The Fall of Man and the Sociological Consequences of Sin

Aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing

In our continuing discussion of the Fall of Man in Genesis 3 and the widespread devastation of sin, we have already covered the theological and personal consequences of Adam and Eve’s misdeed; in this post we turn to the sociological fallout of that sin, or the way that sin affects our relationships with one another.

Returning to our text, we can see this dimension clearly played out in verses 11-13:

“[God] said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”

People were created to live in community with one another. Specifically, Eve was created to be the perfect partner for Adam (Genesis 2.18-25). But when God confronts Adam and Eve with their sin, something very significant (and unfortunate) happens: the unity that had previously existed between Adam and Eve is shattered as Adam immediately blames his wife for the sin which they had committed together.

This brings a conflict and disharmony between them that would be passed down over time (Genesis 3.16), and we can see it unfold in the pages of Genesis in the accounts of numerous broken relationships—Cain’s murder of his brother, the depraved society of Sodom and Gomorrah, the distorted relationships between Sarah and Hagar, Jacob and Esau, Jacob and Laban, Joseph and his brothers, and more. But the problems certainly don’t stop there—this same conflict and disharmony continues to darken and distort our world today.

Our world is deeply flawed by sin, and this manifests itself everyday sociologically, as we treat one another in a wide array of horrible, messed up ways:

• On an international level, countries wage war and kill because of conflict over ideology or resources.
• Systemic evils such as poverty, abortion, racism, sex trafficking, government corruption, lotteries, and more stem from our exploitation of our neighbors in order that we might obtain our own selfish desires.
• Horrific acts of incomprehensible violence fill our news cycles. Mass shootings at elementary schools, the use of passenger airliners as terrorist missiles, bombings at marathon finish lines and incomprehensible barbarity at soccer matches shock and dismay us and cause us to weep.
• Our interpersonal relationships are also a mess. Dishonesty, reckless ambition, and violence abound. The (supposedly) lifelong bonds of marriage are broken on a whim.

And the sum result: our society as a whole stagnates and decays, as people live lives marked by self-interest and fear of one another. The community for which we were created is broken.

Sin destroys our relationships with one another.

Abortion: A Lament and a Remembrance of the Faithfulness of God

It’s been 40 years since abortion became legal in this country. The legacy of that decision is beyond heart-breaking—there have been approximately 55 million abortions in the U.S. over the last four decades, and in our greatest city, 40% of all pregnancies end in abortion.

This is incredibly depressing stuff to me, as it represents the chilling disregard for life that we have developed in our culture. But last night, as I was thinking about it, something else dawned on me for the first time: 

A sizable contingent of those who will dwell for eternity with God in the new heavens and new earth will be those who never experienced this earth in the first place.*

As Christians, that should not diminish our abhorrence for the premeditated destruction of unborn infants, but it should provide us with hope and comfort.

Blessed be our God, who provides for His children!

*Remember, the 55 million are just babies aborted in this country over the last 40 years. World-wide, that figure is much, much higher.

Friday Summary Report, September 7

I don’t have anything too exciting to report on this Friday morning, but here are some interesting/good/important links from around the worldwide web:

(1) First, a story from Louisiana, where, in the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac, a father and son teamed up to rescue 120 people over a 12-hour period with boats. Jesse Shaffer, the father, insisted that he and his son are not heroes, but their neighbors would disagree. A great story, and a glimpse of what Jesus meant by “Love thy neighbor.”

(2) Here’s a cool story (with picture) about Clemson wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins getting baptized   after football practice.

(3) The last couple of weeks have been dominated by politics, with both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions taking place. I am not a fan of politics, in large part because it takes place in some weird twilight zone where the truth neither matters nor is really expected. I heard a ton of people raving about President Clinton’s speech, but was it accurate? Similar articles could probably be (and probably have been) written about every other speech that was given at either convention.

(4) Matt Dabbs wrote a really good blog post on the heinousness of abortion. The fact that abortion has been relegated to the political arena and has been turned into a mere talking point by both parties shows how warped and skewed our society has become. I mentioned this in the comments section of the blog I linked to above, but I’ll repeat it here: I am convinced that the legalized genocide against our own unborn is the greatest evil of our society. It is all too often discounted as ‘just another political issue’, but it far transcends politics. I sometimes wonder how long a nation that shows such little value for life will be allowed to continue.

(5) For those who are involved in youth ministry, here is a great post with some very practical suggestions for ways to get your students involved as leaders within your youth group. As Joseph points out, student leadership doesn’t have to be part of some big, elaborate, complicated program.

