Life - Jubilee Fall 2013

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PRECIOUS THOUGHTS,

PRECIOUS

LIFE Joe Boot

COMMUNICATING MORAL CLARITY ON ABORTION Stephanie Gray

HOW COULD SHE? Linda Baartse

MOLOCH WORSHIP: THE ABORTION OF FAITH, FAMILY AND COUNTRY Dr. Scott Masson

WINTER 2013 General Editor

JOSEPH BOOT EICC Founder

JOSEPH BOOT Contributing Editor

JENNIFER FORBES

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Editorial Jennifer Forbes

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Precious Thoughts, Precious Life Joseph Boot

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Moloch Worship: The Abortion of Faith, Family and Country Dr. Scott Masson

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How Could She?

Linda Baartse

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Communicating Moral Clarity on Abortion Stephanie Gray

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Resource Corner

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Jubilee is the tri-annual publication of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity (EICC), a registered charitable Christian organization. The opinions expressed in Jubilee do not necessarily reflect the views of the EICC. Jubilee provides a forum for views in accord with a relevant, active, historic Christianity, though those views may on occasion differ somewhat from the EICC’s and from each other. The EICC depends on the contribution of its readers, and all gifts over $10 will be tax receipted. Permission to reprint granted on written request only.

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Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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JUBILEE EDITORIAL: ISSUE 10

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JENNIFER FORBES JENNIFER FORBES is founder and Director of Safe Families Canada and also serves as the Director of Development for the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Originally from London, Ontario, she was a missionary kid in Zambia and is now based out of Toronto.

Jennifer holds a B.A. in International Development from York University with a focus on political economy, politics, governance and policy.

ONE OF THE TROUBLING realities I have

encountered during my involvement in pro-life and pregnancy support ministries in Toronto has been the staggering number of Christians who are complicit in abortions. Amongst non-believers, the practice of aborting children is not actually surprising, considering the secular humanistic and increasingly pagan philosophy which has pervaded the culture, and the god of individual autonomy which rules peoples’ hearts. However, for Christians who not only know the Author of Life (Acts 3:15) but also have His law as an objective standard by which to act ethically, it is shocking that abortion is taking place frequently among them. Too many churches in Canada are often silent about abortion, and the tragic reality is that there are Christian women who have aborted their babies; Christian parents who have required or even paid for their daughters’ abortions; and church leaders who have referred women from their congregations for abortions.

Additionally, we have been repeatedly surprised at the Ezra Institute to come across Christians who are not able to articulate a defensible argument in favor of life, and who are ill-equipped to effectively oppose pro-choice rhetoric.

Whether it be general apathy, fear of controversy, or compromise with the world, abortion and the complex issues surrounding it are not being adequately addressed in Canada’s Christian community. I have heard of Christian leaders who will not address abortion from the pulpit because it is “too controversial” or “too political” or it “destroys the peace.” This is reminiscent of Ezekiel 13:10 and 19, “Precisely because they have misled my people, saying, ‘Peace,’ when there is no peace…You have profaned me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, putting to death souls who should not die and keeping alive souls who should not live, by your lying to my people, who listen to lies.” There is an urgent need in the Canadian church to recover a robust philosophy of life which is grounded in Scripture and to implement life-promoting practices according to the law of God. Furthermore, Sunday after Sunday, there are people who sit in church pews riddled with guilt or

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deep pain because of their participation in abortion. Because the issue is often ignored, many of these people have not been taught that they can repent, be forgiven and find healing and renewal in Jesus Christ. Let us not “heal the wound of My people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). In an attempt to be irenic in our own strength and by our own standards, we can leave people in deep despair, for sin has not been exposed and dealt with. Ephesians 5:11–14 admonishes us, Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them… But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: ‘Wake up O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’

It bears mentioning the truth that, while many churches have been lacking in a thoroughly biblical understanding of this crucial issue, there are many people who have been and continue to be very active in the defense of life. There are those who have taken a stand publicly and politically, others who have labored to educate and inform, and countless more who have compassionately cared for mothers, babies and families. Their courage and faithfulness are an example for us all.

As we live in repentance and faith, and urge repentance to those who have been complicit in abortion, we are reminded in the scriptures that the Lord not only forgives our sin but remembers it no more (Is. 43:25; Jer. 31:34, Heb. 8:12, 10:17) and He heals us from our wounds (Ps.103:2–4, 147:3; Jas. 5:16; 1 Pet. 2:24).

As we protect and nurture life in the body of believers, we will model to our culture the love endowed by our creator and back up our public proclamation to society in defense of life.

We often assume that there is a morally neutral public space that we share with people of other beliefs and we must try and accommodate our views with theirs, so as not to offend anyone.

However, in terms of the Lordship of Christ, there is no such space; rather every opinion expressed belongs to a specific worldview, religion Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Editorial: Issue 10

or belief system of some sort, the fruits of which are eventually seen in practice. For this reason we are to defend the Biblical worldview publicly and proclaim it to the world so that they can see the forgiveness and liberty found in the gospel of the kingdom. In defending life in both word and deed, we point to the character of God and show the world there is an alternative to their bondage and slavery to sin and death.

This edition of Jubilee is meant to equip Christians to develop a Biblical philosophy of life, and to act accordingly. Joe Boot exegetes a passage from the Psalms to enrich our Biblical understanding of life. Scott Masson analyzes the idolatry which gives rise to a culture of death.

Linda Baartse gives insight into the experience of women who are considering abortion, to equip us to minister to them with compassionate understanding. And Stephanie Gray shares some pro-life apologetics to assist in crafting a defense of life.

We hope this edition of Jubilee is edifying to you as you continue to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness� (Matt. 6:33).

Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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REV. JOE BOOT REV. JOE BOOT is the founder of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and the Senior Pastor at Westminster Chapel at High Park, Toronto.

Before this, he served with Ravi Zacharias for seven years as an apologist in the U.K. and Canada, working for five years as Canadian director of RZIM. A theology graduate of Birmingham Christian College, England, Joe earned his M.A. in Missiology with the University of Manchester. His apologetic works have been published in Europe and in North America and include Searching for Truth, and Why I Still Believe.

His forthcoming book, titled The Mission of God, is scheduled to be published in 2014. Joe lives in Toronto with his wife Jenny and their three children Naomi, Hannah and Isaac.

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PRECIOUS Thoughts Precious LIFE LIFE IN A CULTURE OF DEATH

As a result of the social and sexual revolution and the changing attitude to sexuality and family, our age is facing a fertility crisis because we are producing fewer and fewer children – an ideal promoted on every side, since children are increasingly seen as a drag on individual mobility, freedom and independence. Abortion has greatly contributed to these declining birth rates. As an aspect of the deep hostility amongst cultural elites toward the Christian view of the family, a culture of death is growing up around us. Most politicians still steadfastly refuse to address the issue of abortion in Canada, whilst the courts continue to imprison people engaging in peaceful Christian witness to protect life near the many abortion clinics. Moreover, in a related issue, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has recently struck down the law against assisted suicide.1 The pressure is thus growing on our parliament to implement physician-assisted suicide across Canada. Meanwhile, leading medical intellectuals writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics are calling for the legitimization of “after birth abortion” (i.e. infanticide), for the same reasons someone would have an abortion now in Canada, declaring that the newborn infant is only a ‘potential person,’ without a moral right to life.2 The British Medical Association has advised doctors that there may be grounds for abortion solely on the basis of the sex of the foetus. A recent investigative journalistic operation found that, abortions on the basis of gender only (i.e. the abortion of baby girls), was prevalent, even though it remains against the law. Subsequent inspections of clinics in the U.K found that the pre-signing of abortion forms by doctors, without any contact with the woman seeking to acquire an abortion, as well as

the photocopying of doctors signatures to preapprove abortions, was widespread.3 This bizarre Western death-wish is propagated in one cultural message after another by media, film and educational materials, where we are perpetually told that humans are essentially infesting the planet, destroying Mother Nature and using up her resources, so that ideas such as zero population growth, zero economic growth and carbon footprint reduction through any and all means, including abortion, have become political orthodoxy for many. Alongside this, our children in state schools are taught that sex is primarily for the purpose of recreation with anyone, not procreation; the killing of unborn babies is a mother’s right; euthanizing the very sick and the elderly is compassionate; and governmental social engineering, not God, governs our lives.

PRECIOUS THOUGHTS

Into this contemporary chaos speaks the great I AM in Psalm 139 through David’s marvellous prayer: 1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. 7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. 19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! 20 They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain! 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

22 I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies. 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

This well-known psalm of David is a personal petition to know the infinite and ineffable God and to be led by him, though surrounded by the wickedness of ungodly men. The psalm celebrates God’s intimate omniscience, his omnipotence, his omni-competence in all human affairs (otherwise known as providence) and his mercy and wonderful judgments. These truths about God serve as a comfort to the one who fears God but are a terror to those who work evil. We have here Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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presented to us the triune God of Scripture who knows all men, their aims, purposes and desires, a God from whom nothing is hidden and yet who enters into covenant relationship with his people using his personal name, I AM. We see that God tests and searches us as creator and universal king. And in particular, we are confronted with his absolute sovereignty, providence and predestination from womb to tomb.

During the first five centuries of the church, this psalm was also understood as recounting the relationship between the members of the godhead, as well as revealing elements of the gospel. For example, the ‘sitting down’ and ‘rising up’ in verse 2 is interpreted as the incarnation of the Son. In verses 3-6 some early commentators read a predictive knowledge of the incarnation. Verse 7 is thought of as referring to the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit who is with the Father and the Son, and verse 8 was often interpreted as representing Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension. Though some of the early church’s interpretations may seem forced we certainly see Christ clearly in this psalm, in part because it reminds us of the virgin birth. Not only do we see Christ, but we see our very lives in the palm of God’s hand from conception, through gestation, to the grave.4

“ideas such as zero population growth, zero economic growth and carbon footprint reduction through any and all means, including abortion, have become political orthodoxy for many”

THE INTIMATE PROVIDENCE OF GOD

The first verse of Psalm 139 literally reads, “I AM, you searched me and you know me.” This is worth reflecting on. The covenant God searches us, and he knows us better that we know ourselves. We see in verses 2-4 the comprehensive extent and exhaustive character of that knowledge. This kind of intimate all-encompassing knowledge is beyond our ability to fully comprehend; it is high and impregnable to our limited understanding, a wonder and mystery which humbles us, and calls us to bow before it (v. 6).

King David reminds us that there is nowhere we can flee from the all-seeing omniscience of God – it hems us in (v. 5). There is no hiding place from the presence of God, neither in the heavens nor in the grave itself can we escape WINTER 2013

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the intimate knowledge and sovereignty of God (v. 7-9). To the believer this is a great comfort, joy and delight, but to the enemies of God it is an intolerable terror and insult to their selfprofessed autonomy and anarchic freedom from God. Our inability to escape God at any point or in any place is dramatically set forth in verse 8 which literally reads, “If I spread out my bed in the grave, behold, you are there!” John Calvin puts it well: people, “cannot move a hair’s breadth without his knowledge.” 5

“We all were personally predestined in God’s righteous will and called into being for the purposes of God”

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This reality is powerful and important, but there is yet more to marvel at in this psalm. It is not that God simply knows all things; he is involved.

