“I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” John 5:30
The culture wars have claimed another victim.
I find it very difficult to understand how someone can call themselves a Christian and use that position to justify murder. It is hard enough for me to understand how nations that call themselves Christian can start wars. When an individual takes a gun, points it at another human being, and pulls the trigger, they are not doing God’s will.
It does not matter what the circumstances are.
It does not matter what the person has done.
There are no exception clauses to “thou shalt not kill”.
The nonviolence of the early Christian Church was legendary and ultimately so impressed the Romans that they stopped killing Christians and converted to Christianity themselves.
Jesus came to earth to share a new gospel of love. He came to deepen the understanding of those who saw God as capricious and vengeful. Jesus told us that God is a tender Father, a shepherd, and our guardian.
Those who seek to violently act in His name, are taking His name in vain. They are underestimating God’s power and completely missing His message. They are assuming that because they see sin in the world, that somehow God needs their help.
God doesn’t need their help.
God not only doesn’t ask us to be executioners, He doesn’t even want us to be judges.
He asks us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. He asks us to be peacemakers. He asks us to turn the other cheek and walk with those with whom we disagree until at least we understand them.
Those who demonize their opposition suffer from self-righteousness. They will find out soon enough that God loves everyone, and the simple sinner who humbly repents will find himself closer to God than the righteous man who condemns the unrighteous.
God reserves judgment to Himself and those who seek to usurp that role will discover soon enough how wrong they were.
Jeff,
NO ONE should kill another as the guy did to the Doctor in this case. NO ONE. It is murder and wrong. From the stand point of your writing I agree with your commentary on this act of murder.
However, I still stand amazed that you can defend abortion, with many posts, to the tune 45 million of them dead babies. It too is murder……just as blatent as the murder of the doctor that we both agree is very wrong.
I will tell you that I can understand the murder of the doctor more then I can understand the murder of the unborn. Someone only contemplate the murder of 45,000,000 or more babies and it’s understandable how a fanatic goes wrong and acts as this guy did. I will restate he is WRONG and murder for murder is not a Christ like act.
Your condemantion of this murder seems hypocritical to me. You can justify it, by doing mental gymnasticas, in the case of abortion, then condem it when someone goes off the cliff in the face of 45,000,000 murders.
I am hopeful one day you will change your position and we can agree on the preservation of life.
Keith,
The fact that you can’t imagine how someone could support a woman’s right to choose abortion is the best example of why the issue won’t be resolved in our lifetime.
You will never be able to accept my point of view and I will never accept your point of view.
Our kids WILL resolve it mainly because it will be more important to them to figure out how to get along than it will be to win this unwinable argument.
life isn’t an agruement………
Your definition of when life begins is the basis for your claim that abortion is murder. In previous posts, I’ve already pointed out the problems biblically and physiologically with that claim.
At the end of the day, your claim that life begins at conception is an article of belief. Platitudes like “life isn’t an argument” may offer those with similar beliefs some comfort, but it does nothing to resolve the differences we face.
I will state again, this issue won’t be resolved to your satisfaction because the only way that you will be satisfied is if everyone agrees with you.
You are like the southern slave owner who will never be able to see an African American as a human. It didn’t matter who won the Civil War or what laws were passed. He took those attitudes to the grave with him. 150 years later and we are still dealing with the echoes of slavery.
We will also need to take this issue to the grave with us before there will be any hope to resolve it.
Hey Jeff,
You pointed out no problems biblically, you merely preformed mental gymnastics to support your veiw. (I did read you posts) As to pointing out the problems with it physiologically your veiws fall into the same catigory.
To classifiy my comment “life isn’t an agruement” as offering “some comfort to those with similar beliefs” is as gretuatious as you’ve accused my statemnt of being. Here’s what I ment. Life isn’t an arguement it is a fact. It either is or isn’t a life. Like a true false question that would read like this; “at the point an egg is fetilised it is either a life or it isn’t…true or false.” The answer is true.
One simple question of logic Jeff. If it isn’t life then why all the “preventitive” measures? Why pass out condems, why all the “education” why RU1, or what ever it is. In fact why the “spounge” episode of Sienfeild? Jeff what in the world are they trying to prevent if not an unwanted child?
Let me say this again. Male mets female, hopefully they get married. The male feitilizes an egg and in about nine months a child is born. If the fertilized egg isn’t a life then where did the “live” child come from?
As to the comparison of the slave owner, poor example, though I understand your point. That was wrong. I would never hold someone in slavery…..as to the logic of this agruement its pretty sloppy. If the north believed 2 + 2 = 3 and the south believed the corret answer to be 4 and a war was fought over it and the war was won by the north and laws were passed that 2 + 2 = 3, I’d agree the law of the land would be the answer is 3 but the correct anser is still 4. Now the slave owner is wrong to his grave but your logic and agruement is faulty.
Life is not an arguement and it does begin at conception. There is no other way to create life except to fertilize an egg. Even if cloning is possible it starts with a fertilzed egg or a product of a fertilized egg.
Legally this is true also. A women is “with child.” (where did that term come from) The child is not agreed to be a child by your point of view but the woman is choosing to have it. She is hit by a drunk driver and the “mass or clumb of stuff” as you’d call it, I and the mother will call it her child, is injured and the pregency is terminated due to the crash. Jeff the drive in many cases is serving jail time today for manslaughter or murder….why if this is not a child?