Friday Summary Report, August 10

I’ve read several blogs where, at the end of the week, the author will post an assortment of links and/or random thoughts that didn’t really merit their own individual post. After resisting the impulse to do something similar for quite a while, I finally decided to just go ahead and do it.

During a given week, I do a lot of reading (both on the Web and in books), and come upon several things that I would like to share, but I hate to write posts that are just 8 words long. So primarily, these end-of-week summaries will consist of links and quotations that I thought were interesting, but will also include random items that didn’t fit elsewhere. I’m not promising to do this every Friday, but I bet it will happen frequently.

(1) Although this article has been out for a while, I just came across it this week. Basically, a couple of ethicists (apparently it doesn’t take much to be an ethicist these days) have proposed that after-birth abortions (i.e. infanticide) should be permitted on newborns, because a newborn is not a person in the sense of being a “subject of a moral right to life.” This is obviously repulsive, but not surprising, and is really just an extension of the arguments that are already made to justify pre-birth infanticide. At least these people are honest enough to admit that no great change happens in the state of the infant at birth.

(2) Here is a somewhat scary article about a tech guru who had his online identity mercilessly hacked and had his iPhone and laptop wiped clean as a result (losing all the pictures of his infant daughter in the process!). I recommend reading the entire article, but a couple of takeaways: (1) Be very careful about linking online accounts together (using same usernames and/or passwords); (2) Back up all of your computer data on an external hard drive; (3) hackers are jerks.

(3) This week, I successfully finished translating 1 John from Greek (the word successfully is used somewhat loosely here). I do feel some minor sense of accomplishment in doing this, but mostly, I feel a great debt to those who have gone on long ago and translated Scripture from original texts into the vernacular.

(4) As this post remains one of my most-read, most-commented on, and most-disputed from this year, I updated it at the end, to make my intentions in writing it as clear as possible.

(5) Over the last two weeks, I’ve been watching as much of the Olympics as I possibly can. Perhaps I will have a post related to that next week.

Lot, His Daughters, And Us: When Cultural Values are Taken to the Extreme

Lot and his Daughters by Artemisia Gentileschi

I’ve been encouraging my High School Bible Class to read through the narrative portions of Scripture this year and have been giving them a daily schedule to help. I think this is a good thing to do for many reasons, but one reason is that there are certain parts of the Bible which are often passed over in Bible classes and sermons, but it’s still important for people to know they are there (especially teens, who should be in the process of developing their own faith rather than relying on the faith of their parents).

When they made it to Genesis 19, I got a lot of questions, and as I discussed their questions with them, it struck me how often certain values that a culture emphasizes (which may be good in and of themselves) can be taken to dangerous and often sinful extremes.

The Importance of Hospitality

Genesis 19 covers the destruction of Sodom, which was something they were vaguely familiar with, but there were a couple of details that they had missed out on. Two angels, appearing as men, come to Sodom and stay with Lot, and the wicked men of the city bang on Lot’s doors and demand that Lot hand over the two men to them so they can engage in sexual relations with them. Lot’s response is shocking to our modern ears:

“Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, and said, ‘I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Behold, I have to daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.’”

Lot doesn’t seem to be in the running for any Father of the Year awards here, as he offers his daughters to the would-be rapists rather than his guests. That’s hard to understand unless you realize that the idea of hospitality and taking good care of one’s guests was of paramount importance in many ancient cultures (and some modern ones). It’s not that Lot was eager to give up his daughters—I’m sure he wasn’t—it’s just that hospitality was such an important cultural value that it led him to an extreme (and I would suggest, sinful) action. Fortunately for Lot’s daughters, the two angels intervene and strike the wicked men with blindness. 

A Woman’s Value Through Child-Bearing

Another example of example of this phenomenon actually comes from the same chapter of Genesis. Ultimately, only Lot and his two daughters escape the destruction of Sodom, as his sons-in-law remained in the city and his wife was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back on the destruction of the city.

Lot and his daughters flee to the hills and live in a cave, and here, another shocking development is recorded:

“And the firstborn said to the younger, ‘Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.’ So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose. 

The next day, the firstborn said to the younger, ‘Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.’ So they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.”

So a few days after Lot offers his daughters to rapists, they now get him drunk in order to sleep with him—Lot’s family seems to be the picture of dysfunction, right? Once again though, I think what we have here is a cultural value taken to an unhealthy extreme. In this case it seems that (as was often the case in many ancient cultures, and even some cultures today) for Lot’s daughters, their entire value as humans was derived from their ability to carry on the family line of their father through the bearing of children. With their husbands-to-be destroyed in the obliteration of Sodom and thus their means of child-bearing suddenly removed from them, Lot’s daughters turn to a sinful and (I imagine) undesirable last resort.