As his covenant people he lays his hand upon us (v. 5). This is a hand of care and protection, leading and guiding, of restraint and discipline as well as judgment. To lay the hand upon someone here represents his full authority over all men.

When I lay my hand upon my children, it is sometimes to protect or carry them, sometimes to restrain or discipline them, but it always exhibits my authority. This is why grabbing or restraining someone we have no right to control, against their will, can be construed as assault; it is an illegitimate exercise of authority. Often the biblical writers (like Job) call on God to remove his hand of discipline or judgment in the midst of his mysterious working, yet how grateful we ought to be, like the psalmist, for the hand of God even when it seems heavy upon us. If it were not for the forceful hand of God whose authority and jurisdiction is total, Lot would have stayed in Sodom. Yet, by grace, when he lingered, the angels grabbed him by the hand and led him out. If it were up to us, we would have cradled and nursed our sins and remained in rebellion against God with stony and defiant hearts, but he effectually calls us out of darkness into his marvellous light, raising us from spiritual death to life. Sometimes, God’s hand is also upon us as he cares for and comforts us. It is an immeasurable mercy to know the comforting hand of God in all things. His ever-present, all-knowing and all-powerful work is unrelenting in every area of life – this is the personal presence of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, even we as Christians want to run away from this all-conditioning God. But David declares “even

the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you” (v. 12).

GOD’S STUDIO

Nowhere is this mysterious, all-conditioning providence more dramatically illustrated than in the marvel that is human conception and gestation. At the centre of this great prayer is one of the most beautiful and important declarations in the psalms, revealing emphatically the sanctity of life (v. 13-16). So remarkable are these things that David declares, “How precious to me are your thoughts oh God, how vast is the sum of them.” God’s total providence and sovereignty are not simply seen in his all-pervasive presence and knowledge of our activities then, they are manifest in his personal creativity and ordination within our lives from conception to our last breath. Here therefore, creation and predestination are seen as involved in each other.

The womb itself is God’s studio, poetically described as “the depths of the earth,” a place totally hidden (v. 15). From conception through gestation, “you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Notably, this wonderful work of God is known to men, even where they seek to deny this knowledge (v. 13-14 cf. Rom. 1:18-20). The psalm thus shows emphatically that we all were personally predestined in God’s righteous will and called into being for the purposes of God; all this manifests the grace and mercy of God. It is of particular interest to notice that the Hebrew word for mercy derives from the word womb, which helps us understand David’s exalted praise, “wonderful are your works.”

In verse 16 we have another critical statement in relation to our subject of the sanctity of human life. In the Hebrew it literally reads, “My embryo (golmi) your eyes saw.” This phrase means an incomplete vessel; the life is young and unfinished. The rest of the verse then goes on to beautifully relate the active creation of the human embryo, in terms of God’s predestination of the totality of life. The sovereign Lord has ordained our days and our steps: “in your book were Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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written every one of them, the days formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (v. 16).

As if to reinforce this marvellous truth, the word “formed” means the forming of a plan prior to its enactment. God then is not just counting the days in his secret work, he is forming the future before our hearts begin to beat, giving meaning to every breath. Every person is thus fashioned in terms of God’s holy purposes. Both the Old and New Testaments provide specific examples of this wonder. Consider Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you;” and St Paul in Galatians 1:15-16: “he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me.”

DESPOILING THE MASTERPIECE – KILLING THE FUTURE

Given then that the womb is the master craftsman’s studio for sculpting the future, it is only when we have considered this mercy of God (the womb), and the providential care of God in the creation of the human embryo, that we can begin to appreciate the evil of abortion. Given the biblical teaching, the wickedness of abortion should be obvious to Christians. Yet, according to some polls, religious school students are just as likely to have abortions as their secular counterparts. Allegedly, one in four evangelicals in America are “conflicted” on the question of abortion. The silence on this issue in the church is too often deafening (unless it is a voice for abortion as a recent survey of United Church Observer readers found), because to address the subject is seen as ‘political’ and politics is allegedly beyond the sphere of biblical faith.6 Nevertheless the true church has long seen, in terms of biblical standards, the destruction of the human embryo as murder. The grounds for this are seen clearly in the Sixth Commandment and in Exodus 21:22-25: When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Interestingly, modern pro-abortion intellectuals increasingly do not attempt to deny the charge of murder. Camille Paglia, a social commentator and pro-abortion writer has stated, “I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.”7 Such an admission on its own should be sufficient to dispel claims that abortion is in any way rooted in self-less or compassionate motivations. Paglia’s statement is well in line with the biblical teaching on the life and personhood of the unborn.

But let us consider further the passage in Exodus.

This is a case law that sets out, by a minimal case, certain applications and implications. Firstly, the case here is of an accidental abortion. If the penalty for causing an abortion, not by pre-meditated violence but by criminal negligence is so severe, it is obvious that abortion deliberately induced is strongly forbidden. Because abortion was seen as murder, we see from the text that it carried with it the maximum sentence of death. Even if mother and child are not physically injured in the incident, the negligent man must be fined.

In other words, God’s law sets around a pregnant woman and her embryo a hedge of protection, second to none. In Scripture even a mother bird with eggs or young is protected by the law, to prevent the exploitation of God’s creation (Deut.

22:6); if birds are to be protected, how much more mothers-to-be with their unborn child?

The challenge we face today in applying God’s law to the matter of abortion is not new. The early church had to confront the widespread reality of abortion in the Greco-Roman world.

The Greek philosophers were often advocates of both abortion and infanticide whenever they were in the perceived interests of the pagan state.

Plato’s Republic makes this plain. He argues that the state is the ultimate order and functional god,

“God’s law sets around a pregnant woman and her embryo a hedge of protection, second to none.”

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“No human being is perfect.

Would the world, moreover, really be a better place after the destruction of the millions of defective individuals.

Has the world gained or lost from the services of the epileptic Michaelangelo, of the deaf Edison, of the hunchback Steinmetz, of the Roosevelts – both the asthmatic Theodore and the polioparalyzed Franklin?”

and can order abortion, infanticide and incest as it sees fit.8 Aristotle’s position was similar in that he required abortions when state-permitted births were exceeded.9 Furthermore, in Roman law, abortion and infanticide were not essentially distinguished. Infants did not actually have legal status until the head of the family, the “pater familias,” accepted the child into the family. Until that acceptance, an infant could be destroyed.10 By contrast, the early church quickly condemned abortion. Tertullian wrote: “to hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is, a man that is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed.”11 The early Apostolic Constitutions likewise call for vengeance upon those who destroy the unborn child. So serious was this to the church, that because the Roman Empire did not see abortion as a crime in the way the Bible does, many elements of the church pronounced their own ecclesiastical sentence of ‘penance for life,’ to indicate the capital nature of the offence. The Council of Ancyra in A.D. 314 noted this earlier practice and limited the restitution/penance to ten years. By contrast among the pagans, Tacitus, the Roman historian and senator, found it repugnant that the Jews would not kill babies. We can see from this how seriously the matter was taken in centuries past.

In many countries today, abortion and state control of births are not only legal, but seen as a basic right. As biblical faith has declined in the West, abortions have correspondingly increased.

In Canada today, abortion is free and permissible all the way up to full-term. In 2006 (the most recent statistic available) there were 91,310 registered abortions that our taxes paid for. US research shows that the reasons most often cited for an abortion are people claiming they are “not ready for the responsibility,” or “inadequate finances.” Only 1% concern rape.12 Women are often pressured into abortions by boyfriends, family and peers and a growing body of research reveals potentially serious physical, emotional and mental ramifications following abortion. These include the increased risk of premature deliveries of full-term children (with all the attendant risks

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of that, including death), endometriosis, and a six times greater risk of suicide. Other common motivations for having an abortion found in various studies include: the preservation of beauty; the continued enjoyment of freedom and irresponsibility; a hatred of life; a hatred of men; and the alleged imperfection of a foetus. On the last point concerning the imperfection of a foetus, two American doctors, writing back in the 1960s, have rightly noted: No human being is perfect. Would the world, moreover, really be a better place after the destruction of the millions of defective individuals. Has the world gained or lost from the services of the epileptic Michaelangelo, of the deaf Edison, of the hunchback Steinmetz, of the Roosevelts – both the asthmatic Theodore and the polioparalyzed Franklin? It must be recognized that liberalized abortion laws would logically be followed by pressures for legalized euthanasia. The attack on life is essentially the same.13

This has largely come to pass. Many Western states are legalising euthanasia and are well on the way to legalising physician-assisted suicide, already legal in several parts of Europe. This attack on life in general – that began with the abolition of laws against abortion – is escalating.

Recently in the UK’s Daily Mail Online, an article was published on the National Health Service (the UK’s socialized medicine system), in the case of a doctor who has blown the whistle on the NHS allegedly euthanizing 130,000 elderly patients every year in the name of the ‘Liverpool Care Pathway,’ because, “they are difficult to manage or to free up beds.”14 It is worth noting at this point that these overt attacks on life are essentially a modern form of eugenics. Hitler’s sterilization laws and eugenics programs were modelled in the United States by the work and legislative preparation of American evolutionary biologist Dr. Harry Laughlin.

Eugenics, the attempt to control and guide a supposed evolutionary process by controlling who reproduces and who is born, is very much Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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back with us in modified forms. The founder of the modern pro-abortion, birth control movement, (and Planned Parenthood) was the racist eugenicist, Margaret Sanger (18791966). A white supremacist, she even addressed a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan. She argued that “the brains of Australian Aborigines were only one step more evolved than chimpanzees and just under blacks, Jews and Italians.”15 Her early clinics were initially targeted and located to control the births of Slavs, Latins, and Jews. She later targeted African American communities.16 Planned Parenthood itself reported that of the 132,314 abortions it alone performed in 1991 in the USA, 42.7% were on African Americans and other minorities even though they make up only 19.7% of the population.17 The greatest tragedy in all this evil is that abortion legalises murder in the life of the family, so that the cradle of life is turned into a place of death. In the United States, abortion has now taken far more lives than all the wars in US history, which from 1775-1975, took 1,205,291 lives. For the same period, deaths by known abortions are around 8,000,000.

CHOOSE LIFE

There is something profoundly malevolent in all this wanton killing, a love of death that is basic to sinful man’s spiritual condition. This orientation toward death, the Bible tells us, marks men and cultures in rebellion against God – that is, by their hostility to God they become suicidal in their inclinations (Prov. 8:36). Scripture tells us there is an inseparable link between sin and death. Spiritual separation from the source of life in Jesus Christ means a growing tendency toward death, because Christ alone is the resurrection and the life and the light that leads to life. Christ’s atonement and lordship in our lives separates us from the power of sin and death, consecrating us to life and righteousness, for in Christ the power of death is broken (1 Cor. 15). In the pagan Greco-Roman world, into which this gospel was first declared, the great love in entertainment was death, paraded as sport at the circus. Whether gladiators were fighting to the death or Christians were being tossed to lions, death was a spectator sport. As Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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the gladiators entered the arena they cried, “Hail Caesar. We who are about to die salute you.” The Christian faith eventually brought an end to the blood-letting or pagan ‘sacrifices’ of the arena.

