Friday, January 16, 2015

A thought excursion mostly about abortion

This is somewhat of a low blow for evangelical Christians, but I just thought of it while in the shower. I haven't thought it through very far--let's see where this post takes me.

Let us assume the beliefs and perspectives of your typical evangelical Christian.
If:
- People are sinful and wicked from birth, and
- Babies that die before they can comprehend the gospel go to heaven (i.e. stillborn, miscarried, aborted, died in infancy, etc.)
Then:
Why is abortion bad?

If we assume the above two premises to be true, then if a baby is aborted before birth, then it automatically goes to heaven. If a child enters the world and is allowed to live its life, then it runs the risk of not finding Jesus and becoming saved. Isn't it better to ensure the baby's fate, and to allow abortions to happen?

Now let us leave the worldview of the typical evangelical Christian.

I do not have the authority to take a moral stance on abortion since I am a man who has never been pregnant and faced the question of whether or not to abort my child. However, I know there is something inherently valuable about life, and it is sad to deprive another person of the potential to experience life. I believe that abortion is a horrible, horrible thing, but this is not a moral position--the procedure of abortion and what it deprives a fetus of are horrible. I do recognize, however, that there are situations in which women find an abortion as a better alternative, and so in that sense I cannot make a moral judgment on abortion. It is naive to think that a woman who had an abortion did it thoughtlessly and carelessly. I cannot imagine the emotional pain that a woman must go through leading up to having an abortion. This is why protests outside abortion clinics are extremely insensitive (and humiliating for the patients).

That last half paragraph was a bit of an aside. In any case, I think that abortion is a tragic thing. Therefore, one of the two premises listed above must be false. And because I believe that God has enough grace to allow young children or terminated pregnancies to enter heaven, it must be the case that the premise "people are wicked and sinful from birth" is false.

Or there is no hell.

Or both of those conclusions are true.

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