I made the mistake of letting myself get drawn into an online discussion: "Can a Christian be pro-choice?"
To me, this is a serious no-brainer. Here are the abundance of reasons I say this. I went into more depth here. In a nutshell: Each and every one of us is a masterpiece of God's handiwork, made in His image, and to simply destroy a child as an exercise in free will is the embodiment of spitting in God's eye. It shows a lack of faith. It shows a lack of love. It shows a lack of compassion. It shows a lack of everything the Christian faith is about.
I noticed two things among the "God is prochoice!" crowd. Mind you, these are professing Christians:
1. They cling to the image of "breath of life" with the tenacity of the damned. (As well they might.) These people don't tend to be Biblical literalists in general, but boy, do they get literal here! God breathed the breath of life into Adam and that PROVES that life starts with the first BREATH! Period! Paragraph! Quote not to me any other scriptures! It's right there: BREATH OF LIFE BREATH OF LIFE BREATH OF LIFE BREATH OF LIFE! From people who don't take a single other word of the Creation story literally. Interesting.
2. "God gave us free will. Therefore God is prochoice." Yeah, God gave us free will. That's how we went wrong, remember? Choosing evil?
As near as I can figure, this praticular brand of "prochoice Christian" worships free will, rather than the Creator that gave us that free will. It's about personal soverignty, not God's soveriegnty.
Which is really dangerous spiritual ground to plant your flag on.
If a "true believer" wishes to switch from a literal view or reading of a scripture to a figurative view or reading, however, THAT'S okay! But for "non-believers" that option's simply not permitted. Your argument - if you wish to call it such - is about as valid as your judgment of others - and you're wrong on both accounts.
ReplyDeleteFirst, if you assume that God breathing the "breath of life" into Adam was only spiritual
symbolism, then you must assume that the rest of the story of the creation of Adam was only symbolic: IE. "It wasn't really dust that God used - the dust symbolized something else." Or, "God didn't actually form or create Adam's physical body - it was formed by a process of change - for which God must alone be credited - over a period of time." Or "The story of Adam's creation regards only his spiritual being or his soul. God created man earlier (on the 6th day) and the inputting of a soul into Adam was an upgrade that came later."
You see, one can explain away anything that doesn't quite gibe with their religious or moral opinion, but the truth of the matter is, it is not your place to determine for others which parts of the Bible should be read literally versus figuratively.
Christ repeatedly warned his followers "judge not - lest ye be judged". Too bad most Christians don't take THAT part of the Bible as a literal and very direct instruction from their Messiah...
Dean, first of all, I pointed out that it is the people trying to use Scripture to justify abortion who take everything figuratively and make an exception for "breath of life," which they choose to take literally. So the people you should be leveling the charge of inconsistency on are the prochoicers.
ReplyDeleteAnd "Judge not lest ye be judged" doesn't in any way mean that you are not to judge the validity of somebody's arguments. When anybody tries to use the Bible to justify abortion, their arguments simply can not hold water.