There Is No Switzerland In This War

There is a war older than every nation on earth.

It didn't begin in Richmond, and it won't end at the ballot box. It began in a garden, when a serpent asked, "Did God actually say...?" and it has raged through every century since, through every empire and every age that decided it could improve on the word of God. The battle lines never change. Only the battlefield does.

This November, the battlefield is Virginia.

You've seen the billboard: "Virginia is for lovers!" If the lawmakers in Richmond have their way, the sign ought to read, "Virginia, the murder capital of the world." They call it progress. They always smile when they say that word. Progress is what people call it when they have grown tired of obeying God and want a nicer name for the rebellion.

This article will ask you to vote. Do not mistake that for a political fight. Real people sat down and wrote these amendments. This did not fall out of the sky. But the moment you treat this as one political party against another, you have already lost the war, because this fight is not between parties. "We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12).

That is what is on the ballot. Not a policy. A power. The same ancient enemy who has hated God since before the garden, and who hates the man, the woman, and the child God made, because they alone bear God's image. He cannot lay a hand on God directly, so he strikes at the image of God instead. That is why he has always gone after the children. The sponsors in Richmond may not think of it that way. They think they are writing policy. But there is an older hand guiding the pen.

Two Amendments, One Rebellion

Two amendments sit in front of you this November: Question 1, on reproductive freedom, and Question 2, on marriage. Both would rewrite the Bill of Rights in Virginia's Constitution. I am going to set their own words in front of you, drawn from the proposed text, because you need to see what they actually wrote.

Then you need to call it what it is. These amendments are evil. Not unwise. Not extreme. Evil. They are an affront to the living God. They take what He named murder and dress it up as freedom. They take the first institution He ever gave the human race and scrape His definition off the page. Richmond is asking you to sign your name to rebellion and file it in the constitution of this Commonwealth. If you can read these words and feel nothing, the amendments have already done their work in you.

Question 1: Reproductive Freedom

Question 1 says "every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom." Read that again. Individual. Not adult. Not parent. Individual. Your fourteen-year-old daughter qualifies, and the same amendment forbids the state from putting any "burden" in her way unless the law survives a test written so tightly that no parental-notice law on earth could pass it. Her mother and father would have no say. The word "parent" appears nowhere in the text. God gave you that child. These lawmakers wrote a constitution that treats parents as the obstacle to be removed.

Then there is the fine print about the third trimester. The Commonwealth "may regulate," it says. "In no circumstance shall the Commonwealth prohibit an abortion" that any physician judges as necessary for the mother's physical or mental health. Mental. Health. That exception is a door the width of the whole wall. In practice, there is no such thing as too late. A child who could live outside the womb, who could be held and fed and named, can still be legally killed if one person with a license is willing to say the word. They will call it health care. It is a permission slip written in blood, and they want it bound into your Bill of Rights next to freedom of speech.

And here is the sentence that should stop every Christian cold. The state "shall not penalize, prosecute, or otherwise take adverse action against any individual for aiding or assisting another individual" in exercising that right. It doesn't say physician. It doesn't say clinic. It doesn't say licensed, trained, or safe. For fifty years we were told the whole point was to end the back alley. To protect the frightened, cornered girl with nowhere to turn from the unlicensed man in the back room, the one with the coat hanger and no medical training, the butcher who maimed and killed women for cash and left them bleeding. That was the whole argument. Shield the desperate girl from the butcher.

Now read this text. It does not shield her from the butcher. It shields the person who helps her get there, licensed or not. The frightened teenage boy who ordered a pill off the internet, the untrained boyfriend, the stranger who shows up with a wire and a promise: the practical effect of this language is to put constitutional cover around them. I am describing what that wording does on the ground, not inventing a loophole the sponsors forgot. The very people the old argument swore to shut down are the people this amendment sets loose. And when it goes wrong, when it maims or kills the girl too, the amendment has already promised there will be no penalty, no prosecution, no adverse action. Murder written into the constitution, and a shield written right beside it. They didn't even have the decency to blush.

One more thing, and it may be the most dangerous part of all. The question in front of Virginia right now is simple. Should the state allow abortion this freely, with so few limits? That is what this November is deciding, and by itself that is grave enough. But this amendment does not just answer that question for this election. It answers it for as long as this text stands. It defines the only allowed state interest as one that "does not infringe on that individual's autonomous decision making." Understand what that sentence does. Every future legislature and every good law you might ever elect someone to pass are handcuffed by this text before the law is ever written. Your grandchildren would grow up under it. You are being asked to bind the next generation with language so tight that undoing it will take another constitutional fight, if it can be undone at all.

Don't let the slogans fool you. This is the state looking at a child God knit together and calling that child's life optional. "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13). "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13). A people who write the killing of children into their Bill of Rights have not merely passed a bad law. They have raised a fist in the face of the God who made those children, and dared Him to answer.

And let me say a hard thing about the people who wrote it. These are not confused people who wandered into a mistake. They are educated. They are careful. Look at how precise that language is. Every loophole is deliberate. Every protection for the child is missing on purpose. Scripture does not leave us guessing about that kind of approval: "Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them" (Romans 1:32). Paul is not handing you a sentencing chart for Richmond. He is naming the guilt of people who know God's standard, defy it, and then give that defiance the force of public approval. Read that last line. They not only do it, they give their public approval to it and carve that approval into law. That is what an amendment is. Approval, signed and enshrined. This is not ignorance. It is depravity with a legislative staff and a printer. They know what God says. They wrote the amendment to say the opposite, and they smiled for the cameras when they did.

