This is possibly the last topic on earth I want to write about. If outpourings on social media are anything to go by, it is personally painful for many people and terribly political. I would much rather stay silent on the issue, and it would be easy to do so because the recent political decision about abortion involves the USA and therefore has no impact on my life. This blog is likely to upset most of the people who read it – unbelievers and Christians alike. I would much rather not write it at all.
So why write about abortion? I am writing because God is being slandered in the process of political wranglings over the matter. Additionally, addressing this issue from a biblical view reveals something of who God is in both His perfect holiness and His everlasting love. You may not like His holiness, but without understanding that you will never experience His love, and God’s character cannot be divided up into little packages that let us pick and choose.
With that introduction, let’s talk about the unborn child from a biological point of view. On a purely physical level, the first unique double helix of DNA formed during conception is part of a developmental process that will result in a unique human body being formed. While the developmental process has stages that we can identify and categorise (e.g. embryo, foetus, new-born baby, toddler, child, adult), it is really just one long process of development. Any fatal disruption in that process, for whatever reason and at any stage, will end that particular unique human life. Abortion is therefore the end of a unique human life prior to birth. Whether there are good reasons or bad reasons to end a human life at this early stage in development is a different question, and one that is the current subject of controversy.
The mind-boggling complexity of reproduction and development is an incredibly strong argument for the existence of an extremely intelligent, creative Being who is the ultimate source of DNA itself and the creator of the intricate processes involved in development. Another strong argument for His existence is that one particular species of animal on this earth has an innate sense of right and wrong – the human. This sense has led to people creating standards of morality by which they strive to live, thus making them feel ‘right’. We don’t all agree on what the standards are, and our disagreements over this issue have defined much of human history.
If you doubt that humans have an innate sense of right and wrong, just wade into the debates about abortion and you will see that they all stem from this unique human characteristic. In the Christian worldview, human morality ultimately comes from God who provides an objective standard of right and wrong. God does not force humans to adhere to His standard, but He has told us what that standard looks like and what the consequences are for not living by His standard – eternal separation from Him that will cause us immense pain and suffering.
Biblical Christians have voluntarily surrendered their preferred standard of living to God’s standard, and seek to live accordingly. People who do not live that way have rejected God’s standard and live according to their own preferred rules, which may be self-defined, societal or religious. In instances where our personal rules of life contradict the laws of the country we live in (even if our rules match God’s rules), we either have to submit to that law or break it and hope we don’t suffer the consequences. In the same way, when we break God’s laws we are in danger of suffering the consequences, which we may experience to some extent in this life but will certainly experience after death.
In the Old Testament, God taught the people of Israel what His standards of morality are and He created national laws for them based on those standards. In the New Testament, God’s moral standard remains the same, but He no longer demonstrates His standard through Israel’s laws alone (although they are written down for us to study). Instead, people throughout the world who willingly submit to His standard in their own lives ought to provide a living demonstration of God’s will for humanity. These people are further commanded to tell others about God and His invitation to all people to leave their former ways of living and reconcile themselves to Him through Jesus Christ. This is God’s mission for His people today.
In the Bible, we find that God views taking a human life seriously. In its simplest form, one of the Ten Commandments is: You shall not murder (Ex. 20:13). The penalty for murder in Israel was death. There were other reasons one could take a human life under these national laws and not be sentenced to death – e.g. manslaughter, meting out the death penalty (those who executed the criminal were not killed), and during war with Israel’s enemies. Consequently, we see mercy for killings that were not planned or desired by the killer (I would put abortion to save the life of the mother in this category), and allowance for killing based on the guilt of one who is killed. In Israel, then, murder was deemed as one person deliberately taking the life of another who did not deserve death, and with no other valid reason.
In the New Testament, God’s views on murder have not changed. Yet Jesus goes beyond “You shall not murder” and says that people who are seeking to live by God’s standards should not only avoid murdering anyone, but they must not even hate anyone. Even further, those who truly want to walk in God’s ways and reflect His character to the world should love people who hate them. Since we are not living in Old Testament Israel, Christians do not have the mandate to enforce or live by the detailed laws given to Israel. Instead, we have the mandate to “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,” (Matt. 5:44) thus fulfilling God’s moral law.
