Sanctity of Life

-Sanctity of life Sunday

–Article from Themelios journal “Going Deeper” by pastor Daniel Strange

-“It’s been said that the main issue in the first millennium was, ‘Who is Jesus Christ?’ In the second millennium the question became, ‘How are we saved?’ And now as we are into the third millennium, the question is and will continue be, ‘What is a human being?’ The seismic implications of this individually, culturally and politically—even while still recognising a Christian ‘afterglow’—cannot be underestimated. We are all feeling these implications in various ways, given the presenting issues surrounding sexuality, gender, transhumanism, embodiment, and the underlying worldviews and of the focus on the self; expressive individualism; social construction; or just what we call human identity.”

-This issue is even manifested in the abortion conversation, because if an embryo isn’t a human, then it doesn’t matter how it’s treated. But, if an embryo is a human than it matters GREATLY how they are treated! 

-I also want to mention that I realize this can be an emotionally heavy issue for some of you – so if you have had an abortion, trust in God’s steadfast love, grace, and mercy toward you. You cannot out-sin the grace of God!

READ/PRAY (Gen. 1:26-31) pg. 1

1. What is a human?

-All sorts of different proposals to this question! Seems obvious, but it takes a lot thought to ensure we’re being accurate because it must include all humans. It also must entail the idea that humans are created in God’s very image. 

-Millard Erickson, Gregg Allison, Wayne Grudem 

-Created: which means we didn’t pop out of nowhere. It also means we’re a part of the creation. Doesn’t over-elevate, doesn’t under elevate. 

-Purpose: image God (represent) as well as a task: “fill the earth and subdue it”

-Relational: male and female he created them.

-What does it mean to be created in the image of God?

-Our culture is even debating this! Are we gendered beings? What about my attractions? What about my desires? Watch this video from 2015 where Bill Gates tries to get at a definition. (social -> passing of knowledge, essentially enlightened animals, assuming the passing of knowledge makes us better and better)

-And who gets to define these things? I’ve talked before about our hyper-individualistic culture today, where each person gets to define their own identity. You can trace these ideas back to the Enlightenment, which (I think) culminated in Frederick Nietzsche (philosopher) saying “God is dead, we have killed Him.” The enlightenment tried to make everything an intellectual pursuit, so the way the Western world has answered this question since then is summarized in another famous philosophical statement from Renes Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” Since the 16^th Century, the predominant belief has been we are merely thinking beings. All issues require better thinking to tackle, leading to people starting to think they could out-think God. This leads to hyper-individualism because we just have to think. You can also see this in the Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” Is it?

-Leads to bodies being evil, leads to treating less intelligent as inferior, it cannot provide the whole answer to what a human is.

-The best way I’ve come to define this topic can be written as a math problem: human = image of God. If you are a human, you are created in the image of God because as soon as you start defining beyond that you start to leave people out. Ridiculous: 2 legs so if I get cancer and they cut off a leg I’m no longer a human. Thinking: what about someone who is intellectually handicapped, are they any less in the image of God?

-Structural is what we’ve just been looking at. We can’t help but be created in the image of God. It’s stamped on every single one of us from the moment of conception. 

-Functional. This is related to the representative nature. How do we represent God on earth?

-Prophet (authority), priest (presence), king (control) (John Frame – Systematic Theology)

-This description is often used to summarize Jesus’ ministry, and all 3 roles in the OT were vital to the flourishing of God’s people. Prophets spoke God’s Words to his people reminding them to obey Him, priests acted as mediators between God and humans to help address the relational divide, kings ruled in a way that allowed the people to more faithfully follow God on earth. We now, as Jesus’ body, have the same job/goal.

-Relational God created us to be in perfect relationship with Him and with others

-Summary: We are called into a relationship (relational) that entails a role (functional) that we are uniquely designed (structural) to do.

-Begins with God calling. All of this centers around God, we always need to be growing in understanding of who He is.

• When is a human created?

–The Developing Human 11^th ed. “Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell (capable of giving rise to any cell type) marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”

-This is the primary question at the root of abortion. If a fetus is a human (which I’ll argue that it is), then abortion is murder. If abortion is murder, then we should outlaw it.

-What does the Bible say? You won’t find a verse that says “life begins at conception” nor will you find a verse that says “abortion is wrong.” This is using theology to form morals and ethics to then determine how we engage this issue.