It is then clearly spiritual evil and wickedness advanced by an anti-biblical worldview that is at work in the destruction of the life of the most helpless and innocent of all human beings.

Not unlike the ancient Roman world, or the ideals of the Greek philosophers, morality today is being redefined in terms of whatever a statist elite says it is; life has value and is worth living when the state says it is. The state has again become the ultimate order and so abortion is consequently seen as simply a matter of politics, not God’s law. The promotion of abortion is then, at root, a return to paganism and a fundamental denial of the truth of Psalm 139. Here, the total governance and predestinating purpose of God is asserted – that is, his plans and his purposes.

Today, with our retrogressive turn, the control of life by human agencies is the alternate plan of predestination of man, by man. If we deny predestinating power to God in our thinking, we simply transfer that power to man and the state. Whenever belief in God’s predestination declines, planning or predestination by the state over life and death rapidly takes its place.

Abortion is thus an attempt to play God and when man plays God he attempts to control life, to grant and take life on his lawless terms. It is ironic that modern humanism is against capital punishment for murderers (evildoers) where God requires it, but will exercise capital punishment against innocent unborn children whom God’s law protects. If man can play God and write his own law, questions of life and death become open questions to be decided by the ‘democratic will,’ embodied by the state planners and legislatures.

Under God, the ministry of the doctor is meant to be a ministry of life and healing; under humanistic man-gods, doctors are increasingly being asked to become murderers. All this is done behind the blasphemous claim that humanism reverences and affirms life! But human worth, dignity and life are no longer affirmed or protected on the grounds that all human beings bear God’s image; rather, the weak are murdered by the strong in

“Modern humanism is against capital punishment for murderers (evildoers) where God requires it, but will exercise capital punishment against innocent unborn children whom God’s law protects.”

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the name of another human’s right to choose. In an age dominated by ‘men of blood’ (v. 19) where God’s name is hated and blasphemed, judgment looms, as the psalmist makes clear.

GOD’S JUDGMENT ON THE WICKED

“Sharp and artificial division of moral character from action seeks to preserve an antibiblical view of man. It results in a denial of real responsibility whereby intent (or character) and act are divorced rather than being seen as involved in each other.”

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It is very important to notice that in this psalm, following powerful and moving statements about the all-conditioning providence of God from conception to the grave, we read David calling on God to judge the wicked. King David hands his life over to God as one formed for the purpose of doing battle against wickedness. These wicked men of blood come under the censure of God and David for their lawlessness. These lawless deeds include murder (v. 19), a violation of the Sixth Commandment, and blasphemy (v. 20), a violation of the Third Commandment. Verse 20 makes clear that there is premeditation, planning and forethought involved in their scheming against God. These murderers use the name of God as though He were on their side as an accomplice. Apostate churchmen are involved in blasphemy whenever they endorse or support what God condemns. So for the United Church of Canada to invoke God in support of abortion and euthanasia must therefore be understood as nothing but manifest blasphemy.

In verses too often passed over by Christians in a consideration of this psalm, David declares his hatred of those who hate God by their murderous lawlessness (v. 21). This reflects God’s own hatred of the wicked as seen in Psalm 5:4-6: “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.

The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” David thus declares that he loathes those who rise up against God in this way. To hate or loathe here means a real abhorrence of those who purposefully plan against and rise up against God. Calvin noted of this psalm, “Our attachment to godliness must be inwardly defective if it does not generate an abhorrence of sin.”18

At this point it is important that we do not ‘read in’ to this text a malevolent, vindictive, self-centred motive or merely emotional understanding of David’s divinely-inspired words. He is pointing out that there is a real spiritual battle between truth and falsehood, God and Satan, light and darkness, in which life and death are very literally at stake – in this conflict there is no middle ground, no irenic third way. Grammatically the term hate here means “the strongest possible aversion” to lawless works and the people who delight in them. According to the Scriptures, love is the fulfilment of the law (Rom. 13:810), therefore lawlessness must be a horror to us, or we cannot be a people of love. In this sense then, to ‘hate’ the wicked (not just lawlessness in the abstract) is an aspect of love to God, because love fears God and obeys his law. We are to love our enemies, not as a warm emotional connection, which is psychologically impossible, but by obeying God’s law concerning them, including the command to make known the gospel of Jesus Christ calling them to repentance. However, Scripture requires that we maintain an abhorrence of evil and the strongest possible disapproval of those who hate and blaspheme God in their murderous ways. To be delighted in or to approve of such people and their works is to participate in their evil. In Luke 14:26 Jesus said that a person who does not “hate his own father and mother and wife and children, brothers and sisters and yes, even his own life, cannot be my disciple.” Obviously by this he did not mean we are to cultivate an ‘emotion’ of hatred for our family. Rather, Jesus taught us that if anything comes before God in our lives, even familial relationships, it is a form of idolatry. If God is not first and foremost and obedience to him not paramount, he is in fact loved less than our own natural family and we show that we prefer our own way and own life to true worship and God’s path of life. In a similar way, to fail to have the strongest possible aversion to the evil man in terms of God’s law is to put sentimentality before what God requires, which is likewise a form of idolatry.

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Precious Thoughts, Precious Life 11

ABSTRACTING EVIL

The reason we tend to find passages of Scripture like this difficult is because many believers have unwittingly adopted the Aristotelian and humanistic version of the division between intention and action, thereby depersonalizing sin by abstracting a man’s actions from his true moral nature. Because life and history undeniably manifest real evil, only by resorting to pagan dualistic assumptions between idea or intent (spirit) and act (matter), can humanistic thinking retain the notion of a natural goodness or moral neutrality within man, over against the biblical doctrine of a fallen and sinful nature in all human beings, revealed by their deeds. This means that, as we see in Gnosticism, the spirit or mind can remain pure, whilst the material environment is evil. This being the case, many pagans thought that what you do in the body does not define your true moral character. As a typical example of this thinking today, people may say of a criminal, “yes, he is a murderer (or rapist, or pornographer or paedophile), but in his heart he’s a good boy with good intentions.” This sharp and artificial division of moral character from action seeks to preserve an anti-biblical view of man. It results in a denial of real responsibility whereby intent (or character) and act are divorced rather than being seen as involved in each other. Works of evil can then be seen not as an expression of man’s sinful and lawless heart, but as a form of strange social sickness produced by the person’s environment, upbringing or lack of education.

Scripture makes clear, however, that sin does not have abstract, objective existence; rather sin is lawlessness and therefore is a moral quality of a man. Sin is something we think and do! Murder and adultery are not things that have an existence apart from man. Crimes do not happen without a criminal – there is no sin without a sinner. Sin is not an ‘idea of being’ but an expression of a sinful and immoral nature. Murder is evil and so murderers are evil, since men do not murder out of the goodness of their hearts. Jesus made clear that a good tree does not bring forth bad fruit and vice versa (Matt. 7:18). By their fruit you will know them! Sin can and does manifest itself in thoughts, words and deeds, in historical Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

events and their results, but it does not then gain independent metaphysical being – this would require the view that evil has a metaphysical ultimacy alongside God. This is why it is not sin in the abstract (merely as a category or idea) that the psalmist says we are to hate; we are also to have an established moral aversion of the strongest kind to evil men!

THE EVERLASTING WAY

We are all sinners, yet mercifully, all sin can be forgiven (except blasphemy against the Spirit) by and through the atoning death of Jesus Christ, when we come to him in true repentance and faith; this includes the sin of abortion. Scripture is clear that because of the sinful nature, all have sinned and come short of God’s righteous standard (Rom. 3:23). Some of God’s greatest servants were guilty of murder and adultery, including the author of this great psalm; and yet they found grace and renewal. Thus, King David does not condemn evil in this psalm out of a sense of self-righteous superiority. In verses 23-24 he prays, “search me oh God.” This is to be our starting point as believers. Search me first Lord, not others. We must ask God to try us and know our thoughts in his intimate omniscience. And, like David, in such a case we should be quickly aware that our own integrity, such as it is, is not enough, we can only stand in his righteousness. We must all be tried and searched by God and we all have need of him to lay his hand of covenant faithfulness upon us to guard, guide, discipline, and preserve us.

This is why David prays in verse 24, “see if there is any grievous/wicked/offensive/lawless, way in me” and then, “lead me in the everlasting way.”

What is that way? It is that way in which we pray God’s right hand to hold us fast (v. 10). It is the way of Christ, the way of obedience, the way of righteousness and justice, the way of the kingdom of God. It is the only way in which we can walk by the power of the Holy Spirit – it is the path that leads to life! This is the everlasting way. Let us be sure we are on it.

“Sin does not have abstract, objective existence; rather sin is lawlessness and therefore is a moral quality of a man.”

“Search me first Lord, not others. We must ask God to try us and know our thoughts in his intimate omniscience. ”

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“What is that way? It is that way in which we pray God’s right hand to hold us fast (v. 10). It is the way of Christ, the way of obedience, the way of righteousness and justice, the way of the kingdom of God. ”

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A Supreme Court judge has struck down the laws banning doctor-assisted suicide, calling them discriminatory, disproportionate and overbroad. While B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lynn Smith declared the laws invalid, she also suspended her ruling for one year to give parliament time to draft legislation with her ruling in mind. See: http://news.nationalpost. com/2012/06/15/b-c-supreme-court-strikes-downassisted-suicide-ban-as-unconstitutional/ accessed September 2013.

2 Stephen Adams, “Killing Babies no different from abortion, experts say.” Daily Telegraph, www. telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9113394/Killing-babies-no-different-from-abortion, accessed April 29, 2013.

3 Holly Watt and Claire Newell, “Law does not prohibit sex-selection abortions, DPP warns.”

Daily Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk/health/ healthnews/10360386/Law-does-not-prohibit-sexselection, accessed October 29, 2013.

4 Cf. St Augustine, Exposition on the Book of Psalms, edited by A. Cleveland Coxe, (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1888), 1267, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf108.pdf, accessed November 5, 2013.

5 John Calvin, Commentary on Psalms, vol. 5, trans.

James Anderson, (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1849), 191, http://www.ccel.org/ ccel/calvin/calcom12.pdf, accessed October 7, 2013.

6 Cf. Patrick Craine, “Poll: United Church members significantly more liberal than Canadian public on abortion, euthanasia,” Lifesite News, last modified July 12, 2012, http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ poll-united-church-members-more-liberal-thancanadian-public-on-abortion-eu.

7 Camille Paglia, “Fresh Blood for the Vampire,” Salon, last modified September 10, 2008, http:// www.salon.com/2008/09/10/palin_10/.

8 Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), Book VIII, 546a-547a.

9 Michael J. Gorman, Abortion & the early church: Christian, Jewish & pagan attitudes in the GrecoRoman world, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1982), 20-25.

10 Heichelheim, Fritz M., A history of the Roman people, Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1984, 35-38.