Our mission as Christians is to live out God’s standards, but the full meaning of this goes far beyond not getting or committing an abortion, just as it goes beyond not murdering anyone. Is our mission to stop other people from getting abortions? Since an unborn child is an innocent party by definition, preventing abortion could save an innocent human life. From another angle, one could say that preventing abortion is preventing sin – on the part of the mother and the doctor who will perform the procedure. But is saving human lives from physical death the actual mission that Jesus gave Christians when He left earth? Or is our mission to prevent non-Christians from sinning? Or is it something else entirely?
The Christian’s mission on earth has many aspects to it, but the clearest summary is found in the Great Commission – what Jesus said to His disciples after His resurrection and before He finally left earth. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:19).
Notice that teaching people to follow God’s commands is included in the Great Commission, but it is the last point in a sequence. Also note that nothing at all is said about saving people’s lives. Saving a life is a noble act, but it is not what Jesus told His disciples to do. The first and most important thing is to go and make disciples, which involves telling people the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. One of the best things about this good news is that it is meant for people who have committed sin (i.e. all of us), including the very worst sins we can imagine.
This news is for the unmarried fornicators, the adulterers, the abortion doctors, the women who have had abortions, and for the hypocrites who condemn abortion publicly but live in sin privately. Our mission is to proclaim that no matter how awful your sin may be, God’s grace through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is sufficient to wipe away that sin and make you righteous in God’s eyes. You may still suffer the consequences for your actions in this life, but the way for you to enter God’s presence and dwell joyfully with Him now and forever is open.
Campaigning to change the laws of a country to make it appear to be ‘more Christian’ because there is somewhat less overt sin being committed is not a shortcut to fulfilling the Great Commission. This is trying to do something with a national law that can only be done by proclaiming the gospel. On the contrary, I would argue that this legal effort is an obstacle to the gospel. We are in effect aborting the mission that God gave us in the first place.
When Jesus came to earth He was inserted into a wicked society run by evil rulers. Soon after His birth, Herod ordered that every child under the age of two be put to death in Bethlehem and its surrounding districts, with the aim of killing Jesus (Matt. 2:16). God did not prevent this great evil from happening and did not intervene to save the lives of all those children.
Jesus was the only truly innocent Man ever to walk the earth, and yet His death was a consequence of numerous sins committed by those around Him. The Jewish leaders envied and hated Him, Judas betrayed Him, Pilate unjustly condemned Him and the soldiers assaulted and killed Him. God did not prevent any of those sins from taking place, and instead Jesus offered His life to save those very same sinners.
This pattern has been repeated thousands of times by followers of Christ down the ages – from the unjust killing of Stephen in Acts 7 to the most recent missionaries killed by the people they are trying to save. From a human point of view, entering a sinful society and doing absolutely nothing to change its laws or rules, but instead living by God’s rules yourself and suffering the consequences, is madness. We don’t want to suffer the consequences of living in a wicked world, so we try to make it more comfortable for ourselves by changing its rules to something that suits us. Yet even if the legal changes we strive for are in closer alignment with God’s law, we will have achieved nothing as far as the original Christian mission is concerned.
Although the law given to Israel was according to God’s standards and Israel voluntarily agreed to keep that law, it had a major weakness – it could not change the human heart (Rom. 7-8). Even people who seemed to keep the law outwardly were exposed as hypocrites (Matt. 15:7-9). If God’s law given to Israel could not change their hearts, how could we possibly bring anyone to salvation by changing human laws? In every historical situation where ‘Christian’ values have been forcibly imposed on people from the top down, disaster has resulted. Certainly, no more people have entered into heaven as a result of obeying ‘Christian’ laws that they detested. Sadly, history often repeats itself.
Christians have no mission from God to prevent other people from sinning through coercion or legal means; we only have a command to stop sinning in our own lives. Perhaps wanting to stop everyone else from sinning is evidence that we have failed to do anything about our own sin? (Matt. 7:1-5). Yet for them and us, God’s invitation to repent and be forgiven remains open. Let us rather use that invitation and invite others to do the same.
Christians have not been commissioned to save the physical lives of people around us (unborn babies included); we have been commissioned to save their eternal souls. Doing so starts with genuinely loving the people who currently reject God’s standard for their lives. Standing outside abortion clinics and hurling verbal abuse at the doctors is not showing love. Jesus modelled how to show love to sinners – He joined them for supper, He showed compassion for their physical needs through healing and feeding them, He prayed earnestly for them, and ultimately He forgave them for their sins against Him. He not only taught people about God’s love or His holy standards for human life, He demonstrated it every day.
1 comment:
Spot on.
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