Controversy

Election time--so much drama!

Some people are saying Paul Ryan should be forced off the ticket because he called rape "a method of contraception." I think it's ludicrous to imagine he considers rape a legitimate method of conception. Common sense would tell us, I think, that he did not choose his words carefully. Isn't it possible he was simply saying that rape is one way that conception can occur? Regardless of how the conception took place, some of us are convinced (obvious to me) the result is an unborn child. And as heinous as the crime of rape is, taking the life of an unborn child is also a crime.

There is much talk about abortion being appropriate when the pregnancy is a result of rape, but what about the countless unborn children that are conceived in love, but then killed in the name of convenience?

I am grateful to live in a country where we are free to express our views, but today there is little tolerance for conservative views--if I believe God created the world and us, I am an uneducated idiot; if I believe that marriage is a sacred union between a man and a women instituted by God, I am a homophobic; and if I believe killing an unborn human being is wrong, I am intolerant and a woman-hater.

So how do people decide what is right and wrong? Where and how do we, as individuals and society, "draw the line" that is constantly moving? Does absolute truth exist? Is there an absolute moral standard? If not, how do we decide what is right and wrong? What Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) said many years ago is even more true today:

In passing, we should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.

 So how do we know when we have gone too far? I am reminded of reading (two separate articles) in which prominent people seriously presented the idea of legalizing infanticide. Their reasoning is that if we allow a viable unborn infant to be destroyed in the womb, why should we not allow that choice to extend to after the infant is born. Perhaps a time period during which the mother or parents can choose to withhold care from the infant so that he or she does not survive.

Schaeffer, in his book Whatever Happened to the Human Race, a Christian response to abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide, makes a good case for the slippery slope we are on:

With nothing higher than human opinion upon which to base judgments and with ethics equaling no ethics, the justification for seeing crime and cruelty as disturbing is destroyed. The very word crime and even the word cruelty lose meaning. There is no final reason on which to forbid anything -- "If nothing is forbidden, then anything is possible."
(Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everette Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, Ch. 1)

As a society, we do not want to believe in an absolute moral standard, because that belief leads us to acknowledge the existence of something transcendent, beyond ourselves--God. Schaeffer links the dignity of human life with the existence of God:

But the dignity of human life is unbreakably linked to the existence of the personal-infinite God. It is because there is a personal-infinite God who has made men and women in His own image that they have a unique dignity of life as human beings. Human life then is filled with dignity, and the state and humanistically oriented law have no right and no authority to take human life arbitrarily in the way it is being taken. (from Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto)

I am keenly aware these days of how difficult confrontation is, especially when I am on the "wrong" side of our changing cultural norms. It is helpful and reassuring to go back to the writings of Christians like Schaeffer, who was not afraid of confrontation, of speaking the truth. Thinking about his words today..written so many years ago, but more relevant than ever before...

Truth always carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation nevertheless. If our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality of the truth involved, there is something wrong. (Francis Schaeffer)