The hue and cry arose to heaven.
Raw passion gripped men and women alike. Dark with human frailty, the
architecture of their souls scuttled them from one extreme to another: from
wailing grief to insane murmuring, from desperate hilarity to catatonic shock,
from enraged cursing to soft choking sobs.
Broken bodies.
Cast off lives. Stark naked
tragedy. Gore and
devastation. Sadness and
sorrow. There before them was the
vexing spector of mortality and the awful stench of death. It was a gruesome panorama that defiled
their senses and haunted their every waking thought.
It was a nightmare come to life. The carnage was beyond
their comprehension. The loss was
beyond their measure. But the
memory of it would be carved onto the fleshly tablets of their hearts with a
dull familiar blade.
It was an all too recognizable scene. It still is.
It could describe for us the savage anguish of Israelite
mothers after Pharaoh ordered the deaths of all their male children (Exodus 1:
15-22). It could describe for us
the desperate terror that raged through Gilead after the marauding army of
Ammon ripped open their pregnant women and raped their daughters (Amos
1:13-15). It could describe for us
the dreadful pall that gripped the families of Bethlehem after Herod
slaughtered all their infant sons in a fit of jealousy (Matthew 2: 16-18). Or, it could describe for us any one of
thousands of other vignettes that litter our cultural subconscious like parched
bones in the howling wilderness—from the ovens of Auchwitz to the gulags of
Siberia, from the prisons of Teheran to the streets of Beirut, from the
hospitals of Bloomington to the abortion clinics of New York.
Indeed, such tragedy is a well worn human landscape. Such calamity clutters the pages of
human history. Such pathos persistently
torments the hodge-podge ideals of human hope. Replayed again and again and again, it has become a
semeiotic symbol of the end of man and the end of his doing.
Like a moth drawn to a candle flame, man deals in
death. He always has. He always will. For that is his nature in this poor
fallen world.
Sadly, because all men without exception are sinners, the
most fundamental factor in understanding anthropology is the thanatos factor. Very simply, what that means is that
all men have morbidly embraced death (Romans 5:12).
At the Fall, mankind was suddenly destined for death
(Jeremiah 15:2). We were all at
that moment bound into a covenant with death (Isaiah 28:15). “There is a way
that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12;
16:25).
Whether we know it or not, we have chosen death (Jeremiah
8:3). It has become our shepherd
(Psalm 49:14). Our minds are fixed
on it (Romans 8:6), our hearts pursue it (Proverbs 21:6), and our flesh is
ruled by it (Romans 8:2). We dance
to its cadences (Proverbs 2:18) and descend to its chambers (Proverbs 7:27).
The fact is, "the wages of sin is death" (Romans
6:23) and "all have sinned" (Romans 3:23). “There is none righteous,
not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God;
all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who
does good, there is not even one.
Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving,
the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and
bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in
their paths, and the path of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their
eyes” (Romans 3:10-18). And, “all those who hate God, love death” (Proverbs
8:36).
It is no wonder then that abortion, infanticide, exposure,
and abandonment have always been a normal and natural part of human
relations. Since the dawning of
time, men have contrived ingenious diversions to satisfy their fallen
passions. And child-killing has
always been chief among them.
Virtually every culture in antiquity was stained with the
blood of innocent children.
Unwanted infants in ancient Rome were abandoned outside the city walls
to die from exposure to the elements or from the attacks of wild foraging
beasts. Greeks often gave their
pregnant women harsh doses of herbal or medicinal abortifacients. Persians developed highly sophisticated
surgical curette procedures.
Chinese women tied heavy ropes around their waists so excruciatingly
tight that they either aborted or passed into unconsciousness. Ancient Hindus and Arabs concocted
chemical pessaries—abortifacients that were pushed or pumped directly into the
womb through the birth canal.
Primitive Canaanites threw their children onto great flaming pyres as a
sacrifice to their god Molech.
Polynesians subjected their pregnant women to onerous tortures--their
abdomens beaten with large stones or hot coals heaped upon their bodies. Japanese women straddled boiling
cauldrons of parricidal brews.
Egyptians disposed of their unwanted children by disemboweling and
dismembering them shortly after birth--their collagen was then ritually
harvested for the manufacture of cosmetic creams.
None of the great minds of the ancient world--from Plato and
Aristotle to Seneca and Quintilian, from Pythagoras and Aristophanes to Livy
and Cicero, from Herodotus and Thucidides to Plutarch and Euripides--disparaged
child-killing in any way. In fact,
most of them actually recommended it.
They callously discussed its various methods and procedures. They casually debated its sundry legal
ramifications. They blithely
tossed lives like dice.
Abortion, infanticide, exposure, and abandonment were so
much a part of human societies that they provided the primary literary liet motif in popular traditions, stories, myths, fables, and
legends.
