack of wisdom? Because there are things that aren't part of God's design that we just have to live with as well, since it's part of the fall.

So, just because something's not exactly how God designed it doesn't automatically make it wrong. But with surrogacy, where we want to start is the idea that God has made male and female. He made man and woman to be in that covenant relationship of marriage for life and for that to be where procreation occurs.

And so, when we think about what surrogacy is, surrogacy is always deviating from the one man and one woman in marriage doing the procreative act as part of their marriage covenant and then God blessing that by providing a child in the womb of the woman.

Now, does that mean that every single time there's some deviation from that that it's always wrong? That's not what we're saying yet. But in particular, when we start to talk about surrogacy being a woman offering her body, or even if she somehow didn't, a woman being used so that her body can be a place for the gestation of a human being, that starts to call into question, well, where does wisdom take us?

Where does what the Bible actually says, where should we go with this kind of thing? And so, Tim had the example of Abraham and Hagar, Tim, if you want to pop in on there.

Tim Jones. Well, yeah, you definitely have different types of surrogacy and the more that technology is increasing, then these options are increasing as far as that goes. But there's different types of surrogacy.

Like the concept of surrogacy in general, just for people who maybe aren't clear what surrogacy actually is, but the idea of surrogacy in general is you're going to hire a woman essentially to have a child for you.

So, that's typical surrogacy is you're going to hire a woman to essentially have a child through some means, and we'll talk about different ways that this could come about. But then you had an article though too that deviated from that in the sense that now, like a new wrinkle on that is not actually hiring a woman, but then using brain dead women in order to be vessels for surrogacy too.

Maybe you could say a brief word about that and then I'll talk about different categories.

Tim Jones. Yeah, there was an article I found in the World Magazine called Surrogacy's Next Logical Step, and it's by Adeline Allen. I'm not quite sure who she is, but her writing is very Christian. I don't know anything about her personally though, but the subtitle of this article was Deep Evil Comes Disguised as Technological Compromise.

And the idea was that a philosophy professor from Norway recently made an argument in the Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, and the argument was women who are in persistent vegetative states or are brain dead could be used as surrogates to gestate babies for commissioning parents.

And the idea is that they're not actually there anymore. And if they can define that person as in some sense not actually there in their personhood, then they could say, well, we don't really need their consent.

Now it's just a pound of flesh. We're just using the warm body, which is really what surrogacy ultimately ends up being as well. You know, one of the problems, and we'll probably get into more problems, but when you said you're hiring a woman, one of the problems ends up being that it becomes a way to really take advantage of the poor.

And that's just a byproduct of what I think is a bad idea.

So that would be taking advantage of the poor, and then in the analogy of the brain dead woman, that would be taking advantage essentially of a woman unable to make that choice. And maybe we could talk about some of the ethics related to that in general.

But then in general, surrogacy is just like the idea of hiring a woman essentially to have your baby, and then it can be done in different ways. So, you know, you have what's called traditional surrogacy, and that could be done through natural or artificial insemination.

And just giving those categories, like just trying to explain the categories, and then we'll get you to comment on some of these things. But, you know, if you think about traditional surrogacy done through natural insemination, that's just essentially, you know, Abraham Hagar kind of situation.

So Sarah's unable to have a child. Abraham is, you know, Abraham goes into Hagar at the request of Sarah, which is obviously not a bad idea, or not a good idea. It's not a good idea.

Yeah, yeah, make that correction, please.

He goes into Hagar in order to obtain offspring for Sarah. And so, you know, that would be the earliest form of surrogacy would be Abraham Hagar kind of example. And that would be, you know, traditional surrogacy through natural insemination.

Now, you can, you know, a wrinkle on that is now we have the ability to do this through artificial insemination. And so that would be still, though, you're hiring a woman to have a child for a couple, and then instead of, you know, naturally making the baby, as couples have done throughout history, you're basically, the man is just treated like a sperm donor to the woman.

And the woman still then, in that kind of arrangement, is going to be the biological mother of the child. So you have traditional surrogacy naturally done or artificially done. The mother being hired, the woman being hired is the biological mother.

And then, you know, the other category, which is the one that's more common now, which is what's called gestational surrogacy, and that's going to be done through IVF. And, you know, basically what you have is you have a fertilized egg being implanted into the woman's uterus, and that woman is hired, essentially, to carry that baby to term.

And she's not, you know, quote-unquote biologically connected to the child. It's a, you know, it's a fertilized egg that's being she's, you know, the person who's going to carry it. And, I mean, you could do that, you know, through hiring her, or maybe she's, you know, a family member and trying to help you out or something like that.

