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Christianity Today, May, 2007 |

Foolish Things

Don't Cede the High Ground

Our abortion views don't rest on sociological data.

Stan Guthrie | posted 4/25/2007 09:05AM

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We cannot cede the spiritual high ground. There can be no repentance without knowledge of sin. We cannot lose our moral compass in a mountain of sociological data. We cannot lose our faith in the power of God's Spirit not only to convert people, but also to take captive their materialistic ways of thinking. Prophets may be ignored, but they should never lose their voice—or their nerve. Can you imagine Martin Luther King Jr. proclaiming, "I have a statistic"?

Related Elsewhere:

Stan Guthrie's other columns are available on our site. He also keeps a blog at StanGuthrie.com.

Recent articles in our Life Ethics section include:

Total Victory on Partial-Birth Abortion | Prolife leaders applaud Supreme Court's first regulation on an abortion procedure. (April 19, 2007)

Abortion Overreach | Today's Supreme Court decision again shows that the all-or-nothing strategy is not the way to go. A Christianity Today editorial (April 18, 2007)

U.K.'s Solution to Multiple Problems: One at a Time | Britain may tighten IVF laws to prevent multiple pregnancies. (April 12, 2007)

The Slope Really Is Slippery | Why we struggle to gain our moral footing in bioethics. A Christianity Today editorial (March 1, 2007)

"Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?" appeared in the New York Times Magazine.

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May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5

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Phil	Posted: May 05, 2007 9:07 AM

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

Posted: April 30, 2007 6:10 PM

"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	Posted: April 30, 2007 12:15 PM

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.

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