The deliberately slanderous headline reads: "11 states consider murdering babies after ultrasound pictures are taken"
As Christians, we are often called upon to reprove our brothers and sisters. The editor of Pro-Life News does not allow comments so that we can chide him personally or privately. He slanders his brothers and sisters in public, and he needs to be taken down a notch in public.
This brother's actions are designed to tear others down, to deliberately attack brothers and sisters who are working to limit the carnage, deliberately misrepresenting them. Again, this is bearing false witness -- the breaking of a Commandment -- on a deliberate and ongoing basis. If we do a study of how the word translated "violence" is used in Scripture, this brother is daily and deliberately committing violence against brothers and sisters. Read Hebrew Words and Abortion, Part II. Let me share a portion:
The next word for "violence" is "chamac," meaning "to wrong, do violence to, treat violently, do wrongly (Qal); to treat violently, do wrong; of physical wrong; of ethical wrong; of physical and ethical wrong (Niphal); to be treated violently." This is a primative root word used 8 times in the Old Testament, and translated (KJV) as violence (2 times), violated (1), shake off (1), wrongfully imagine (1), violently taken away (1), wronged (1), and made bare (1). Example are:Proverbs 8:36
But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. (KJV)Jeremiah 22:3
Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place. (KJV)Zephaniah 3:4
Her prophets are light and treacherous persons: her priests have polluted the sanctuary, they have done violence to the law. (KJV)
Another word, also transliterated "chamac," means "violence, wrong, cruelty, injustice." It is used a total of 60 times in the Old Testament, translated as violence (39 times), violent (7), cruelty (4), wrong (3), false (2), cruel (1), damage (1), injustice (1), oppressor (1), and unrighteous (1). Examples are (all KJV):Genesis 6:11
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.Genesis 49:5
Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.Psalms 72:14
He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight.Jonah 3:8
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
The final word used in the Old Testament to indicate "violence" is transliterated "m@rutsah," meaning "crushing, oppression:"Jeremiah 22:17
But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.
I'm beginning to see a pattern here, in that violence is indeed condemned roundly by God -- but that "violence" encompasses not just what we'd think of as a direct physical assault, but also any assault upon the integrity of a person or God's law. This includes taking away anything from another person -- posessions, reputation, dignity.
The editor of Pro-Life News is committing this sin against brothers and sisters regularly, publicly, daily, deliberately. This is not an occasional slip of the tongue or misunderstanding. This is deliberate and daily wrongdoing against brothers and sisters. This brother needs to be expelled from the fellowship until he repents. You can email the moderator of Pro Life Blogs at prolifeblogs@gmail.com, or contact him or her through the contact form.
Things like this are a huge part of the spiritual battle. We must keep our own house clean. We often slander our opponents -- saying that they are deliberately committing murder when we do not know how it is they actually view their actions. That is probably a huge part of why God allows the outrage of abortion to continue -- to teach us how to do battle. To teach us to identify the enemy. And we are joining forces with the real Enemy when we resort to Satan's methods of dealing with those we disagree with. Satan is, I'm sure, quite delighted when any brother or sister tries to fight the breaking of one Commandment (against murder) with habitual breaking of another (against bearing false witness).
And I can hear the squeals of outrage: "How dare you compare a few words typed on a keyboard to the deliberate slaughter of innocent unborn children!?" Well, I'll reply in advance that I'm not the one making the comparison. God is. He had a reason for putting covetousness and slander on the same list with murder. Are we going to trust Him to recognize evil or not?
In closing I will quote C. S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity:
It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity-that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride-just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
I might add that Satan is no doubt delighted to see you battle abortion as long as you do it by committing slander, bearing false witness, and puffing yourself up with the sin of Pride. And prolifers are very, very prone to this: to saying, "Yeah, I do this bad thing, but at least I'm not killing babies!" Well, for the most part, abortion is a very carnal sin. (Only the "Abortion as a Sacrifice to Artemis" types embrace it as a spiritual sin.) Fighting it by puffing yourself up with Pride is a spiritual sin. Which one was Jesus more likely to take a sinner to the woodshed over? He was far more gentle on the Woman Caught in Adultery than he was with the puffed-up religious leaders who congratulated themselves daily on how much more holy they were than the woman in question.