Question 2: Marriage

Question 2 goes after marriage. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). Jesus Himself quoted those words and added, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate" (Matthew 19:6). Marriage is not a government program. It is the first human institution God ever made, older than Israel, older than the church, older than any government that now presumes to redefine it. And He defined it with two words. Man. Woman.

The amendment strikes those words out of Virginia's constitution and drops in "two adult persons." That is the whole trade. God's definition out. Man's definition in. The ballot question asks whether the Constitution should remove the ban on same-sex marriage, affirm that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender, or race, and require all legally valid marriages to be treated equally under the law. Hear what that does. The state will no longer confess what God said marriage is. It will confess what man says marriage is, and teach your children that confession as the fixed floor of the Commonwealth.

And do not miss what a constitution is. It is the thing you teach your children as the fixed floor under everything else. So this does not simply permit a different arrangement off in the corner. It reaches into the cradle of the family, the one place God ordained to pass His name from parent to child, and it rewrites the meaning of the home your grandchildren will be raised to believe is normal. That is not tolerance. It is the state taking the hammer to the foundation and telling you to be grateful for the renovation. They will call it kindness. It is contempt for the word of God wearing a smile. "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness" (Isaiah 5:20). Some people have decided Scripture is a museum piece. Pretty enough to quote at a wedding. Disposable the minute it gets in the way.

And what does this amendment say to protect the church? Nothing. Not one word. Today a state law shields pastors from being forced to perform ceremonies they cannot perform, and any future General Assembly can strike that law with a simple majority on an ordinary afternoon. The constitution they are writing will say nothing at all about the pulpit. The state says it would never intrude on the operation of a church. Sure. Who believes that anymore? Ask yourself how many things the state swore it would never do, that it now does before breakfast.

There Is No Neutral Ground

Here is what I need you to see. This is not a new fight. This war has always had the children in its sights. When Israel grew strong in Egypt, Pharaoh commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill every baby boy the moment he was born, and when the midwives feared God and refused him, he ordered every male infant thrown into the Nile (Exodus 1:16, 22). Centuries later, when word reached Herod that a king had been born in Bethlehem, he sent soldiers to kill every boy two years old and under in that whole region, hoping to catch the one child among the many (Matthew 2:16).

Look at the pattern. It is always the state, and it is always the babies. Government power turned on the smallest and most defenseless life there is, precisely because that life cannot fight back and cannot vote. And this war has always had the covenant family in its sights too, because the family is where God writes His name on a nation. The devil has simply changed uniforms. Same war. Different battlefield.

And this is not a figure of speech. This is a battle of life and death. Literal life. Literal death. If Question 1 passes, children will be killed with the blessing of Virginia's highest law. Not in theory. Not overseas. Here. In your county. A child either lives or dies. There is no third option, and there is no Christian way to sit this one out.

In this war there is no Switzerland. There is no neutral ground. When the Second World War set the whole continent on fire, Switzerland declared itself neutral and sat the killing out, safe behind its mountains while its neighbors bled and burned. You do not have that option. There is no neutral ground on this field. There is no mountain to hide behind while the children of your own state are put to death by law. Jesus said, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters" (Matthew 12:30). Silence is a vote. Staying home is a vote. And it is a vote cast on the side of the men in Romans 1, whether you meant it that way or not.

Yes, pray. You had better pray. Get on your knees like children are about to be handed over, because they are. Then stand up off those knees and go do something about it. Prayer that never becomes obedience is the trick comfortable Christians use to keep a quiet conscience while the sword is still coming down. "So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead" (James 2:17). God is not looking for another round of soft prayers from people who will not walk across a parking lot and vote.

So notice what I am asking you to do, and what I am not. I am not asking you to defend God. God has defended Himself quite well for a very long time. He split a sea. He answered with fire on Carmel. He rolled a stone away on the third day. He does not need you to protect His honor.

He demands your allegiance.

Your task is to come down on His side out loud, plainly, where people can see it, and yes, at the ballot box, because that is where this particular battle stands this November. "Choose this day whom you will serve" (Joshua 24:15). "And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14). You are alive. You are here. This is your battlefield, and you did not pick it. God set you down on it.

Vote No on Both Amendments

Here is the one ask. Defeat both amendments. Vote no on Question 1. Vote no on Question 2. Early in-person voting in Virginia begins Friday, September 18, 2026, and runs through Saturday, October 31. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2026. Bring your household. Bring your neighbors. Drive the widow down the street who cannot get there herself. Leave the pew and go to the polls. Worship on Sunday. Vote when the machines open. If you can sit through a sermon on holiness and then go home and let them write child-killing into the constitution without lifting a finger, you have told the truth about your faith, and it is not a pretty truth. This comes down to whether the people of God will show up when it actually costs something, or whether we will keep claiming a Lord we have quietly decided we do not have to obey.

A Word to Pastors

And a word to the pastors. If you are not warning your congregation about what is about to happen in this Commonwealth, examine your calling. You were not ordained to run a smooth Sunday morning and send everyone home comfortable. A shepherd who will not warn the flock when the wolf is already inside the gate is no shepherd at all. "But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned... his blood I will require at the watchman's hand" (Ezekiel 33:6). The sword is coming. If you stay quiet because someone in the third row might call you political, you have already told God whom you actually serve.

And a word to everyone sitting under that kind of silence. If your pulpit will not even spend three minutes naming what these amendments do to children and marriage, you may need to find a church that will. I know what it costs to leave people you love. Your first loyalty is still to the Shepherd, not to a hireling who will not sound the alarm.

The battle is the Lord's. But He has posted you on this battlefield, in this year, in this Commonwealth. Children will live or die. Marriage will be honored or mocked. The word of God will be obeyed or treated like a nuisance to be voted around. Act like it.