Shock and Awe(ful)
Theologically, it’s been a day that began and ended shockingly. The first was over modern-day Christians arguing in a blog that the Bible does indeed condone slavery. And on that basis, atrocities committed by professing believers can be excused as “products of their time” since today we know slavery is wrong but Paul thought it was okay, because he hadn’t “progressed” to our modern sensibilities. It was even argued that Paul might have condoned the hatred and murder of “heretics” since that’s just how things were done by “Christians” in the middle ages. The number of levels at which these ideas are so very wrong must exceed the number of pages in the US tax code; I don’t think I need to spell it out here as I did there. How anyone can read the NT and think that such blatant violations of passages like 1 Cor. 13 can be excused by culture is beyond me.
But then there’s the shock of reading just a while ago an inconceivable (pardon the pun) attempt by a popular blogger to justify abortion. Given other jaw-dropping teachings from there that I’ve discussed in earlier posts, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But I think this one went to a whole new level.
The thrust of the argument seems to be (one never knows, given the history of that blogger’s propensity for ambiguity) that since nobody considers donated organs or tumor cells to be human beings, then we can leap from there to the conclusion that abortion isn’t the taking of human life!
So let’s break this down.
First a few verses are cited, then the obligatory Calvinist theologian, to establish that the soul is created by God--- no argument there from any Christian. But then comes the non-sequitur: that since God creates the soul but the body is formed through ordinary reproductive processes, then somehow the soul is nowhere to be found in the zygote (in spite of Psalm 139:13). And finally, from this lofty peak is the flight to “abortion isn’t the taking of human life, anymore than removing a tumor is the taking of a human life”.
And this is being taught by a Baptist pastor in 2012.
I realize he’s quoting somebody by the name of Moses (!), but I have to hope that he simply grossly misunderstood the guy. Just looking at the last sentence of the quote, I think this is likely: “I am fairly certain the soul remains with the whole instead of being scattered every place that we leave our cells.” How in heaven’s name does that sentence become “the soul has no attachment whatsoever to the cells until the baby is born”? Though he characteristically doesn’t actually spell out this conclusion (implications, heavy though they may be, can always be denied later), it is where the reader is being led; an excuse is being crafted to give up the unpopular position of defending the unborn. And I am appalled. (But who cares?)
I believe that the human soul is “interfaced” to the body via the brain; a person can lose a lot of their body and still be clearly a human being with a soul. But the “elephant in the living room” here is that the blogger never even tries to answer the question, If the soul is not in every cell, then when exactly is it attached to the body? If not at conception, then when? After birth? There is a push now to start allowing infanticide; if it becomes culturally acceptable, will bloggers like this start arguing in favor of it as something more enlightened and informed? The whole thing does nothing but open up an entire bait shop full of cans of worms. It conveniently allows an arbitrary and changeable cut-off point that will suit whatever society deems appropriate.
These two “shocks” together paint a most horrible scenario. So maybe soon society or “science” makes it clear that one must be a backward fundy to believe babies have souls; since we can hide behind “product of his time”, it’s all good with God! And we make so many new friends because they won’t be embarrassed by our backward, redneck beliefs! Rainbows and lollipops all around.
This is seriously evil excrement being passed (pun intended) as Christian theology. The foxes are truly running the whole poultry farm. May Jesus return today and put a stop to the ravaging of His Bride.