-A few key texts, besides Genesis:

–Psalm 51:5. Psalms are poetic in nature, so we don’t want to stretch them beyond their context, but they still contain truthful statements. If from the point of conception David can consider himself a sinner, that means he is a human at that moment. 

–Psalm 127:3 Children are a gift and a joy. Children is the very means God chose to bring salvation into the world! God’s promises center around children.

–Exodus 21:22–25 In the midst of the laws, God commands what should be done if a child is killed even by an accident. If she gives birth and the baby is healthy there’s a small fine, if the baby dies then life is demanded.

–Luke 1:39-45 One from the NT that I talked about last month, so I won’t go much further with it, but remember this is a (in medical terms today) fetus responding to a zygote. Mary is VERY early in her pregnancy.

–Gen. 9:6 The last verse connects back to Exodus, and we looked at it during my message on politics, but I thought it was worth bringing up today as well. God says the consequence for murder is loss of life. There is something unique about murder that elevates it to a different level of seriousness, and even our world today feels that. There are some crimes that bring this overwhelming sense that the only justified consequence if capital punishment. 

-One of the arguments sometimes used against this argument is that Jesus didn’t say anything about it (which it pitting Jesus’ words against God’s words which is a mistake), because it was a settled issue. There wasn’t any debate!

-Human life begins at conception, if you boil any other argument down to it’s essence it becomes purely arbitrary. 

-Trimester was invented as part of Roe vs. Wade to allow a discussion to be made about where and when the government can legislate abortion.

-Breathing? I remember when I was younger hearing Bill Clinton talk about life beginning the moment a baby takes a breath. Did you know that before a baby is born they breathe through their umbilical cord? Or that even after a baby is born it can take a couple minutes for them to take their first breath? Does that mean that they aren’t humans even though they’re being held and living outside the womb?

-Born vs. unborn? Does a journey of 8” really make a difference in whether we would consider them a child? Why do they have to be outside of the womb in order for us to care for them?

-Desire? Have you noticed that when someone talks about wanting a baby they refer to the child as a baby, but if they baby isn’t wanted they become a fetus or clump of cells? Why does someone else’s desire get to play a role in whether or not someone is a person? 

-When they feel pain? Did you know that infants weren’t sedated for surgeries until the 1980s? It was believed that even after birth they couldn’t feel pain. And many studies today have shown that as early as 15 weeks of gestation babies can start to feel pain. But again, why does that determine whether or not they’re a human? I’ve read about people whose bodies don’t produce the right neurological pathways for them to feel pain. Think of leprosy! Does that make them less of a human? 

-Viability? Another arbitrary marker! Think of someone with diabetes. They would die without insulin meaning they’re not fully viable. Does that mean they’re less human? And even the time of viability keeps getting moved earlier and earlier depending on technological advances. There was a baby born at 21 weeks 1 day who survived. Only halfway cooked!

-We have SO much more information now than we did in 1973! Ultrasounds have been game changers. We can see literal pictures of the babies developing.

-That has to become one of our primary arguments. Follow the science! These aren’t clumps of cells, they’re humans who are worth of all the same dignity as you or I.

• How do we articulate our views?

-All sorts of arguments put forth! Do the toddler test. If the unborn are humans (they are), then we need to treat them the same as any other human (or just use a toddler)

-Always, always, always bring it back to whether or not they’re human! Anything else is just a distraction.

-A book I found helpful this week ‘The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture’ summarized our argument this way: 

-In high school I spent 2 weeks at a worldview training camp in CO that had a few sections on abortion that have stuck with me since then (obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t remember them!) But I remember being told that you can condense the differences between a child in the womb to a child outside the womb by using the acronym SLED:

Size – if someone is taller/bigger than me are they more human?

Level of Development – are any of my children any less human than me?

Environment – does a journey of 8” make a human?

Degree of dependence – I had surgery this past year, I couldn’t even drive! Was I less human during that time? 

-These are all the differences between a child outside the womb and one inside the womb. The difference is that one can be killed without consequence.

-There are all sorts of popular arguments that claim to be pro-life killers. Let’s walk through a couple of them. 

-The violinist? Judith Jarvis Thomas 1971 essay “A Defense of Abortion”

“You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist, a famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own.