11 Tertullian, Apologia 9.6. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ schaff/anf03.iv.iii.ix.html, accessed October 7, 2013.

12 “Abortion Statistics,” Orlando Women’s Center, http://www.womenscenter.com/abortion_stats.html,

accessed November 5, 2013.

13 Rousas John Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, (Phillipsburg, PA: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1973), 267.

14 Steve Doughty, “Top doctor’s chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year,” Daily Mail Online, last modified June 19, 2012, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/ Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000elderly-patients-year.html.

15 Carl Wieland, One Human Family: The Bible, Science, Race and Culture, (Powder Springs, GA: Creation Book Publishers, 2011), 65.

16 Washington, H. A., Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 196.

17 Wieland, One Human Family, 65.

18 Calvin, Commentary on Psalms, 191.

Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Moloch Worship: THE ABORTION OF FAITH, FAMILY & COUNTRY JEREMIAH 32 RANKS AMONG the

most affecting passages in all of Scripture. The gravity of the circumstances contributes to it.

The curse of Deuteronomy 28:63 is about to be invoked, leading to Israel’s exile in Babylon.

Yet in response to Jeremiah’s prayer, confessing Israel’s guilt, the Lord asks a rhetorical question that offers a glimpse of hope against the backdrop of present darkness, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?”(Jer. 32:27). A catalogue of His people’s acts of depravity follows, suggesting why it might be. The offence against His holiness is rank (Lev. 18:21; 20:2–5). He concludes the litany of reproach with these startling words: They have turned to me their back and not their face. And though I have taught them persistently, they have not listened to receive instruction. They set up their abominations in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Moloch, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. (Jer. 32: 33–35)

The pattern of a degenerating culture that the Apostle Paul describes, which begins when it exchanges the truth about God for a lie, then substitutes idolatry for faithful worship, and culminates in replacing marital fidelity with all manner of sexual licentiousness (Rom. 1:21–27), has reached its horrible conclusion in Jeremiah’s prophesy.

The standard reading of Romans 1:21–17 is that unrestrained sexual transgression marks the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

depth of cultural depravity. It is undeniably one aspect of it. The ‘high places’ of Jeremiah 32 were directly related to the worship of Baal and his wife Asherah through the cultic prostitution of men and women. Yet Asherah was also the female consort of Moloch. And it is in her alliance with him that we see the final element of the cultural decline that illuminates Paul’s text.

Sexual licentiousness coalesces with something the Lord describes as so shocking that it had not “entered His mind…to cause Judah to sin” – the practice of sacrificing their own children. They become “inventors of evil.” Turning one’s back on the Lord of life ultimately entails embracing the culture of death, and the fire of Hell.1 Moloch worship was deemed unimaginable for a reason. A dreadful sight, the brass statue of the god was cast in human shape with a bull’s head, and outstretched hands. A fire was kindled within his belly, and stoked to a terrific heat. To appease him, parents were required to offer up their babies to the scalding embrace, and gaze upon the horror that ensued without tears or sign of protest. Parental approval was required for a sacrifice to be acceptable. It alone would convince the angry demon god that sacrificing their baby was of their own volition. Ever accommodating, Moloch’s votaries would play their drums and flutes loudly to drown out the tortured cries. 2 What transpired in the valley of Hinnom was not simply a moment of utmost darkness in Israel’s ancient history. It was an earthly type of an eternal danger. Jesus regularly warned that mankind tended towards Moloch worship when it did not worship Him. He used the word Gehenna (Hell)3 eleven times in the synoptic Gospels to describe the pattern of life opposite to that of His Kingdom. He clarified what was

13 PAGE NO.

DR. SCOTT MASSON DR. SCOTT MASSON is a Fellow at the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

A native of London, Ontario, Scott studied English and History at Huron College, U.W.O., before living abroad for 12 years.

During that time, he pursued further studies in Germany and England. He gave his life to Christ in 1995, while a first-year doctoral student at the University of Durham, England.

As Associate Professor of English Literature at Tyndale University College, Scott specializes in the areas of hermeneutics and literary theory.

He serves as the Associate Pastor at Westminster Chapel for College and Careers and is involved in the start up of Westminster Classical Christian Academy.

Scott lives in Toronto with his wife Christa and daughter Grace.

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“Moloch worship is of course only the most lurid of the atrocities of the ancient world towards the very young.”

implicit in the judgment of Israel in Jeremiah 32: the acts associated with that place had an eternal spiritual significance. The “valley of Hinnom,” in Jesus’ teaching, was a place where body and soul can be destroyed (Matt. 10:28) in “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43). The connection of Hell with the practice of rampant sexual license and willful sacrifice of infants cannot be ignored. It represents a spiritual depravity of the first order.

Russell Moore puts it bluntly when he states that “A culture of death that denies personhood to the unborn is a culture that is assaulting the very image of Christ himself.”4 Moloch worship is of course only the most lurid of the atrocities of the ancient world towards the very young. Its only comparison may be the two instances in Scripture where a god-king sought to enact a wholescale massacre of the innocents, in the first instance for the purposes of ‘population control,’ in the latter, to prevent the emergence of a rival king. In both instances, the Lord appeared as Saviour. Yet aside from the gruesome rites, the Moloch cult’s practice of infanticide was common. Throughout the ancient world, where fertility rites and cultic prostitution were rampant, unwanted children were also regularly left exposed to the elements. In ancient Rome, for example, a father had absolute and despotic power over his family, including the power of life and death over his wife, concubines, children and slaves. They were from a legal perspective his property.5 What happened to them was the father’s ‘choice’ alone, and the state supported him in that.

MOLOCH WORSHIP REMIXED

Yet for all its savagery, while the ancient world might have permitted fathers to dispose of their unwanted children, even it would never have classified abortion as a ‘human right’, i.e. as in some sense the fulfillment of the law, or a human good. By identifying abortion as a human right, and thus an absolute, one of the more pernicious aspects of the contemporary practice of abortion in the West has developed: abortion has been identified as a matter of women’s health and personal well-being. In the United States, the WINTER 2013

publications of the National Organization for Women (NOW) repeatedly refer to abortion as “the most fundamental right of women”, ahead of the right to vote and the right to free speech. The protection of abortion rights is its top priority.6 First, let me speak to the two issues related to women.

ABORTION AS A DEFENSE OF WOMEN’S HEALTH

The common appeal to abortion as fundamentally a matter of ‘women’s health’ is strange, if not altogether perverse. It does not matter whether health is understood physically, mentally or spiritually. While pregnancy does affect a women’s physical health, it cannot reasonably be categorized as if it were a form of illness to be cured by excision. The obvious ‘cure’ for pregnancy is a nine-month period of gestation that concludes in the birth of a child. It is a means of propagating the human race, and more specifically, the woman’s kind. It thus obeys the first command given in Scripture: “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28; 9:1). Associating abortion with ‘women’s health’ cannot possibly refer to her physical health. It must refer to some sense of mental or spiritual well-being then. The facts speak incontrovertibly against its contribution to women’s mental health. Dr. Priscilla Coleman recently published an article in the British Journal of Psychiatry surveying decades of studies, concluding that “Women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be attributable to abortion. The strongest subgroup estimates of increased risk occurred when abortion was compared with term pregnancy and when the outcomes pertained to substance use and suicidal behaviour.”7 This leaves us with ‘spiritual health’. If that is what is meant, it can only be a euphemism for child-slaying as a means of women’s salvation, something akin to Moloch worship.8 It represents a direct antithesis to the Biblical text which speaks of a woman’s salvation through child-bearing (1 Tim. 2:15).9 Since the entire purpose of health care is Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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the preservation and furtherance of life in all its respects, the medical establishment ought to be seeking to abolish abortion rather than making an industry out of it. 10 At present, it breaks the sixth commandment in the name of fulfilling it, by appealing to ‘choice.’

ABORTION AS A DEFENSE OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

The appeal to the act of abortion as a centerpiece of ‘women’s rights’ is similarly non-sensical.

Abortion cannot possibly be considered intrinsic to human nature or human flourishing. On the contrary, it strikes at the right to life, the basic human right. 11 Killing abrogates all subsequent notions of justice and human rights. This ‘woman’s right’ is by its nature opposed to human rights. It is not even intrinsic to being a woman, for it only appears at the moment when a child has been deprived of its life and rights. And many women would refuse to do so precisely for that reason.

What sort of claim is it then? The true nature of the claim that some people make can be seen in the argument typically used to attack a prolife position: denying abortion forces women to have ‘unwanted children.’ ‘Every child a wanted child’ is a slogan for the pro-choice movement.

Making a mother’s desire the measure of a child’s worth renders it a commodity. The woman’s right to choose appears after the unborn child has been depersonalized and reconfigured as an item of property. It bears an uncanny similarity to the view of the ‘rights’ of the father in pagan Rome to dispense with his property as he saw fit. In both instances, the personhood of the child is denied, and the ‘right’ is exercised in the taking of another’s life, which is in clear contravention of the understandings of human rights established

by Christians in the West, largely to the advantage of women and children.

But the comparison between the choice of the Roman father and mothers today only goes so far, precisely because of the advent of Christendom.

Whereas the ancient world possessed no such notion as ‘human rights,’ it is the backdrop for Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

the contemporary practice of abortion. There are only two ways in which the ‘right to choose’ to abort a child can be considered a matter of women’s rights: i) Women’s rights can be asserted if human rights are altogether suspended; or ii) they can be asserted if they lie outside the established understanding of human rights.

Both, I submit, have effectively happened. To allow for life, the most basic human right, to be taken by virtue of an appeal to a different set of rights is to assert the absolute priority of the latter over human rights. We are currently experiencing the consequence of allowing the state to define life in countless areas as a result.

The process will not stop until all human rights have been abrogated. And this has not even resulted in the empowerment of women. Women have attained this absolute exemption to dispose of their ‘property,’ yet only under the condition that they too be similarly depersonalized, and (legally speaking) excluded from the human race.12 It is striking that the language defending a ‘woman‘s choice‘ has nothing to do with her rights as a person. Proponents of women’s rights defend ‘what she can do with her body,’ which is not the same as her person. Human personhood is a predicate of divine personhood. Detaching a woman’s body from her person has rendered it into a natural commodity that she possesses.

