Murder is OK--Relatively Speaking

I’ve often been accused of being a very dichotomous-minded person, philosophically speaking.  That is, I tend to see things as clearly on either side of the spectrum.  Nothing is “50 Shades of Grey” to me anymore.  Moral choices, once dissected, are either plainly wrong or obviously right.  We have loads of justifications that we throw in the mix, but that doesn’t change the bottom line.  Decisions grounded by a moral compass are not always perfect when decided by fallible mankind, but they are definitely more just.  

One of the many “bad fruits” of Human Secularism, in my opinion, has been “Truth Relativism”.  Truth relativism is the reluctance to acknowledge that anything is either “right or wrong”.  According to Truth relativism—morality depends on the individual situation.  This is in direct opposition to Judeo-Christian teaching which clearly indicates that there are many things that are deemed always right and always wrong.  For instance, the Bible tells us that lying is always wrong.  It’s one of the 10 commandments.  Thou Shalt NOT is pretty clear—no “shades of grey” there.  Now…I can almost hear the coming refutation from people today.  The usual examples of truth relativism go something like this:

Well...if you were hiding Jews in your attic and the Nazis knocked on your door would you LIE? 

To be completely honest (pardon the intentional pun), a short while ago I probably would have said “Yes—go ahead and lie to the rotten Nazis”.  However, the root problem is that when we are LYING we are not RELYING on God.  Once we remove God from the equation, then Truth becomes problematic. God IS Truth. 

For the example given above, let’s look at the other options instead of lying:

a)      pray for divine protection (numerous examples of this in the Bible)

b)      offer no response (Jesus was silent before his accusers)

c)      give a non-answer such as “Is there a problem officer”?  Jesus, when asked if he was King of the Jews, simply answered—“It is as you say”. 

d)      all of the above

You see, LYING says “I am in control of the situation”.   Trusting in God to handle the situation is WAYYYYYYY more effective.

There is a story, interestingly enough from Nazi Germany, about just such an issue.  A young man was on a train out of the country while attempting to assist others in escaping from certain death in a concentration camp.  A German SS officer came up to him demanding answers.  One of the questions was:  “Why are you on this train?  By who’s authority”?  The young man answered:   “I am here on the authority of the Highest-most power”.  To which the SS Soldier simply looked frightened and walked away with no further inquiries.  I love this story.  It encourages me to be obedient when I am tempted to take the lazy, lying, non-truth way out.    

So now we come to the truth about abortion.  In the U.S. we have been believing and supporting a BIG LIE.  Abortion is murder—plain and simple.  Yet many Christians defend abortion in certain situations as dupes of Truth Relativism.  What if the mother’s life is in danger?  How about rape and incest?  What if the child is deformed in some manner?  We so often hear the phrase “slippery slope”.  Well in just one short generation, Americans have “slipped” from abortions performed only in the most dire of circumstances to sanctioning partial birth abortions, “designer-baby” sex-selection abortions and 90% of all Down’s Syndrome babies being aborted.  We are morally no different than the Nazi’s who began “cleansing” their society of supposed deformities and ended up killing people because they had a harelip.  Clueless Christians have been complicit in “greasing” this slide by buying into the Truth Relativism arguments. 

Oh—I know…I’m going to get the usual liberal arguments about supposedly hypocritical conservatives causing death by war and capital punishment.  However, these points of view actually BOLSTER this argument.  The Bible clearly indicates the difference between innocent life and non-innocent life.  Today we have it exactly BACKWARDS.  We blithely kill the innocent and protest in the streets to protect the guilty.  Once again…there is no Biblical foundation whatsoever in these positions.  Just what mankind thinks is right or wrong and we know from history how well that turns out.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

~Proverbs 14:12

In American law, “ignorance of the law” is no defense.  Today, we are ignorant of God’s laws and, trust me, there is NO defense.  When we, as Americans, liberally donate money to “Save the Whales”, prohibit clubbing of baby seals, support PETA and Animal Shelters, etc.--WE HAVE NO DEFENSE whatsoever before God when it comes to sanctioning the murder of innocents on the altar of convenience.  Furthermore, God not only plainly tells us this is wrong, he even did us the favor of laying out the punishment for breaking this law and it is not pleasant:

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.

~Genesis 9:6

Do not pollute the land where you are.  Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.”

~Numbers 35:33

Son of man, will you judge her?  Will you judge this city of bloodshed?  Then confront her with all her detestable practices…O city that brings on herself doom by shedding blood in her midst…You have become guilty because of the blood you have shed…You have brought your days to a close, and the end of your years has come.

~Ezekiel 22:2-4

Even our American history, just a short 150 years ago, offers up a clear example of the penalty exacted for the persecution of innocents through slavery.  The Civil War slavery penalty on the nation was harsh.  Historians estimate around 600,000 Americans were slain in the Civil War.  Interestingly, ship manifolds suggest that approximately 600,000 slaves were shipped into the U.S. in the ugly slave trade industry (see chart below from Wikipedia):

Slaves imported to American colonies
Date	Numbers
1620-1700	21,000
1701-1760	189,000
1761-1770	63,000
1771-1790	56,000
1791-1800	79,000
1801-1810	124,000
1810-1865	51,000
Total	597,000

. 

Evidently, God demands one for one.  Such is the importance of human life in His eyes.

"If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her…then thou shalt give life for life,"

~Exodus 21:22-23

Even President Abraham Lincoln, a very Godly, praying man, suggested this penalty was exactly true:

“Yet, if God wills that it continue until…every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.”

Once you acknowledge that every life has EQUAL worth—or, in other words, shine the light of TRUTH on these questions—there is only ONE correct answer.  Of course, you should not murder another person simply because it may be convenient for someone else.  The thinking only gets “muddy” or “grey” when God’s perfect truth is out of the equation and we trust our own faulty reasoning.  Eventually, as in the United States today, we end down a horribly ugly and evil pathway.  Then, everything is “relative”—even murder.       

So what will America’s penalty be for the murder of SIXTY MILLION innocent children? 

I don’t know, but like the Civil War…it’s probably all relative.


I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.
~Thomas Jefferson   

Please join us in the Grassroots movement National Day of Repentance:

www.dayofrepentance.org

In honor of our Judeo-Christian heritage, Americans will pray and fast from Sunset on 9/25/12 through Nightfall on 9/26/12. This will also kick off 40 days of prayer until the 11/6/2012 election.