The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then, he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.”

Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or still longer? What if the director of the hospital says, Tough luck, I agree, but you’ve now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because, remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.”

I imagine that you would regard this as outrageous”

-Spontaneous pregnancies aren’t a thing. The child was created inside you by choices you made. You can’t just wake up without participating in an activity of which pregnancy is a possibility. All actions have consequences.

-It’s one thing to withhold support, it’s another to kill someone. Abortion isn’t an unintentional death, it’s purposely killing someone. Think of it like this: if you come home and find a stranger in your home who would die if you don’t take care of him, are you thus allowed to just throw him off a cliff? No! One person argued that calling abortion withholding of support is like suffocating someone with a pillow and calling it the withdrawal of oxygen.

-Why should anyone accept that a mother has no more obligation to a stranger than her child? What if it were your 2-year-old hooked up to you?

-Lastly, the child isn’t parasitic. They’re exactly where they’re supposed to be for their age and stage of life.

-Latest twitter argument from Patrick Tomlinson (sci-fi writer)

“You’re in a fertility clinic. Why isn’t important. The fire alarm goes off. You run for the exit. As you run down this hallway, you hear a child screaming from behind a door. You throw open the door and find a 5-year-old child crying for help. They’re in one corner of the room. In the other corner, you spot a frozen container labeled, ‘1,000 Viable Human Embryos.’ The smoke is rising. You start to choke. You know you can grab one or the other but not both before you succumb to smoke inhalation and die — saving no one. Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos? There is no C. ‘C’ means you all die.” In a decade of arguing with anti-abortion people about the definition of human life, I have never gotten a single straight A or B answer to this question. And I never will. They will never answer honestly, because we all instinctively understand the right answer is “A.” A human child is worth more than a thousand embryos. Or ten thousand. Or a million. Because they are not the same, not morally, not ethically, not biologically. This question absolutely evicerates their arguments, and their refusal to answer confirms that they know it to be true. No one, anywhere, actually believes an embryo is equivalent to a child. That person does not exist. They are lying to you. They are lying to you to try and evoke an emotional response, a paternal response, using false-equivalency. No one believes life begins at conception. No one believes embryos are babies, or children. Those who cliam to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women.

-Abortion isn’t about who we can save, it’s about whether or not we can kill someone. This is even worse than the violinist argument for correlating to the issue of abortion.

-Just because you save 1 doesn’t mean the others aren’t human. There are other moral judgments you’ll bring into this conversation. What if I’m given the choice of saving a family of strangers or my child? Guess who I’ll have a stronger pull towards. My child! In this example, 1 of the children will experience a different level of pain than the others, but that doesn’t make them any less children! In fact, some studies have worked to figure out human moral instincts, and if asked to choose between a human or a dog the answer is obvious until it’s your pet! There’s increasing levels of commitment from family out to strangers. Galatians has a great example of this: do good to all, but especially the household of faith.

-It still doesn’t answer the primary question: is the fetus a human? If the embryo is a human than we should do our best to treat them with the same dignity, honor, and respect as any other human.

-Controlling women isn’t the goal, but caring about humans is. The child inside a woman should have the same level of right as any other human who exists outside the womb. That has been the consistent belief of the church for 2,000 years, and will remain the belief of the church until Jesus returns.

-This is just 1 aspect of the sanctity of life! I understand that! But I haven’t preached a sermon on abortion yet, and I can’t cover everything in any sermon. We should also care about the lives of the immigrant, the homeless, the orphan, the widow, and any human being that we come into contact with. We do have the responsibility to treat any human we encounter with dignity, including the unborn.

-Just because you may be stumped by some of the arguments, don’t put your head in the sand and refuse to study/learn or engage this issue. Read a book! The next one I’m going to read on the sanctity of life has to do with incarceration reform.

-Pray, look for opportunities to serve, go tour Amnion sometime, and trust that God will give you the strength to engage when the time comes. You don’t need to do everything! Some of you will feel a strong pull towards helping a local crisis pregnancy center – praise God! We need people who have that burden in their lives, but don’t look down on others who don’t have that same call. I think our EFCA SOF summarizes our call well: “God commands us to love Him supremely and others sacrificially, and to live out our faith with care for one another, compassion toward the poor and justice for the oppressed.”