Short Argument against Abortion

This is Dr. Groothuis again giving a short but effective and non-sectarian argument against abortion. This is where I don't understand how people throw personal responsibility aside when it comes to making sexual decisions.

Abortion is the intentional killing of a human fetus by chemical or surgical means. It should not be confused with miscarriage (which involves no human intention) or contraception (which uses various technologies to prohibit sperm and egg from meeting after sexual intercourse). Miscarriages are natural (if sad) occurrences, which raise no deep moral issues regarding human conduct-unless the woman was careless in her pregnancy. Contraception is officially opposed by Roman Catholics and some other Christians, but I take it to be in moral category entirely separate from abortion (since it does not involve the killing of a human fetus), so it will not be addressed here.

Rather than taking up the legal reasoning and history of abortion in America (especially concerning Roe vs. Wade), this essay makes a simple, straightforward moral argument against abortion. Sadly, real arguments (reasoned defenses of a thesis or claim) are too rarely made on this issue. Instead, propaganda is exchanged. Given that the Obama administration is the most pro-abortion administration in the history of the United States, some clear moral reasoning is called for at this time.

The first premise of the argument is that human beings have unique and incomparable value in the world. Christians and Jews believe this is the case because we are made in God's image and likeness. But anyone who holds that humans are special and worthy of unique moral consideration can grant this thesis (even if their worldview does not ultimately support it). Of course, those like Peter Singer who do not grant humans any special status will not be moved by this. We cannot help that. Many true and justified beliefs (concerning human beings and other matters) are denied by otherwise intelligent people.

Second, the burden of proof should always be on the one taking a human life and the benefit of doubt should always be given to the human life. This is not to say that human life should never be taken. In a fallen, cruel, and unfair world, sometimes life-taking is necessary, as most people will grant. Cases include self-defense, the prosecution of a just war, and capital punishment. Yet all unnecessary and intentional life-taking is murder, a deeply evil and repugnant offense against human beings. (This would also be acknowledged by those who believe it is never justifiable to take a human life.)

Third, abortion nearly always takes a human life intentionally and gratuitously and is, therefore, morally unjustified, deeply evil, and repugnant-given what we have said about human beings. No real argument can be brought against the claim that what creates a human pregnancy (a fetus) is a human being. Biologically, an entity joins its parents' species at conception. Like produces like: apes procreate apes, rabbits procreate rabbits, and humans procreate humans. If the fetus is not human, what else could it possibly be? Could it be an ape or a rabbit? Of course not.

Some philosophers, such as Mary Anne Warren, have tried to drive a wedge between personhood and humanity. That is, all persons are not human (such as God, angels, ETs-if they exist), and not all humans are persons (fetuses or those who lose certain functions after having possessed them). While it is true that there may be persons who are not humans, it does not therefore follow that not all humans are persons. The fetus as a person in progress, not a potential person or nonperson.

When we separate personhood from humanity, we make personhood an achievement based on the possession of certain qualities. But what are these person-constituting qualities? Some say a basic level of consciousness; some assert viability outside the womb; some say a sense of self interest. All of these criteria would take away humanity from those in comas or other physically compromised situations. Humans can lose levels of consciousness through injuries, and even infants are not viable without intense human support. Moreover, who are we to say just what qualities make for membership in the moral community of persons? The stakes are very high in this question. If we are wrong in our identification of what qualities are sufficient for personhood and we allow a person to be killed, we have allowed the wrongful killing of nothing less than a person. Therefore, I argue that the best ontology is to regard personhood as a substance or essence that is given at conception. Even if one is not sure when personhood kicks in, one should err on the side of being conservative simply because so much is at stake.

Many argue that outside considerations experienced by the mother should overrule the value of the human embryo. But these considerations always involve issues of lesser moral weight than the conservation and protection of a human life. An unwanted pregnancy is difficult, but the answer is not to kill a human being. Moreover, a baby can be put up for adoption. There are many others who do want the child and would give him or her great love and support.