But, like, that's the idea is that she's not biologically connected to the child. So, in traditional surrogacy, the woman is the biological mother. In gestational surrogacy, it's done through IVF. And so, why don't we just go through this in order, Mike?

So, what do you think? Traditional surrogacy, yes or no? Traditional surrogacy, natural insemination. So, Abraham Hagar, what do you think?

Traditional Surrogacy, Adultery, and the Abraham and Hagar Example

Okay, I'm going to say no.

Is it worse than the Gospel Coalition?

That's the real question.

That's our standard that we're holding everything to tonight.

Yes.

I think it's clear from Scripture that, you know, that it's adultery is what ends up occurring in the case for that to even happen. And so, we can never promote anything like that as Christians.

All right.

So, worse than the Gospel Coalition or better?

I'd say it's worse.

The Gospel

He paused there for a second.

It's not for the Gospel Coalition. In fact, I question anybody that's been reading them since 2015, but I

What if you're reading them for the laughs, though?

That was a tough dilemma for him.

You know, that guy's article that he wrote, he was actually trying to make a point that he made really, really poorly, but it certainly didn't involve adultery. So, yeah, surrogacy in that case would be promoting adultery, and you could never advocate for that.

I don't know how no matter how bad a couple wanted a child, I don't know how you could ever take what happened with Abraham and Hagar and say this was a model for you. In fact, God pretty clearly didn't bless it.

You know, He really made it clear that this was a problem. It showed a lack of faith at the time.

Yeah, I mean, can you imagine what would happen if they would have just not done that? Like, you wouldn't have had all this conflict in the Middle East for, like, years and years and years.

Sure.

Like, it seems like, you know, if there's any you know, often narratives, they show you theology instead of telling you theology, and that would be an example of how you can see all the disastrous consequences that have come from that one act over the course of, like, history of the world, right?

That was just one of the worst decisions that ever happened. I mean, God obviously uses these for good, but it was a bad decision.

But you can see how instantly Hagar hated her mistress. This immediately created a level of jealousy and division in this, you know, tribe, in a sense, that may or may not have been there before. But there's nothing

I mean, even if Sarah was the one that came up with the idea, there's nothing like infidelity to really destroy people's relationship, to destroy their trust.

And Abraham shouldn't have went along with it.

No.

I mean, Abraham shouldn't have went along with it. He shouldn't have passively followed her in that. And then, I mean, even, you know, Hagar, she looked upon Sarah with contempt immediately after that because, I mean, there's something that, you know, like, hey, you know, my womb is working, yours isn't, right?

And so, you know, it seems like it's setting both, like, the enmity is both ways because And your point is essentially it's because it's unnatural. Is that right?

Well, it's not the way that God designed us to procreate, and it's adultery. And so, in that situation, it's really bad. But one of the things you see in that situation that I think is applicable to the entire discussion is that Abraham's choice that he made, and Sarah's, and really Hagar, too, although she may not have been quite as able to have said no as maybe Abraham and Sarah could have.

What it showed was just a lack of trust in what God had promised and that God wants us to do things in a righteous way in order to work toward what He has promised. And so, that becomes the issue ultimately is do we believe that God's way is not just, like, the best way, but the right way?

And that we don't need to take matters into our own hands to do things in a way that is outside of how He has ordained that they should be, or we'll say decreed or said that they should be. And when we start to think, oh, well, I've got a better way than God, a lot of times He lets us somehow discover the technology to do things or the way to make things happen that we think He needs our help with.

And a lot of times what happens is we find out after the fact that wasn't the right way to do things. Does that make sense?

Fair enough. Alright, well, so you have traditional surrogacy done through natural insemination in that way. So, there's Abraham, Hagar. Just think of the same kind of scenario and then do it with artificial insemination.

So, Hagar is the woman being hired to bear the offspring of Abraham and quote-unquote Sarah at that point. But then it's not technically adultery in the same way because it's not a physical act in that way.

She's just, you know, Abraham essentially is going to be the sperm donor. You know, it's going to be done artificial insemination, not natural insemination. What's the reaction? What do you got?

Better or worse than TGC?

My initial reaction is that that one is a little harder to just come right out and say, hey, it's wrong. Some of these are clearly, there's wrong things involved in such a way that this one's harder. But still, I'm going to say, especially if you're a Christian, who's going to actually be the people that draw the lines here?