What About Us?

With a little careful reflection on the cultural forces that pulled on Lot and his daughters, I think their actions are a little more understandable. That being said, I don’t think these stories show us that the influences of culture validates sinful behavior—not at all. On the contrary, I believe one thing these stories do show us is how, if we’re not careful, the ideals we value as a culture can push us to do unthinkable things.

For example, in American society, one of our most sacred values is individual freedom. Many of the people who colonized the United States came here out of the desire to find freedom of one type or another. The American Revolution was fought because the descendants of those colonists felt that they should be free to govern themselves. The importance of liberty was hammered first into the Declaration of Independence and later into the U.S. Constitution, primarily through the Bill of Rights. As Americans, we pride ourselves on being free people.

But how could freedom be a bad thing? Well, it is the cultural value of freedom that, when taken to an extreme, is used to justify the yearly destruction of hundreds of thousands of unborn infants in the U.S. As a society, we are engaged in an ongoing genocide against our own unborn, but we pretend it is okay because supposedly, the mother should be free to do whatever she wants with her own body.

Clearly, our cultural values can cause moral blind spots for us today just as they did for Lot and his daughters some 4,000 years ago. Perhaps in the distant future, people will look back on our society and shake their heads in shame at the plague of abortion that we have embraced. And perhaps they will be able to somewhat understand our sin because of the cultural values that influence us and that we use to justify it.

But it will still be sin.

The Connection Between Our Inalienable Rights

“You can pursue liberty all you want to as long as you don’t tread on somebody else’s life, and that includes the life of the unborn.”

—Herman Cain

Waterboarding And Abortion

Ken Blackwell has written an interesting article pointing out the irony that the same Obama administration that claims to be morally horrified at the idea of waterboarding mass murderers also approves of Partial Birth Abortion.

A couple of interesting tidbits:

“The purpose of the Geneva Convention was to give warring nations a strong, positive incentive to behave according to international norms and not to engage in conduct that “shocks the conscience.” When we give Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists prisoner of war status and Geneva Convention coverage—without demanding anything of them in return—we abandon one of the great achievements of the Geneva Convention.”

“Our new president abhors torture, unless it is the torture of the unborn. In that case, it is not torture at all, but simply inducing fetal demise. This great international uproar over what is and is not torture has been generated because of the treatment of three known mass murderers. The slaughter of innocents in their thousands elicits no international outrage. This is part of what Justice Breyer sees as evolving international standards of decency.”

I’m not dismissing the torture of captured terrorists as a non-issue (although I think the discussion of whether or not waterboarding constitutes torture is a valid one).

I’m just saying that the torture issue, in scale and severity, doesn’t compare to abortion.

Life: Imagine The Potential

I came across this video from CatholicVote.org, and on the heels of yesterday’s briefest of posts, I thought it was especially appropriate.

It’s only 41 seconds long…check it out.

Thanks to Todd, who posted it first.

AP: “Obama To Reverse Abortion Policy”

It begins.

Abortion, Part 4: Why Abortion Is A Deal Breaker

The original question that got this series kicked off (well over a month ago—I really am sorry it has taken me so long) was, “What makes abortion a deal breaker as opposed to the other moral issues?”

I’m really just now getting around to answering that question, but in order to really do it justice, I thought it was necessary to first lay some groundwork about what I believe abortion really is, and about how I vote.

To succinctly sum up what we’ve discussed so far, I firmly believe that life begins at conception, and that abortion is, therefore, nothing less than the taking of an innocent human life. I realize that some people disagree with me on this, but in order to reach the conclusion that an unborn infant isn’t a human being, I think you have to reject Scripture, science and logic.

Having established (at least, in my mind) exactly what abortion is, the next question is how that should affect our voting behavior. Abortion is a moral issue, and when it comes to voting I think moral issues are the most important, but as we discussed in the last post, there are a bunch of moral issues.

Neither major party lines up perfectly with my views on the many different moral issues, which should leave me gridlocked, unable to decide how I should vote—unless one issue overrides all the others. And that brings us to this post.

So why does abortion trump other issues?

The Severity of Abortion

To start off, I’m going to ask you to attempt to do something which is actually quite difficult.

I said in an earlier post that abortion is an important issue because it is either the equivalent of brushing off skin cells, or it is the equivalent of shooting your next door neighbor. Since I believe that human life begins at conception, I think it is the latter.

And yet, here’s the scary part: while I can intellectually equate abortion with killing a next door neighbor, emotionally, even to me, it doesn’t seem as bad. Why is that?

It’s because of the culture we live in. Our values, our opinions, the way we look at things are all tremendously influenced by the culture that surrounds us. For a moment (and this is the difficult part), I want you to try to step outside of that culture.

