The move of society into the twenty-first century has been to make legal some growing beliefs to action in a secular society based largely on values found in evolving social thinking and practice. This is related to a concept of freedom that not only changes human beliefs and conduct from secular social history but also from scriptural explanations and injunctions. During recent decades the debate has been fierce relating to abortion. Suddenly it also focused on same-sex marriage. The debates are often odd in that they draw upon unsupported assumptions, some of which are contradictory to justify major moves in general society, and putting down those who have believed on the record of history (that includes spiritual sources for forming values). Those persons continuing some beliefs and practices of centuries are accused of phobias, prejudices, and distortions. Objectivity in major disputes is hard to come by. Although that has always been so, it has not in history impacted many persons or become so public in media that society has lost some of its community, unity and context for the formation of the lives of children.
Christians are to regard children highly: 1) Am I violating Scripture in the matter? 2) How is it that avowed Christians disagree on what Scripture has to say about important life decisions like abortion and marriage? We cannot find passages in Scripture that support some growing views. We do have ways to protect human rights matters for persons without displacing the biblical and historical views of the factors in debate. Most importantly we do have passages opposing some changes so to introduce what will be a continuing tension in society unless the freedoms of the past are denied to those obedient to the heavenly vision of God and human responsibility to life. Life is the evidence of God, and that is enough for mankind to be interested in God’s processes in his major interest related to the world – LIFE. There is a growing interest in assisted suicide, already legal in parts of the world, so to break the saying from the beginning of our understanding: God gave life and only he should take it. Doctors dedicated to healing ministry that protects life are now called upon to monitor persons in taking their lives, or take rejected fetuses from pregnant women so to deny that God cares, and that he has not revealed his order for life. Presently a person may be arrested for destroying the egg of a valued bird, and reimbursed for taking life from the fetus of a human being. The laws are moving in the direction of a theory of human-animal essence rather than the image of God (divine factor) stamped on every human soul that characterizes the human being.
My wife bore four children, and gave them to me, as in the meaning of marriage she gave herself in love to me. We deliberately reciprocated with each other. Out of that context four small lives were born, from the life of the womb to the life of nature. They will make another transition to the life of God we identify as immortality. On the birth of the third infant my wife said she felt that with the difficulty of pregnancy that she had experienced we ought to consider our family to be complete. I accepted that as sensible to her situation. Four years later she announced that she felt she wanted two more children. A year later our fourth was born. The pregnancy and delivery seemed more difficult than the previous infants had offered. She subtracted number five, a decision she would renounce if she had become pregnant again. What would have been lost to us without the fourth one, protected from abortion when my wife felt disoriented? My beloved second daughter filled out our quartet. From her life with her pastor husband, a son and daughter have been born. The son taught young people in Asia and is presently completing graduate degrees so to serve society even more effectively, and the daughter is assisting distressed girls maltreated, even enslaved, in India. God has given us two great four-letter words that prove himself to us – Love and Life. The Christian does well to raise to persons, in as gracious a manner as possible that the governments of earth are expressing an expanded human self-pride to determine that a human fetus may lose his or her life by human (prospective parent) preference. Exceptions in experience should not determine policies. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020