The only exemption to giving priority to the life of the fetus would be if there were a real threat to the life of the mother were the pregnancy to continue. In this case, the fetus functions as a kind of intruder that threatens the woman's life. To abort the pregnancy would be tragic but allowable in this fallen and disoriented world awaiting its final redemption. Some mothers will nonetheless choose to continue the pregnancy to their own risk, but this is not morally required. It should be noted that these life-threatening situations are extremely rare.

This argument does not rely on any uniquely religious assumptions, although some religious people will find it compelling. I take it to be an item of natural law (what can be known about morality by virtue of being a human being) that human life has unique value. A case can be made against abortion by using the Bible (only the Old Testament or both the Old and New Testament combined) as the main moral source, but I have not given that argument here. Rather, this essay has given an argument on the basis of generally agreed upon moral principles. If it is to be refuted, one or more of those principles, or the reasoning used, needs to be refuted.

Although at the beginning of this essay, I claimed I would not take up the legal reasoning related to abortion, one simple point follows from my argument. In nearly every case, abortion should be illegal simply because the Constitution requires that innocent human life be protected from killing. Anti-abortion laws are not an intrusion of the state into the family any more than laws against murdering one's parents are intrusions into the family.

In Lust We Trust or In Lust We Bust

Unfortunately this image displayed above says a lot about our society today both within and outside the church. Lust is a stronghold that sees its way into most relationships as a normal course of action. Our cultures policy is everything is alright as long as I have permission from my significant other, or it doesn’t hurt someone, or it is just looking not touching. But just as our covetousness can get us into trouble when given an opportunity with material possessions so lust can get us into trouble with our physical and emotional relationships.

I have been married to my wife for almost seven years now and I have been getting progressively better about the way I deal with my affections for her and how my love for her and my marriage stems out of my affections for Christ and His bride. It is only through the redemptive matrix of the gospel that this stronghold can be overcome. God had changed my heart to only have “bedroom eyes” with one woman through transformation of the body, heart, and soul. I used to be an adulterer…now I am just an adult.

As I have been talking with people about this topic in the last few weeks, I have noticed that there’s been some interesting dialogue in our conversation about lust, and the discussion keeps returning to a common theme: what do we need to do to actually experience change? Let me share with you the real life example of a friend Bob.

Bob is happily married to a godly wife, he loves her, they have great sex, etc. The only problem is, Bob also finds himself attracted to another woman - a common friend they both know. He takes Matthew 5 seriously, he wants to stop feeling this way, he prays, he tries to overcome his desires, etc…but it just gets worse - to the point where he’s gone all the way in his mind.

I’m not making this up - this is real, this is the reality of sexual desire. And it’s strong. Now you tell me: what does Bob need to know or do to experience change in his heart? Where does the rubber really meet the road?

This may sound like a familiar problem to many of us. Most of us will not gouge out our eyes to prevent sinning. But this is serious business between a man and woman, a husband and a wife. What would you do? How would you handle your feelings? And now I get to tell you the rest of the story.

In the face of this pressure, my friend Bob did something crazy. He decided he loved his wife too much to keep deceiving her about what was going on inside. So he confessed - he told her about his desires for this other woman. He told her everything. He held nothing back. And her response was amazing.

She didn’t get angry. She didn’t lash out. She didn’t tell him never to speak to this woman again. She didn’t say ‘try harder’. She didn’t say that he better ‘fix it or else’…

Instead, she said, “Bob, I love you, I forgive you, and I am with you - you have to learn how to overcome these desires, and I am going to stand beside you and help you do that, because you are my husband, and I am committed to you.”

In other words, she didn’t say “I will love you because you are faithful, because you are sensitive, because you a good provider, a good leader, a good lover.” She didn’t say “I will love you because you get it right” (performance). Instead she said “I will love you because you are my husband (relationship). I will love you because of who you are.”

Wow. How would you like a wife like that? Can you imagine being a wife like that?

Listen, this is precisely how God deals with us in the gospel - he loves us, and is with us, because of who we are in Christ: sons, not slaves. If God’s favor is based on what Christ has already done, then nothing you can do - not your greatest triumph, not your worst defeat - nothing can change the way he feels about you.