Hence under Roe v. Wade, the ground for the legal change was construed to be the right to ‘privacy’ against any societal claims of jurisdiction.13

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“Since the entire purpose of health care is the preservation and furtherance of life in all its respects, the medical establishment ought to be seeking to abolish abortion rather than making an industry out of it. ”

The full significance of this perverse understanding of women’s rights, which has been established by making them property owners of themselves and their unborn children, will become clearer when I discuss the terrible dehumanizing effect that the ‘pro-choice’ position has had on women, children and fathers. 14 It is in large part a function of the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution has led the Western world to regard women essentially as natural sex-objects rather than as persons whose sexual being is fulfilled in a monogamous, complementary relationship to their genderWINTER 2013

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“The more extreme of the views parrot the moral relativism of their secular contemporaries in agreeing that Christians should not seek to ‘impose their values on others’ by a public outworking of their faith, even though the Great Commission demands precisely a form of that – through discipling the nations, which always has moral, legal and political dimensions.16”

opposite, in a covenant relationship of duties and responsibilities, which include those towards the unborn child.15

of the change, “Mothers cultivate childlessness, wives are male, and husbands are female. Other than that, everything is the same as it was.”17

EVANGELICAL APATHY TO THE RETURN OF MOLOCH WORSHIP

In the Christian community, to whom this article is directed, many would doubtless dispute the analogy between the practice of therapeutic abortion on demand and the return to a species of Moloch worship. They might observe that there is no sense of the worship of Moloch (or any other god) in the contemporary practice of abortion. There is no cult, no ritual prostitution, no religion. All this is true. But the justification of murder of one’s progeny on the sole basis that it sanctions ‘choice’ is the essence of Moloch worship. The only difference is that rather than a ‘god’ being propitiated by an expression of free will, we are. But both practices plainly share something. They are captive to an idol, and in both cases, they exemplify the truth of Scripture, which declares that “all those who hate me love death.” (Prov. 8:36)

Despite the horror of abortion, its cost of millions of lives, and the anguish within those of countless others, it is still common to read among some of the most respected evangelicals of our day that culture is a matter of secondary concern to Christians, if not a matter of indifference. The Christian faith is solely a matter of ‘winning souls.’ The more extreme of the views parrot the moral relativism of their secular contemporaries in agreeing that Christians should not seek to ‘impose their values on others’ by a public outworking of their faith, even though the Great Commission demands precisely a form of that – through discipling the nations, which always has moral, legal and political dimensions.16 The earliest Christian confession was not that Jesus is Saviour. It was that Jesus is Lord. Christ cannot be king without a kingdom. Nowhere is the moral bankruptcy of the Christian retreat from cultural engagement more evident than in the refusal of many Christians to actively oppose the slaughter of the innocents of our day, or to seek to overturn what Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI rightly called our present age’s ‘culture of death.’ The complicity of Christians in the sexual revolution against its Biblical understanding is doubtless one of the main reasons. Having salved their consciences that compromises can be made in the area of sexual morality, it is easier to lose sight of the gravity of moral stipulations regarding life itself.

Post-Christendom in fact most closely resembles the return to a civilization that is alien, indeed absolutely antithetical, to that of the Lord of life.

The abortion of the unborn is the flip-side to the sexual revolution. It is, as Douglas Wilson puts it, “Moloch worship redevivus.” Abortion is part of an ongoing redefinition of what it means to be human, which is also marked by the orientation of sex towards gender, i.e. to nothing but a figment of our imaginations. Wilson wryly notes

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Perhaps a look at the specifics of the case at hand might be in order.

THE REVEALING REFERENCE TO ABORTION AS ‘CHOICE’

The uncompromising devotion to the abortionist cause marks out those that support it as a sort of cult. But what sort might that be? G.K. Beale, in his book We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry, suggests, based on Isaiah 6, that whatever people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or for restoration.18 In the case of Moloch worship, the civilizations that worshipped that fearsome idol were horrifically savage, and they gave their progeny over to death. It is entirely correct to say that there is nothing resembling brass idols in our midst. But there is more to it than that.

What people revere is whatever they hold to be ultimate reality, whether it is the triune personal God of Scripture, or something else.

What is the ultimate reality in Canada? I would say that it is the triune God, but that is not the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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dominant perspective. The dominant perspective in Canada and throughout the Western world is that which is afforded by modern science, which methodologically excludes revelation, however much explanatory power it has. It offers a cosmological explanation of a materialist nature. The prevailing cosmological view of our day, the explanation for the very existence of life and the universe is called the ‘big bang theory,’ whereby everything spontaneously emerged from a hydrogen explosion. It further resulted in the enormous complexity and diversity, and the interrelatedness of everything that exists. Now if we were to describe the assumptions that had been made in this theory, we would be compelled to admit that it presumes that something can spontaneously come from nothing, and that anything can basically become anything else. It doesn’t matter if we want to add the biological theory of evolution to it, because the idea is basically the same, which is why the theories happily co-exist.

THE WILL OF THE GOD; THE GOD OF THE WILL

What we are really providing an intellectual template for is the absolute freedom of the will to declare that anything can become anything else. The consequence of this in the sexual realm is what we might call ‘pomosexuality’ – postmodern sexuality. It’s like magic. The mirage of ‘gay marriage’ is a cardinal illustration of worshipping ‘choice.’ The autonomy of the choice is revealed in declaring that something that hadn’t existed now does; the ‘worship’ is clear in the demand that it be publicly celebrated and legally recognized. On the other hand, reducing the institution of marriage to a verbal definition, and then excluding the procreation of children from that definition, is a reduction of a something to a nothing. Passing legislation thereafter to include variations on the ‘definition’ to make it more inclusive (as with same-sex marriage) can make them ‘official,’ but no more real or socially effective. Without children, they cannot perpetuate themselves. We can similarly talk as if ‘gender’ exists in contradistinction to biological sex, and can manufacture new genders to identify new trains of thought, but they are no more than Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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willful expressions, which officialdom can only will that the general populace will, because they will it to be so. And the legal and educational system will duly oblige, because the one thing that both have demonstrated in recent years they believe in common is the absolute freedom of the will.19 Arbitrarily determining human life to begin at some point other than conception does precisely the same.

In short, the ultimate reality of our day is a very comfortable and infinitely plastic form of nihilism, the reduction of everything, however well-established, to be a matter of simple redefinition, even if it thereby refers to nothing but our will. Our society worships death because it reveals its choice to be its own god.

David B. Hart explained our society’s chief moral value as the absolute freedom of choice, with this analysis: …a society that believes this must, at least implicitly, embrace and subtly advocate a very particular moral metaphysics: the unreality of any “value” higher than choice, or of any transcendent Good ordering desire towards a higher end. Desire is free to propose, seize, accept or reject, want or not want — but not to obey. Society must thus be secured against the intrusions of the Good, or of God, so that its citizens may determine their own lives by the choices they make from a universe of morally indifferent but variably desirable ends, unencumbered by any prior grammar of obligation or value.… Hence the liberties that permit one to…destroy one’s unborn child are all equally intrinsically “good” because all are expressions of an inalienable freedom of choice. But, of course, if the will determines itself only in and through such choices, free from any prevenient natural order, then it too is in itself nothing.20

“The reduction of everything, however well-established, to be a matter of simple redefinition, even if it thereby refers to nothing but our will. Our society worships death because it reveals its choice to be its own god.”

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important. The hospitals and abortion clinics and the limitations upon public protest provide a cost-free and civilized variation on the drum beats to shield mothers from comprehending the consequences of their actions.

HOSTILE WITNESSES IN THE CULTURE WARS

This has thusfar been a pro-life portrait of the issue. Let us also consider the cultural analysis of someone who would support the pro-choice position. Michael Valpy, former Religious Affairs columnist for the Toronto Globe & Mail newspaper, is a respected analyst of the religious and ethical issues of our day. I will take his commentary on the legacy of Henry Morgentaler, Canada’s most famous abortionist, to illustrate the broad cultural significance he sees in the prochoice movement in Canada. Let me begin with a bit of context.

“At issue in the abortion debate was the still larger issue of who defines what life is. It had been God. Who was it now?”

On Dominion Day, July 1, 2008, Morgentaler was vested as a Member in the Order of Canada.

The insignia pinned to his chest by former Governor General Michaelle Jean bore the Latin motto desiderantes meliorem patriam, “they desire a better country.” It is from Hebrews 11:16, the motto of those who live by faith in Jesus Christ.

For Morgentaler, receiving the award marked an extraordinary reversal of fortunes. When the Order was established by Queen Elizabeth II back in 1967, abortion was strictly illegal, and the Christian motto doubtless seemed appropriate to Canadians, if for some only as a gesture towards ‘tradition.’ Yet revolutionary change was coming.

That same year, Pierre Trudeau was responsible as Justice Minister for introducing the landmark Criminal Law Amendment Act, an omnibus bill whose provisions included, among other things, the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults, movement towards the legalization of abortion, contraception, and lotteries, and the loosening of divorce laws. It became law of the land in 1968-69. Another country came with it.

Reflecting on Morgentaler’s elevation five years afterwards, at the time of his death, Valpy opined on the CBC’s website that it had signified that “the

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door was firmly shut on institutional religion’s engagement in the public life of the nation.” It was part of the trajectory of what progressives call being on the wrong side of history: Between Pierre Trudeau’s partial decriminalization of abortion in 1969 (in the same piece of legislation that completely de-criminalized homosexuality and contraception) and the Supreme Court’s ruling in 1988 declaring any criminalization of abortion to be unconstitutional, it became clear that absolutist teachings from the realm of the sacred would no longer be the determining factor in public morality and the nation’s public life.21

The fundamental issue though is the religious implication of the honour: “What could have been a more definitive rejection of the church’s teaching than the Governor General presenting Morgentaler with the state’s highest honour?”

22 Valpy means more than the bare symbolism of the act. Honouring Morgentaler represented far more than honouring the man who brought about the legalization of abortion in opposition to the church. At issue in the abortion debate was the still larger issue of who defines what life is. It had been God. Who was it now?

For Valpy, the answer was clear. Morgentaler was the conduit for the appropriation of the church’s and the family’s historical mandate by the state.

The state had now honoured a man who had conspicuously – even defiantly – honoured the state above God, indeed who had honoured it as a god. In ‘rejecting the church’s teaching’ on life, it celebrated the state’s teaching on life. It was therefore a moment of vast cultural and religious significance.

According to the Whig narrative of history as an inevitable progression towards greater liberty and enlightenment, Valpy identifies Morgentaler’s elevation as a beacon of Canadian values to be the defining moment between two lords, two laws, and two worldviews in Canada.

There is something undeniably correct in his summary. For him, Canada has effectively ceased to be a Christian country because in its most basic Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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understanding of human life, i.e. in its definition of life, it is no longer defined by Christian law.

He understands, as all progressivists (and too few Christians) do, that by exercising the prerogative of defining life (as also in redefining marriage) the state has usurped the Lordship of Christ, His sovereign authority over life as its Creator in every area, which is symbolized by His definition of all human life and legal protection over it. And if God’s predetermination of life and history has been rejected in Canada, as it once was in Israel before the exile, man’s predetermination of life and history invariably ensues. 23 It is not just a piece of legislation. It strikes at the very heart of all law. As in Europe, he exults, Christian culture has now been utterly privatized. Christian worship is still permissible, Christian culture (as expressed through the public outworking of the faith) is not.