Step outside of the word fetus. It’s a word which really just means baby. An unborn, human baby, with a beating heart, and a world of potential. It’s a word that our culture likes because it sounds so scientific, and because it helps us avoid the annoying problem of granting personal rights to the object in question.

Step outside of the word abortion. It’s a word which really just means murder¹. It is the act of intentionally ending a human life. It’s another word that we like because it sounds so clean and clinical—it becomes just a medical procedure from which any question of morality is removed.

These words are euphemisms. Toss them aside.

Now think about the procedure. The methods differ significantly², but really, the same thing happens each time—a mother goes to see a doctor for the purpose of ending the life of the child she is carrying inside her.

Two lives enter the doctor’s office, but only one leaves. A baby has been killed.

That’s what abortion is. No other issue exceeds the severity of abortion. It’s a matter of life and death.

The Magnitude of Abortion

You may argue that there are other “matters of life and death,” and you’d be right—but all of them pale in comparison to the damage to human life caused by abortion. I’ll apologize in advance for all the statistics, but sometimes numbers really do tell the tale.

First of all, consider that there are 17,000 murders each year in the United States³. That may seem like a large figure, until you compare it to the number of U.S. abortions each year—approximately 1,200,000⁴.

That’s the equivalent of the Holocaust every five years—and we’re legally doing it to our own children.

Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, over 48,000,000 infants have lost their lives via abortion in the United States. That’s roughly equal to the combined total populations of the states of California and Illinois, or the population of Texas two times over.

Those are staggering numbers. However, I don’t think you can fully grasp the magnitude of abortion (I know I didn’t) until you compare it with the other leading causes of child deaths worldwide (these are yearly totals):

• Number of children who die of HIV/AIDS: 290,000⁵
• Number of children who die of easily preventable diseases: 8,000,000⁶
• Number of children who die of hunger and malnutrition: 6,000,000⁷
• Number of children who die as a result of war: 2,000,000⁸
• Number of children who die of abuse or neglect (widely considered under-reported): 53,000⁹
• Number of abortions: 45,000,000¹⁰

It isn’t even close—abortion kills far more children each year than all the other main causes combined.

There may be other issues that are literally a matter of life and death, but none of them even approaches the scale that abortion is on. No other issue matches the magnitude of abortion. It is the great evil of our time.

A Historical Perspective: Slavery

My basic premise—the notion that one particular issue can be more important than all others—is derided by a lot of people as being inherently flawed. However, when you look through the lens of history at the issue of slavery, I think it’s clear that the premise is perfectly sound—sometimes an evil can be so widespread and prevalent that it dims other issues by comparison.

It took a Civil War, but eventually, we got the slavery issue right, and looking back with our 21st century eyes, it’s hard for us to imagine that people could have ever justified it in the first place.

Yet interestingly, the issues of slavery and abortion bear striking similarities.

Consider that in both cases, the suffering of the victims was allowed on the basis that they were considered to be sub-human. This thinking was furthered by the use of words like slave and fetus.

In both cases, the victims were treated as the property of others, without rights of their own.

In both cases, an evil practice was justified because of its economic benefit. Slavery was the backbone of Southern economy, considered by many to be a necessary evil. Similarly, proponents of abortion often describe it as a necessary evil, sometimes the “only option” for impoverished mothers.

And in both cases, good but misguided people made the mistake of refusing to condemn the unacceptable behavior of others. Slavery continued for as long as it did because too many people who would never consider owning a slave themselves refused to take that “right” away from others. Think about the typical Pro-Choice bumper stickers and protest signs you see and translate them to the slavery issue: “Opposed to slavery? Don’t buy one!” It seems ludicrous to us today, but until we as a culture can realize that with abortion—as with slavery—humans are being denied basic human rights, such flawed thinking will continue.

One last similarity between the two issues that I’ll mention is that the road to abolition was a long and tough one, with many setbacks. Sometimes I grow very discouraged about the state of abortion in America. I think that laws and opinions will never be changed, and that most politicians (even Pro-Life politicians) don’t really care about changing them.

But on my better, more optimistic days, I believe that some day, long after abortion has been outlawed, we’ll look back as a culture and shake our heads in shame at what we once allowed (as we now look back at slavery).

Conclusion

This is the reality of our world: currently, U.S. law allows mothers to legally kill their own children via abortion. It happens 1.2 million times each year, or once every 26 seconds. Worldwide, abortions kill more children each year than all the other leading causes combined.

The original question was, “Why is abortion a deal breaker?” In all humility and sincerity, my response is, “How could it not be?”

