Last week Jacob Hantla wrote about an article that had appeared in the news the day before. A girl who lives in the Minneapolis area unexpectedly gave birth to a baby. She is overweight and it seems that neither she nor her mother had known that she was pregnant. She did not want the baby and reacted to its birth by stabbing it some 135 times and stuffing the lifeless body in a trash can. She is now facing charges of first degree murder, a charge that could potentially put her in prison for the rest of her life, and is being held on $1 million bail. Jacob points out a sad and disgusting aspect of this case, saying “since it was after the baby had passed through the birth canal instead of a few hours earlier while it remained in the uterus, the law declares it first degree murder instead of abortion.” As the title of his article suggests, if this girl wanted to avoid trouble, she really should have killed the baby a day earlier. Had she done this it would have been a mere surgical procedure to get rid of unwanted tissue. There may have been repercussions for this kind of late-term abortion, but not a first degree murder charge.
I came across another interesting article last week. In this one a man was appealing to the courts to have them overturn the order that forces him to pay alimony to his ex-wife. His ex, you see, has undergone gender reassignment surgery and now considers herself [or is that himself?] a man. The former husband is now arguing in the courts that it is illegal for him to pay alimony to a man and thus he should no longer be forced to pay. While he is, in many ways, absolutely right, the consensus of legal experts is that the courts will not be sympathetic to him.
These two articles reaffirmed in mind the absolute value of absolute truth. Once we, as humans, begin to tamper with what God says is true and good, we launch ourselves down a slippery slope that will necessarily lead to greater and grander error. Only when we have rejected God’s truth do we need to fight about and wrestle with issues such as whether a baby killed inside its mother is morally and ethically equal to the murder of a baby outside of its mother’s body. Only when we turn from God’s truth do we need to wonder if a man who used to be a woman is really now a woman or a man. When God’s Word is held out as the standard, these questions immediately dissolve in the light of its certainty.
It is not just unbelievers who encounter these strange and unnatural questions. When Christians are swayed from the truth and begin to introduce error into their lives they, too, have to face questions that they really have no need or right to ask. It has been my experience that when I find myself wrestling with issues that seem like they should be clear, more often than not I soon find that I have introduced some kind of error into my thinking. This error brings shades of gray to what is really black and white. God’s Word is given to bring light and clarity. If it seems to bring confusion, you can rest assured that the fault is yours and not the Bible’s!
