Fear God, Save Babies (Psalm 82.3-4, Luke 10.30-37)

2008-10-11

Psalm 82.3-4 is a passage that parallels Proverbs 24.11-12 in many ways:

Vindicate the weak and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.”

Through passages like these God is calling his people to intervene whenever the vulnerable are threatened, be it an individual or an entire group. Masses of German Christians should have com to the active defense of their Jewish countrymen, and a much larger segment of the American church should have joined the fight against slavery and segregation. Why didn’t this happen? Why don’t more Christians today follow these passages into the active defense of unborn children? I would suggest that most of us, myself included, have too narrow a definition of who our neighbor is and too narrow a view of what it means to love him. Regarding widespread oppression and injustice, we tend to confuse opposition in principle, with opposition in practice. We content ourselves with the idea that we’re not participating in injustice, failing to consider the fact that we’re often doing nothing to stop it either

Martin Niemoller, a German pastor imprisoned for his opposition to Hitler, made the following statement in 1946:

Christianity in German bears a greater responsibility before God [for the Holocaust] than the National Socialists, the SS, and the Gestapo.”¹

How could he say this? Because he recognized that those who have been rescued unto salvation are far more accountable to God than those who remain mired in blindness and unbelief. If we don’t get a better grasp of what it means to love our neighbor, history is going to again look at the church with the same indictment: “Where were all of the Christians while innocent babies were being murdered en masse?” We would do well to turn our attention to the Good Samaritan.

In Luke 10 a certain lawyer tests Jesus with the quintessential Gospel question - “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus points the man to the law. Whoever loves God with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind; and who ever loves their neighbor as themselves will have eternal life. The lawyer, wanting to know who exactly he’s obligated to love, asks a follow-up question - “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus respons to the second question with the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.30.37).

The Good Samaritan was a man who, at significant cost to himself, cared for a dying stranger who was being ignored by everyone else around him. Making his service even more remarkable is the fact that Jews and Samaritans generally despised each other, yet the Good Samaritan rescued his Jewish neighbor anyway. He is the hero of the story, the model of neighborly love. His actions are commendable, but shouldn’t be seen as extraordinary. This is the kind of love God expects from us all!

The villains in this story are the religious leaders who passed the stranger by. It’s easy to heap scorn on such callous disregard, but we probably wouldn’t have fared any better. These men probably felt badly for the victim. They may have even prayed for him as they passed by. Getting involved though, wasn’t their calling, wasn’t their responsibility, or wasn’t a wise use of their time. Maybe they were late for an important religious engagement, or weren’t trained in CPR. Whatever their reasons, Jesus condemns them, not for wrong thinking, but for wrong doing. To love their neighbor, at that moment, required rescuing and caring for him, and that is something they deemed either too costly, or too insignificant. God, through the parable of the Good Samaritan, is calling his people to the real and practical and often painful ministry of meeting physical needs in a dying world.

Right thinking isn’t enough. What good is it to say you’re opposed to abortion, but don’t actually do anything to help those who are dying?