● ● ●

¹ In a few instances, I guess you could argue that abortion isn’t exactly murder. For example, if the life of the mother was endangered, then maybe it would be self-defense. Or in the case of a woman who had been raped, maybe her emotional state would lessen the charges. But these are exceptions which just help to prove the general rule that abortion is murder.
² Sometimes drugs are taken which kill the infant, other times the tiny growing child is sucked out of the mother via syringe, sometimes harmful chemicals are injected into the amniotic fluid, and sometimes the baby’s head is crushed and then manually removed. See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion#Abortion_methods
³ http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
⁴ http://www.nrlc.org/ABORTION/facts/abortionstats.html
⁵ http://www.unicef.org/aids/
⁶ Easily preventable diseases includes things like diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, polio, tuberculosis, hepatitis A & B, yellow fever, mumps, malaria, diarrhea, respiratory infections, etc. (Source: The Lancet).
⁷ http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2005/1000151/index.html
⁸ http://www.unicef.org
⁹ http://www.unicef.org/sowc06/
¹⁰ http://www.wpro.who.int/sites/rph/data/abortion.htm

Thanks to Jonathan Reinhardt for help with many of the statistics and their sources.

Abortion, Part 3: How I Vote

This is the third part in a series on abortion, and specifically on why I feel abortion is the single most important issue when it comes to voting. My views on abortion are based on certain philosophies and premises, which you can catch in Part 1 and Part 2.

In this post, I’m going to shift gears a bit and try to explain how I vote in general. It’s been a difficult post to write in a lot of ways, but it’s been good for me to flesh out my thoughts.

Abstaining From Politics

As a quick note, I should mention that there are some who believe that Christians should abstain from politics and voting altogether. After all, our true allegiance is to Christ, not some earthly office or entity, and Christianity is about being salt and light, not about getting others to do what God wants via legislation.

While I respect that view, I also believe that the thinking behind it is flawed—I’m confident that God wants us to use every avenue we have to influence others for good and inject the values of His Kingdom into the world, including our political voice.

Political Parties

On my Facebook profile, my political views are listed as “Inconsistent”. I described them as such not because I consider them to be inconsistent with each other, but because I consider them to be inconsistent with either of the two major parties that dominate our political landscape today.

Generally, I have conservative views on economic issues. As a product of (among other things) Harding University’s Belden Center for Private Enterprise, I believe that capitalism, low taxation, and limited government regulation of business are generally good things.

That being said, those views (some of which are pretty strong) don’t really impact my vote that much because at the end of the day, no matter which party is in control, as Americans, we are among the wealthiest people in the world. If our economic recession lasts longer than expected and cuts deeper than expected, as Americans, we will still be among the wealthiest people in the world.

Instead, the side of politics that matters more to me are the “social” issues, or maybe a better term (which I’ll use for the rest of this post) would be “moral” issues. From a Christian perspective, it’s fundamental that morality is more important than money—how good you are is more important than how rich you are.

And that’s my major problem with the Republican Party—while they may agree with me on many moral issues, when push comes to shove, they just don’t consider those issues to be as important as money. And worse, I think some Republican candidates don’t care about them at all, but just pay lip service to them in order entice me to vote for them.

Of course, on the other hand, you have the Democrats, who I disagree with on a lot of moral issues and disagree with on economic policies.

So here I am, inconsistent with both major political parties, determining my vote based on the issues that I think are most important—the moral ones.

Moral Issues

Christians (and others) who support pro-choice candidates are quick to point out that there are a lot of moral issues besides just abortion—and they’re right. There’s a bunch of them, and I could probably do weeks’ worth of posts covering them all, but instead, I’ll just briefly mention a few in order to illustrate that my views are somewhat scattered across the political spectrum (I won’t mention abortion, since that’s the subject of the next post).

As I’ve mentioned before in a previous post, the teachings of Jesus on the “Least of These” influence my thinking on a lot of these issues:

“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ Then He will answer them, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25.41-46.)

Environment

God created this world for us to use, and also for us to take care of. This idea of stewardship represents a balance that I think a lot of people miss.

Having said that, I think the case for Global Warming (or, “Global Climate Change” now that statistics show that we’re not warming as originally predicted) is unconvincing, and has become overly politicized, as evidenced by the fact that the significant number of scientists who have refuted global warming have been silenced and ridiculed.

Gay Marriage

God defined marriage as being between one man and one woman, and as Christians, I think we should do what we can to support that definition. To me, that certainly includes opposing gay marriage, but at the same time acknowledging that, with the divorce rates we have, American heterosexual couples are doing a good enough job of destroying marriage without help from anyone else. Let’s protect marriage, but let’s also admit that homosexuals aren’t the only ones who are bringing damage upon it.

