God, Children, and Abortion

Tuesday, January 22nd was the 40th anniversary of  landmark Supreme Court case known as Roe v Wade. We at Table 54 haven't discussed the public's reaction to this yet but today seemed like a good time to air facts and feelings.

The main objection to legalized abortion seems to be the Christian belief that God condemns the killing of children (if, indeed, you believe that a fetus is somehow a living child - an argument for another time and place).

This is nothing less than an outright LIE.  God not only hasn't condemned infanticide, in the past he has actually ordered it to take place:

Deuteronomy 7

 ¹ When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— ² and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. ³ Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, ⁴ for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.⁵ This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. ⁶ For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. 

Deuteronomy 20

¹⁶ However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. ¹⁸ Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

And did God's chosen people carry out these outrageous genocidal and infanticidal commands?  You bet your bippy they did.  

Joshua 6

          ¹⁷ The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord.  Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared.  

         ²¹ They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

Don't think that God's attitude concerning the killing of children only extended to those outside the Jewish faith.  Not so.  Consider the Law Covenant that God contracted with the people of Israel:


      Exodus 21

¹⁵ Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death. 

¹⁷ “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.

Leviticus 20

⁹ “‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head.

Deuteronomy 21

¹⁸ If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, ¹⁹ his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. ²⁰ They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” ²¹ Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

Geeze, I don't hear you singing "Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World."

So how do Bible commentators, ministers, priests, teachers, etc. justify these verses in light of an "all loving God?"  Does this sound like a God of justice, long-suffering and compassion?  They tell us

1. We can't question the wisdom of God.  If he condemns people, they are evil, and deserve it.  ('Nuff said.)
2. They say there is nothing in recorded history to support such events.  (It's in the Bible, stupid.)
3. This was the ancient world.  Life was brutal anyway.  (So it was normal and moral to kill children.)
4. This was done to show everyone God was serious.  (Kill kids to prove a point?  You have to be kidding.)
5. I've heard that God has the right to take anyone's life as he sees fit.  (Consider Newtown, Connecticut.)
6. God is concerned with Canaanite contamination of Israel.   (By innocent children?)
7. God was preserving Israel's spiritual health and posterity.  (By killing children?)
8. God hasn't harmed the children - they will receive eternal life.  (Oh, God killed them so they're saved.)
9. So if the God of Islam orders them to kill Christian men, women and children that's OK?  (No wait - wrong God.)  

My favorite is #8 - that God saved the children from growing up in the depraved lifestyle of their parents giving them eternal life.  If you apply that same logic to abortionists, their salvation rate is 100%, all the souls go to heaven - so abortion can't be a bad thing.  The children get eternal life and don't have to grow up in this nutty, murderous world.  It's either that or the fetus isn't a child at all.  Can we apply some reason here?

So believe in a loving God who legislates right to life?  Huh?

-Y