Who in society is going to say, no, we're not going to cross this line into what ultimately amounts to sort of playing God? And so, I'm going to say, no, Christians shouldn't do it. I'm going to have less ability to say because for sure there was adultery involved.

Although any time there's artificial insemination, there's something that has to happen to create the donation. And in traditional IVF, in traditional in vitro fertilization, where there's just anonymous sperm donors, there's a ton of sin happening.

All of which is a violation of the seventh commandment. And so, in this specific case, maybe it's a little bit of a...

Fuzzier?

I was going to say, maybe it's a little less of a clear line in this case. But I would go beyond that, and we probably won't get into this whole discussion, but I would go beyond it to the, we need to avoid that industry in general.

Sure.

One of the things about it that is difficult to imagine is that in the case of, okay, there's the adultery component to it, right?

Yes.

And so, that component may not be present so much in artificial insemination, traditional surrogacy, okay? So, there may not be the adultery component, but then the major problem that sticks out to me is that this woman is still the biological mother of this child.

Yes.

And then this biological mother of this child is going to be separated from her child via contract, right?

Yes.

Via financial contract. So, essentially, she's going to have to turn off all of those motherly instincts that she has, right? To care for this baby that is part of her biological contribution, right? And she's going to essentially have to turn that all off.

So, I mean, I think there's like a variety of things that I can imagine that are problems that are related to that. Some of those are even the same problems that you may see in the Abraham-Sarah scenario, but do you have any thoughts about that aspect of it?

Like the woman being separated from her offspring through this, you know, adultery, non-adultery kind of thing?

IVF, Embryo Destruction, and the Ethics of Assisted Reproduction

Yeah, there's actually a pretty well-publicized case that happened sometime in the past year. Maybe it was just among abortion abolitionist groups that I'm in where there was a woman who was a Christian woman who was offering herself as a surrogate to a couple.

And she thought she was doing something good by helping provide a child to this couple that wanted one. And it wasn't the situation you brought up. She was the actual surrogate and it wasn't her child.

But the couple decided they didn't want the baby and ordered her to have an abortion. And she did it. And her reasoning was that she didn't have any choice. It was their child to do with what they wanted, which becomes really interesting with the My Body, My Choice crowd.

She did it or didn't?

She did it.

Oh, she did kill the baby.

This was a woman that professed to be a Christian that went to an abortion clinic and had her baby ripped out of her womb or burned to death or whatever procedure was done. Because the couple that was paying her, who were the real parents, they got to make the decisions.

And I think that when we start to get into these situations, the idea that you would lack that motherly instinct of any child that was in your care, whether it was yours or not, is a big problem. But I'll agree with you that it's probably unwise.

My argument would be less, oh, that's absolutely wrong. There's no possible way that could ever be done in an ethical way. But my argument would be more along the lines of if you are a Christian and you trust that God is the one who's deciding your life, if you're a Christian and you're following Christ, you've signed up for suffering.

All right.

Like you've signed up for I could get killed for this. I could go to prison for this. I'm going to suffer for Christ in order to be glorified with Christ. That's from Romans 8. And if I've signed up for some level of suffering, maybe, just maybe, your suffering is infertility, which would be not an uncommon suffering with women, even from Scripture and since the Scripture has been completed.

And maybe God is giving you the infertility for the purpose of you seeking to do things the way He would have you do them. Which, you know, I'm not a signs and wonders person, but if there was ever to me a sign to someone that you should adopt, it's infertility.

That doesn't mean you don't try things, and it doesn't mean there's no compassion for people that struggle with that. But I think that God actually gifts people with infertility to draw them closer to His Son, conform them to His image.

And I think, in many cases, lead them with that love for children and the desire to have a child, to adopt a child that desperately needs a family, rather than insisting on trying to effectively create a child with their DNA.

You know, so, Michael, just to kind of push on what you're saying a little bit, so I can hear what your response would be. They're probably going to, I imagine there will probably be some people who hear what you're saying, and then, you know, they say, okay, well, what about, you know, cancer, for example?

You know, what's the difference between the two? I mean, couldn't we just say the same exact thing, that we should, you know, if you find out you have cancer, don't go get the radiation therapy or, you know, whatever the doctor is telling you to get to treat it.

Don't go get it removed somehow. The cancer is actually a test that God is giving you, you know, to sanctify you, basically. So, in your mind, is there a difference between those two scenarios in some way, or what would your response be to that kind of person?

Yeah, that's a great question, and that's actually the concept I was thinking of as I was trying to answer and say that it's really hard to be black and white and say just no, no, no, it's sin automatically.