Immigration

The Bible is pretty clear as to how we are to treat the foreigner—with hospitality. Because of this, I have very little patience with the general position of the Right on immigration.

I realize that we have a lot of illegal immigrants in this country, but I’m also virtually certain that the vast majority of them would choose to become legal if it were easier for them to do so. That’s what I call the iTunes Effect: when the iTunes store gave people an affordable, legal alternative to stealing music, many, many people immediately took advantage of it. I may be naive, but I think immigration would work in much the same way.

Furthermore the U.S. has always been a country of immigrants. It’s how we got our beginning, and it’s what gives us our identity. The Statue of Liberty actually says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free…” but all too many people seem to want to add an “unless they’re from Mexico” clause to the end. I think that’s ridiculous. And sad. And not biblical.

Poverty

I feel convinced in my own mind that ideally, it should be the job of the Church, not government, to take care of the poor, but considering that Christendom as a whole hasn’t done a very good job of that, government helping out might not be a bad idea.

I question whether or not the typical policies of the Democratic Party really help out the poor that much, but at least, in theory, their heart is in the right place. And to those with more conservative views who think that taxation basically amounts to stealing (a view I’m sensitive to), I think it’s important to remember that Jesus didn’t say, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s—unless he asks for more than you want to give him.”

At the same time, I see a lot of inconsistency regarding political views on poverty. If poverty was such a big deal to the Left, you would think they would also oppose things like state lotteries (which statistics have shown feed off of the poor) and alternative fuel sources such as ethanol, which take food (corn) and turn it into fuel when thousands of people around the world starve every day. It makes me wonder if poverty is the Left’s lip service issue just as abortion is the Right’s.

War

I know that this is a major issue with some people, so I may not do it justice in my brief comments, but I’ll try.

I’m not a pacifist. I think war is a terrible thing, and should be avoided when possible, but I also think it can be justified. I think that’s a Biblical view, although I respect the opinions of those who disagree.

Regarding our current war, I know it’s very unpopular, but if we’re honest, I think we’d acknowledge two things. First, back when war was declared, the vast majority of politicians (although our President-Elect is a notable exception) and the vast majority of American citizens were in favor of it. I think too many people are trying to deny responsibility for that. Secondly, having made the decision to go to war, it’s incredibly irresponsible to just pack up and leave in the middle when all indications are that things will get worse if you do. That might be the case now, and it certainly was the case back when the Left first started demanding a pullout.

Having said that, if all the Iraq War accomplished or all it was about was removing a dictator from power who had committed genocide on his own people, then I think it was justified. Similarly, if Hitler had decided not to invade every country in Europe but had still gassed every Jew he could get his hands on, I think war would have been justified in that situation as well.

Conclusion

Once again, my point in bringing up all these issues is not so much to convince anyone on any particular subject, but rather to illustrate what I believe is a consistency among my views on different moral subjects, but an inconsistency between the moral views I hold and the views generally held by either major political party.

So what does that leave me with? Since there are clearly a lot of moral issues, and my views on these issues don’t all line up neatly with a specific party, how can I ever choose to vote for one candidate or another?

Well, if all issues were created equal (you can see where I’m going with this), I wouldn’t be able to—I’d be locked in a stalemate of conscience. But that’s not the case. Sometimes, the magnitude of a particular issue can make it so important that it should take preeminence over all others.

Slavery was such an issue, and abortion is another.

Abortion, Part 2: What Is It?

It is my firm belief that human life begins at conception. I’ll explain why I believe that in this post, but it’s on that premise that I oppose the practice of abortion.

After all, if that premise is not true, then the abortion debate is much ado about nothing. But if it is true, then abortion is nothing less than government-sanctioned, premeditated murder. To put it bluntly, abortion is either the equivalent of brushing off skin cells, or it is the equivalent of shooting your next door neighbor.

There’s a big difference there, so figuring out exactly when human life begins is important.

The Scriptural Argument

As I mentioned in the introductory post to this series, I’m a Christian, and that influences my views on abortion. I think Scripture clearly teaches that life begins at conception, and frankly, that alone would be enough for me (though I think there are other arguments as well).

There are a lot of verses that I could reference and a lot of points that could be made, but I’ll narrow it down to just a couple.

First, the same Greek word, BREPHOS, is used in the New Testament to describe an adolescent child (2 Timothy 3.15), a newborn child (Luke 2.2), and an unborn child (Luke 1.44). New Testament writers didn’t seem to make a distinction between children before and after birth.