Keith,
No one, you are anyone else, has proof of when God determines that a fetus is a person with a soul. You and the rest of your pro-life cohorts have simply decided that conception is the time and refuse to even consider that perhaps you could be mistaken.
If you read my posts, I pointed out the problems with the your claim that God endows a fertilized egg with personhood, and then allows many more of those “persons” to “die” than ever are born through failure to implant in the uterine wall. If God cherishes life in the way that you say He does, you would have thought He would have constructed a more reliable system to convert that fertilized egg into a baby.
If you read my posts, I pointed out that there is plenty of support in the Bible for the thought that we are God’s ideas with a spiritual existence before we’re born. There’s nothing that identifies the moment at which that spiritual idea has consciousness in human flesh.
I don’t know when that moment is and I don’t presume to be able to tell anyone else.
As far as legal protections are concerned, though there have been many attempts by pro-life folks to extend legal personhood to the fetus, so far that hadn’t occurred, but the caselaw here is fuzzy. A Michigan appeals court has ruled that a woman can use deadly force to protect her fetus even when her own life might not be in danger. It’s called the “defense of others”. The manslaughter bills that have been passed by a few state legislatures include explicit language which says that the law does not confer pesonhood or any rights to the fetus.
I agree with you the life begins with fertilization in the same way that an apple begins when a bee spreads some pollen in an apple tree flower. But the fertilized flower is not an apple and a fertilized egg also has a long way to go before it becomes a person.
For years I’ve heard Christians must be more tolerent, which we are. I’ve heard we must be more opened minded, which to think we are close minded is a false accusation. Jeff, to your comment in paragraph one above, have you ever considered you are wrong.
Life begins at conception and runs through death. A pregency that goes wrong and miscarries or is still born is no different then someone passing away from cancer at the age of 49. They both end the same and are allowed by God. To your comment about God not having more concern for life because so many don’t make it to birth would need the same comment to be directed at God for the person passing from cancer at 49….
As to the legal process, cases have been prosecuted againest those who have “killed” children in the womb. They are in jail for murder. Drink drivers, etc………It is hypocrital of the law to say that one child is murdered if struck by a drunk driver and the other aborted by the “choice” of the mother at the same stage of pregnency….at least conceed tha
Life starts at conception and contiues through our death. Death occurs by acceident, naturally, tragity, sickness or any other form sometime after conception…weather in the womb or outside of it. We should interfer at no point in the natrual process after birth it is murder, prior I’d suggest, is the same.
Legally to your apple blossom example…..you have 400 apple trees and grow them commercially, legally the following is true: i come to your orchard and put a deadly chemical on your trees while in bloom killing your crop for that year. You could take me to court and sue me for the lost revenue. I could argue that I killed no apples and that a flower is not an apple. I’d lose, EVERY TIME!
This is the same agruement you’ve made about life in the womb. You are a bright and thoughtful person but I stand amazed at the simple and silly agruements “created” to defend abortion by MANY bright and thoughtful people.
And another thought….if it isn’t a life then why is the decision a “tough choice” that must done in consultation with family, clergy, and others? Whats the big deal Jeff, why all the fuss?
You wouldn’t make a very good lawyer.
You are confusing property with people.
If you damage someone’s property, there is an assessment of the amount of damage you have caused, and you would have to repay it. No one would attempt to count the number of the blossoms that you damaged. Instead your damages would be calculated based on how many apples this orchard normally produces and what the price for apples is likely to be this year. That doesn’t prove that every blossom becomes an apple, only that over a large population of blossoms you can predict how many apples likely will be harvested.
My example of blossom and apple was simple and straight forward. It posed the question, when does the blossom become an apple? If you use your current analogy, you would say that a blossom becomes an apple when it is fertilized.
Your whole arguement is based on a simple premise. Personhood begins at conception because that’s when the growing process starts. My question is very simple – why there?
So far, the only response that I’ve heard is “because I say so”.
I could say just as easily that personhood begins when the fertilized egg subdivides because many don’t and never grow.
I could also say that personhood begins when the growing blostacycst embedds itself in the uterine wall, because many don’t and never grow.
I could also say that personhood begins when the heart is formed and starts beating, but that fetus can’t survive outside the mother and many don’t.
I could also say that personhood begins after the first trimester when the risk of miscarriage has passed, but the fetus still can’t surviv outside the mother and some don’t.
I could also say that personhood begins when the fetus is able to survive outside the mother, but that leaves personhood as a medical definition which is somehow uncomfortable.
I could also say that personhood begins when the fetus takes their first breathe of air on their own. I think that everyone including the law agrees with at least that definition.
As far as “tough choice”, I can’t speak for how women approach this, but as a father I can tell you that it is all about expectations. It is a big deal because of what that fetus could become, not what it is. By the way, we have no argument that every fertilized egg has the potential to become a person, just as every unfertilized egg and sperm have the potential to become a person.
you brought up the apple bloosoms…………and my point.
I guess I am a little lat eto the party.
I am finding the use of the Bible as a weapon as an assault on God. It seems the fashion to use Bible quotes, sometimes out of context to support a political view. It is like they are indirectly (or not) saying that God is one political party or the other. To me, it makes Christianity cheapened.
The second part of that is these same individuals are alienating others, rather than attempting to include others. Often it comes out as, you are not Christian because you don’t believe such and such.