In my experience, Christians are in absolute denial about both the substance of the legalization of abortion and its widespread consequences, and even though they are uncomfortable with the status quo, are quite willing to leave the issue on the backburner. Yet allowing for the denial of God’s predestination of human life to become Canadian law is necessarily to replace it with human predestination, and more specifically the government’s total determination of all life in Canada. That is because what is at issue is the same as was involved in original sin. Original sin is not, as one so often hears, a matter of eating from fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and thus ‘becoming as gods.’ That is a Gnostic distortion of the text. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The detail of the text is crucial. ‘Becoming as gods,’ thus meant that Adam and Eve took upon themselves the power of moral determination. They not only exercised dominion over the created order, but acted as if they could exercise dominion over the King of Creation Himself. And the immediate moral consequences of their action was not only the sentence of death they received, but that the first of their progeny, Cain, exercises moral determination by killing the second, Abel. They had achieved the quasi-divine power of moral Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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determination. Yet it characteristically expressed itself in the choice to take human life. As the ancient Roman proverb would have it: homo homini lupus. ‘Man is man’s wolf.’ Man might be as a god. But the devil calls the shots.

This is the current state of affairs. The sense of purpose that the Christian faith has inculcated into the Western understanding of history does not permit the progressivist to assign history a direction without a director. What has replaced Jesus Christ is the lordship of man, his sovereign authority over life and death, expressed in the State, which as Hegel once wrote is the ‘voice of God on earth.’ Politics has returned to what it had been in the Western world before Christendom, a theological-political enterprise in which there is no separation of church and state precisely because the state once again exercises the prerogatives of the church, as it did before the advent of Christendom. This sounds surprising because every time the Christian faith is suppressed in the public square in our day, it is done in the name of the ‘separation of church and state.’ 24

“This sounds surprising because every time the Christian faith is suppressed in the public square in our day, it is done in the name of the ‘separation of church and state.’ 24”

THE ABORTION OF FATHERHOOD - HER CHOICE, HER PROBLEM

One of the preeminent social legacies of Christendom was the eradication, through legal and political means, of the idea that women were the property of their husbands. The Bible insisted on the covenant obligations of man to wife, and both to child as the basis of the social good. The Enlightenment’s postulates of human autonomy and freedom (rather than personhood and the family) as the fundamental human categories seriously eroded that, and brought about a backlash in the twentieth century. The feminist movement largely encouraged women to understand themselves in similarly mistaken autonomous terms, understandably demanding equal rights in a variety of areas where men’s obligations had been previously understood.

But the right to choose to abort a child – and the perceived need for it – validate the patriarchal worldview which holds that women, encumbered as they are by their reproductive capacity, are

“One of preeminent social legacies of Christendom was the eradication, through legal and political means, of the idea that women were the property of their husbands”

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“But nowhere is it more obvious that supporting abortion is different than standing for women’s rights than in the widespread practice of gendercide, the choice to abort the unborn simply because they are girls.25”

“Not only has it given men a free pass, it has increased the stigma on women for carrying or aborting the child, precisely because ‘her choice’ means it’s now all on her shoulders.”

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inferior to men because pregnancy requires them to depend on men. The sexual revolution simply made this a crisis.

Having explored the connections of the sexual revolution with abortion and observed it as a social symptom of extreme theological peril, I conclude by observing its devastating effect on the entire family, but particularly on the women it allegedly liberates and heals. The irony of the situation could hardly be more acute. Throughout the Western world, abortion is held to be the most fundamental women’s right. Canada sees itself in the forefront of women’s rights precisely because it provides unlimited, fully-funded access to abortion. But nowhere is it more obvious that supporting abortion is different than standing for women’s rights than in the widespread practice of gendercide, the choice to abort the unborn simply because they are girls.25 The hypocrisy of those who have called themselves defenders of women’s rights has been well and truly exposed on this issue. They might sound the dog whistle of ‘oppression’ and ‘imposing patriarchy,’ and a Pavlovian pack of ‘activists’ might still bay and gnash their teeth.26 But they now stand shoulderto-shoulder with patriarchal societies. The point of principle is clearly about defending the ‘prochoice’ position against any limitation. Unfettered access to death as a ‘choice’ is sacrosanct.

Yet even if we disregard the practice of gendercide, we still find that, forty years on, abortion on demand has failed to liberate the overwhelming majority of women or promote their good. Instead, it has promoted the terms of the sexual revolution – uncommitted, anonymous sex without consequences – to the detriment of women. Giving pregnant women the sole prerogative of ‘choice’ is the final insult. For it has exempted men from any responsibility. Covenant fidelity has been done away with. The sperm donor and the drunken sailor have the same status, the same effective rights and obligations, as a dutiful husband who loves his wife and would seek to be a good father to his children. In short, women’s power to ‘choose’ not only results in the slaughter of millions, it has made for the unprecedented cultural phenomenon of single mothers and fatherless children, a statistic that seems to rise by the year.

Not only has it given men a free pass, it has increased the stigma on women for carrying or aborting the child, precisely because ‘her choice’ means it’s now all on her shoulders. Once women leave the silencing cordon of ‘confidentiality’ of Moloch’s functionaries in the clinic, they alone will have to hear either the baby’s cries on their own or their peers’ attacks on their ‘irresponsibility.’

It is not only men who will anathematize the pregnant woman. Pressure from families and friends, who know that they too will have to bear the consequences of the mother’s allegedly autonomous decision, is often unbearable. Society too will add to this by the cost it will have to bear.

CONCLUSION

As the insignia on the breasts of the Order of Canada’s members declares, there remains a better country for those who live by faith.

Without faith, and covenant obedience to the One who is faithful and true, there can be no life.

The fifth commandment declares that it is those who honour their father and mother that shall inherit the land. Jesus makes it plain that that land is the whole earth. That includes Canada.

The promotion of abortion as the pre-eminent human good declares nothing other than the depth of depravity in the world today. Those who hate the Lord love death.

It is the calling of the church to speak against this, to call the lost, and to affirm life as God’s gift. Above all, we should be mindful once more of the text in Jeremiah with which this essay began. The Lord had asked Jeremiah a rhetorical question in response to the weight of sin and depravity, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?”(Jer. 32:27).

The price that the faithless paid for their worship of death rather than of Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life was clear, and it is clear in our time. Yet the promise of God to the faithful remains in the midst of that: …they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for their own good and the good of their children Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul (Jeremiah 32: 38-41).

It is the meek, those obedient to the Lord of life, that shall inherit the earth. And those who hate life are seeing to it quickly.

1

This practice began under Solomon’s reign (1 Kings 11:7). The reformer Josiah sought to stop it (2 Kings 23:10).

2 Diodorus Siculus, Ch. 20.14; Plutarch, De Superstitiones, 171.

3 Heb. Ge Hinnom; Gr. Gehenna, literally, the ‘Valley of Hinnom’.

4 R.D. Moore. “Should We Pull Back from Politics?” (Nashville: The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, 2013) http://erlc.com/article/shouldwe-pull-back-from-politics 5 Cf. John Eidsmore, Historical and Theological Foundations of Law, Vol. II, Classical and Medieval (Powder Springs, GA: Tolle Lege P., 2012), p. 534.

6 In a 1999 speech celebrating the 30th anniversary of the passage of Trudeau’s omnibus bill C-150, Senator Lucie Pépin similarly argued that its abortion legislation provided a new freedom which “proved to be a stepping stone for many other freedoms and options that have altered women’s place in [Canadian] society - self-esteem, education, jobs, a voice and empowerment.” http://www. parl.gc.ca/Content/Sen/Chamber/362/Debates/ pdf/007db_1999-11-16-e.pdf 7 P.K. Coleman. “Abortion and Mental Health: Quantitative Synthesis and Analysis of Research Published 1995 — 2009.” The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2011, 199: 180–186. http://bjp.rcpsych.org/ content/199/3/180.full.pdf+html 8 As Joe Boot argued previously, healthcare is a priestly function with salvific connotations that are related to the nature of the God who is worshipped. Cf. “Health, Salvation and the Kingdom of God,” Jubilee (Spring 2012).

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9

I take this difficult text to refer to the fulfillment of the dominion mandate – faithful women shall, through their obedience to the first commandment given to mankind, to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, inherit God’s blessings in this life in anticipation of its fullness in the eschaton.

10 The heart of the pro-life position resides in its obedience to the sixth commandment, as Qs.135–136 of the Westminster Larger Catechism make clear.

11 For example, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which asserts that “all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights,” and that “among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” Article 3 of the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person;” and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Sect. 7: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

12 The right to life mentioned in Section 7 of the Canadian Charter stands, in clear reference to the U.N. declaration, as the basic right to be alive.

The courts have lacked consistency in defending this. They ruled in the 1989 case of Borowski v. Canada (Attorney General) that the unborn were not subject to this protection due to mootness, i.e. because they declined to decide. On the other hand, in the 1993 case of Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General), they rejected assisted suicide because the right to bodily control could not trump the right to life. It was a common societal belief that “human life is sacred or inviolable,” and therefore security of the person itself could not include a right to suicide; suicide would destroy life and thus be inherently harmful. Instructive, and worrying, was the appeal to the shifting sands of ‘societal beliefs’ rather than any reference to something inalienable.

13 At root, there are two different systems of law. The law that defends persons stems from the common law tradition. The law that defends ‘privacy’ stems from the Romantic idea of ‘natural rights’.

14 The claim that it is a matter of women’s rights seems to have well and truly decimated by the widely-publicized practice of ‘gendercide’, which has not changed the status quo one inch. Cf. http:// www.economist.com/node/15606229 or http://

“I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for their own good and the good of their children after them.”

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www.economist.com/node/15636231 It is telling that the Playboy Foundation was from the very beginning an advocate of women’s abortion rights. Cf. Carrie Pitzulo, “The Battle in Every Man’s Bed: Playboy and the Fiery Feminists,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 17, no. 2 (2008): 259-289, 10.1353/sex.0.0004 16 Perhaps the most alarming manner in which the church has followed the world is in allowing its teaching to follow the progressive methodology so ably described by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man. Teaching has to some degree been allowed to separate from moral conduct and example.

17 D. Wilson. “Delenda Est.” Blog and Mablog, September 26, 2013. http://dougwils.com/ s7-engaging-the-culture/delenda-est.html 18 Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008.

19 In early October, the 60,000-strong Thomson Reuters media empire, in an effort to determine its diversity success, has asked its staff of reporters, researchers, marketers and others to pick their sex from nine choices, including ‘genderqueer,’ a category for identities other than man or woman, and ‘not sure’. http://washingtonexaminer.com/ article/2536814 20 D.B. Hart. “Christ and Nothing.” First Things, October 2003. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/12/christ-and-nothing-28 21 M. Valpy. “Morgentaler’s Other Legacy — The Wall between Church and State.” Posted June 3, 2012. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ story/2013/05/30/f-vp-valpy-morgentaler-religion. html 22 Strictly speaking, the Order of Canada is not even Canada’s highest honour (the highest, the Order of Merit, is awarded at the monarch’s prerogative), and Morgentaler was awarded the lowest of the three grades in the Order.