Like the Greek of the New Testament, the Hebrew of the Old Testament makes no distinction between an “infant” and a “fetus.” The Hebrew word, GEHEVER, is used over 60 times in the Old Testament, usually to refer to an adult male (Psalm 34.8, Job 3.23, Psalm 125.7). But in Job 3.3, this same word is used to refer to an unborn child at the moment of his conception.

I think an even stronger argument concerning the beginning of life comes from the incarnation of Jesus. Concerning the incarnation, the Bible teaches that the Son of God emptied Himself, became flesh, and dwelt among us (Philippians 2.5-8, John 1.1-14).

The question then arises, “at what point did the Son of God become flesh, and begin His life as a human?” There’s only one answer that makes sense: Jesus didn’t begin His humanity on the night He was born in Bethlehem; the Messiah of the Jews and Savior of the World became flesh at the point that the Holy Spirit caused Mary to become pregnant! (Luke 1.35)

The Scientific Argument

Science is certainly not my area of expertise, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Certainly there are scientists and doctors who would argue that life doesn’t begin at conception, but many of them argue that it does.

And consider: the day before an infant is born and the day after an infant is born, the infant is almost identical in terms of development. The significant difference is in terms of environment (out in the world as opposed to inside the womb).

A few years ago, I had to write a paper on Embryonic Stem Cell Research for an Ethics class, and I came across this article which suggests that we can more clearly determine when life begins by comparing it to when life ends. I would suggest that you take the time to read the article, but the author, who is a professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, points out that:

“Death occurs when the body ceases to act in a coordinated manner to support the continued healthy function of all bodily organs. Cellular life may continue for some time following the loss of integrated bodily function, but once the ability to act in a coordinated manner has been lost, “life” cannot be restored to a corpse-no matter how “alive” the cells composing the body may yet be.”

Applying that same definition of life, it’s clear when life begins:

“From the earliest stages of development, human embryos clearly function as organisms. Embryos are not merely collections of human cells, but living creatures with all the properties that define any organism as distinct from a group of cells; embryos are capable of growing, maturing, maintaining a physiologic balance between various organ systems, adapting to changing circumstances, and repairing injury. Mere groups of human cells do nothing like this under any circumstances.”

The Common Sense Argument

If life doesn’t begin at conception, then when does it begin? Other “starting lines” seem arbitrary:

Is life determined by viability? An infant isn’t a person until it can survive outside the womb? That’s problematic, because with advances in medicine, that date continues to change. For that matter, if humanity is determined by how well someone can survive, a lot of toddlers, people in nursing homes and paraplegics are in trouble—are they less human than the rest of us?

Does life begin at birth? That seems like more of a concrete dividing line, but if that’s the case, why are there restrictions on late-term abortions? And why does Barack Obama not support the lives of infants who survive abortion attempts and emerge from the womb living (For the record, I’ve pointed out before that at least Obama is consistent on this issue—if it’s okay to abort an infant right before birth, it should also be okay to let the infant die immediately afterwards.)?

It seems that our gut tells us that humanity begins prior to birth. Consider the following example. When a couple who is pro-choice and has no problem with the practice of abortion decides to start a family and conceives, their view of the unborn changes dramatically. No longer is a fetus just a bundle of cells; instead, it is an unborn infant. It is considered to be a member of the family and the parents plan for it accordingly. They get excited when it moves and are concerned about its health. They don’t wait for the moment of birth to bestow personhood upon it!

So what do we make of this inconsistency? Is life determined by the feelings of the parents? Is an unborn infant a human only if the parents consider it to be so, only if it is wanted? This is the most ludicrous position of all, but it’s the position where many end up.

Conclusion

There’s much more to be said, but the point of this post was to put forth reasons why I believe human life begins at conception, and why, therefore, the issue is an important one. There are more arguments that could be made, but I think I’ve said plenty.

At this point, I’m still laying the foundation for later posts and not really anticipating a lot of disagreement from most of my readers, but if you do take issue with something I’ve said, let me know.

Abortion, Part 1: Introduction And Disclaimer

In the comment section of a previous post, I was asked, “What makes abortion a deal breaker as opposed to the other moral issues?”

It’s a good question, and a fair one, because abortion is a deal breaker for me—it’s certainly not the only issue I care about, but I do care about it more than any other issue.

As I began to answer the question, I realized that I really couldn’t do it justice in one post—it’s just too important—so this will be part one of a multi-part series on abortion. I originally hoped to have all this posted prior to Election Day, but there’s just no way I’ll be able to. That’s okay though—unfortunately, abortion is an issue that will continue to be with us after November 4.

I don’t expect to get many comments on these posts, because I rarely do when I write about the more serious side of life. But that’s okay—these will likely be some of the more important posts that I ever write.

