Taking a hard line for life

Obama to reverse limits on stem cell work

This post is not going to be an exegetical, expositional biblical defense of my beliefs concerning the issue of abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Neither will it be a pragmatic analysis of stem cell research pointing out the stark lack of progress and results in the field of embryonic stem cell research compared with the fruitful field of adult stem cell research. Both of these would be worthy of blogging.

This post is simply a declaration.

1. Abortion is pre-natal infanticide. It is murder. From the moment sperm joins egg and creates a new and distinct human life that life has the same value as an adult human being. It is not pre-human, it is a living, distinct, personal human being.


2. There is never warrant for abortion. Not for the life of the mother, nor in cases of rape or incest. The mother's life is not more valuable than that of the unborn infant. The unborn infant is an innocent third party to crimes leading to an unwanted pregnancy. Ending the child's life because of medical complications that endanger the mother implies that the mother's life is more valuable or more human than that of the child.


3. Conception of new human beings for use in medical research (embryonic stem cell research) is murderous butchery and an incredible display of depraved selfishness that makes a person's own perceived quality of life more important than the life of another human being.


4. The use of aborted infants for embryonic stem cell research is to give approval of the murderous butchery that is abortion.


5. The creating of infants in order to be artificially implanted in infertile women, insofar as it is engaged in discarding "surplus" infants, is mass murder.


6. No one who has had an abortion or even many abortions should consider themselves disqualified as concerns salvation. They should be treated with compassion and be assured that forgiveness, reconciliation and eternal life await all who come to Christ in faith and repentance.


7. No one who has performed abortions should consider themselves or be considered by others as having been disqualified for salvation, provided they repent from their sins (including their murderous vocation) and accept Christ as their righteousness before God, they may enter into eternal life.


8. Christians should give no quarter nor compromise concerning the value of the unborn infant as a distinct person created in the image of God. Christians should view abortion as no less a crime than premeditated murder. Christians should avoid hypocrisy and make no distinctions between the value of the lives of infants conceived through consensual sexual activities and those conceived in sex crimes. Christians should likewise make no distinction as concerns the value of the life of an infant in early, mid and late stages of development


9. Christians should not return evil for evil, and should be compassionate towards those who have been blinded by the world and enslaved by Satan and sin, knowing we too were once blind slaves and had to be rescued from our hardness of heart by God.


10. We should not engage in violence, hateful rhetoric, or arrogant self righteousness towards those who perform abortions or those who obtain abortions, but rather, as sinners who have been given the free gift of righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ, proclaim this gospel in love to those in bondage to the sin of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and artificial fertility clinics.

Here is where I stand, and I am certain that these views will label me a "radical" even among many Christians. But I would only ask that these issues be carefully, prayerfully, and biblically considered and that the truth to the glory of God be paramount in our drawn conclusions.