Almost home from a speaking trip in England, I watched the eastern USA pass below. “What would I do if this plane were to crash-land on a lake?” I mused.

After finding myself alive, the next thought to flood my mind might be of the hard drive inside my backpack. It constitutes the only full backup of 20 years of life and ministry. Let the $1,500 laptop go, let the iPhone and the money, credit cards and passport all go to the fish. But not that hard drive! On it are stored gigabytes of graphic artwork, newsletters, templates, financial records. Most precious of all, it contains whole books not yet published, which took months to write and photos and stories and reports on all our work in India dating back to 1996.

I envision defying the flight attendants’ shouts “I leave everything behind!” Once down an escape slide, being fit, I swim triumphantly in sidestroke, the other hand aloft bearing the precious hard drive safely to shore.

But what if around me were other people who couldn’t swim? Weighing in at only 95 pounds, I would not dare get close to a foundering adult lest they pull me under and we both drown. A child I could certainly save… but not both the child and the hard drive. What would I do?

Yes, I would of course sacrifice the data for the child. One child is worth more than 20 years of one’s life. Should I forego the chance to save one child, I would be guilty of murder. The horror of shame that would descend upon me would make life unbearable.

I did not have to act upon any of the above. The plane bore all its passengers safely home where I immediately went to Wal-Mart, bought another hard drive and made a second copy of the data. The second hard drive now lives safely in the cabinet in my garage, rendering the hard drive in my backpack no more valuable than any other piece of plastic or paper.

Many people today feel abortion is perfectly ok. They believe it’s ok to let babies die in exchange for things far less valuable than the data on a hard drive. On Nov 8th a large number of US citizens, Christians included, plan to make a mark on a piece of paper. By that mark they sign the death warrant for thousands of unborn babies. No matter what the outcome of the election, the voter’s guilt is sealed. His or her hands have been stained with the blood of every future abortion which takes place in this nation.

Admittedly, neither option vying for the big chair is optimal. Our nation has descended to such a state of godlessness, that we must remind ourselves how to survive in the jungle.

Suppose you’re in the jungle and two unfriendly creatures are coming at you – a gorilla and a cobra. You can’t fight them both at once. You have to decide which one will do you the most damage. One way or the other, you’re not coming out of this unscathed. If you fight the gorilla, you will certainly die from cobra bite. If you drive off the cobra, the gorilla will beat you up but might leave you alive. You can recover from bruises but not from poison.

Thus we must choose the lesser of two unhappy options in this election. If we were to look at no other variables, one is sufficient to guide our decision: Nothing will bring the wrath of God upon a nation sooner than the murder of innocents. Abortion is as the poison of a cobra. We must drive off the cobra and then find out what the gorilla plans to do to us…