He loves you because of who you are in Christ.

And recognizing that reality is tremendously liberating. It frees us from our bondage.

Bob told me, “You have no idea how this affected me! When my wife responded to me this way, my heart melted! I was guilty, and instead of the judgment and condemnation which I deserved, she loved me in spite of myself, she gave me grace!”

Real grace rightly seen decimates our desires for sin. When Bob saw clearly the nature and extent of his wife’s love for him (because of her commitment to him, not his own fidelity to her), it changed his heart, it tamed his lust. On a scale of 1-10, his desire for this other woman plummeted from an 8 or 9 down to a 1 or a 2.

Why? Because seeing his wife’s love for him rejuvenated his own love for her; recognizing why she loved him (relationship, not performance) changed the affections of his heart.

What I’m saying in all this is that we don’t conquer our lust merely by trying harder (although a heart set free by love most certainly will try hard) - rather, we conquer our lust by learning to love something better, by realizing how it is that Christ loves us. We conquer our lust by seeing the grace of the gospel.

On a side note, here are some other thoughts I wanted to share from my marriage and life/ministry experience:

1. Making love is neither what society constantly portrays it as nor what the enemy entices us to imagine that it is. We are made to think that sex, even with a spouse, is mostly about seeing someone nude, getting physical sensations, and fulfilling animalistic needs. But God made sex to be the deepest consummation of true love that there is. The marriage bed is where they can physically and spiritually consume each other in love, not lust.
2. When Satan tries to entice you with lust, he is attacking your marriage, either current or future. Many Christians who used to be into pornography or pre-marital sex will tell how on their wedding night, when they saw their wife or husband nude for the first time, they couldn’t get the mental images of all the naked people they had seen before out of their minds. It was like there was a harem that was pressing in on them while they wanted to be with just each other. For the unmarried person, exposure to lust and especially blatant pornography makes the wait for intimacy with that special someone much harder, since he has been exposed to sexual images. Trust me; marriage is not like a pornographic film. When the pizza man comes, you pay the bill. There is no corny music playing in the background and ninety eight percent of the women you encounter will never be doing the Cirque du Soleil acts that you see on the screen. This stuff messes up true intimacy in a marriage (and marriage is about intimacy and not sex).
3. Remember the example of Joseph from Genesis 39. When Potiphar’s wife presses in on him and starts to strip him of his clothes, he flees. He does not try to explain why this isn’t right. He doesn’t fall madly and deeply in love with her. He doesn’t use the grace of God as a license to sin and make up for it later. He runs away leaving the coat that he was wearing in her hands. When lust starts peaking its head around the corner at us and grabs us by the coattails, we should be looking more like an Olympic track star than trying to look like a Greek god who wants worship for himself/herself.
4. Modesty is an important measure for men and women. While there is nothing wrong with grooming ourselves and making ourselves presentable to the public (good hygiene is missional), there is a problem when it comes to the “flaunt it if you got it” mentality. You “got it” from your genes and I can’t recall one biblical example of “flaunting it” for the Kingdom. We all have a personal responsibility in keeping ourselves accountable to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ in the area of modesty.

Little Pharoahs

This is a blog post on The Journey Atlanta website from my friend Matt Burlew. I like it.

“Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good” (p 171, The Magicians Nephew, by C.S. Lewis)

“and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.” Revelation 1:5

Everybody has a little Pharaoh inside them, a hard little corner of the heart, that says I will not let my sin go. Everyone has a little Israelite that wants to go back to the slavery of sin even after God has rescued them from it.

In the Old Testament book of Exodus, we read how God allowed his people to be enslaved to the Egyptians so that he could rescue them and demonstrate his power. Pharaoh was worshiped as a god in Egypt and when Moses the Israelite showed up saying “the God of the slaves is bigger than you and all your Gods, and he says let the slaves go,” Pharaoh sneered and made them work harder. So God buried Egypt with plagues. He blanketed their cities with frogs, lice, flies, turned their drinking water to blood, blistered their skin, ruined their crops with hail, killed their livestock- each plague worse than the last. Between each one God sends Moses to Pharaoh to ask: “Had Enough?” And each time, little Pharaoh says, “I will not let the slaves go.” Finally God told Moses that He was going to send one final plague that would get Pharaoh’s attention and free His people forever: Death. The story of the final plague goes like this:

Exodus 12 - 21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. 23 For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. 24 You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25 And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26 And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. 28 Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. 29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said.

