The State of Christendom in American Contemporary Culture, Part 5

The fourth column in my series on Christendom in America was submitted two days before the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling. I waited a while after that to see if anything needed to be changed.

It didn’t. But I want to reiterate something my readers may not be hearing.

I am not “pro-choice.” Nor am I “pro-life.” The choice vs. life dichotomy is illogical and dysfunctional. Choice is not the opposite of life, and to pit the two stances against each other with such paralyzing rhetoric is only yet another sign of the polarization of this Age.

I have long been of the mind that the cultural division in America is a greater problem than the problems with either side. The SCOTUS decision may well have Constitutional basis in returning abortion laws to the States. But in doing so, the divisiveness is exacerbated.

The recent dismissal of the rape of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio as “fake news” is a case in point. The plight of the victim was not taken at face value, but according to divisive rhetoric. There is no reason in God’s heaven why that girl could not have been granted an abortion. But in the hysteria of this age, she had to go to another state to get it done.

If we believe the blanket statement, “abortion is murder,” we are not receiving that belief from the Bible. There is nowhere in the Bible that specifically states that abortion is murder. Therefore, the belief originates somewhere else.

On the other hand, if we believe that “abortion is healthcare,” we are blind to every case as well. Let’s consider the extreme:

“Oops! I forgot the condom! Don’t worry honey. If you get pregnant, I’ll pay for the abortion.”

That’s not healthcare. That’s sloppiness.

I am a Bible-believing Christian whose views are based primarily on the Bible, and who tries not to let popular Christian literature interfere with his biblical approach. As a Christian of my type, I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage—or at the very least, outside of a committed monogamous relationship.

Sex is a holy act consecrated in a godly marriage, as is written: “Marriage is honorable in all, and the marriage bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4). All this swinging, polyamory, and recreational sex is for the birds. Such deviations from realistic sexual norms invariably create more problems than they solve.

If we humans were to magically still our deep-seated passions to engage sexually with one another, and to reserve those passions for the undefiled bed, can you imagine how many fewer abortions we would need to have?

There would be so few abortions it would scarcely be an issue. Similarly, we would not have as many sexually transmitted diseases. Nor would we have as many heated disputes as to whose partner is truly whose. The downsides of having sex are largely a result of our corporal promiscuity.

And is this any wonder? Not in the least. It is the natural result of a species composed of people obsessed with sex. And God knows this. He knew it from the start. This is one of the reasons why He created marriage. It’s a catch-all, err-on-the-side-of-caution solution to all the problems created by our natural sexual natures.

While people think of a marital contract as a binding thing, it is actually a freeing thing. If embraced faithfully, marriage frees us from the effects of our erotic nature when that nature is scattered about the four winds. It frees us to direct all things related to monogamous intimacy toward one and one partner alone.

The God who created marriage is not the god who binds us. He is the God who frees us. The god who binds us is the “god of this world,” who is Satan.

While the SCOTUS overturning of Roe v Wade may have been intended to “free us”–in that Red States would be free to outlaw all or most abortions, and Blue States free to pursue enhanced directions in women’s reproductive rights—a far greater effect of this travesty has been to further “bind us” to the ever-increasing disunity and hostility in the cultural division of our Age.

Moreover, the issue of abortion rights vis a vis the right to life of an unborn baby actually is a ramification of that division. Notions such as “abortion rights” or “the right to the life of an unborn fetus” were absent in church doctrine prior to the advent of Roe v Wade.

One of the reasons for this is a profound inability on the part of the religious right to distinguish sin from crime. Not all sins ought to be crimes, and not all crimes are necessarily sinful.

According to Scripture, all sin is sin against God. (Psalm 51:4). If I do the will of God, if I cease to sin, then my sin no longer stands in the way of God. (Isaiah 59:1-2). One could conceivably entertain sinful thoughts in their heart (Matthew 5:22, 28) yet not break the law in any sense.

Because all sin is an absolute violation of the perfect law of God, the essence of sin eschews the principle of “lesser of evils.” But in enacting laws, in deciding what human actions are to be considered “crimes,” we need to take this principle into account.

Therefore when we consider abortion laws, we need to decide which is the greater wrong. Which is the lesser of evils: the purported murder of a fetus forming in the very early stages of pregnancy—that fetus bearing little or no resemblance to a human being—or the brutal rape of the woman forced to bear that fetus? At one point in the course of pregnancy should the victim of a rape feel morally obliged to bear the child?

These are the kinds of questions we need to ask ourselves when involved in enacting laws. Sin is a unique matter between one individual and their God. Crime often involves multiple people acting in opposing forces. Laws are not set in place for the punishment of sin, but to ensure peace and security among the populace wherein those laws apply.

The recent overturning of Roe v Wade does not promote peace among Americans, nor are we made any further secure. Instead, we have only exacerbated the greatest single problem that exists in America today: a growing cultural division marked by increasing hositility, bringing us to the verge of anarchy and to Civil War.

It is for this reason that I am opposed to the SCOTUS ruling of June 25 overturning Roe v. Wade. This decision does not promote good will in our culture, but further hostility and hate. And those who impose their idea of Christian values upon freethinkers in a democratic society have forgotten what God is all about. God is not about imposing our standards, right or wrong, upon others who rightfully hold different views. Personally, I think God is a lot more concerned about widespread sexual sin among Christians in America than he is about the alleged “murder of millions of unborn babies.”

This leads to what I have tried to express in this fifth and final column on the state of Christendom in contemporary American culture. We are not only confused as to what the Bible says. We are not only confused what it means to be a Christian. We are confused as to who God is—for we have forgotten that God is Love.

Read parts one, two, three and four of this series.