23 The comment of his successor as Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, is telling: “A sovereign is a state with a monopoly on the means of force. It is the object of ultimate allegiance and the source of law.” Ignatieff, like all Hegelians, divinizes the state. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ michael-ignatieff-911-and-the-age-of-sovereignfailure/article594094/ 24 Cf. Mara Hvistendahl’s Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (USA: Public Affairs, 2011) 15

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speaks of a shortfall of 160 million girls in Asia, and the ills of the practice of ‘choosing’ one’s offspring in general, an effect that has also been noted throughout the Western world. http://www.npr. org/2011/06/15/137106354/in-asia-the-perils-ofaborting-girls-and-keeping-boys 25 In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that a law that sought to make it a felony to knowingly provide a sex- or race-based abortion was both sexist and racist. http://www. huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/arizona-abortionban-race-sex_n_3355493.html

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HOW COULD SHE? “I JUST CAN’T IMAGINE how any

woman could abort her own child. Hasn’t she seen the pictures of how a child develops in the womb?

I don’t know how anyone can deny there is a baby growing, even in the early stages of development.

How could she do it?”

The middle-aged woman told me that she didn’t want to sound judgmental, but she really didn’t understand why women abort. She came into the Pregnancy Care Centre office with her hands filled with bags of nearly new baby clothes that her little grandson had quickly grown out of. She was excited about being a first-time grandmother and showed us his pictures.

She looked up from the baby photos and noticed that we didn’t display pictures of any children in the office. We’ve learned that a woman in an unexpected pregnancy is often frightened and overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for a baby, I told her. We intentionally keep baby pictures, and baby donations out of her view in order to reduce her anxiety and to create a safe environment for her to talk and to learn more about her pregnancy options. We listen to find out about her greatest fears, and help her to see she has alternatives that will offer a good future for her and her child. As we extend support and discuss the options of parenting or placing a child for adoption, she will often calm down and see that her life is not over. She can quite naturally discover a desire to nurture and protect her baby.

This grandmother couldn’t imagine the panic a woman goes through when she faces an unexpected pregnancy. I think it would have improved her understanding if she had been an invisible observer in one of our client sessions.

Sometime after she left, a young woman came for a pregnancy test appointment. It wasn’t only the test she wanted. She wanted someone to talk to.

In fact she repeated the test at home several times before coming to our office. She never thought she would get pregnant. She was hoping that the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

home tests were wrong, and the two telling test lines wouldn’t show up again. She wanted to talk with someone confidentially to unravel the conflicting voices in her head that kept her tossing and turning at night. She couldn’t be pregnant and she wanted to know what she needed to do to get her life back to normal. Abortion seemed to be her only way out.

She told me about her situation. She was completing her second year of university with plans to become a professional in her field after three more years of study. Her boyfriend also had several years of school before he was to graduate. They were thinking of getting married but only once they finished school, had jobs and had money for a house. Both were living at home with their parents. She told me she was a Christian who regularly attended a church and had put her trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. I know and hold high regard for the church she attended.

I asked her about what she believed about abortion. She believed abortion is wrong. In high school, she had participated in a pro-life club that held up curbside signs calling for an end to abortion. Even though she believed abortion was wrong, given her particular situation she believed she couldn’t have a baby – that God wouldn’t want her to have a child now. Fears of bringing shame on her family and on her church were the key factors influencing her to think that her abortion was necessary. She was aware she had crossed God’s boundaries by being sexually active before marriage. She was willing to bear any personal pain that might come with an abortion – physical, emotional or spiritual, she just didn’t want her church and family to suffer from her bad choices.

She convinced herself that abortion, in her case, was a self-denying act. Even with her Christian background, at that moment, she could not feel her feet sliding down a slippery slope. She did not see that trying to cover her sexual sin by having an abortion, could bring even greater harm to herself and the end of life to her child who God entrusted to her care.

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LINDA BAARTSE

LINDA BAARTSE lives in Toronto and is Executive Director of the Pregnancy Care Centre, a Christian non-profit organization that exists so that no woman needs to feel that abortion is her only alternative. Linda and team extend emotional, material and spiritual support to those who struggle with hard decisions in a crisis pregnancy.

Previous to moving to Toronto, Linda spent over a decade in Guatemala working with Mam-speaking groups through CAUSE Canada, and Wycliffe Bible Translators on projects that included installing running water, initiating a school literacy program and supporting a Christian women’s association.

“Even though she believed abortion was wrong, given her particular situation she believed she couldn’t have a baby.”

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How Could She?

“How is your faith helping you during this difficult time?” She sobbed and reached for a tissue.

“We sin when we see the wrong action as being easier and more attractive.”

“The test of belief is revealed in the choices that are made.

Believing that abortion is wrong is easy to say.”

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My life is over. How can I keep going to school and ever hope to be successful in life? I can’t even remember to make lunch without my mom’s help, how could I take care of a baby? I’m too young. We’re not ready to be married. What if my parents found out I was pregnant? They would kill me. And they have already paid my tuition.

If I show up obviously pregnant at my church my parents will have to step down from their leadership positions. Everyone will talk about us. I can’t pray to God anymore.

I hate this. I’m sinful by being pregnant and I’m sinful if I abort, so what’s the difference?

I have other friends who had abortions and they got over it. It will probably be hard on me emotionally but I really have no choice.

And adoption? I could never do that. If I am going to go through the pregnancy I am not going to give my baby away to people I don’t know. A baby should be raised by her own mother and father. If I can’t be a good mother, abortion is best so the child doesn’t have to suffer a terrible life. I don’t want to, but you see I really have no other choice.

Were her arguments logical? Were they based on the truth of Scripture? No. But temptation to sin never is. In Romans 7, the Apostle Paul speaks about the struggle of the flesh directing us away from the God’s protective and life-giving boundaries. As Christians in our daily struggle against sin we don’t often fall from lack of knowing what the right action is. We sin when we see the wrong action as being easier and more attractive. Using an illustration from the Puritan Thomas Brooks, she couldn’t see the hook behind the abortion bait. She had no idea of the physical, emotional and spiritual harm that would result from aborting her child. She couldn’t see that abortion would change her forever. However, in the end, this young Christian woman was open to hearing counsel from the Bible, chose to give birth to her child, and discovered support from her family and her church.

Not all the situations we know have positive endings, even within the church community. Women who attended our post-abortion Bible study have told us their church leaders encouraged abortion with the assurance that God understands and would forgive them. A woman with several children was upset at being pregnant at the time when her husband was out of work. She sought help from the parish nurse on Sunday at church.

After sharing her difficulties, she quietly received some phone numbers for abortion clinics written on a piece of paper. Other family members, also church members, agreed a child would be too much of a burden for her. She listened to them and aborted her unborn child. She spent years grieving her loss, going through times of being unable to properly care for her other children and relate to her husband. She still struggles with anger against everyone who encouraged her to abort and failed to offer support or even suggest that she might regret her decision.

Other women have felt pressure to have abortions from social workers or doctors due to their past history of depression, or due to concern for the health abnormalities of their unborn children. A woman of the Muslim faith was grateful for our support when, against medical advice, she gave birth to a child who she had been told would suffer from Down syndrome. She shook her head in disbelief that a health professional would not want her beautiful daughter in this world. She was grateful that she found others who would support her as she prepared to parent the child God gave her, regardless of ability, and even with her limited resources as a refugee. Her daughter was born without health problems. She encouraged us to tell her story to anyone else feeling pressure from professionals to abort, that they might take courage and not be fearful.

Women from many religious backgrounds hold the conviction that life is sacred. Even for those who don’t claim to have any faith, many will say that life should be protected. However, the test of belief is revealed in the choices that are made. Believing that abortion is wrong is easy to say when it doesn’t involve personal shame, an educational Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

How Could She?

or career setback, disapproval from loved ones, or the responsibility of a raising a child. For a young woman and her partner, an unexpected pregnancy is often the first significant test of whether they will live according to their personal values as adults. Embracing the life of a child involves personal sacrifice. Living according to your convictions can be costly.

Boyfriends often pressure their girlfriends to abort. I can think of several sessions with young men who reminded their girlfriends of their agreement to abort if there was ever a pregnancy. The young woman, even those who believe abortion is a good choice, will often have second thoughts about her pro-choice perspective when she finds out she is pregnant. Boyfriends can envision a short-term sadness for the woman but they believe that abortion will give both of them longer term gains. “You’ll get over it. I’ll be there to support you” is a common response.

Post-abortive men and women tell us differently.

One young couple I know has grieved for years.

The girlfriend had long term medical complications after her abortion. The young man repentant, yet grieving, has a hard time looking to the future. Another young man sought professional counseling for depression some ten years after he bought a plane ticket to help his girlfriend travel to have an abortion. These people tell us the abortion gave some short-term relief from their complicated situations, but resulted in long-term emotional pain. As the years went on, there were regrets they were powerless to change. Many have confirmed that the memory of their abortion replayed over and over in their head was worse than the actual abortion experience.

live by their rules. News of the unexpected grandchild would bring shame on the family in their home country and they wanted to spare their daughter suffering as a single mom. Her mother made the abortion appointment. They sat in an abortion clinic that was full of other young women sitting with their moms as well. Dad sat in the car in the parking lot. The young woman sent text messages back and forth to one of the support workers in our office. She didn’t want to go against her parent’s wishes, yet she didn’t want to take away the life of her child. She didn’t sign for the abortion that day, and didn’t show up for the rescheduled appointment a week later. Her baby was born healthy and the little girl lives with her mom in her grandparent’s home. The young woman tells us that that her parents have adjusted well to the changes and are finding delight in their granddaughter.

For me it is no longer very difficult to answer the question “How could she?” Understanding the issues around unplanned pregnancy, the nature of our sinful hearts, and the societal pressures young women face, increase my desire to extend help and hope in our Saviour. We pray that Christians who are convicted that each life is precious will be ready to extend love and grace and make sacrifices to let “her” know that she is not alone.

“Abortion gave some short-term relief from their complicated situations, but resulted in long-term emotional pain.”

“We pray that Christians who are convicted that each life is precious will be ready to extend love and grace and make sacrifices to let “her” know that she is not alone.”

The grandmother at a loss to understand the reasons why women abort would likely have been shocked to hear that not only boyfriends, but many parents, are involved in facilitating their daughter’s abortion. A woman in her mid-twenties decided that she wanted to parent her baby.

Her parents were appalled. Even though she had completed her studies and was working, they would have no part of such a shameful choice.

While she lived in their house she would need to Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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26 PAGE NO.

STEPHANIE GRAY STEPHANIE GRAY is an international speaker who is co-founder and executive director of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (unmaskingchoice. ca). She is author of A Physician’s Guide to Discussing Abortion and faculty at Blackstone Legal Fellowship in Scottsdale, AZ and lives in the Greater Toronto Area.

COMMUNICATING

MORAL CLARITY on Abortion THERE ARE FEW ABORTIONISTS in

mother wanted Dr. Fellows to kill the child solely because she’s female, he would not. But if that same mother wanted that same doctor to kill that same child for a different reason –namely, that she has Down syndrome – Dr. Fellows would, in fact, “absolutely” kill the baby.

This abortion doctor has been doing abortions for a record-breaking forty-four years (since its legalization in Canada). He does them up to twenty-three weeks and six days – yes, that’s a day shy of six months. His demeanor is calm and he is bold when making admissions about what he does. “I have no dispute with Stephanie’s rendition of what goes on in the uterus,” he explained to the audience, “Nor do I have any dispute over the fact that it is ending the pregnancy.”