First, a disclaimer, of sorts:

I’m a Christian, and that’s why I feel the way I do about abortion—I’m trying to live out what Jesus said was important. If you’re reading this and you’re not a Christian, I hope you’ll keep reading, but I want you to be aware of the perspective that I’m coming from.

But if you are a Christian, I’m writing this especially for you.

I’m aware of a surprisingly large number of Christians (some of whom I respect a great deal) who will vote or have voted for Obama in 2008, seemingly without regard for the fact that he is the most abortion-friendly candidate we have ever seen from a major party (I’ve linked to this article before, but if you haven’t read it yet, you owe it to yourself).

I hope you’ll weigh and consider the next few posts, and of course, your feedback (negative too) is always welcomed.

Does Pro-Life Make A Difference?

I know quite a few people who are opposed to abortion, but whose voting decisions aren’t actually affected by those beliefs.

After all, electing pro-life politicians doesn’t actually have any effect on abortion in America, right? Well, actually, according to this article, it does:

“Most of these authors attempt to make one of two points: either a) that there is little that elected officials can do to curb abortion through legislation, or b) that the pro-life movement has not reaped any real benefits from supporting candidates who oppose abortion. Voters should, therefore, they argue, place greater emphasis on other issues. However, an examination of the history of the pro-life movement and a careful analysis of abortion trends demonstrate that these arguments are deeply flawed. In fact, the success of pro-life political candidates has resulted in substantial reductions in the abortion rate.”

The article then goes on to describe all the ways in which pro-life politicians and anti-abortion legislation have decreased the number of abortions in the United States.

So what does that have to do with the impending election? Well, one of the candidates opposes abortion, while the other, according to another article, is “the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to have ever run on a major party ticket.”

If you’re opposed to abortion, it should be something to think about. I understand that there are other moral issues as well that we have to deal with, but I always come back to Jesus’ words about “the least of these” in Matthew 25.

Who better qualifies as “the least of these” than an unborn child?

Obama And Abortion, Or, Where Intellectual Consistency Takes You

I’m not a Barack Obama fan.

I do like some things about him: I think he makes good speeches; the fact that his middle name is Hussein doesn’t really bother me, and I think the name Obama actually sounds pretty cool; the way he talks about hope and change (always rather vaguely) is enticing; I think it would be really cool to have a black president.

On the other hand, I don’t like how he pretends to be a moderate. I don’t like how he claims to be shocked by the recent statements of a religious figure who he’s known well for twenty years. Cool posters aside, I don’t like how he talks about change and doing things differently, and then seems eerily similar to any other politician trying to win a campaign.

Most of all, I don’t like his stance on abortion.

I’ve known that Obama was Pro-Choice for a long time, but got a better idea of his views after reading this article, which describes Obama’s opposition (as an Illinois State Senator) to the Born Alive Infants Bill:

State and federal versions of this bill became an issue earlier this decade because of “induced labor abortion.” This is usually performed on a baby with Down’s Syndrome or another problem discovered on the cusp of viability. A doctor medicates the mother to cause premature labor. Babies surviving labor are left untreated to die.

Jill Stanek, who was a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill., testified in the U.S. Congress in 2000 and 2001 about how “induced labor abortions” were handled at her hospital. “One night,” she said in testimony entered into the Congressional Record, “a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have the time to hold him. I couldn't bear the thought of this suffering child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived.”

In 2001, Illinois state Sen. Patrick O’Malley introduced three bills to help such babies. One required a second physician to be present at the abortion to determine if a surviving baby was viable. Another gave the parents or a public guardian the right to sue to protect the baby’s rights. A third, almost identical to the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act President Bush signed in 2002, simply said a “homo sapiens” wholly emerged from his mother with a “beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord or definite movement of voluntary muscles” should be treated as a “‘person,’ ‘human being,’ ‘child’ and ‘individual.’”

Stanek testified about these bills in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, where Obama served. She told me this week he was “unfazed” by her story of holding the baby who survived an induced labor abortion.

The article goes on to describe how Obama was the only Illinois State Senator to oppose the legislation, an opposition he explained by saying:

“Whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a—a child, a 9-month old—child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it—it would essentially bar abortions, because the Equal Protection Clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute.”

One thing I can respect about Obama is that he is at least intellectually consistent. He realizes that if it’s okay to kill a fetus in the womb, it must also be okay to kill that same fetus if it survives birth.

The problem with that consistency is where it takes you. It took Jill Stanek to a Soiled Utility Room where she cradled a living, breathing human child until it died.

Of course, that seems appalling, but as long as you define human life in terms of viability, or in terms of whether or not it is wanted, that’s where you end up.