So God struck down the first born son in each Egyptian family and death passed over each house marked with the blood of the spotless lamb. Sound familiar? The holiday that Jesus was celebrating with his disciples that we know as The Last Supper was Passover. Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God, (1 Corinthians 5:7, 1 Peter 1:19) his blood is the blood that saves us from slavery to sin, eternal death in hell which is the furious and righteous wrath of God on stubborn sinners who like Pharaoh, refuse Him. John the Baptist sees Jesus walking towards him, and says “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29) Jesus blood on the cross takes away the wrath of God. Just as God struck down the first born of Egypt to free his people, so God struck down His own son to free his people once and for all. Christ said “It is Finished” and died. At that moment his blood was splashed onto the doorways of everyone who would believe in him and death in hell passed over us, and we were freed from slavery to sin.

So are we free?

A few miles out of Egypt, the Israelites, free after 400 years of being free labor and dying under the stones that built the pyramids of Egypt, wanted to go back. The Israelites, God’s people, after watching God wreck the most powerful nation on earth, and shove Pharaoh to his knees, stood around in the desert and said, “We miss exotic food. We want to go back.” They had freedom, but would rather have Ruth’s Chris steak. They were so mad they didn’t have good food out there in the desert that they wanted to go back and be slaves for it. Thats how cheap God’s people were willing to sell him out. That’s how blind we are to the power of sin in our lives.

Jesus gets betrayed by one of the guys in his church, sold out to the cops who beat him like they’re tenderizing a raw steak, drag him into two trials and finally get him convicted on a technicality because the judge is up for reelection. Sentenced to death, Jesus has to carry what amounts to a telephone pole down main street and up a hill, he nearly passing out from the blood loss of being whipped, while the locals trash talk and spit on him. When he gets to the top of the hill outside town, they drill him with lag bolts to literally attach what’s left of his body to the pole and stand it up, leaving him to sweat himself dry, bleed out, and suffocate slowly to death in the sun. And he looks down from that cross at each one of us and says “You are free. I do this for you.”

But here’s the problem: each of us in our hearts has a little Pharaoh who says “I won’t let go of my sin.” Each of us has a little Israelite who says, I want to go back and be a slave to sin because it’s so much fun. The Israelites wanted to go back to Egypt and be slaves for pizza and beer. We want to go back to our porn, our drugs, our laziness, our wasted time, our gossip, our secrets, our greed, our mountains of fast food and our intellect that says we’re smarter than God and we know what’s good for us. We won’t be told what to do. We will argue, whine, disagree, and tell God firmly on our terms that we like being slaves, that we would rather destroy our lives. Thanks. We don’t care if he butchered and crushed his own son so we didn’t have to be slaves to the sinful stupidity that degrades and destroys us, Sin that wrecks families, marriages, communities, relationships and cultures. We’d rather kill ourselves, and kill each other than ever obey the crucified creator of everything around us. And every sin we run to commit, is a sin Christ had to die for. We pile it up on him. On the cross, Christ became a drug addict, a molester, a murderer, a pickpocket, a stalker, a porn addict, a pervert, a tax evader, lazy, a glutton, a racist, a liar. He became a pimp, a prostitute, a serial killer, a traitor, a coward, and a religious guy.

The beating to death that God took was so sin would not beat us to death. Because if you sin, you die. Thats what Romans 6:23 says “The wages of sin is death.” In Adam, all die. Our first father, Adam, sinned, and so everyone who sins, dies. Christ, the second Adam, lived a sinless life, passed the temptation test that Adam failed, yet took the punishment for sin. In this exchange, he overcame the curse of death for sin. He took our sin and gives us, who believe, his perfect life. Putting it simply, Christ is the only thing that stands between every one of us and the eternal, furious, and righteous wrath of God. For those who believe, when we die, we will stand before God and Jesus will say “He’s with me. She is with me.”