And yet, we’re talking about the same child. Surely if that child’s value is independent of her gender it should also be independent of her abilities or appearance (isn’t that what we tell teenagers experiencing self-esteem issues?). And yet, we frequently see this inconsistency in the abortion debate – most people think the morality of abortion is determined on a case-by-case basis: “Abortion is certainly wrong sometimes, like if used as a form of birth control,” many declare, “But if the child is conceived in rape? Yeah, that makes abortion okay.”

Canada who perform abortions late-term, and even fewer who will debate the topic in public forums. And yet, earlier this year I found myself at a Canadian university formally debating Dr. Fraser Fellows of London, Ontario – for a second time.

His position was so extreme I expected no exceptions. So I was surprised by his answer when I asked, “If someone came to you wanting an abortion solely because the child is a girl, would you do that sex-selective abortion?”

“No,” he said.

A short while later I asked, “What about Down syndrome?” to which he responded, “If the woman decides that she does not want to have a child with Down syndrome, so be it.”

“Surely if that child’s value is independent of her gender it should also be independent of her abilities or appearance.”

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Me: “So have you aborted children who have Down syndrome?”

Dr. Fellows: “Absolutely.”

It seems Dr. Fellows would determine the morality of an act based on the motivations of the actor. But an odd scenario develops for him: Consider a woman is pregnant with a child who is female and also has Down syndrome. If that

Or does it?

HUMAN RIGHTS

When my colleagues and I bring pro-life signs to busy sidewalks, one of our favourite questions to ask passersby is, “Do you believe in human rights?”

The exchange which ensues generally goes something like this: Passerby: “Yes.” Pro-Lifer: “What about this human’s rights?”

[Pointing to an image of an aborted child.]

Passerby: “It’s not human.”

Pro-Lifer: “Does the child have human parents?”

Passerby: “Yes.” Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Communicating Moral Clarity

Pro-Lifer: “Wouldn’t that make her human then?”

Passerby: “But it’s not alive.”

Pro-Lifer: “Before she was killed, was she growing? For example, from one cell to two, then four, eight, and so forth?”

Passerby: “Yes.” Pro-Lifer: “And doesn’t science teach us that if something is growing it must be alive?”

Passerby: “I suppose, but it’s just a fetus.”

Pro-Lifer: “What is a fetus?”

And this is where the pro-lifer usually discovers the passerby does not know the meaning of the word they themselves just used. Fetus, besides meaning “unborn offspring,” is an age category that isn’t species-specific. Dolphins have fetuses, as do dogs. The question is not, “Is the pre-born a fetus?” but rather, “What kind of fetus is the pre-born?” And if that fetus is a living human (something we already established by virtue of her growth and her parentage), doesn’t she have the same right to life (guaranteed in our Charter as well as the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights) as other humans who happen to be at different ages (embryos, infants, toddlers, and teenagers)?

THE CRUX OF THE ISSUE

Abortion advocates tend to avoid the conversation going in that direction, for they don’t have a satisfactory answer to that question. Instead, they’ll focus on the understandably difficult circumstances some pregnant women are in. That’s what Dr. Fellows did: “If you were privy to the stories,” he said, “that women come with, the desperation…I will do the abortion because people…have told me this woman is desperate and she’s sad and she wants it over with.”

Whether a woman is in poverty, has no sup-

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port, is pregnant from sexual assault, or facing another crisis, both sides of the abortion debate can agree difficult circumstances exist. And yet, would we ever allow difficult circumstances to be grounds to kill born children? Should we kill a toddler if he is a reminder of his rapist father?

Should we kill teens whose parents are poor or have no support?

The fact that we do not kill the born for the very reasons we kill the pre-born shows we do not consider the pre-born individuals like the born.

And yet, embryology texts teach that life begins at fertilization. Here is but one example: “[The zygote], formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new human being…” 1 The fact that we had such a small start and yet were “all there” is explained well by law professor Richard Stith through his analogy to a Polaroid picture: The image exists the moment the camera clicks, and we exist at the moment of fertilization; but just as initially the image appears as indecipherable black smudges, so too at fertilization we appear underdeveloped. But our identity (the “image”) was captured in an instant, simply requiring time for us to develop.2

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“Both sides of the abortion debate can agree difficult circumstances exist. And yet, would we ever allow difficult circumstances to be grounds to kill born children?

Should we kill a toddler if he is a reminder of his rapist father?

Should we kill teens whose parents are poor or have no support?”

Dr. Maureen Condic, in her paper “When Does Human Life Begin?” provides an in-depth scientific explanation to support this illustration: From the moment of sperm-egg fusion [the beginning of fertilization], a human zygote acts as a complete whole with all the parts of the zygote interacting in an orchestrated fashion to generate the structures and relationships required for the zygote to continue developing towards its mature state.... The zygote acts immediately and decisively to initiate a program of development that will, if uninterrupted by accident, disease, or external intervention, proceed seamlessly through formation of the definitive body, birth, childhood adolescence, maturity, and aging, ending with death. This coordinated behavior is the very hallmark of an organism.

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Communicating Moral Clarity

Mere human cells, in contrast, are composed of human DNA and other human molecules, but they show no global organization beyond that intrinsic to cells in isolation. A human skin cell removed from a mature body and maintained in the laboratory will continue to live and will divide many times to produce a large mass of cells, but it will not re-establish the whole organism from which it was removed; it will not regenerate an entire human body in culture.

Although embryogenesis begins with a single-cell zygote, the complex, integrated process of embryogenesis is the activity of an organism, not the activity of a cell.3 PERSONHOOD

Struggling to find a rationale for abortion and unable to refute the science, abortion supporters typically respond with philosophy, claiming the pre-born aren’t “people.” A good pro-life response is a Socratic one: “How is person defined?” Typically a list of functions is given: self-awareness, ability to feel pain, capacity to communicate in complex languages.

Such a list inevitably, and unintentionally, excludes some born people (such as those with congenital insensitivity to pain), making it more exclusive than merely leaving out the pre-born – a consequence abortion advocates wouldn’t like.

“The uterus, unlike other body parts, exists in one body more for another’s body than one’s own.”

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Moreover, pro-lifers would do well to inquire, “Doesn’t the person have to exist for any ability, like self-awareness, to exist? For example, selfawareness doesn’t float around – it’s a function of an individual. The individual can exist without it (e.g. sleeping) but the self-awareness can’t exist without the individual. Shouldn’t we value the being over the ability?”

One could also ask, “Why isn’t a one-celled human embryo aware versus a one-celled amoeba?”

The latter isn’t aware because of what it is, whereas the former isn’t aware because of how old it is.

Ultimately, any definition of personhood used to deprive the pre-born of rights will boil down

to the pre-born simply being younger (because of their age, they haven’t developed the abilities to think, reason, and feel pain, etc.). In short, that would be age discrimination. Tragically, discrimination is a tendency humans have acted on throughout history: women were denied personhood when it was defined by sex. Jews were denied personhood when it was defined by ethnicity/religion. Blacks were denied personhood when it was defined by skin colour. If those with light skin don’t have the right to deny the personhood of those with dark skin, why should those who are older have a right to deny the personhood of those who are younger?

DEPENDENCY

“It’s not about age,” some abortion advocates respond. “It’s that the fetus is dependent on the mom’s body.” The total reliance of the pre-born on the born is most accurate – and yet, why are the pre-born dependent on their moms? It’s because of their age – in our species, at that age, we need our mothers’ bodies (if we were elephants, we’d need our moms’ bodies for almost two years!). Moreover, does this dependency make us less responsible, or more, for the youngest of our kind? Consider the case of a university student versus a toddler asking their parents for food. If the former’s parents deprive the student of food, they will not be charged with neglect. But if the latter’s parents deprive the child of food, they will be. Why no consequences in the first case but consequences in the second? Dependency: the adult child is capable of caring for himself whereas the toddler is not. Civil societies hold to the standard that the more vulnerable someone is, the more responsible we are for them (hence the adage “women and children first”), which is why pre-born dependency makes a great case against abortion.

BODILY RIGHTS

Ever creative, abortion advocates have come up with still another response – even if parents have to feed their children, they aren’t obligated to give their body parts away. A philosophy professor I debated once made that argument,

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Communicating Moral Clarity

claiming that if your child needed a kidney, it would be nice of you to donate yours, but the law shouldn’t force you. On that he is correct, but how is that different from “donating” your uterus – something he similarly said you should not be legally bound to do?

The answer lies in the nature and purpose of the kidney versus the uterus. The former exists in my body, for my body. The latter, however, exists in my body, every month, getting ready for someone else’s body. I can live without my uterus but my offspring cannot. Therefore, the uterus, unlike other body parts, exists in one body more for another’s body than one’s own.

Things, November 4, 2006, http://www.firstthings. com/onthesquare/2006/11/stith-arguing-with-prochoicer 3 Maureen Condic, “When Does Life Begin?”

(Thornwood, NY: The Westchester Institute for Ethics & the Human Person, 2006) <bdfund.org/ wordpress/wp-content/.../06/wi_whitepaper_life_ print.pdf> Accessed Oct. 27, 2013.

“Opposing one abortion leads to opposing all, for if the pre-born are innocent humans and humans have human rights, it’s never okay to kill them.”

CONCLUSION

Pitting the child against the mother is perhaps one of the most tragic consequences of the proabortion mindset, for that relationship should be the most sacred of all. There is no denying the hardships some pregnant women face, but there is also no denying that an abortion won’t un-rape a rape victim, won’t make a poor woman rich, and won’t turn a woman’s frog of a boyfriend into a prince. Women in crisis need help, but surely we can alleviate a pregnant woman’s problems without eliminating her child.

If someone is uncomfortable with some abortions (such as Dr. Fellows on sex-selection), we need to show them how opposing one abortion leads to opposing all, for if the pre-born are innocent humans and humans have human rights, it’s never okay to kill them. As I said in the close of my debate with Dr. Fellows, “we need to use a different means to get to the end that we want.…

Why would we ever end the lives of the youngest of our kind to deal with problems that older people face?”

1

K.L. Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects,7th edition (Philadelphia: Saunders Elsevier, 2008), p. 5.

2 Richard Stith, “Arguing with Pro-Choicers,” First

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RESOURCE CORNER How Then Shall We Answer - Hardcover This book represents Joe Boot’s summa apologetica. Bold, imaginative and instructive, it is written for a general audience rather than for a specialized one. The prose is remarkable not only for evident wisdom in the field of apologetics but also for the distinctive way the author does it. With various imageries and anecdotes, Joe provides a clear, engaging articulation of a fresh set of perspectives on several topics. Full of biblical and theological insights, and written with an evangelistic heart, this book serves to nourish the faithful, stimulate good arguments for the seeker and build a strong rational basis for the causative relation between faith and reason, the former being the presupposition of the latter. With rigor and relevance, Joe constitutes a seminal apologetic that enables readers to grasp the signs of divine transcendence, and to apprehend, or rather to be apprehended by the beauty of Christ. (Dennis Ngien PhD, from the foreword)

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