But what I would say becomes different is if I go to whatever is my cancer treatment, if I take ibuprofen, right, I don't, you know, I'm not saying if you have a headache, trust God and don't take ibuprofen.

There's things we can do. God's given us medicines. He's given us ways to accomplish some of these things. For me to go to an IVF clinic, where advanced reproductive technologies occur, where in vitro fertilization occurs, for me to go to one of these places for a service, I am willingly submitting myself to an industry that is almost 100 murdering children daily.

So, the same doctor, if we can call the person that, who's going to be artificially doing whatever it is I'm asking him to do that I think I'm doing ethically, he's going to walk down the hall and he's going to take some little image bearers of God and he's going to destroy them.

He's going to take a few other ones and he's going to donate them to science to be tested on. And then some more, because the parents have a little bit of a conscience about it, he's going to freeze them so that they'll never be born, but they'll just be stuck in this like frozen prison.

And I can't advocate that a Christian could be a part of something like that. So, in the same sense that people might, like if you owned a slave today, we'd say, man, you wouldn't want to be a part of that.

I think that's the same concept. We don't want to participate at all in the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather we expose them.

Why IVF Is Not Like Cancer Treatment

That's interesting you bring up the slave concept because there is a part of this that is somewhat like that. So, like in different scenarios, Harrison you brought up the idea of what's the difference between getting cancer treatment and doing some sort of surrogacy arrangement.

One of the distinctions Michael is making is he's making it as it relates to just tying yourself to an evil industry. But then there's also something else you can think about too as it relates to this topic in that, like in traditional medicine, you're actually fixing a problem, right?

So, you're fixing a problem. So, like if you have cancer, supposedly what you're doing is you're curing the cancer by removing the cancer. You're fixing the problem, you're restoring some sort of function.

Now, in what's called traditional surrogacy done through artificial insemination, you're not actually fixing a problem, right? It's just kind of a workaround that does involve slavery in the way that Michael is talking about.

So, you have two different stances. You have the traditional one and then you have the gestational one. But then in the traditional realm, you're not actually fixing a problem. So, in that arrangement, the woman is going to be the biological mother of the child and the husband is essentially going to be the sperm donor to this other woman.

And then what's happening there is you're not restoring the function of the wife's lack of pregnancy in the same way that with a cancer treatment you would be fixing a biological problem. You're not actually fixing it, you're asking someone else to do the job for you.

You see what I'm saying? But then in that arrangement, she's selling her child as a slave to you, right? So, she's selling her child as a slave to you. Now, if you move out of that realm into gestational surrogacy, in that way, then the husband and wife's fertilized egg is going to be implanted into this woman, right?

But you're still not restoring function in the same way that cancer is supposed to be fixing a problem. What you're doing is you're asking someone else to do the job that you can't do for you, right? And then, you know, in doing that, then you're creating all sorts of ethical problems.

And some of those ethical problems are the problems that Mike has mentioned. So, let's move into the realm of gestational surrogacy, which is done through IVF, where a husband and wife, you know, fertilized egg or eggs or whatever is being treated to given over to another woman to, you know, basically deliver them.

What are some of the problems you see beyond the ones that you've mentioned? Or maybe you can reiterate the ones you've mentioned and just talk about, you know, what are the problems with IVF in general that you see?

And why is that, you know, a worse a bad solution to the problem of childlessness as you see it?

IVF as the Creation and Destruction of Human Life

Yeah, so one of the first problems is that IVF isn't done. It's not like when somebody gets their wife pregnant and one of the sperms made it to the egg and that's that. This is a situation where traditionally what will happen is through several cycles, the people in the IVF clinic are fertilizing multiple eggs.

So, they are in effect, we'll say, creating multiple human beings since we believe that fertilization is the point when a person becomes a person. This is why it's important that we define life that way.

If you define life at implantation, then IVF clinics are doing nothing wrong, right? They're just they're doing the equivalent of mixing, you know, vinegar and baking soda and just seeing what happens, but they're using different elements or substances, right?

And so, I would say the first problem is you end up in a situation where you're intentionally creating life so that you can kill those lives or freeze them for an indefinite period of time, which I think is also equally unethical, maybe somewhat preferable to just murdering them outright.

I don't know which of those I'd actually say is worse. So, I think you want to avoid that situation entirely. So, when you get the person that says, okay, my wife and I are going to create the donations in an ethical way without violating any commandments, and then we're going to tell the doctor that we want all the embryos that possibly get fertilized, we want them all implanted, and we're going to take all of them, right?

