Underground Exiles

If you read the Bible from beginning to end, you will encounter over 14,000 different words, and the word abortion doesn’t even make a single appearance.  To be completely straight forward, Scripture says precisely nothing on the subject, yet you are reading an article called “Fear God, Save Babies”.  Is that a little presumptuous?  Is it even possible to articulate a biblical position on a subject the Bible apparently never mentions?  I would argue that it is possible, and moreover, it’s necessary.  If Scripture did deal with abortion directly, we wouldn’t have to wrestle through what a biblical response would look like.  So we must take everything the Bible does tell us, and apply it to everything it doesn’t.

The most significant question about abortion for those of us dealing with the Bible isn’t whether it is right or wrong, but whether God expects us to do anything about it.  I say that because any honest query into the act of abortion reveals it to be nothing less than the deliberate execution of a living, growing, genetically-distinct human being.¹

Since the Bible expressly condemns the shedding of innocent blood², recognizing the injustice of abortion should be fairly easy.  Figuring out what to do about it is decidedly more difficult.  On the one hand, abortion kills almost 4,000 helpless human beings every single day, and that’s just here in the United States.  On the other hand, abortion is the natural fallout of an increasingly self-serving, self-centered society.  Abortion, in fact, is deserving of God’s wrath, and may well be a manifestation of Gods wrath.³

Some have argued that opposing abortion takes crucial resources away from the primary call of the church.  Others believe that opposing abortion is the primary call of the church.  What is a biblically-minded person supposed to do?!

At the outset of my Christian life, I was convinced that abortion was a relatively insignificant “side issue”, one that could easily divert the church from more important matters.  I have since come to a far different conclusion.  To demonstrate why I believe God’s people have a responsibility to actively defend those whose lives are threatened by abortion I will direct you to five biblical texts.  Though they don’t directly deal with abortion, they introduce a variety of scenarios which parallel abortion in striking ways, and provide valuable insights into the character and expectations of God…(continued tomorrow).

1. “[The Zygote] results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm … unites with a female gamete or oocyte … to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th ed.
   Keith L. Moore, Ph.D. & T.V.N. Persaud, Md., (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998), 2-18.

   “Fertilization is an important landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed… “ Human Embryology & Teratology, Ronan R. O’Rahilly, Fabiola Muller, (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996), 5-55. [↩]

2. Exodus 20.13; Deuteronomy 19.13; 1 Kings 2.31; Proverbs 6.16-18; Isaiah 59.7; Jeremiah 19.3-5, 22.3; Joel 3.19 [↩]
3. When Pharaoh refused to let God’s people go, the wrath of God manifested itself in 10 plagues, the most severe of which was the death of all of the first born sons in Egypt.  When David sinned with Bathsheeba, the wrath of God manifested itself in the death of their innocent child.  Children are the hope and future of every society.  When God’s wrath lands on them, for the sins of a parent or the sins of a nation, it is an incalculably severe blow.  When a society starts killing its own children, it engages in nothing less than self-destruction.  Romans1.18-32 makes clear the fact that God’s wrath can simply be the “giving over” of people to bear the natural consequences of their actions.  For a nation that allows its children to be executed in the womb, not only does such behavior deserve punishment, in many ways, it is punishment. [↩]