And I have been remiss in not couching the battle regularly in spiritual terms, and in not calling Scriptures to play on a regular basis. I'm guilty of fostering this cancer by not taking great care in how I address others' motives myself.
7 comments:
Hi Christina, great blog! God bless you for telling the truth in love.
I don't quite get the headline-- I found the site and read the article, and it didn't seem to make any sense. It was certainly inaccurate.
One wonders what PLN could do if it committed its efforts toward the pro-aborts instead of the pro-lifers.
Maybe save a baby or two, do you think?
I"m also concerned about the capitulation to evil. After all, it's the excuse that the ends justify the means that allows abortion in the first place.
Do the ends -- saving babies -- justify the means -- routinely breaking other commandments?
And all of us are prone to the misrepresentation of other people's motives. How many prolifers describe a woman walking into an abortion mill as "choosing to have her baby killed" without for a moment stopping to recognize that we don't know what she's been told. We don't know that she knows it's killing a baby. If she was raised by a pro-abortion mother, surrounded all her life by proabortion people, she's been taught that "It's a baby" is a bald-faced lie, that there's nothing in her uterus but some tissue that, if she doesn't take quick action, will become a baby. She might have been taught that abortion is the responsible thing to do for herself and her family and her future children and the entire well-being of humanity.
She's going in for an abortion. We can't know if she's choosing it freely or if she's doing this because she fears for her life. We can't know if she's scared out of her wits or proudly exercising her "right to choose". We can't know, unless she tells us, that she really knows that what she's about to do is killing a living child.
The more I think about it the more abortion seems to be a furnace burning away the dross in everybody.
Oh -- for those who say, "Well, the ends -- saving babies -- doesn't justify the means -- giving tacit approval to killing them through abortion" I'd point out two things:
1. Nobody in their right mind has any doubt that the goal of these bills is to highlight the humanity of the child and prevent abortions.
2. Look at Scriptures. We can start with the Hebrew midwives, who in response to Pharaoh's decree to kill the newborns, didn't stage a protest or try to lobby against the decree. They instead hedged and said, "The Hebrew women are too hardy; the babies are born too fast for us to get there in time to kill them at birth." Then Moses' mom hid him, rather than confronting Pharaoh with him and asserting the child's right to live. Moses' sister played dumb, as did his mother, when dealing with Pharaoh's daughter. This is but one example of Scripture supporting the idea that sometimes you're living under an evil regime and have to do the best you can. What incrementalists are doing is in the same spirit.
You are asking for other pro-lifers to rebuke another pro-lifer in this blog.If I remember correctly, ARTL was judged and rebuked for judging and rebuking other pro-lifers, something that was condemned by the owner of this blog. Now you are asking for it to happen to a pro-life brother because you disapprove of his tactics.
Is it wrong or just depends on who the pro-lifer is and whether or not you agree with his strategy?
The ultrasound bill can save some lives but hss the potential downfall of women looking at the baby, realizing it is a person, a baby and still deciding to kill the baby.
Martha,
You may be correct that some women will knowingly kill their baby, a little human inside their wombs. But I don't know that that is a downside, since I would wager that many more women would have an attack of conscience when they see the little baby, the little human, inside them. I could be wrong, but I don't get what is a downside about a woman knowingly making the choice to kill a person, rather than unknowingly making the same choice. If she does it unknowingly, there is a much greater chance for her to discover later what she has done and feel like a murderess; whereas if she has the information beforehand, she may change her mind -- saving the baby's life; and if she knows the information prior to the abortion and still kills her baby, then at least she knows she's a murderess beforehand. I think the odds are still better to require to have an ultrasound first, so that she knows for sure what she is destroying (with the hope and intention that she will change her mind), than to just let her continue in ignorance and kill the baby for lack of better knowledge.
Martha, it depends upon the spirit of rebuking and what you're rebuking the person for.
The PL News editor is wallowing in Pride, being snotty, belittling others' efforts, and just in general deliberately lying about other people and tearing people down in spirt of willful deceitfulness. I am asking that he be not given a public platform for these sinful attacks.
See the difference?
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