The founding of Rome was, for instance, presumed to be the
happy result of the abandonment of children. According to the story, a vestal virgin who had been raped
bore twin sons, Romulus and Remus.
The harsh Etruscan monarch Amulius ordered them exposed on the Tiber
River. Left in a basket which
floated ashore, they were found by a she wolf and suckled by her. Later, a shepherd discovered them and
took them home to his wife and the kindly couple brought them up as their
own. Romulus and Remus would later
establish the city of Rome on the seven hills near the place of their rescue.
Oedipus was presumed to be an abandoned child who was also
found by a shepherd and later rose to greatness. Ion, the eponymous monarch in ancient Greece miraculously
lived through an abortion, according to tradition. Cyrus, the founder of the Persian empire, was supposedly a
fortunate survivor of infanticide.
According to Homer's legend, Paris, whose amorous indiscretions started
the Trojan War, was also a victim of abandonment. Telephus, the king of Mysia in Greece, and Habius, ruler of
the Cunetes in Spain, had both been exposed as children according to various
folk tales. Jupiter, chief god of
the Olympian pantheon, himself had been abandoned as a child. He in turn exposed his twin sons,
Zethus and Amphion. Similarly,
other myths related the fact that Poseidon, Aesculapius, Hephaistos, Attis, and
Cybele had all been abandoned to die.
Because they had been mired by the minions of sin and death,
it was as natural as the spring rains for the men and women of antiquity to
kill their children. It was as
instinctive as the autumn harvest for them to summarily sabotage their own
heritage. They saw nothing
particularly cruel about despoiling the fruit of their wombs. It was woven into the very fabric of
their culture. They believed that
it was completely justifiable.
They believed that it was just and good and right.
But they were wrong.
Dreadfully wrong.
Life is God's gift.
It is His gracious endowment upon the created order. It flows forth in generative
fruitfulness. The earth is
literally teeming with life
(Genesis 1:20; Leviticus 11:10; 22:5; Deuteronomy 14:9). And the crowning glory of this sacred
teeming is man himself (Genesis 1:26-30; Psalm 8:1-9). To violate the sanctity of this
magnificent endowment is to fly in the face of all that is holy, just, and true
(Jeremiah 8:1-17; Romans 8:6).
To violate the sanctity of life is to invite judgment,
retribution, and anathema
(Deuteronomy 30:19-20). It is to
solicit devastation, imprecatation, and destruction (Jeremiah 21:8-10). “Do not
be deceived, God is not mocked, whatsoever a man sows, that he shall also reap”
(Galatians 6:7).
But the Lord God, who is the giver of life (Acts 17:25), the
fountain of life (Psalm 36:9), the defender of life (Psalm 27:1), the prince of
life (Acts 3:15), and the restorer of life (Ruth 4:15), did not leave men to
languish hopelessly in the clutches of sin and death. He not only sent us the message of life (Acts 5:20) and the
words of life (John 6:68), He sent us the light of life as well (John
8:12). He sent us His only
begotten Son--the life of the world (John 6:51)--to break the bonds of death (1
Corinthians 15:54-56). Jesus
"tasted death for everyone" (Hebrews 2:9), actually "abolishing
death" for our sakes (2 Timothy 1:10) and offering us new life (John
5:21). “For God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John
3:16).
One of the earliest Christian documents--actually predating
much of the New Testament--asserts that "There are two ways: a way of life
and a way of death." In
Christ, God has afforded us the opportunity to choose between those two
ways--to choose between fruitful and teeming life on the one hand, and barren
and impoverished death on the other (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Apart from Christ it is not possible to escape the snares of
sin and death (Colossians 2:13).
On the other hand: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old
things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2
Corinthians 5:17). “All those who hate Christ "love death" (Proverbs
8:36); while all those who receive Christ are made “the sweet savor of life” (2
Corinthians 2:16).
The implication is clear: the pro-life movement and the
Christian faith are synonymous.
Where there is one, there will be the other--for one cannot be had
without the other.
Further, the primary conflict in temporal history always has
been and always will be the struggle for life by the church against the natural
inclinations of all men everywhere.
Death has cast its dark shadow across the whole of human
relations. Because of sin, all men
flirt and flaunt shamelessly in the face of its spector. Sadly, such impudence has led to the
most grotesque concupiscence imaginable: the slaughter of innocent
children. Blinded by the glare
from the nefarious and insidious angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), we stand
by, paralyzed and mesmerized.
Thanks be to God, there is a way of escape from these bonds
of destruction. In Christ, there
is hope. In Him there is
life--both temporal and eternal.
In Him there is liberty and justice. In Him there is an antidote to the thanatos factor. In Him, and in Him alone, there is an
answer to the ages long dilemma of the dominion of death.