First of all, you're trusting a person whose job it is to provide you with the product you're trying to purchase to not hide from you the ones that he considered to be defective. Like, it's just not going to happen.

It's why we don't regulate abortion. It's why we call for abolition of it and criminalization, because we don't trust the actual people that are willing to murder children for money to then tell the truth that they followed all the regulations.

And so, traditionally, what will happen is these embryos get fertilized. The embryos are fertilized. So, the eggs get fertilized and embryos are created, and then there's ways that they can test to see, hey, does this thing have Down syndrome?

Does this have some other abnormality? And then they can selectively decide, even by gender, which ones to destroy, which ones to just freeze, which ones are probably not likely to be viable. And nobody's going to pay $20 ,000 to a clinic and then be told, well, it didn't work.

And so, to me, I think you're getting into a situation where there's just so much wrong with it that you can't involve yourself in it. Now, somebody could argue, well, a lot of cancer places are doing bad things.

Well, maybe they are, but we don't know all that for sure. And their intention isn't we're trying to murder some of the people in order to make money off of the ones we keep. And so, I think that couples should avoid it entirely.

And if you're going to want to be a part of an industry that tries to figure out this technology, there needs to be the Christian version of it, where, for example, snowflake adoption, which is where you take a baby that somebody else created and froze.

And a person that wants children goes and says, okay, I'll go through all the difficulty of the actual gestation and figuring out if this baby will even live and all this stuff to try to give this baby life.

And there are Christians who have gone and adopted what's called a snowflake baby, where they take a baby out of the cryogenic freezer, and they actually put them in a woman's womb, and then they raise them as their own child and adopt them.

So, that's a picture of the gospel right there.

The IVF Industry, Frozen Embryos, and the Paris Hilton Example

You know, I mentioned it right before we started recording, but I wanted to bring it up again just for everyone listening. I read an article recently about, I think it was Paris Hilton. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was Paris Hilton.

And the article was basically saying that she had gone through the IVF process a few different times, and she was looking for a very specific combination of genders for all of her children. I don't remember if it was like two girls and one boy, or one boy and two girls, or something like that.

Twins that are a boy and a girl.

Twins that are a boy and a girl. So, she ended up having, like, 20 fertilized eggs that are just on ice now because she hasn't gotten the combination that she wanted. And so, reading that was very off-putting.

It was very much like, this feels unnatural in every single way possible. Like, sure, you can talk about the hypothetical, you know, what about this situation or that situation? But just reading about what she was doing was like, what are we even talking about at this point?

What's funny about this, Harrison, is I'm reading an article on it right now because I pulled it up, and their major concern with her is that this is a procedure that can cost upwards to $12 ,000. And by her doing it so many times in order to get the specific combination, this is showing great insensitivity towards those who are struggling with infertility who can't afford this kind of procedure.

That's what people are worried about with this.

That's what they're worried about, how insensitive it is to the people who can't afford it, that she would waste so much money on this.

Well, that ought to show you that our society is perfectly fine at identifying the most pressing moral issue in any sort of situation like this. That's certainly a comfort for me to hear that, then.

What do you think, Mike?

And what's horrific about it is that this is so normal to us. Like, we should be on the floor about this. We should be, like Daniel, praying that the Lord would forgive our nation. And to us, this is just normal.

I mean, a hundred years ago, this would have been, like, something they would have made a movie about, and people would have said, no, no one would even watch that. It's too horrific. And to us, it's like, yeah, I guess it makes sense.

And so, I just think that's horrific, what she's done. And if there's 12 frozen embryos, that's 12 of your neighbors, my neighbors, who we've been commanded to love that are just sitting in a freezer.

Yeah, who are never going to hear the gospel, who are born into sin, and they're never going to have anyone. Well, I mean, they're going to miss out on so many things. They're going to miss out on having parents that would ideally care about them and provide for their needs and raise them up, right?

They're never going to learn about who God is. They're never going to have a chance at living a life that is pursuing glorifying God, right? And so, there's so many things, all in the name of, in this situation at least, all in the name of having a specific, you know, like, pick out the children that I want in a catalog.

Kind of like your kid coming up on Christmas, and your parents give you the catalog. I mean, that's basically the same situation, right?

Exactly.

Well, and if when they do an IVF cycle, if they, you know, the numbers could be different, but if they go with, like, trying for 15 or so to try to get one or three good ones, the 12 frozen children of Paris Hilton right now is really more like 180, maybe, that have already been destroyed.