Obama is now Telebama

In this post from one of my seminary professors, Dr. Groothuis, on his blog, The Constructive Curmudgeon, he comments on this article from the Washington Times. I find it funny as well that this man who has been praised as being blessed with being such a great communicator can't string a sentence together without electronic help. This does not make him a bad president. It is just funny.

Obama's unheard of reliance on teleprompters is noted in this editorial from The Washington Times. While it is no laughing matter, no TV comedians are spoofing it, which they should. It is passing strange: a law professor who cannot think on his feet--and who is the most powerful man in the world. Using a teleprompter during a press conference is akin to me using one while I am engaged in a live debate or while answering questions in a class I'm teaching.

Contend or Contextualize

This article by Hunter Beaumont really captures what I believe is one of the important dichotomies facing the church today when we examine the excuses for why churches do things the way the do (we have always done it that way). Here is the truth however, we don't do church just for us, we do church for those who need to hear the gospel (that is if we are wanting to follow the Great Commission).

When we watch the New Testament church at work, we see that there were two impulses. One was to preserve, maintain, and protect the gospel message. "Guard the good deposit entrusted to you," Paul urged Timothy (2 Tim. 1:14). "I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints," pled Jude (Jude 1:3).
The Two Impulses

But preserving the faith was not the mission itself; advancing it was. The same Paul who wrote of maintaining traditions and guarding the deposit was, on other points, extremely flexible. When the essence of the gospel was at stake, he argued fiercely against circumcision (Gal. 2:3-5). But when gaining a hearing for the gospel was at stake, he quickly circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:1-3). "I have become all things to all things to all people that by all means I might save some," wrote Paul at his amenable best (1 Cor. 9:22).

We call these two impulses contending and contextualizing. One is conservative—contend, fight, preserve! The other is progressive—adapt, create, advance! Good missionaries keep both hands on the wheel and always know where the ditches are.
Under-contending/Over-contextualizing

In modernity, the chief cultural sin was to insist on anything supernatural. Eager for acceptance, many preachers whittled away Christianity's sharp edges, giving ground on the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, and the historical resurrection. This was necessary, they insisted, to win over our "cultured despisers.

But in postmodernity, the cultural scorn has shifted. The supernatural is plausible again, but exclusivity and assertiveness are now taboo. The quickest way to ruffle skirts in our pluralist world is to come off rigid or narrow. So the new breed of preachers is tempted to lop off anything that sounds too exclusive—the Bible as universal truth, Jesus as the one mediator between God and man, and God's judgment, along with its remedy, penal substitutionary atonement. This is where our generation must contend or perish.

Advance 09

I am so stoked about this conference and I hope I am going to be able to go but if not I hope that many others are and take the fire back to their churches.

New Baptist Covenant in Birmingham, AL

Here is an excerpt of some of the events that occurred at the New Baptist Covenant meeting in Birmingham, AL from January 31st:

On January 31, 2009 more than a thousand people crowded the sanctuary of the historic 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham for a New Baptist Covenant regional meeting.

Highlights of the event included work sessions on the Luke 4 mandate, as well as messages from President Jimmy Carter, Marian Wright Edelman, and Wayne Snodgrass.

The meeting was co-chaired by Gary Furr, pastor of Vestavia Hills Baptist Church and Arthur Price, pastor at 16th Street Baptist Church. Brent McDougal of the Alabama Cooperative Baptist Fellowship served as the event's coordinator.

These meetings were held at the 16th Street Baptist Church which is right across the street from the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham. I got an opportunity to look around both and their legacies in helping to promote the cause of racial justice in the South.

As for the meetings, they were focused primarily on social justice issues: poverty, universal health care, racism, etc. There was very little theological interaction. There was also very little conservative participation (which has been one of the criticisms from the beginning).

Some logistical issues that ensued were getting people in and out of the 16th Street Baptist church to listen to President Carter and the other guests. The seating was limited as was the parking. I think they may have misunderstood the number of people who wanted to participate in these events.