Foolish Things
Don't Cede the High Ground
One of the things I loved about Seinfeld was how it poked holes in our society's moral shallowness. During one episode, George Costanza's boss, Mr. Lippman, summons him.
Lippman: It's come to my attention that you and the cleaning woman have engaged in sexual intercourse on the desk in your office. Is that correct?
George: Who said that?
Lippman: She did.
George: [pause] Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing is frowned upon … you know, cause I've worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time.
Lippman: You're fired!
Like George, many people today exhibit moral blindness. Take, for example, the recent article by Emily Bazelon in The New York Times Magazine, "Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?" At the outset, Bazelon writes that "the scientific evidence strongly shows that abortion does not increase the risk of depression, drug abuse, or any other psychological problem any more than having an unwanted pregnancy or giving birth." Those pro-lifers who come alongside women misled or bullied into an abortion are caricatured as wild-eyed, intellectually dishonest (or ignorant) fanatics working out their own issues.
Then Bazelon describes how certain leaders of the "anti-abortion movement" have pragmatically chosen to focus on the women who have abortions anyway:
If the activists have a Moses, it is David Reardon, whose 1996 book, Making Abortion Rare, laid out the argument that abortion harms women and that this should be a weapon in the anti-abortion arsenal. "We must change the abortion debate so that we are arguing with our opponents on their own turf, ...
This article is currently available to CT subscribers only.
To continue reading:
or
Foolish Things
Stan Guthrie
Stan Guthrie is an editor at large for Christianity Today and author of Missions in the Third Millennium and All That Jesus Asks. His column, "Foolish Things," ran from 2006 to 2007.
- Missionary Myths
- Ancient Parable, Urgent Time
- We're Not Finished
- Why Evangelize the Jews?
- A Hole in Our Holism
A Fractured and Beautiful Faith
Streaming This Weekend, May 24, 2013
(on articles open to the public, you must at least register for a free account).
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Newsletters
Google
Comments
Displaying 1–3 of 29 comments
See all comments
Phil
Sin doesn't please God. However Jesus did NOT focus on people's sin. He focused on introducing them to a loving relationship with God. That eventually lead to people choosing to change their actions in response to God's love. You will never change someone's actions first (legislatively or through guilt), and then somehow lead them to God afterwards. That's the tail wagging the dog. If you knew God you would know that he takes no pleasure in good outward action without the right relationship with him. That's right...no pleasure. If he did, he would have made robots, or better yet would have never allowed sin into the world. This article has almost no value to the believer or unbeliever but to stir up anger between Christians and non-Christians. The author of this article has completely missed the message of the gospel and is falling into the trap of current day cultural-christian tendencies. This is not the message of Jesus. Think about it.
No revisionist history
"Searcher of God's Will" should accurately quote the verse s/he relies on. I looked up Ex. 21:22-24 on all 18 English-lang. translations on Bible Gateway (and a couple of others on bible.com) and NONE of the versions includes the langauge s/he purports to quote (claiming that a man who injures an unborn or prematurely born child must give life for a life). Most versions don't specify whether the punishable harm was to the woman or the child. Of the few that specify, such as the (new) Contemporary English version, and the (old) Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition, both state the punishment is for injury to the woman, NOT the child. Some versions refer to "miscaries" or "miscarriage." This traditional reading fits into the brutal context of the chapter, which explicitly condones slavery (even selling one's own daughter) and treats women as property. Any attempt to impose late 20th c. warm/fuzzy feelings about the unborn into this text is pure revisionist "history."
Joy
People who choose abortion have not killed my baby but their own. Comparably, if someone robs from or kills a person who is a stranger to me, I have suffered no loss, the perpetrator owes me no debt and so I have nothing to personally forgive. However I expect my government to hold those people accountable who hurt an innocent person. Having a legal system is not a foreign idea in the Bible: "The governing authority is God's servant, to bring punishment on the wrongdoer"Rom 13:4. God established governments to maintain order in society, but God is not powerless to bring about consequences for a government's licentiousness: "Can a government that brings misery by its decrees and condemns the innocent to death be allied with God? ...God will repay them for their sins and destroy them" Ps. 94:20-23. In a democracy, if we are complacent about immoral laws, we share in the guilt. You can make rules, guide, help, punish, share consequences AND forgive - I do it with my children all the time.