{"id":302,"date":"2014-01-26T14:19:26","date_gmt":"2014-01-26T14:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/?p=302"},"modified":"2014-01-26T14:33:36","modified_gmt":"2014-01-26T14:33:36","slug":"excerpt-from-a-simple-sermon-on-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/archives\/302","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt from a simple sermon on abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

My own thoughts on abortion are unorganized. My tongue blunders. I could not write anything very stirring\/good on the topic. So, I posted this sermon I unearthed by following a link on the baylyblog. I thought it addressed the issue really well. Please read:<\/em><\/p>\n

excerpt from\u00a0http:\/\/merecomments.typepad.com\/merecomments\/2009\/07\/a-simple-sermon-on-abortion.html {by Hunter Baker}<\/h2>\n

“The sanctity of life is an acid test for the Christian church.\u00a0 What is an acid test?\u00a0 One way the acid test was used was to distinguish real precious metals from fake ones.\u00a0 Take something that looks like gold and drip nitric acid on it.\u00a0 If it holds up and is not degraded by the acid, the gold is real.\u00a0 Our approach to the sanctity of life determines how we hold up to the acid test.\u00a0 We will find out whether our faith is real as we deal with a culture that denigrates unborn life, especially imperfect life.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Before I get too deep into this issue, I want to pause for a moment to acknowledge that people in our congregation have likely \u00a0been touched by abortion.\u00a0 When there have been over 40 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, the consequences touch many of us.\u00a0 To any who fall into that category, I just want to say that my sympathy is with you, not against you.\u00a0 All have sinned and our hope is in Christ.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a moment to consider a couple of references from the Bible on unborn life.\u00a0 Consider Jeremiah 1:5 where the Lord says to Jeremiah:<\/span><\/p>\n

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

And then Psalm 139: 13-16:<\/p>\n

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother\u2019s womb.\u00a0 I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.\u00a0 Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.\u00a0 My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.\u00a0 Your eyes saw my unformed substance . . .<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

It seems to me that one can infer from these passages that God knows human beings from the moment of our conception or even before.\u00a0 This means that the unborn child is a person, not a mass of tissue, not a collection of parts waiting to be switched on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

People have often focused on dividing lines like when we first draw breath, because our understanding of the unborn child has been so poor throughout human history.\u00a0 We did not understand that the unborn child does breathe in a sense.\u00a0 The child simply receives oxygen from the mother.\u00a0 Another line that received attention, sometimes in the law, was the \u201canimate\u201d status of the fetus.\u00a0 People argued that the child in the womb was not really alive until its movement could be detected by the mother or by someone placing a hand on her stomach.\u00a0 Of course, now we know that the child is moving long before the mother or anyone else can feel it.\u00a0 The ultrasound has unlocked the mysteries of the womb.<\/span><\/p>\n

I will never forget when Ruth was pregnant with Andrew.\u00a0 She was in private practice and had access to an ultrasound machine.\u00a0 I would come over to the office after work to meet her for dinner and would find her in the ultrasound room lying on her back or side moving the sensor over her stomach and watching Andrew moving about and listening to his little heart beat.\u00a0 Sometimes, she was excited and eager to tell me what she could see.\u00a0 Other times, she was simply entranced, transported by the show her little man was putting on for her.\u00a0 This was even in the very early stages of the pregnancy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What I\u2019m trying to say is that Andrew was alive.\u00a0 He lived inside his mother\u2019s womb.\u00a0 His life didn\u2019t begin when he was born and people sucked out his nose and started sticking needles in him.\u00a0 His life began in the womb.\u00a0 And as all of you parents out there know, he was not much less dependent on her when he came out than when he was in.\u00a0 In fact, during the late stages of pregnancy Ruth pointed out to me that Andrew would never be easier to care for than he was at that moment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the sake of argument, let\u2019s concede that Andrew was conceived and born into an ideal situation.\u00a0 He had two well-educated parents with good careers ahead of them.\u00a0 Both of us were committed to loving him.\u00a0 But what if he hadn\u2019t been?\u00a0 What if his mother had been 15 years old and the father had been absent or unable to take on any responsibility?\u00a0 Andrew would still have been a living baby inside of that fifteen year old.\u00a0 He would still have been a person created and known by God.\u00a0 Just because his circumstances would have been substantially less favorable, does that mean it would have been okay to kill him?\u00a0 Because that is what we are saying when we support the idea of legalized abortion.\u00a0 We are saying it is okay to kill a child who is alive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Someone out there says that\u2019s just my opinion or that\u2019s just a religious point of view.\u00a0 No, it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Pick up an embryology textbook.\u00a0 Read about the life of the embryo and the fetus.\u00a0 Accept the testimony of someone who has spent the time, as we had the rare privilege to do, watching a child develop in the womb.\u00a0 The real life of a fetus is about as hard a scientific fact as you will find.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m thankful for the birth and development of the fields of embryology and fetology.\u00a0 We have finally reached the place where it has become ridiculous to refer to the unborn child as a \u201cmass of tissue\u201d or to compare the unwanted child to a tumor.\u00a0 That time is over.\u00a0 Some years ago, I was grateful for the honesty of the feminist Naomi Wolf, who called for an end to the charade.\u00a0 Despite her support for abortion, she felt it harmed women to act as though abortion did not mean killing an unborn child.\u00a0 The fact could no longer be resisted.\u00a0 Better to acknowledge it and simply argue abortion is still a needed right for women.\u00a0 What she did not say is that if you follow her logic, it means a person who is larger and in control of a smaller, dependent person has the right to end the dependent person\u2019s life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wolf\u2019s honesty has not carried the day, though.\u00a0 The pro-choice movement sometimes shows disturbing similarities to totalitarian movements of the last century.\u00a0 Just as the Germans who ran the concentration camps had to learn to speak in such a way as to shield their consciences from the horror of what they were doing, people who work in abortion clinics watch their words very carefully.\u00a0 You don\u2019t speak the truth because the truth is unspeakable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

. . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, you can\u2019t get away from the truth even if you try.\u00a0 When I was in Georgia working in public policy, I was invited to attend an event at the capitol where women who had had abortions told their stories.\u00a0 It was an intense afternoon.\u00a0 Many women spoke, but one has stayed with me since that time.\u00a0 Speaking through her tears, a young African-American woman talked about her abortion.\u00a0 Her unborn son sometimes visited her in her dreams to ask her why she let him be killed.\u00a0 I have rarely had such strong sympathy for another human being as I had for her that day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Listening to her and other women who have had abortions, I have heard them express their feeling of betrayal that this was an option for them.\u00a0 At first, this may sound like an attempt to divert moral responsibility, but I think they are right.\u00a0 When women choose abortion, they are usually confused and in distress.\u00a0 Is it really that surprising that they sometimes feel they\u2019ve been let down by their families, friends, and their community even as they struggle with their guilt?\u00a0 After all, the result of our collective wisdom as a society is that this was a reasonable choice for them to make.<\/span><\/p>\n

. . . .<\/p>\n

I will conclude by noting the emergence of a disturbing trend in American life.\u00a0 Today, because we know so much more about the unborn child than ever before, we can learn things like whether the child has a possibility of having Down Syndrome or other genetic problems.\u00a0 Would it shock you to hear that in situations where doctors tell patients their child might have Down Syndrome when they are born, nearly 90% arrange an abortion?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

. . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Twenty years from now, there may be almost no people with Down Syndrome visible to us in our communities.\u00a0 There will be no children with Down Syndrome just as there are no children with polio.\u00a0 But the troubling difference is this.\u00a0 We cured polio.\u00a0 We have simply killed Down Syndrome.<\/span><\/p>\n

We do it through doctors and genetic counseling and private decisions, but the basic logic of it is no different than that of the Third Reich.<\/span>\u00a0 Imperfect life is not worth preserving.\u00a0 In the case of Nazi Germany, the government arranged for sterilization, abortion, and euthanasia to get rid of what they called \u201clife without value.\u201d\u00a0 What you may not know is that the Nazi\u2019s were not the only enthusiasts for eugenics.\u00a0 It was popular all over the world.\u00a0 American states had pro-eugenics laws on the books.\u00a0 But after World War II, the nations recoiled at the culture of death in Nazi Germany.\u00a0 The U.N. rushed to proclaim the need for the respect for life born and unborn.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the time of moral outrage has subsided.\u00a0 We have forgotten how far we are capable of falling.\u00a0 So, today, individuals make the choice to rid the world of the Down Syndrome child rather than a government.\u00a0 Has it become any more praiseworthy?<\/span><\/p>\n

This idea doesn\u2019t apply only to abortion.\u00a0<\/span> It comes up every time you face something that interferes with your plans for yourself and every time you face some kind of moral gut check or an acid test, if you will.\u00a0 What are you made of?\u00a0 Is there some real gold there or are you masquerading as the real thing?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The nature of most people is to want to flee when they find themselves in difficulty.\u00a0 And so, the girl in trouble seeks an abortion.\u00a0 The investment manager begins to engage in fraud to cover mistakes and poor judgments.\u00a0 An executive participates in inflating the value of assets to make his firm\u2019s bad stock look good.\u00a0 I was reading about Bernie Madoff the other day.\u00a0 When he was caught by investigators who discovered his fraud, he simply said, \u201cI always knew this day would come.\u201d\u00a0 But of course, he failed the acid test.\u00a0 He never confronted the problem when he could have done some good.\u00a0 He hoped against hope that his failure would remain hidden.\u00a0 The result was that his clients, who thought they had the real thing, were left with fool\u2019s gold.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let us be the kind of people who pass these tests when we are tried.\u00a0 Let us support our friends and neighbors when their trials come.\u00a0 Let us be a witness to God\u2019s love for human beings born and unborn.\u00a0 Let us<\/span>\u00a0pass the acid test.<\/p>\n

Farewell, farewell.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My own thoughts on abortion are unorganized. My tongue blunders. I could not write anything very stirring\/good on the topic. So, I posted this sermon I unearthed by following a link on the baylyblog. I thought it addressed the issue really well. Please read: excerpt from\u00a0http:\/\/merecomments.typepad.com\/merecomments\/2009\/07\/a-simple-sermon-on-abortion.html {by Hunter Baker} “The sanctity of life is an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,47,50,51,48,49],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortion","tag-issues","tag-notmywords","tag-secondary-source","tag-sermon","tag-wise"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WcVY-4S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasmusen.org\/special\/ameliajane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}